Customer Reviews

The Twilight Zone: The Purple Testament/ A Quality of Mercy [VHS]

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THE PURPLE TESTAMENT from the First Season is a strange World War II story set in the Pacific about U.S. Army Lieutenant Fitzgerald who can predict death from a strange glow on the faces of the doomed men in his outfit. William Reynolds, a highly underrated actor, gives a brilliant performance as the lieutenant as he runs the gamut of emotions from frantic disbelief to beaten disillusionment about his terrible gift. The cast is very good including Dick York, Warren Oates, and Paul Mazursky. This is an outstanding episode. A QUALITY OF MERCY from the Third Season is another World War II story. Set in the Pacific during the final days of the war, Dean Stockwell is U.S. Army Lieutenant Katell who has absolutely no empathy or remorse for killing enemy soldiers no matter what the circumstances are. When his situation becomes juxtaposed with the enemy Japanese he gains new insight into his convictions. The sentiments of this episode seem somewhat naive considering today's global political and militaristic posture. The nobility of combatants on contrasting sides seems a thing of the past, but this episode is written from the perspective of the ordinary man sent into the extraordinary situation of war and how he reacts to the incredibility of it. On the surface this episode could easily look like a lot of hokum but its implications run much deeper. It features another good cast including Albert Salmi and Leonard Nimoy. A QUALITY OF MERCY provides a unique look at an improbability of events and is noteworthy for what questions and emotions it presents for the viewer. THE PURPLE TESTAMENT, my favorite of the two episodes, shows us the facileness of men's souls as they become hardened to the day-to-day exposure to war and the wear and tear it takes on those placed in command to the point where the responsibility of putting men into harm's way eventually becomes frivolity. Through William Reynolds' performance we see this frivolity grow not of indifference but of just wanting his own hurt to stop.