"The Twilight Zone" Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (1963)

User Rating:

9.2/10   

Director:

Richard Donner

Writers:

Richard Matheson (writer)
Rod Serling (creator)

TV Series:

"The Twilight Zone" (1959)

Original Air Date:

11 October 1963 (Season 5, Episode 3)

Genre:

Drama | Fantasy | Horror | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Plot:

A man, newly recovered from a nervous breakdown, becomes convinced that a monster only he sees is damaging the plane he's flying in. |

Plot Keywords:

Monster | Based On Short Story | Gun | Thunderstorm | Airplane

Cast

William Shatner	...	Bob Wilson
Christine White	...	Julia Wilson
Ed Kemmer	...	Flight Engineer (as Edward Kemmer)
Asa Maynor	...	Stewardess

Runtime:

25 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Filming Locations:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios - 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA

Company:

Cayuga Productions

Trivia:

Richard Matheson originally wanted Patricia Breslin to play Bob Wilson's wife.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: From the outside of the airplane, during a lightning flash, the cables that pull off the emergency escape door are visible.

Quotes:

Bob Wilson: There's a man out there.

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in "The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror IV (#5.5)" (1993)

Far, far, far from the best TZ

For the life of me I've never understood the appeal of this. As a stand-alone story of irrationality (Wilson's or the world's, take your pick) it's OK.

But the best TZ episodes have an interior logic, a sense that even as you're agreeing with the people on screen "This can't be happening", you know that somehow, somewhere, it could.

This, however, is so simplistic and artificial - how long do you have to watch before realizing that no one else is going to see the creature? And more importantly, that the writer and director are so palpably engineering it that they might as well be visible - like boom shadows - on the screen.

Lame, lame, lame. The stars are for Shatner.