"The Twilight Zone" Time Enough at Last (1959)

User Rating:

9.1/10   

Director:

John Brahm

Writers:

Lynn Venable (short story)
Rod Serling (teleplay)

TV Series:

"The Twilight Zone" (1959)

Original Air Date:

20 November 1959 (Season 1, Episode 8)

Genre:

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

Plot:

A henpecked book lover finds himself blissfully alone with his books after a nuclear war. |

Plot Keywords:

Book | Nuclear War | Bookworm | Hydrogen Bomb | Cigarette Smoking

Cast

Burgess Meredith	...	Henry Bemis
Vaughn Taylor	...	Mr. Carsville
Jacqueline deWit	...	Helen Bemis (as Jaqueline deWit)
Lela Bliss	...	Mrs. Chester

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:

The exterior, long library steps were filmed some months later and used as the steps up into an Eloi public building, in MGM's 1960 film _Time Machine, The (1960)_. They were also seen in Brahm's later work, Episode 28 of The Twilight Zone, "A Nice Place To Visit".

Quotes:

[SPOILER]
Henry Bemis: And the best thing, the very best thing of all, is there's time now... there's all the time I need and all the time I want. Time, time, time. There's time enough at last.
[goes to pick up a book, but in doing so his glasses fall off and break. He slowly raises his glasses to his face, seeing they are completely broken]
Henry Bemis: That's not fair. That's not fair at all. There was time now. There was, was all the time I needed...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Sam and Max: Moai Better Blues (2008) (VG)

Has haunted me forever

From the first time I saw this episode in its original form to today, the events of this simple tale have stayed with me. I have been an English teacher for 35 years and have used this on numerous occasions to teach irony. Of course, this is the story of a man who is so incredibly unhappy. His adversaries are people who see his fascination with books as a consummate waste of time. His wife, his boss, his customers all see him as a loser. He seems like a delightful man, full of ideas, but in the world of his bank job he is merely inefficient. I love the line "go back to your cage" delivered by his boss. Of course, as most anyone knows, he gets his chance to have everything he wants, except he has one weakness. The reason I give this a nine rather than a ten is that there are some things that just don't fit the post nuclear world. Serling must have been a little impatient; and, of course, he was on an incredibly grueling schedule. Suffice it to say, once you've seen the ending, it never leaves you.