The Twilight Zone Season Four: What to expect? (1 Viewer)

[Lord Dalek]

Ah season 4, probably the most unfairly maligned of the Twilight Zone's run (better than that overrated mess that is Season 3). I'll deffinetly try to look into getting this.

 

[Charles H]

Wasn't the "pilot" show for THE TWILIGHT ZONE an episode of "Desilu Playhouse" called "The Time Element" in which William Bendix is transported from contemporary Waikiki back to Pearl Harbor in 1941? It would great to see that on a definitive TZ collection. It seems to me that I saw this a couple of years ago when Sci-Fi or Nick-at-Nite bought a TZ package.

 

[Kajs]

Maybe it's my short attention span, but I really don't like the 4th season at all. I had the old complete TZ collection and I watched every 30 min one in that set, but I just didn't really like those hour long ones.

 

[TravisR]

Yeah, it's (sort of) the pilot for the TZ. Not technically the pilot but it was a test run for the series. I'm sure Image knows that the fans want to see it. Unfortunately, if it wasn't on the first set and they haven't mentioned it yet, I kinda doubt they got the rights to it.

 

[Al (alweho)]

Below is what Image has posted so far about Season Five on their site for the 12/27 six-disc 25:03 long set. It looks to be pretty standard - unless they've had a track record of adding features after the initial listing goes up on-line:

EPISODES: In Praise of Pip - Steel - Nightmare at 20,000 Feet - A Kind of a Stopwatch - The Last Night of a Jockey - Living Doll - The Old Man in the Cave - Uncle Simon - Probe 7, Over and Out - The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms - Ninety Years Without Slumbering - Ring-A-Ding Girl - You Drive - The Long Morrow - The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross - Number Twelve Looks Just Like You - Black Leather Jackets - Night Call - From Agne, With Love - Spur of the Moment - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Queen of the Nile - What's in the Box - The Masks - I Am the Night, Color Me Black - Sounds and Silences - Caesar and Me - The Jeopardy Room - Stopover in a Quiet Town - The Encounter - Mr. Garrity and the Graves - The Brain Center at Whipple's - Come Wander with Me - The Fear - The Bewitchin' Pool

SPECIAL FEATURES: Stunning Brand-New Transfers! Remastered from new high-definition film transfers using the original camera negatives and magnetic soundtracks

Commentaries and Interviews featuring Mickey Rooney, Martin Landau, Michael Constantine, Bill Mumy, Carolyn Kearney, Mariette Hartley and Earl Hamner, Jr.

Excerpt from Rod Serling's Sherwood Oaks College lecture

Highlights from the Museum of Television and Radio seminar

The Art of Editing

Season 5 Billboards and Photo Gallery

 

[todd s]

Is the "Bewitchin Pool" on the next season the one with the horrible voice-over for that little girl?? It was so bad...it distracted from the story.

 

[Craig Beam]

Strange that the season 5 specs don't list isolated scores. God, I hope it's just an oversight in the press release. I'm a huge TZ music fan, and there are lots of previously-unavailable scores in season 5.

For that matter, are there isolated scores on the season 4 set? I don't have it yet. Anybody?

 

[TravisR]

Todd, yep. I think the dub is the reason why they held it back as the last episode. It doesn't matter if people tune out when it's the last episode.

Craig, yep. Season Four has isolated scores. As usual, it's not on all of them though.

 

[Jay Pennington]

Yup. With due respect to the great June Foray.

 

[Jeff#]

The only thing good about one of the worst Twilight Zones ever filmed "The Bewitchin' Pool" was the beautiful Dee Hartford as Sport's mother.

Mary Badham, the little girl in that story previously co-starred with Gregory Peck in the hit motion picture "To Kill a Mockingbird". So why the hell did June Foray dub over some of her dialog in the episode for Mary's scenes in that parallel environment where she and her brother visited the old woman?? Their voices didn't match in the slightest!

An interesting note: Mary come out of a 39 year retirement in 2005 to play a cameo role in Keith Carradine's feature "Our Very Own".

 

[michael_ks]

I would like to have seen June Foray dub the voice of Sport's mother with the "Natasha" voice...

 

[michael_ks]

As for Season 4, I'm surprised no one mentioned the terrific "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville". Not stellar writing by any means, but that great performance by the highly under-rated Albert Salmi! And then, of course the lovely Julie Newmar as Miss Devlin...what more can I say?

 

[Jeff#]

Julie Newmar was much lovier wearing a miniskirt when she guest starred on It Takes a Thief about 6 years later.

"Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" was a fun episode, but it would have worked better if it had only been a half-hour. This is an example of some stories being too "padded" in the longer format.

Ironically, Albert Salmi travelled through time in an earlier episode too: the more intense and violent first season story "Execution", in which he played 1880 murderer Joe Carswell who escapes a hangman's noose and soon rans amok in 1960.

 

[todd s]

Does anyone know why the voice was redubbed? If they girls voice was bad...Wouldn't they have realized it during casting?? And no offense to June Foray but that voice just so did not work.

 

[Jeff#]

Mary Badham got to use her own voice in the episode, but only in the scenes in the real world where Sport is still with her parents and before jumping in the pool. June Foray only did the voice over in the "other world" where the old woman feeds them sweets galore.

Then when Sport jumps into the lake and returns from the "other world" via the same pool she came from, Mary's voice is again heard. It's a very strange story, and in June 1964 a terrible way to end the first-run episodes of a classic series.

 

[michael_ks]

The best of Salmi's three TZ appearances. He just put so much into that role. In "Spotlights and Shadows: The Albert Salmi Story", Russell Johnson reflects on how much fun he had in working with Albert, stating that his professionalism was second to none.

 

[michael_ks]

I may be mistaken, but I'm almost certain that Foray's voice is used when responding to her parents at the poolside about the impending divorce. When Sport replies "We like'd it the way it was" I remember thinking hey, that's the voice of 'Rocky the Flying Squirrel'!

 

[Ruz-El]

I have to admit, I'm getting pretty excited to dive into season 4, having not seen any of the episodes before. Unfortunately, I probably wont be getting it until next week or so, it's part of a large pre-order bundle.

The good thing is I noteven half way through season 3, which so far is exellent.

One thing I'd like to point out to people who might not be familiar with the show: I've been buying these pretty much blindly, having only seen some of the more popular episodes (and funny enough, mostlyseason 1 episodes at that.) You might be reading critism here on some of these episodes, but I'm finding that even the clunky TZ shows are still pretty damn fun to watch. I'm yet to feel cheated, and can pretty much imagine watching these again and again. I'm hoping season 4 continues this trend!

 

[Jeff#]

You may be right, Mike. The episode is so unwatchable, I couldn't sit through it again a few years ago during a Sci-Fi Channel marathon.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

...and it's sort of odd that of all TTZ
episodes, Bewitching Pool is the one
I so fondly remember.

I don't know why. I was a kid when I saw it.

I vaguely remember it, but it did have something
to do with kids trying to escape their world of
divorcing parents by jumping into a lake and
entering into another world.

Mind you, I haven't seen the episode in 30
years and I just have a small memory of the
episode ending where the kids hear the faint
sounds of their mother calling from the other
world, and they choose to ignore it.

Am I remembering this correctly?

Also, am I reading correctly that the little
girl from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD stars in this
episode?