MovieChat Forums > The Twilight Zone (1985) Discussion > What´s your favourite episode?

What´s your favourite episode?


I´d liked "A little peace and quiet" where a housewoman finds a strange amulett, that gives her peace and quiet - an even more (hell of an ending!),
and "Nightcrawlers", based upon the short story by the brilliant Robert R. McCammon - what are your favourite episodes?

reply

Two, first one was an episode Wes Craven did(I think) where a man wakes up one day to find the English Language has gone to pieces, and words don't mean what they used to mean(i.e. 'Dinosaur' means 'lunch', 'lunch' is a reddish colour, and puppies are called 'Wednesdays')

Second was a story about a woman who gets in bad debt with a credit card company, so objects around her house start disappearing as the credit company 'repossesses' them. She tries to make it stop by cutting the card in half, and her house(with everything in it - including her!) vanishes too.

"You probably don't think I'm a very nice guy. Do ya?"
"Boddy I think you're slime."

reply

I vividly remember the episode called The Shadow Man directed by Joe Dante. It scared the *beep* out of me when I was 8. Anybody know where I can get a copy?

reply

SHADOWMAN was creepy,i want to find it too on dvd

reply

That was a great episode! I'd nearly forgotten about it.

reply

my favorite story is "a stop at willoughby" a story of a train commuter. the train occasionly makes an inscheduled stop at "willoughy' a town in the past.
he visits it but always gets back on the train. Until one day he decides to stay. Actor: Mark Harmon.
sure wish i could get a vhs or dvd of this episode.

reply

The version with Mark Harmon wasn't a TZ episode, it was a TV movie based on the 1960's episode "A Stop at Willoughby" which starred James Daly. The TV movie was called "For All Time" and it also starred Mary McDonnell. Check it out, there's a record for it here on IMDB.

reply

I'm glad this is coming out on DVD soon, because I really want to see "Nightcrawlers", which I've heard is one of the most intense things to ever be broadcast on TV.

reply

It is.

CB

Good Times, Noodle Salad

reply

My favorite episode was "A Message from Charity."
If I recall correctly, the 1985 version of "The Twilight Zone" came on the same year that NBC remade "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and the same year that Spielberg's "Amazing Stories" was on the air. I was in the sixth grade that year (I'm 30 now), and it's good, top-notch TV shows like this, among other things, that make me think that the '80s were a really good decade for being a kid.

"That, my friends, was the minority vote."--Daniel Day-Lewis, "Gangs of New York"

reply

A Message from Charity was once of the best. It was 1986 and all the kids in my class voted it as the best episode.

reply

My favorite episode was "A Message from Charity."

I am in the middle of going through the series, and "A Message from Charity" is my favorite so far. I will come back to this thread after I finish to list some of my favorite. The series is better than I remembered.

----------
...you can't kill the boogie man!

reply

Does anyone remember "Need To Know" with Frances McDormand? It was about people in a small town going insane as they learn the meaning of life...Freaky stuff. I cannot WAIT for these DVDs!

reply

Yes! Very unsettling.

reply

[deleted]

That was a really creepy episode. I just saw it today.

Formerly known as Communism_is_the_Future

reply

I loved "The Shadow Man" "The Misfortune Cookie" though they were all great. Fantastic news that they're finally comin to DVD!!

reply

Only one I ever saw was "Gramma", when it originally aired...the part at the climax where the grandmother's grotesque face is finally shown scared the cr*p out of me as a kid. I just finished reading Skeleton Crew, and it doesn't surprise me that the story was written by Stephen King.

reply

Nightcrawlers

reply

I agree, this was the most memorable one.

reply

I'd have to agree, I was only 10 years old when I saw that particular episode, and while having a tolerance to horror at that point, Stephen King's Gramma still scared the s**t out of me.

reply

I thought "Gramma" was an episode of Tales from the Darkside?


My fave episode was Brice Willis in "ShatterDay"

reply

It's been over a decade since I've seen any of this show but I can still remember some of the stories. My favorite is probably "A Message From Charity" about a teenage boy in modern time achieving a psychic link with a teenage girl in the 1600s. Back in the mid 90s I found a copy of the original short story in a collection and was amazed at how faithful the screenplay was.

I also liked the 5 minute shorts "A Small Talent For War" (aliens come to Earth and scold humanity) and (can't remember the name) the one about parents concerned over their son taking a test... Oh and the one with Sherman Hemsley playing a mathematician who would sell his soul for the answer to a problem and poof a demon (Ron Glass) appears. I always loved that the demon's t-shirts kept changing ("Gehenna, not just a place a way of life.") and the line "I can go from here to the Andromeda galaxy and back in one-tenth of a second. Faster if I didn't stop for lunch!"

-Doughdee222
"I am a realist, not a pessimist. The real world is pessimistic by nature."

reply

How could you guys forget, the one where all the guy wants to do is read, then everyone dies but him? i dont remeber the title but that ones great!


"This is your life and its ending one minute at a time" -Fight Club

reply

It's not that we forgot, it's that you're remembering an episode from the 1960's TZ, and this board is for the 1980's TZ. The episode is "Time Enough at Last," starring Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis. It might have been remade as an episode of the 2002 TZ, but I've never seen that version (didn't get a UPN station in this market until after it had been cancelled) so I don't know for sure.

reply

That episode was called "Time Enough at Last" ..... one of the great ones

reply

(can't remember the name) the one about parents concerned over their son taking a test...

The one about the test was one of my favorites, too. It was called "Examination Day", and I think it was based on a short story that I read later. I don't remember the author, unfortunately.

reply

Why has no one mentioned "Palladin of the Lost Hour" with Danny Kaye. This was by far the best Twilight Zone episode of that 80's series. It's a beautiful story with exceptional acting. Another favorite is the one where a woman who is a worker in a future society escapes through a dream machine to her version of paradise (I think it may of been one of the first episodes ever broadcast). "A Message from Charity" was also great as was "Examination Day" and another one that was a take on the moral majority - a right wing preacher type is in charge of Hell and does not consult God before sending people there. Here in Canada it was considered the "lost episode" because of some interuption but I managed to tape it off someone's satelite.

reply

I never even knew "Paladin of the Lost" Hour was made into an episode. I remember reading the short story in Eng 101. It was a fantastic story and i wish i could see the episode.

I do remeber seeing "Gramma" and i must agree it was scary as hell.

reply

[deleted]

was that the one where hes testing a new "keeper of the global stopwatch?"

reply

Man, I remember watching this show all the time, but I don't remember any of the episode titles. Maybe you fellas here can help me with the titles, or if these were actually another show.

*Spoilers!*

My favorite: I think it was called "A Children's Zoo." In this episode, a family with two arguing parents took their little girl to the zoo. The catch was, the parents couldn't enter. The quiet, little girl enters, and in the zoo are, lo and behold, parents!! The little girl pushes a button to talk to the parents. Some threatened her, some begged of her, and finally, she selected an older, nicer couple to be her "new" parents. The episode ended with the little girl leaving with her new parents, and they walked right by her old parents, who were arguing. But then they panicked when they saw their daughter leaving with someone else.

Second fav: An episode where a man's life is lived based on what he reads on fortune cookies. Predictable, of course, but I liked it. He's rich and living well, but then his life starts falling apart. He finally reads a cookie that says, "You will die very soon." He gets mad, attacks the waiters, and eats a ton of cookies at once. He thn pulls out a slip of paper that reads "You are dead." End of show.

Also liked an episode where a mom discovers she can get quiet whenever she wants by saying "Shut up!" Everything freezes in life but her. If I'm not mistaken, the ending has the Soviet Union launching a nuclear missle that's about to land on America. She screams "Shut up!" over and over. Everything freezes, she walks outside, and there, among the many people that had gathered in the streets, sees the missle frozen in mid-air.

And I think this show was called "Kentucky Rye." Don't remember much, except some guy who killed a woman accidentally in a hit-and-run, ends up buying a bar. Problem is, it's $1,100, and all he has is $1,000. Then a mysterious man appears and forks over $100. It was the husband. That's about all I remember.

"When I left you I was but the learner. Now I am the master." - Darth Vader

reply

Twenty years, and it still resonates. Faves:

--'A Message From Charity' {from quaint to chilling as a young man [Duncan McNeill from 'ST:Voyager'] telepathically experiences with her the attempted assault of a young woman accused of witchcraft}
--'Rendezvous in a Dark Place' with the owner of one of the most beautiful male mouths on TV, Stephen McHattie [Seinfeld psychiatrist], as Death showing the ravaged Janet Leigh life is sometimes wasted on the living. "And I alone will never leave you."
--Short and bittersweet, but liked the thought-provocation of 'The Star' [written by Arthur C. Clarke of '2001' fame]: a Jesuit's realisation that his star of Bethlehem heralded the loss of a great civilisation.

Honourable mention to:
--'Palladin of the Lost Hour' with Danny Kaye [a big hit in France]
--'Dead Run' [Brent Spiner ST:TNG alert] about raising the good from Hell, still topical in today's media climate where it is deemed acceptable prime time TV for children to see corpses [any CSI], airhead bulimics with plastic bags burrowed under their flesh [any 'reality' program] and beer commercials [any professional sporting event], but not a nipple, and
--the score of 'Nightsong'; a DJ's lost love, with the late beefcake Antony Hamilton.

Worst?
I'm sure I'm repressing the worst episode ever. Worst I can recall? the campy 'I of Newton' with Ron Glass? The sappy 'Little Boy Lost'? hmm, guess I'll just have to await the DVD's.

reply

"Little Boy Lost'" with Season Hubley was my favorite episode even though dubyah1 thought it was sappy. It's a story about how coming to any decision can greatly alter the course of your life or someone elses.

reply

Can anyone remember an episode from the 1980's version with Bruce Willis starring? He splits in to two versions of himself. One version never leaves his apartment, the other version goes out to work and takes over his life. The apartment version gradually becomes psychotic and reclusive while the exterior world version is more confident and together. I think it ended with the apartment version of Willis fading away and the exterior version stepping in to his life completely. It was transmitted in the UK by at least Central/Angla ITV stations in the late 1980's or early 1990's. This and the end scene of 'A Little Peace and Quiet' with the ICBM frozen in the night sky above a cinema showing 'Doctor Strangelove' are enduring TV images for me.

reply

Bruce Willis calls home and Bruce Willis answers in 'Shatterday' ;-) written by Harlan Ellison, who also wrote 'Palladin of the Lost Hour', as well as 'Ther Terminator', 'Logan's Run', and the Star Trek classic 'City on the Edge of Forever'.

reply

[deleted]

Harlan Ellison co-wrote 'Gramma' from King's short story

reply

[deleted]

Im confused.......

I thought Bruce Willis in "ShatterDay" was about a guy sentenced to a year of invisibility??? What IS that one?

reply

Never mind, I see you started a separate thread and got an answer there.

I thought Bruce Willis in "ShatterDay" was about a guy sentenced to a year of invisibility??? What IS that one?

That's "To See The Invisible Man" with Cotter Smith.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It's all like some bad movie.

reply

My favorites, in no particular order.
Her Pilgrim Soul
To See the Invisible Man
A Message From Charity
Wordplay
I of Newton
The Once and Future King
Voices In the Earth
Wong's Lost and Found Emporium
A Small Talent for War
A Little Peace and Quiet

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It's all like some bad movie.

reply

John deLancie was also in "Dead Run." There were quite a few modern Trek actors in this series of TZ. Jonathan Frakes turns up in "But Can She Type," and I'm pretty sure I saw Nana Visitor somewhere.

reply