Customer Reviews

The Twilight Zone: Vol. 6

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Vol. 6 is worth seeing for the episode "The Passerby", an extremely well-produced show. The set alone is very impressive, as is the plot device of the continuous procession of weary, bedraggled soldiers, especially as night falls.

I am greatly disappointed at author Mark Zicree's negative remarks about this episode in his "TZ Companion"; believe me, his opinions are just that, and he totally misses the beauty and eloquence of this show. True, the pace is weary and measured, but that's exactly what the plot demands. He says that James Gregory is "too old" to play a Confederate Sargeant----has he ever seen actual photos from the Civil War??? Men of ALL ages fought---and they aged tremendously from the torturous rigors of war.

Johanna Linville is wonderful--always on the edge of tears, heartsick, lost in her dreams of the past. Sure Mr. Zicree, WE all know what's happening fairly early on in the show---but SHE DOESN"T---she's too "disconnected" from reality to grasp it.

Fred Steiner's noble and elegaic score is wonderful, and the overall look of the show is terrific. There's even a real shocker of a scene involving a Union Lieutenant---even though James Gregory's lead-in dialogue and explanation during that scene is pretty contrived and "over-the-top".

And the final twist----how touchingly understated!
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The rest of the dvd is variable. "The Grave" is OK in terms of atmosphere, and we all like watching Lee Marvin but COME ON--the ending is really stupid--no other way to say it!

Joseph Schildkraut, one of the great actors of all time, is excellent in "Death's Head Revisited" ---- a very moody and gripping morality play---(and rather daring for its time).

"Jeff Myrtlebank" is OK. Zicree thinks it's fabulous. Cute, maybe, but its minor stuff.

Buy it and judge for yourself.

There is an obvious theme to the four episodes collected on Volume 6 of the Twilight Zone DVD series, namely that death is not the end of existence. After all, the reviews for this DVD all disappeared, but this one managed to make it from beyond. The first episode on this DVD is far and away the best, the classic "Deaths-Head Revisited" written by Rod Serling. Oscar Beregi plays Captain Lutz, a former S.S. officer who returns to the concentration camp at Dachau to remember the good times he enjoyed there torturing and murdering people. However, the ghosts of Dachau, led by a man whose name was Becker (Joseph Schildkraut), have something else in mind. Dachau is represented by what is obviously a frontier fort, but like "Life Is Beautiful" the story is much more important than the set design. Serling always had a tendency to get too preachy, but in this particular episode he hits the mark perfectly. Less satisfying is "The Grave," written and directed by Montgomery Pittman. Pinto Sykes (Richard Geary) is gunned down by the folks in a western town. They had hired Conny Miller (Lee Marvin) to do the job, but he never caught up with Sykes and we have doubts about his courage. Now Miller hears that before he died Sykes vowed to grab Miller if he ever came near his grave. The mood is rather spooky, but why a killer would want to get the coward who never even tried to kill him is a bit of a big hole.

"The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" is another Pittman offering, in which the title character (James Best) suddenly sits up in his coffin at his funeral. However Jeff does not seem exactly normal; in fact, he seems better. Now he likes to work hard and can win fistfights, all of which has the local folk and his fiancee Comfort Gatewood (Sherry Jackson) a might spooked. There is certainly a rustic charm to this episode, which is the second best one on the disc. I would have sworn it was an Earl Hammer, Jr. episode, but I was certainly wrong on that score. Finally, Rod Serling's "The Passerby" is a minor tale in which a woman named Lavinia (Joanne Linville) is waiting for her husband to return form the Civil War, but fears he might be dead. James Gregory plays a sergeant who stops to rest and who figures out ahead of Lavinia, but not ahead of the audience, what the twist is to this one. Then again, any story in which Abraham Lincoln shows up has some redeeming quality. Still, it is "Deaths-Head Revisited," a tale about the Holocaust when it was still pretty much a historical footnote as far as television and films were concerned, is the reason to pick up this one.

From my teens this is one of the series that I more fondly remember. As a sci-fi fan I was attracted by "The Twilight Zone" proposal. At that time I wasn't able to see more than a score of episodes, but they remain in my memory with extraordinary persistence.
Thanks to the technological marvel of DVD I'm able to see these amazing stories again and find them as magical & thought provoking as 45 years ago.
As the structure of the episodes are mostly bounded to a surprise ending or to the argument in a very short span of time of 25 minutes each, I'll focus my review more on outstanding features than on the topic of the episode in order not to spoil the pleasure of the viewer.

Disk 6 contains four good chapters with intermixing themes: Ghosts, Tombs & Fear.

1) Deaths-Head Revisited - An ex-SS officer decides to pay a visit to an old concentration camp. He will find it changed!
This is an episode written by Rod Serling in person delivering a forceful story that seeks deeply in human emotions, justice & retribution.
Actor's performance is over par: 1938 Oscar winner Joseph Schildtkraut fleshes an ex-internee and Hungarian Oscar Berengi Jr. the sinister ex-SS Captain, both are supreme.
Qualification: 8.

2) The Grave - One of the high points of this episode is the appearance of Lee Marving in the leading role as Conny Miller the frustrated pursuer, very well accompanied by western specialists as James Best, Lee Van Cleef and Strother Martin.
The story is situated in the Far West when Conny Miller returns to his hometown and learns that his always elusive prey, Pinto Sykes, has been killed but before dying asserted that Conny was afraid of him and that he will wait for him in his tomb.
Once more as in other episodes brilliant cinematography in charge of George Clemens contributes to the excellence of this chapter. Clemens won Emmy Award 1961 and nominations for the same honor 1962 & 1963 all due to several episodes of this series. He filmed 112 episodes of this series.
Qualification: 8.

3) The Last Rites of Jeff Myrteblanck - When a community was assisting to his funeral, Jeff suddenly rise up from his coffin generating stampede.
Afterwards, every people in town, including his fiancée, is wondering who or what he is.
This is, arguably, the best episode in the DVD, full of subtleties in how the fear spreads into the neighborhood and lead to a final confrontation with Jeff.
As in the previous episode Montgomery Pittman directed and wrote it with great success. BTW actress Sherry Jackson performing as Jeff's bride is his stepdaughter.
Qualification: 9.

4) The Passerby- Again Rod Serling shows his master hand in writing the script, insufflates a magic, tender and melancholic air to the whole episode.
Veteran actor James Gregory fleshes the Sergeant very convincingly.
The story is situated just after the end of the Civil War when an endless flow of worn troops pass by the gates of a ruined southern mansion and a Sergeant ask leave of the lady owner to have a cup of water and a little rest.
Qualification: 8.5.

This DVD series presentation has two great advantages: it has a very good price and allows buyers to choose their favorite chapters without needing to buy the whole series.

Reviewed by Max Yofre.

"The Passersby" was a supernatural version of a civil war story Serling wrote for a television drama years previous with Sidney Blackmer in the lead. Lee Marvin was so drunk on the set of "The Grave" that he backed the horse into poles and broke them. The final moments of that episode was a problem -- the wind machine was so loud the actors had to loop their voices into a soundtrack.

"Deaths-Head Revisited" was inspired by the Eichmann trials at the time. In "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank," James Best was scared to be locked into a coffin so he used a pencil to keep the lid propped open until filming commenced.

Trivia above supplied not from the DVD, but from the book, "The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic" because the 800 plus page book is a P-E-R-F-E-C-T companion to the DVD. Before or after you watch an episode, you can use the book to uncover the in-jokes, bloopers and trivia that make viewing these episodes fun. Both are available on Amazon.

My husband loves the old twilight zone episodes and this is a great selection. The shipment was timely and the DVD is in great shape.

More great episodes

Passerby- very strange liked it though (***)

Grave- very suspensful. The ending was kind of stupid though. (**)

Death's Head Revisited- Loved this one. It creeped me out a little bit. (****)

Last Rites of Jeff Myrtle- This one was a little too strange for me. it was still good though. (***)