I hate to use the word “old” to describe it, but also didn’t want to make the title too wordy.
By old I’ll say anything made from 1930-1990, even though 1990 isn’t that terribly long ago.
It's a stretch, but to go way back, how's about The Petrified Forest? The big stars steer it away from feeling like it could be an episode of a TV show. It's very much a "vehicle" for Leslie Howard, Bette Davis and, needless to say, as things turned out, Humphrey Bogart. Yet the story is not unlike many Zones that feature trapped people, unable to get out of where they are literally (a room, a house, a spaceship) or personally, as in who they are, and how limited their options are due to mistakes they made in the past or character flaws that seem unfixable (sic).
The desolate location isn't a million miles from the (literal) Death Valley of the first season TZ The Lonely, and other episodes set in far off places. I Shot An Arrow Into The Air is another like that. Then there's all that talk, much of it personal, that drives Petrified Forest's plot, as it does so many Zones. The end is, predictably, melodramatic, yet so too were nearly all Twilight Zones. I think that in the movie the TZ vibe is strongest very early on, when there are just a handful of characters. When Duke Mantee & Gang arrive it begins to play more like a movie of the Depression era.
d31d1- I mentioned this movie back on the original Twilight Zone message board (when it was still part of IMDb), but it just came up on my YouTube suggestions, and I just watched it again and it is SO great and a perfect TZ movie. Its called "H.G. Wells' - The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936)":
Link to movie on YouTube, but it cuts off before the very end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1iHe42UCCo
Here is last 4 minutes of the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh3xvqplJUk
Everyone who loves The Twilight Zone has to see this movie (if you haven't see it yet)! In fact there is one episode of TZ that seems to take the general idea of this a little ways, but I can't seem to remember the name.
Really interesting. Thanks!
share"The Devil and Daniel Webster" (1941) has some distinctly TZ-like eerie moments.
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Great thread ! I suspect a TZ vibe means a lot of different things to different people. I try to think of movies that have a supernatural twist rather than just a suspenseful and B&W tone, but two very big movies I thought of are, the original Cape Fear (although I'm influenced by the remake, where DeNiro seemed like he had supernatural cunning and strength) and Not the original but the remake of The Manchurian Candidate, with Meryl, Liev and Denzel. The whole mind experimentation angle just seems like the sort of twist TZ might do in a much more compact fashion. TZ on steroids and color film.
shareJourney to the Far Side of the Sun aka Doppelganger
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