“You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.”

Justin’s rating: Something out of four would actually be an appropriate rating here

Justin’s review: I wasn’t the biggest Twilight Zone fan growing up, although I did have the distinct impression that this was the sort of show that could make me stay up at nights in fear of my closet swallowing me or something. Over time, however, I came to an appreciation of the old Rod Serling classics, especially how thoughtful and inventive some of them were. The stark black-and-white look of the show coupled with its unfettered access to the weird possibilities of the imagination made for episodes that would stick in your head for years afterwards.

However, there’s always the association that Twilight Zone equals Horror, which is a tad unfair to the format. Sure, sometimes it is scary, but many times just surreal, supernatural or eerie. I never got around to checking out Twilight Zone: The Movie as a teen because I assumed it would’ve scared my pants right off and then I’d become known as “Pantless Boy” for the rest of puberty. If I only knew that this was a pretty tame endeavor into spooky campfire tall tales, I wouldn’t have been so cautious.

Let’s recap: When Justin is scared of something as a kid, it takes him about 18 years to finally face that fear and discover it’s a big pussycat.

Like the series, Twilight Zone: The Movie is an anthology. Here, it’s split up into four stories with a prologue/epilogue framing it. Burgess Meredith fills in for deceased Rod Serling as the M.C., although he just doesn’t have the same punch as Serling. What’s perhaps more interesting than the stories themselves is that each segment is helmed by a different director (with some pretty big names here: Joe Dante, Steven Spielberg, John Landis, and George Miller), and, of course, the behind-the-scenes fatal helicopter stunt that claimed the lives of three actors.

Since reviewing each of the stories separately was good enough for Roger Ebert back in the day, it’s more than good for me to plagiarize now:

Prologue: Seeing a young Albert Brooks and Dan Aykroyd was an experience in squinting closely at the TV and muttering, “Man, where are their wrinkle lines?” The prologue itself, styled like an urban legend with its slow, foreshadowy buildup, is nothing to write home about, even if you are at home. Once you get over this hump, you’re pretty much assured that nothing in this movie’s going to scare you if this is the best they could come up with.

Segment 1: An interesting tale of a bigot (Vic Morrow) who finally gets what’s coming to him, as he suddenly starts time-jumping to different eras (Nazi France, ’50s Deep South, ’60s Vietnam) and is slapped upside the head by irony as he becomes the one being hunted, tormented, and attacked. I say this is an “interesting” tale, because it lacks the dark punch that it really needed to land to make it effective. I don’t know what it is, but only the last scene did anything for me – the rest seemed like set dressing.

Segment 2: Just when you think this movie’s on a path to the dark side, Steven Spielberg takes over for a fairly charming look at a retirement home where the old folks learn to reclaim their inner youth with the help of Scatman Crothers. I’m sure Cocoon was lurking somewhere just off set, muttering how it was going to do it better once it got the funding. I like it for the line, “The day we stop playing is the day we start getting old.” It’s fluffy but interesting to watch little kids portray senior citizens.

Segment 3: Probably one of the more famous Twilight Zone stories (which got a funny Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror sendup), this one retells “It’s A Good Life” as a little boy with impressive mental powers traps a schoolteacher in a house full of hostages posing as “family.” The set is particularly well-done, just off-kilter enough to be unnerving, and some of the effects jolt effectively (people with no mouths always are freaky-deaky). It has a bit of a feel-good-let’s-hug ending to it, but it was probably the most entertaining out of all the stories here.

Segment 4: John Lithgow reprises William Shatner’s famous turn as a jittery airplane passenger convinced that there’s “Some… thing! On the wing!” There are better special effects and some funny moments (creepy girl, you need to be stowed down below), but it’s more or less a pass, particularly if you saw the original episode. There’s a short epilogue that ties this story back to the prologue, but it got a big shoulder-shrug from me.

The odd thing about Twilight Zone: The Movie to me was that instead of creating all-new stories for it, they instead elected to just redo or crib from the series extensively (even the first segment, which is supposedly the “original” tale, was inspired by two episodes). I suppose there’s a little something here for everyone, but I feel it comes off as a lame effort to recapture the punch-in-the-gut glory of much better days gone by.