OK, so, I watched the anthology film Twilight Zone: The Movie. That would be where four fairly big directors–John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller–each did a remake with a then-big cast of the old anthology TV show. Why that one? Well, it was leaving HBO Max at the end of April, and I figured “What the hell!”
I’m going to review this one a bit differently.
So, normally when I write these up, I do two paragraphs of plot summary to establish the basic premise, and then two more where I say what did and didn’t work before I slap a grade on it. For this one, I’m just going to write a mini-review of each segment and then put an overall grade at the end. There’s an opening sequence where Dan Aykroyd turns into a monster and eats Albert Brooks, something that gets a callback in the last segment, and while both men briefly reminisce over The Twilight Zone TV series, they namedrop one classic that does not get remade here that featured actor Burgess Meredith. And then Burgess Meredith acts as a narrator for the rest of the movie, one of a couple of callbacks to the old show. But as it is, it looks like these segments are set up in order of quality with the weakest first and the strongest last. Not a bad way to go, actually.
“Time Out” goes first, Landis’s work (he also did the introduction), but the reason it’s the weakest is probably not Landis’s fault. Vic Morrow plays a bigot who leaves a bar and ends up bouncing through time, forever on the receiving end of all kinds of racial discrimination from the worst such examples that most Americans can name. However, this is the segment that Morrow (and two child actors) was killed making when a helicopter crashed on top of him, so I suspect this one was probably supposed to run longer.
Up next is Spielberg’s segment, “Kick the Can,” and it is the most Spielbergian possible segment considering where Spielberg was at this point in his career. While The Twilight Zone was known for horrifying or ironic punishments, the series did occasionally give the audience a pleasant or happy ending, as seen with this story where an old man known only as Mr. Bloom (Scatman Crothers) goes around to miserable nursing homes and teaches the residents how to feel young again by simply playing a game, temporarily turning them back into children. And, in a nice but obvious touch, one old lady’s cat turns into a kitten for that period. Most of the old timers choose to go back to their normal ages, but they’re happier now, so that’s all that matters. Small wonder when Spielberg produced his own anthology sort of show for TV, it was the much more positive-themed Amazing Stories. He hadn’t gotten to the point he is at today where he can produce family fair or serious drama, but not both. He used to be able to do both. And methinks if Landis’s work had been completed, this one would have been the weakest.
Joe Dante’s take on “It’s a Good Life” follows. A kid (Jeremy Licht) can make any wish he wants come true, and everyone is terrified of him as a result. Incoming schoolteacher Helen Foley (Kathleen Quinlan) seems to be unintimidated, and the kid mostly wants everyone to eat junk food and watch cartoons all day. There may be some irony that the segment’s one onscreen casualty is played by Nancy Cartwright, longtime voice of Bart Simpson, when her character is eaten by a cartoon dragon. But there are other implied bits of darkness, and it ends hopefully for Helen and her new student. Lots of Dante’s regulars like Kevin McCarthy and Dick Miller are in this one, as is the original kid Bill Mumy in a small role, and the segment looks and feels like the sort of Looney Toon sort of stuff Dante has made a career out of, with a look that might have made this segment fit better into the original Creepshow.
The best of the bunch, then, was easily George Miller’s take on “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” where John Lithgow takes on the role of a scared airline passenger, nervous enough to be going through a bad storm, but made worse when he, and only he, sees a gremlin on the wing ripping the engine apart. Miller is a man who know how to build tension, and this is easily the only really frightening segment in the bunch. True, I am not sure Dante or Spielberg’s segments were meant to be scary, but the point stands. Basically, anyone who remembers this movie remembers it for this segment, and for good reason. Oh, and since William Shatner originally played the role on TV, when Shatner appeared for the first time on Lithgow’s 3rd Rock from the Sun, the two made a good joke about seeing something on the wing of their plane that no one else saw.
Basically, the last segment was genuinely good, but not enough to lift the movie as a whole much better than just so-so. Too bad. This one could have been much better given the talent behind and in front of the camera.
Grade: C+
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