The bestTwilight Zoneepisodes offer a strong mix of sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and speculative fiction shorts that often play out as morality tales. The series was one of the original anthology television shows and is easily the most influential. Every anthology series that followed owes a lot to Rod Sterling’s masterful collection of thought-provoking, often frightening, and disturbing tales of terror. Whether it was horror, sci-fi, or the fear of an unknown future,The Twilight Zonemastered it all.
There have been a few reboots of the series, including a critically acclaimed one by Jordan Peele. However, the original remains the best, and that series alone (running from 1959 to 1963) created some of the most haunting, frightening, scary,and sometimes hopeful and empathetic short filmsin genre television history. With major celebrity names likeWilliam Shatner, Jack Klugman, Burgess Meredith, and Jackie Gleason, the bestTwilight Zoneepisodes are as effective today as they were six decades ago.
10Living Doll
Season 5, Episode 6
There have been many “living doll” horror movies.Child’s Playis the most famous. BothM3GANandAnnabelleare new additionsto the subgenre. However, all thesekiller doll movies owe everything to the original killer doll, the Living Doll fromThe Twilight Zone. This doll was named Talky Tina, and a mother bought the doll for her daughter’s birthday one year. She hoped the doll would help the little girl transition better into life with her new strict stepfather but that isn’t how things turned out.
The entire way this episode takes the unlikable Erich and turns him into someone the audience fears for is masterful…
Telly Savalas (The Dirty Dozen) plays stepdad Erich, who knows the doll is evil even though his new wife and stepdaughter think she is sweet. When Talky Tina tells Erich, “My name is Talky Tina, and I’m going to kill you,” he sets out to find a way to destroy it but fails. The entire way this episode takes the unlikable Erich and turns him into someone the audience fears for is masterful, but when he gets what is coming to him in the end, it makes it all worth the wait.
Season 2, Episode 28
“Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up” was another episode in whichThe Twilight Zonetackled prejudice and bigotry by using alien life to tell the story. This episode is mostly described asa whodunnit mystery but was also a good precursor to alien invasion movies likeInvasion of the Body SnatchersandJohn Carpenter’s The Thing.The episode occurs at a roadside diner where a group of strangers is stranded during an extreme weather storm. However, they soon start to realize something isn’t right.
All 5 Seasons Of The Twilight Zone, Ranked Worst To Best
While this classic anthology series was an iconic show for five seasons, some seasons failed to sustain the charm the show is celebrated for.
The diners believe one of the people there is an alien, and they don’t know which one of them it could be. This causes them to turn on each other, show their prejudice in the open, and make threats based on what they see as differences. Even couples start to suspect their partners are not who they claim to be, and the tensions rise until they all finally leave without proving anything. The final twist is that one of them was an alien, believing the planet was ready to attack since humans couldn’t even trust each other, slamming the point home.
8The Invaders
Season 2, Episode 15
“The Invaders” is an amazingTwilight Zoneepisode that misdirects the viewers into thinking they are watching one thing and then springing the twist that things are not what they seem. Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) wrote this episode with Douglas Hayes directing the horror story about what appears to be a lonely woman fighting for her life as small creatures seem to be trying to kill her in her home.She does everything she can to protect her home and stay alive as she kills these creaturesin any way she can.
What makes this episode work so well is that the viewers spend the entire time cheering for the villains without knowing that they are the bad guys and then realize when it is too late that the “monsters” were the victims all along. The twist reveals that the “creatures” are human astronauts who landed on another planet, and the woman is a giant alien protecting her home from the “invading” humans. It is the only time in the episode any dialogue is used, and the fact this is a silent installment adds to the terror.
7It’s A Good Life
Season 3, Episode 8
One of the creepiestTwilight Zoneepisodes ever made is season 3’s “It’s A Good Life.” That is because it has one of the scariest things in horror flicks - a creepy kid. Rod Sterling wrote the script based on a story by Jerome Bixby, and it all starts off shockingly. The first thing that the audience sees is a group of adults nervously talking to each other, and some of them beg the others to kill a child (played by Billy Mumy). However, these adults are not the bad guys in this story.
A person with great power, but unchecked aggression can destroy everything around him.
Anthony Fremont has godlike mental powers. He can read minds and force people to do anything he wants them to. No one can resist his powers, and everyone in the town is enslaved to this young boy’s wishes and desires. He is also vindictive as when he doesn’t get his way, he will hurt the adults he feels slighted by. This terrifying episodeshows how a person with great power, but unchecked aggression can destroy everythingaround him and make people scared to do anything to stop him.
6To Serve Man
Season 3, Episode 24
There are manyTwilight Zoneepisodes from which other shows and movies have borrowed, but few have been as mimicked as “To Serve Man.” This episode stars Richard Kiel (Jaws from the James Bond franchise) as an alien. His people are 9-foot-tall telepathic beings who land on Earth and greet humans with a book calledTo Serve Man.The aliens claim they are there to serve humans in any way possibleand share their advanced knowledge, which could solve all of Earth’s problems.
As with all the bestTwilight Zoneepisodes, this one has a twist - one of the best in the entire franchise’s run. They do everything they promised and turn the Earth into a utopia with all the problems, including pollution, world hunger, and more solved. The twist was also a perfect joke, as the book’s title -To Serve Man- was literal in the sense that the aliens were taking humans to visit their planet, where they then served them as meals to their race. The joke helped elevate this to masterpiece status.
5Nightmare At 20,000 Feet
Season 5, Episode 13
ThisTwilight Zoneepisode might be the most famous one in the original run. The main reasons are two-fold. First, this was one of William Shatner’s appearances in the anthology series, and he was on top form in this performance. Second, the story itself was creepy and memorable - one that most fans can remember almost every detail about. Shatner is a man who is scared of flying but has to take a flight anyway. It doesn’t help that a storm is ongoing, and the plane hits turbulence.
Richard Donner (Superman) directed the episode in one of his early credits.
What sends this man over the edge is when he looks out the window and sees a “gremlin” on the plane’s wing. No one believes him, and he is considered an unruly passenger, all while the gremlin tries to bring down the plane. Richard Donner (Superman) directed the episode in one of his early credits, and while the gremlin is clearly a man in a furry suit,the entire thing is just creepy enough to remain one of the most memorable and belovedTwilight Zoneepisodes in history.
4The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street
Season 1, Episode 22
One of the most popularTwilight Zoneepisodes ever made, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” tells a story that was important in the 1960s and might be even more vital in today’s society. The episode starts with the electricity going out in a neighborhood, and no one can get it back on. However, when one car can still start,the people who live on Maple Street begin to believe there is an alien invasion ongoingand start to point fingers at each other, accusing neighbors of being aliens.
This episode is one of the best allegories duringThe Twilight Zone’s run about fear-mongering and xenophobia.
While the prejudice laid out in this episode is not based on gender, race, ethnicity, or religion, it does show that humans will often find reasons to segregate and hate people unlike them, even if there is no reason to do so. This episode is one of the best allegories duringThe Twilight Zone’s run about fear-mongering and xenophobia in small, close-minded communities. When it turns out aliens caused it, but only as a way to turn humanity against each other by provoking fear, it is a message that remains frighteningly real.
3Five Characters In Search Of A Exit
Season 3, Episode 14
The plot of “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” is clearly one that many horror movies have played off of over the years. A group of five people are stuck together with no reason or explanation. They all need to find a way out before they all die. These people include a clown, a hobo, a ballet dancer, a bagpiper, and an army major, andthey need to figure out why they are there, what each of them represents, and how to escapebefore the nightmare finally ends.
This is a story of five random strangers who don’t remember how they got there or even who they are. Rod Sterling wrote this episode and set it up like a deranged whodunnit, an Agatha Christie-styled mystery without a brilliant detective to help these people escape trouble. What really helps this entire episode stick the landing is that they are not in “hell,” as they surmised, but it is something a lot more innocent and also terrifying that explains their predicament.
2Time Enough At Last
Season 1, Episode 8
“Time Enough At Last” is aTwilight Zoneepisode that seems to have a happy ending after a worldwide tragedy but then twists the knife in the viewer’s mind when it destroys all hope in the episode’s last shot. Burgess Meredith stars in this episode as a bank teller who doesn’t like to be around people and prefers to spend all his time reading by himself. However, he never finds the time, and people continue to get in his way.When a global catastrophe delivers the world via a nuclear bombing, this man survives.
10 Types Of Twilight Zone Episodes
Each installment of The Twilight Zone has a message hidden in its story, but there are a number of different types of episodes based on their themes.
When he comes out of his bomb shelter and sees the entire world seems to have been destroyed, he realizes he has “time enough” to do what he wants to do in life. Things get even better when he finds the library wasn’t destroyed and all the books he could ever want to read are still there. However, this episode does not have a happy ending, and it is a twist that offers up the worst tragedy imaginable for this man when his glasses break. This installment seems playfully mischievous and is a perfect tragic comedy.
1Eye Of The Beholder
Season 2, Episode 6
One of the most shocking and brilliantly executedTwilight Zoneinstallments is the season 2 episode"Eye of the Beholder." In it, a woman learns she is so “ugly” that she doesn’t have a chance at a normal life unless she undergoes several experimental plastic surgeries. It seems sad, but she seems more than willing to undergo this to live a normal life. Director Douglas Heyes films the episode so that viewers can’t see vital information until the shocking twist at the end.
The main theme of the episode remains prevalent in today’s society. With so many people believing they have to change their appearance to please others, it has made plastic surgery commonplace, especially for the rich and famous who always want to retain their youth.The episode’s title is a spin on “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” When the twist comes, and the beautiful Maxine Stuart realizes she has to be made to look like the pig-snouted creatures in this world, it delivers everythingThe Twilight Zonestands for.
The Twilight Zone
Cast
The Twilight Zone is an anthology series that debuted in 1959, featuring a collection of standalone episodes encompassing drama, psychological thriller, fantasy, science fiction, suspense, and horror. Known for its macabre or unexpected twists, each story is distinct, exploring various speculative themes and human experiences.
