"Blasphemy" charges rethought.....1985's The Twilight Zone

I guess I've been a bit too "loyal." Pledging allegiance to a fault.

It's no secret (if you know anything about me) that Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone has been, and still is, a benchmark in my life, in terms of inspiration and enjoyment. Seriously, I can watch any given episode, even lesser ones such as "The Mighty Casey," repeatedly; it's all in the storytelling employed by Serling, Richard Matheson, and Charles Beaumont. Whether otherwordly or grounded in the everyday, the T-Zone stories meshed suspense, fantasy, and underlying social messages so well, so fluidly, that you could just rerun the original eps today and it'd still blow every other television show out of the goddamn boob-tube. No bullshit.

Considering this intense adoration I have for the original show, it should be understandable that I've long been leery of the 1985 reboot, same-named The Twilight Zone.



I'd heard mostly negative chatter, which sounded about right to me---Twilight Zone without Serling seems worse than McDonalds without their glorious french fries (sorry, I submitted to the temptation recently, and it was practically an orgy of the mouth). And then I checked out some clips of 1985-Zone episodes on Youtube, and the ish seemed like a Tales from the Darkside ripoff, meaning, a knock-job of an already-mediocre anthology series. Gone were/still-are the topical awareness of the original series; present were/still-are basic "shocks" and standard horror yarns, stripped of all-important soul and left to sustain as hollow grounds. Which wouldn't be a big deal, truthfully, if it had just called itself anything other than The Twilight Zone.

Plus, the Grateful Dead-orchestrated theme music sucks, as does the opening title sequence---both key elements of the original show. Why keep the Twilight Zone name? I'd wonder to myself, a bit peeved.

Thanks to the Chiller channel, however, I've been able to DVR several episodes now, and I must admit---the 1985 version isn't a total washout. Of course, the storytellers involved couldn't even reload Serling's typewriter, but who can, really? Taken as nothing more than largely-cheesy entertainment, it has its memorable moments. More crappy episodes than stellar ones, but it's at least interesting to see the early work of actors the likes of Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren, as well as directors such as Wes Craven and William Friedkin. I can't exactly call myself a "fan" of the relaunch, though; just somebody who'll now gladly watch the episodes when they come up on Chiller, and then quickly dispose of them off of my DVR memory bank.

All that being disclosed, I now want to post one of the better entries from the 1985 spin, director William Friedkin's (The Exorcist, The French Connection, and recently Bug)intense, great-looking "Nightcrawlers." Unlike nearly every other 1985-Zone story, this one actually has shreds of Rod Serling's original M.O.---namely the "Vietnam war veteran who can't shake the horrors of the war" angle. Some of the best Serling Zone tales dealt with war vets (i.e., the Nazi deathcamp-of-ghosts winner "Death's Head Revisited"), and something tells me that the man himself would've given his prestigiuous thumbs-up to "Nightcrawlers." Even though it's certainly more mean-spirited and violent than traditional Zones.

Check it out if you're intrigued at all, it's a two-parter, but only 20 minutes total; the final five minutes are bad-to-the-ass (No Milk? For the record, I'm a Milk fan, I just didn't feel like saying tired-old "No Brokeback"):



You know why even this successful episode doesn't feel like it's The Twilight Zone? No introduction/conclusion narrations. Nobody could do them like Sir Serling, so I guess they were better off cutting their losses, eh?