The Twilight Zone: The Complete Definitive Collection

I didnt get into this show until the past year or so. Ive heard of it in the past but I wasnt born until the early 80's so I didnt get to see it as much as id like to of. Now I can see all the great episodes on DVD and really get to appreciate the genius of this show. This box set contains all 156 complete episodes of Rod Serling's groundbreaking series along with exciting extras.List of Episodes for all 5 seasons-Season 1Episode 1: 'Where is Everybody?'- Earl Holliman stars as a man on the edge of hysteria in a deserted town. Despite the emptiness, he has the strangest feeling hes being watched.Episode 2: 'One for the Angels'- A Salesman cleverly eludes death. But if he lives a little girl must die in his place. Only the salesman greatest pitch can save her.Episode 3: 'Mr. Denton on Doomsday'- A drunk of a gunslinger finds his fast draw abilities can be restored by drinking a magic potion.Episode 4: 'The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine'- an aging former movie star lives and dreams in the past. She refuses to leave her screening room until she disapears.Episode 5: 'Walking Distance'- Martin Sloan is plays a frazzled executive who learns that you can go home again after he steps back in time and meets his mom his dad and himself.Episode 6: 'Escape Clause'- A hypocondriac exchanges his soul for immortality and indestructibility.Episode 7: 'The Lonely'- A covicted murderer incarcerated on a distant asteroid and is dying of lonliness.Episode 8: 'Time Enough at Last'- A Bookworm yearns for more time to read, then a nuclear holocaust leaves him alone in the world with lots of time, plenty to read and an ironic twist.Episode 9: 'Penchance to Dream'- A man whos terrified of falling asleep in fear he might die. His pursuer? A mysterious vixen he meets in his dreams.Episode 10: 'Judgement Night'- 1942, a german wonders why he is on the deck of a British Steamship with no memory of how he got there and impending doom.Episode 11: 'And When the Sky was Opened'- Col. Clegg Forbes 'Rip Taylor' and 2 astronauts return from their space flight. They soon discover that no one remembers them as if they never even existed.Episode 12: 'What You Need'- Two bit thug thinks hes found the key to a better life.Episode 13: 'The Four of us are Dying'- Gifted with the ability to change his face Arch Hammer devises a plan to elevate himself.Episode 14: 'Third from the Sun'- William Surka and a friend steal an experimental spaceship and go off to an unknown planet.Episode 15: I shot an Arrow into the Air'- The worlds first manned space mission goes awry stranding the crew on an asteroid.Episode 16: 'The Hitchhiker'- Alone on a cross country trip Nan Adams has a blowout. Surviving the incident, she gets back on the road, only to see the same hitch-hiker everywhere she looks.Episode 17: 'The Fever'- Tight fisted Franklin Gibbs is not happy when his wife wins a trip for 2 to Vegas. But things change when he falls under the spell of a slot machine that calls his name!Episode 18: 'The Last Flight'- World War One flying ace flies through a mysterious and lands at a modern U.S. Airbase in the year 1960.Episode 19: 'The Purple Testament'- Lt. Fitzgerald has found his own special wartime hell. Looking into the faces of his men prior to battle he has the ability to see whos about to die.Episode 20: 'Elegy'- 3 astronauts land on a remote asteroid where everyone is frozen in place.Episode 21: 'Mirror Image'- A woman spies her exact double at a bus station and becomes convinced the double is trying to take her place in this world. A fellow passenger thinks shes crazy..at first.Episode 22: 'The monsters are due on Maple St'- Inexplicable events cause the residents of Maple Street to errupt into rioting. Residents suspect alien invasion.Episode 23: 'A World Of Diffrence'- Arthur Curtis thinks hes an average businessman living a normal life. Or is he an actor playing a businessman in an office thats really a set?Episode 24:' Long live Walter Jameson'- A history teacher who talks about the past as if he lives it.Episode 25: 'People are Alike all over'- Space expidition crashes on Mars.Episode 26: 'Execution'- man in 1880 about to be hanged for shooting a man in the back.Episode 27: 'The Big Tall Wish'- Over the hill prizefighter gets a boost from a lil boy whos a big fan in a disillusioned world.Episode 28: 'A Nice Place to Visit'- After being shot to death a theif encounters white haired pip who gives him everything he wishes.Episode 29: 'Nightmare as a Child'- A schoolteacher who has blocked out the details of her Mother's murder and encounters a strange little girl.Episode 30: 'A stop at Willoughby'- Advertising exec cracks under pressure of his job dreaming about a peaceful town called Willoughby.Episode 31: 'The Chaser'- Roger Shackleforth, desperate to win the affection of the beautiful Leila, slips her a love potion.Episode 32: 'A Passage for Trumpet'- After commiting suicide an unsuccessful trumpet player is given a second chance at life.Episode 33: 'Mr. Bevis'- A good natured, accident prone eccentric whos guardian angel gives him a chance at success.Episode 34: 'The After Hours'- A woman discovers that the floor of a department store on which she bought a gold thimble dosent exist.Episode 35: 'The Mighty Casey'- Baseball team with a robot player.Episode 36: 'A world of his own'- Noted playwright who discovers he can make anything appear or disappear by just describing it.Season TwoEpisode 37: 'King Nine Will not Return'- WWII captain/a vast desert. Where is his crew and why are futuristic jets flying overhead?Episode 38: 'The Man in the Bottle'- A curio shop owner thinks hes found happiness when a genie he discovers in an old bottle grants him 4 wishes.Episode 39:' Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room'- Small time hood is ordered to commit a murder he dosent want to perform.Episode 40: 'A Thing about Machines'- A man despises any sort of machine, and he'll experience a new kind of terror when he learns the feeling is mutual.Episode 41: 'The Howling Man'- During a walking trip in Europe Ellington loses his way and meets an insane monk claimed hes captured by the Devil.Episode 42:' Eye of the beholder aka Private World of Darkness'- Janets hideous face has made her an outcast all her life. As she waits for her last chance surgery, she ponders the consequence of failure.Episode 43: 'Nick of Time'- A superstitious newlywed becomes obsessed with a penny fortune telling machine.Episode 44:' The Lateness of the Hour'- Dr. Loren and the faultless Robot services he invented.Episode 45: 'The trouble with Temptation'- An aging actor who longs for the old days when his wife was alive. Hes given a glimpse of the past.Episode 46: 'A most unusual camera'- Two thieves find out a camera they have stolen take pictures of the future.Episode 47: 'Night of the Meek'- Christmas in the Twilight Zone. Art Carney as a forelorn department Santa who takes to drinking.Episode 48:'Dust'- A man about to be hanged for running over a little girl. The girls father uses magic dust and a change comes over village.Episode 49: 'Back There'- A man who travels back in time to Lincolns assassination.Episode 50: 'The Whole Truth'- Automobile compels used car dealer to tell the truth. He cant sell a single vehicle on his lot until he comes up with an unusual idea.Episode 51: 'The Invaders'- A flying saucer lands in the attic of an isolated house. Spaceship begins to stalk old woman.Episode 52: 'A penny for your thoughts'- Flip of a coin gives banker the power to read minds.Episode 53: 'Twenty Two'- Woman is terrified of returning nightmare involving number Twenty Two.Episode 54: 'The Odyssey of Flight 33'- Flight 33 picks up a tail wind and is blown off course. After corrected the flight arrives at its destination- a billion years of course.Episode 55: 'Mr. Dingle, The Strong'- A timid salesman is given super strength by a martian experimentor.Episode 56: 'Static'- an antique radio starts to broadcast programs from an old mans youth that only he can hear.Episode 57: 'The Prime Mover'- Ace Larson discovers his business partner can move things with his mind. They set out for Vegas and win.Episode 58: 'Long Distance Call'- Before Grandma died she gave Billy a toy telephone. When he uses it to talk to her, his parents dismiss it as imagination.Episode 59: 'A hundred yards over the Rim'- 1847, a western settler sets out to find medicine for his son, he returns with much more than medicine.Episode 60: 'The Rip Van Winkle Caper'- Thieves put themselves into suspended animation for 100 years after hiding a million dollars worth of gold bars.Episode 61: 'The Silence'- Archie Taylor offers man half a million dollars if he can keep quiet for a year.Episode 62: 'Shadow Play'- a man trapped in a reaccuring nightmare.Episode 63: 'The Mind and the Matter'- a book on the power of thought enables a worker to recreate the world exactly how he wants it.Episode 64: 'Will the real Martian please stand up'- State troopers follow tracks from an unidentified flying object.Episode 65: 'The Obsolete Man'- In a future state where religion and books have been banned, a librarian is judged obsolete by The Chancelor and sentenced to death.Season ThreeEpisode 66: 'Two'- Two lone survivors of a nuclear Holocaust must start the world anew.Episode 67: 'The Arrival'- A plane lands safely but all passengers and crew are missing.Episode 68: 'The Shelter'- When a UFO invasion appears eminent, friends and neighbors are reduced to selfish conniving animals in a fight over one familys bomb shelter.Episode 69: 'The Passersby'- Civil War Confederate Soldier stops at a house, he soons realizes everyone who pass are dead.Episode 70: 'A Game of Pool'- a brilliant pool player in a show down.Episode 71: 'The Mirror' - a poor and ambitious central american farm worker overthrows his countrys tyranical leader.Episode 72: 'The Grave'- Notorious badman puts a curse on hired gun.Episode 73: 'It's a Good Life'- He knows your every thought, every emotion. He can eliminate all you hold dear. Who is he? A six yera old boy.Episode 74: 'Deaths'- Head Revisited- A former Nazi captain returns to a concentration camp to relive the good old days- until his long dead victims appear to deliver overdue justice!Episode 75: 'The Midnight Sun'- Earths orbit has changed drawing closer to the sun and promising imminent destruction. Or has it?Episode 76: 'Still Valley'- A confederate soldier gets a chance to win a Civil War for the South.Episode 77: 'The Jungle'- A businessman and a trip to Africa. A voodoo curse is placed upon him.Episode 78: 'Once upon a Time'- A janitor living in the year 1890 and a time traveling helmet.Episode 79: 'Five Characters in Search of an Exit'- clown, hobo army ranger are trapped in a enormous cyclinder.Episode 80: 'A Quality of Mercy'- A soldier gets a new perspective on war when he is forced to experience it from the enemy's point of view.Episode 81: 'Nothing in the Dark'- an old woman has fought with death a 1000 times and always won but she thinks a wounded policeman at her door is Mr. Death. Is He?Episode 82: 'One More Pallbearer'- Eccentric millionare offers use of his bomb shelter to 3 people who wronged him.Episode 83: 'Dean Mans Shoes'- a vagrant steps into a murdered gangsters expensive shoes and is taken over by the dead mans ghost.Episode 84: 'The Hunt'- An old hillbilly and his hound dog find themselves meet a gatekeeper who tells them theyre at the entrance to Heaven. One problem.. Dogs are not allowed.Episode 85: 'Showdown with Rance Mcgrew'- TV cowboy finds himself in a real old west Saloon where Jesse James challenges him to a showdown.Episode 86: 'Kick the Can'- an old man at sunnydale rest home discovered a secret to regaining youth.Episode 87: 'A piano in the House'- A critic uses a magical piano player to disclose his party guests hidden selves.Episode 88: 'The last rights of Jeff Mrytlebank'- came back to life at his own funeral, Jeff hasnt been the same. Townspeople want him out.Episode 89: 'To Serve Man'- The Kanamits, 9 foot tall aliens arrive on Earth. To Serve Man.Episode 90: 'The Fugitive'- Old Ben, A fugitive from Outer Space with a heart of gold.Episode 91: 'Little Girl Lost'- a 6 yr old who can be heard but not seen and has vanished into a 4rth dimension.Episode 92: 'Person or Persons Unknown'- David wakes up to find himself in a nightmare, no one, not even his wife or mother know him, all evidence of his identity has disapeared.Episode 93: 'The Little People'- Spaceship commander declares himself a god when he lands on a planet populated by people smaller than ants.Episode 94: 'Four O'Clock'- Political fanatic has determined that at 4 p.m. he will eliminate all his enemies by shrinking them.Episode 95: 'Hocus Pocus and Frisby'- Frisby is a loud mouth braggart whos boasts attract the attention of aliens.Episode 96: 'The Trade-Ins'- An elderly couple visits the New Life Corporation hoping to transplant their personalities into youthful bodies.Episode 97: 'The Gift'- An alien crash lands in a village and befriends and gives a present to a little boy.Episode 98: 'The Dummy'- A Ventriloquist is convinced that his dummy, Willie, is alive and evil.Episode 99: 'Young Mans Fancy'- Newlywed couple return to grooms childhood home, the ties of the past prove to strong to resist.Episode 100: 'I Sing the Body Electric'- Anne must learn to understand and accept that her new grandmother can be tender loving and thoughful even thought she is a Robot.Episode 101: 'Cavender is Coming'- Carol Burnett stars as Agnes in this tale of a klutzy usherette rescued from poverty by a guardian angel.Episode 102: 'The Changing of the Guard'- Donald Pleasance is Professor Ellis Fowler, forced to retire after 51 yrs of teaching. Fowler is startled by a ghostly appearance of former students..Season FourEpisode 103: 'In His Image'- Alan Talbot dosent understand why his hometown seems unfamiliar, why he is driven to kill and what are the noises in his head?Hes about to get answers when he comes face to face with his double.Episode 104: 'The Thirty Fathom Grave'- submerged submarine, 20 yrs after it was sunk by Japanese during World War II.Episode 105: 'Valley of the Shadow'- Phillip Redfield finds himself trapped in a small town where people can reverse time.Episode 106: 'Hes Alive'- Peter, 'Dennis Hopper', a smalltime Nazi Leader, yearns for more power.Episode 107: 'Mute'- 12 yr old girl who loses her parents in a fire and dosent speak.Episode 108: 'Death Ship'- 3 astronauts discover a wrecked duplicate of their spaceship and their own dead bodies!Episode 109: 'Jess Belle'- Billy Ben finds himself enchanted by the beautiful Jess Belle who soons learns the danger of buying a love spell from a witch.Episode 110: 'Miniature'- Charley Parkes is a shy bachelor who discovers a miniature doll alive inside a 19th century dollhouse.Episode 111: 'Printers Devil'- Newspaper editor on the brink of suicide, someone presents an unusual deal.Episode 112: 'No Time like the Past'- Paul travels back in time to try to prevent some of historys catastrophes.Episode 113: 'The Parallel'- Astronaut finds himself back on Earth in a world similar to but not quite his own.Episode 114: 'I dream of Genie'- George rubs a magic arabian lamp and a genie emerges to grant him one wish.Episode 115: 'The New Exhibit'- About a Wax MuseumEpisode 116: 'Of late I think of Cliffordville'- A bored wealthy businessman, gets a chance to go back in time and start over.Episode 117: 'The Incredible World of Horace Ford': Toy Designer spends most of his time reminiscing about his idyllic childhood. But when he gets a chance to go back to those years, he gets a bitter taste of reality.Episode 118: 'On Thursday we leave for Home'- Leader of a strander outpost in space for 30 yrs.Episode 119: 'Passage on the Lady Anne'- young couple books passage on old ship.Episode 120: 'The Bard'- Jack Weston is an untalented would be writer wohse career takes off when the ghost of William Shakespere writes his script.Season FiveEpisode 121: 'In Praise of Pip'- An alcoholic bookie regrets that he wasnt a better father to his son, 'Pip', critically wounded in South Vietnam. A visit to an amusement park gives them both a second chance.Episode 122: 'Steel'- The future, robots and asteroids.Episode 123: 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet'- A salesman recovering from a nervous breakdown spots a gremlin on the wing of his plane.Episode 124: 'A kind of stopwatch'- magical stopwatch that can stop everything except him.Episode 125: 'The last night of a Jockey'- Mickey Rooney is Grady, a former jockey banned from horseracing.Episode 126: 'Living Doll'- Erich is displeased when his wife buys an expensive doll for his stepdaughter. He becomes even more displeased when the doll tells him it dosent like him.Episode 127: 'The old man in the cave'- a mysterious guardian helps a tiny community.Episode 128: 'Uncle Simon'- Barbara Polk has taken care of her detested Uncle for 25 yrs waiting impatiently to inherit his wealth. But his will states she must take care of his robot.Episode 129: 'Probe 7, over and out'- Lone survivors of 2 annihilated planets.Episode 130: 'The 7th is made up of Phantoms'- a trio of national guardsmen conducting war exercises.Episode 131: 'A short drink from a certain fountain'- an aging man desperate to keep up with his younger wife tries a youth serum.Episode 132: 'Ninety years without slumbering'- man believes he will die if his grandfather clock stops.Episode 133: 'Ring a Ding Girl'- Hollywood Star Bunny Blake gets an unusual gift from her town fan club.Episode 134: 'You Drive'- Oliver Pope hits a boy on a bike killing him.Episode 135: 'The Long Morrow'- 40 years in suspended animation.Episode 136: 'The Self improvement of Salvador Ross'- Salvador will stop at nothing to win Leahs love. He even trades his youth for money.Episode 137: 'Number 12 looks just like you'- at age 19, everyone must undergo an operation which makes them beautiful and identical to everyone else. But Marilyn refuses.Episode 138: 'Black Leather Jackets'- 3 tough looking guys on motorcycles move into a suburb. Dont drink the water.Episode 139: 'Night Call'- Lonely and confined to a wheelchair Elva Keene starts to get numerous mysterious phone calls. Terrified, she screams the words that will doom her.Episode 140: 'From Agnes, With Love'- A computer technician must dela with the queen of all femme fatales, a computer names Agnes who wreaks havoc on his love life.Episode 141: 'Spur of the Moment'- Woman chased by mysterious figure in black.Episode 142: 'An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge'- Confederate spy spared death when the rope meant to hang him breaks. Or does it?Episode 143: 'Queen of the Nile'- a columnist,a movie star and a secret.Episode 144: 'Whats in the box'- Joe sees a secret revealed and its horrible consequences on his tv set.Episode 145: 'The Masks'- Knowing he is about to die, Foster summons his heirs to his mansion for a bizarre Mardi Gras ritual and gives them the inheritance they so richly deserve!Episode 146: 'I am the Night, Color me Black'- an execution day and pitch black skies.Episode 147: 'Sounds and Silences'- Roswell, a boisterous man who loves noise. But when his wife leaves the volume in his life goes haywire.Episode 148: 'Ceasar and me'- Ventriloquist Jonathan West is no match for his evil dummy- Little Ceasar, woh grabs the chance to set him up for a fall.Episode 149: 'The Jeopardy Room'- man has 3 hours to escape from a room with a ticking bomb and a gun pointing at his head.Episode 150: 'Stopover in a quiet town'- 2 people wake up in a strange town where everything appears to be fake.Episode 151: 'The Encounter' - ' A rare non syndicated episode'- Fenton, a WWII Vet, proudly shows his captured sumurai sword to Arthur Takamuri, a young Japanese American gardener- who picks it up and instantly knows he must kill his host!Episode 152: 'Mr. Garrity and the Graves'- Jared Garrity makes a living reserecting the dead in the old west.Episode 153: 'The Brain center at Whipple's'- Callous factory owner Wallace Whipple automates his plant, putting thousands of men out of work, Smugly self satisfied, he has no regrets.. At first.Episode 154: 'Come Wander with Me'- a singer journeys to the backwoods to find authentic folk songs.Episode 155: 'The Fear'- An unknown creature hidden in the shadows terrorizes a hysterical young woman a state trooper whos there to help her.Episode 156: 'The Bewitchin' Pool'- For children distraught by feuding parents, a special swimming pool offers admittance to a happier, simpler place.There are tons of extras on these DVDS. Some of the extras include Conversations with Rod Serling, Photo Galleries, Billboards, Alfred Hitchcock Promo, Everything you could imagine. Enjoy it.

“The Twilight Zone” was the greatest television series of the 1950s and 60s, and may rank as the finest series of all time. Its superiority rested on several factors: quality of acting; superb direction by Douglas Heyes, Don Medford, Buzz Kulik and others; atmospheric music by Marius Constant and Bernard Herrmann; and, most of all, imaginative scripts by Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, George Clayton Johnson, and of course, Rod Serling.Serling had already established himself before the “Zone” as the best TV playwright in the business, contributing scripts to “Playhouse 90,” “Desilu Playhouse,” and others. But he had grown frustrated by the censorship of TV sponsors and other parties by 1958, who had objected to various aspects of his social and ethical themes. Particularly significant in this connection is a clip from the “Mark Wallace” show in 1959 (just one of many interviews in this box set) – on this occasion, the playwright detailed some of the reasons for embarking on “The Twilight Zone,” which included his desire to escape the petty bowdlerization of TV authorities.By now it’s a veritable cliché: this notion that serious themes can be treated more safely in commercial media through the “camouflage” of fantasy. In the Wallace interview, however, Serling did not actually cite this as a rationale for the “Zone.” What he did say, while neither affirming nor refuting that notion, was couched in ambiguity. On one hand, he vouched for the need to relinquish such themes for the “Zone,” partly for reasons of censorship, and partly owing to the abbreviated length of the new series (30 minutes as compared to the 90-minute length of most teleplays). Yet he also claimed genuine merit for the series, asserting that the shows were of high quality and had their own aesthetic legitimacy.Serling’s demeanor was serious, to be sure, but he was obviously hedging his bets. Because when viewing the general landscape, we find that a significant number of episodes tackled serious themes. Here is just a sampling of the subjects “Twilight Zone” addressed during its five-season run:Totalitarianism – “The Obsolete Man”Nuclear war – “Two,” “The Shelter”; “Time Enough at Last”Hypocrisy – “Four O’Clock”; “The Masks”Racism – “The Encounter”; “I Am the Night – Color Me Black”Greed – “The Fever”Juvenile delinquency - “Black Leather Jackets”Marital discord – “A World of Difference”; “Living Doll”Crime & recrimination – “You Drive”The societal obsession with beauty – “Eye of the Beholder” & “Number 12 Looks Just Like You”Loneliness of the elderly – “Nothing in the Dark”; “Night Call”Childhood isolation and fear of “the other” – “Mute”Labor issues – “The Brain Center at Whipple’s”The Holocaust (or Naziism generally) – “Death’s Head Revisited”; “Judgement Night”These and other examples prove that Serling did not abandon serious themes when embarking on “The Twilight Zone.” To the contrary, he explored them often, not only in his own writing, but in the stories he chose from others.Worthy as this was, the series went further. For one thing, it created a mood of existential isolation that had never been achieved before and has never been equaled since. Protagonists find themselves in strange environments they cannot fathom, and which leave them helpless and disoriented. We see this most clearly in episodes like “Where is Everybody” (the subject of a space project is forced to undergo sensory deprivation and suffers hallucinatory terrors as a result); “Mirror Image” (in which doppelgangers haunt the principal actors as ostensible manifestations of a parallel universe); “The After Hours” (where the protagonist finds herself trapped on an uninhabited level of a department store); and “A World of Difference” (which, anticipating the film, “The Truman Show,” shows an actor trapped in the spurious reality of a movie script).This series, in other words, created the most vivid portrait of what W.H. Auden called the “Age of Anxiety” – there was rarely an episode that did not touch upon this theme in one way or another. Even when loneliness and isolation were not the focus of an episode, they often seemed to lurk somewhere in the background, and were reflected in the form of prejudicial backlashes against real or imagined enemies --- see “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” (a barely-concealed commentary on McCarthyism) or “Living Doll” (a little girl’s plastic companion serves as the catalyst for an estranged husband’s cruelty).In other words, “The Twilight Zone” wasn’t merely about imaginative ideas dressed in strange attire, or even about existential angst. It also had important things to say about human nature, about American culture in the twentieth century, and about the frequent inability of people to establish even the most basic forms of communication. By contrast, even the best of its TV rivals, “The Outer Limits” and “Thriller,’ had little to say in these regards. (The episode called “The Cheaters” in the “Thriller” series was an exception that proved the rule).Ray Bradbury, while contributing only one story for “Twilight Zone,” was ultimately the writer with the greatest influence on the series overall (at least on its serious and more literary episodes). This is evident in two ways: first, in particulars – e.g., “The Lonely” showed the strong influence of Bradbury’s “The Long Years,” while “Little Girl Lost” was an interesting variation on Bradbury’s “Tomorrow’s Child.” Moreover, at least two episodes allude to Bradbury by name – see “A Stop at Willoughby,” and “Walking Distance.”Second, and more importantly, Bradbury’s work suffused the series in that it transferred his concern for lonely and alienated people (especially in his early fiction) into what was, at the time, a comparatively new medium. We should remember that while TV had been available as early as the late 1940s, it was still at a rudimentary stage in 1959, and during most of its first decade, existed as live entertainment that had only recently been superseded by the filming of programs for long-term preservation. Bradbury’s influence can be seen, at any rate, in a significant number of Serling’s scripts. Readers sampling stories like those in The Martian Chronicles, The Golden Apples of the Sun, and Dandelion Wine – as well as dystopias like “The Pedestrian” and Fahrenheit 451 – will see some of the tales that inspired Serling and other contributors to the series. The latter included Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont who, while very original fantasists in their own right, were both mentored by Bradbury in their apprentice years. While it’s true that Bradbury had little direct input to the “Zone,” the mood of his early work had strong and definite echoes that made a permanent impact.Some people, including “Zone” critic Marc Scott Zicree, feel that the series suffered when it changed to an hour format in 1962. Zicree does point out some notable exceptions, however, and I would agree that “Death Ship” and “Jess-Belle” were among the best shows in the series. “Jess-Belle,” scripted by “Waltons” creator Earl Hamner, Jr. is in my opinion a masterpiece of horror-oriented folklore, and strikes me as occupying the same plane as Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Jar” and Thriller’s “Pigeons from Hell.” “Death Ship,” for its part, is almost like an extraterrestrial variant on Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (which itself was appropriated – from a French adaptation – for the “Zone”).This set is well worth having, not just for the episodes themselves, but for the many interviews and commentaries that illuminate the work of Serling and his entourage of fantasists. Especially notable (though excluded from the Blu-ray edition) is the 90-minute documentary, “Submitted for Your Approval,” which effectively chronicles Serling’s career, including his powerful pre-Zone dramatic works like “Patterns“ and “Requiem for a Heavyweight.” In addition, it points out how strong an influence Serling’s military service had on his writing – episodes like “The Encounter,” “The Purple Testament,” “King Nine Will Not Return,” and even Civil War forays like “Still Valley, show the influence of his wartime experience.I find it mysterious, however, that Serling’s Jewish ancestry is not cited as a salient influence on the “Zone.” Given that fantasists like Franz Kafka and Bruno Schulz had to endure the oppression that stems from ethnic discrimination, it’s hard to believe Serling was immune from that oppression, even if this was less virulent in latterday America than in old-world Europe. We can speculate on the specific ways prejudice may have manifested itself in Serling’s personal life without reaching sound conclusions. It seems plausible, nevertheless, to infer that a sense of alienation due to lingering anti-Semitism may have dogged the writer throughout his life, and that this partially accounts for what Jack Klugman called Serling’s “great sense of morality.”“The Twilight Zone” covered a wide canvas, and not everything to which Serling applied his brush was successful. His comedy writing, in particular, seemed forced and artificial (though occasionally entertaining, as in “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up”). Even his serious work could implode – in episodes like “He's Alive,” the moral message drowns in didacticism and sinks from its own pretensions. The frequent twist endings, moreover, could sometimes be puerile and a bit too “cute.”Whatever these failings, the best works – and there were a remarkably high percentage of them – rank as the screen equivalent of fine literature, and – probably because Serling was originally a playwright – were the most genuinely dramatic in TV history. There was, as Lois Nettleton observed in her commentary to “The Midnight Sun,” an intimacy about them that penetrated to the core of the human experience, and made us aware of our place in the universe.So, yes – there were pratfalls on occasion, as there are in every series. But overall, “The Twilight Zone” set a standard that rose above mere entertainment, and that will forever be a touchstone for everything that follows.

This dvd box set contains the complete series of the original Twilight Zone created by Rod Serling. All five wonderful seasons are included. The picture and sound quality are excellent having been remastered. The dvd set comes in a plastic amery style case that houses all the disks. Please note this is the American release and is region 1 coded - so you will need a multi region dvd player to watch them. If you enjoy classic sci fi television then this box set is for you. Next stop The Twilight Zone.

In my twilight years, I can rate this series before purchase, having watched many of them when I was about 9 years old. At that age, some were too scary so my mother sent me out of the lounge! Now, I can watch them all.

映像もきれい、値段も安く感激です。ロッド・サーリングの次回予告がこんなにあったとはびっくりしました。

All 156 episodes from the original tapes/negatives in flawless quality on 25 disks.Rod Serling had amazing imagination to bang these out at a rate of on per week for three solid years!Great for talent spotting sixties and seventies TV/flim mega-stars taking their first small acting parts or lurking as extras.And no advertising breaks but includes trailers.

I was in two minds as to whether the show would stand the test of time. For the majority of what I have seen so far, it has. There are a couple of episodes that don't quite come up to standard, but, the majority are great.