Customer Reviews

The Twilight Zone: Walking Distance/ Kick the Can [VHS]

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WALKING DISTANCE is probably the best episode ever produced. Gig Young acts out Serling's prose so perfectly that he speaks for every man that ever wished he could go home again. It is a very moving episode. Bernard Herrmann's score intuitively picks up the emotion and heartfelt sincerity that Serling wrote into this story. This was Rod Serling's, Bernard Herrmann's and Gig Young's finest work for any medium. I think it is the finest piece of work ever put on film. KICK THE CAN is thematically similar and also very moving. It examines what it means to grow old and if one must give up the very things that makes us who we really are. It too is a very heartfelt episode, sincere and remains one of the best.

Long ago when Television was young there were indeed programs of quality and value. One of the great icons of the era was for sure Rod Serling. Mr. Serling has been gone now since 1975...but his vision and talent and taste for the ironic live on in " Twilight Zone" episodes.

In "Walking Distance" Martin Sloan( Gig Young) gets to look back on his life in a very special way. A shock to himself when he sees himself, as a boy, carving names into a post on a gazebo..( a gazebo that could have been possibly in Serling's home town of Binghamton New York.

The quagmire of time and space are now imposed on Martin Sloan..and this unique teleplay is one of the best 26 minutes you might see on Television. The montage scene on the merry go round...the field is at first tilted...then corrects itself with a return to Mr. Sloan's reality..Frak Overton, Byron Foulger and Ronnie Howard round out the singular cast.

If this were all not enough, Bernard Herrman lends a most meloncholy score to the whole proceedings. This is what happens when great artists combine talents to produce something timeless.

Some " Wisp of Memory" indeed!

"Walking Distance" -- Serling's ode to his childhood in Binghamton, N.Y. -- is extraordinary television. Gig Young is perfect as the world-weary New York ad man who is awakened by the boy within himself. Notice the faraway look in his eyes while he's eating ice cream at the lunch counter or the confusion that registers on his face when he meets his mother and father. The Serling script is autobiographical from start to finish. I was in a college discussion group in the 70s led by Serling when he said that this story and Night Gallery's "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar" were among his most personal writing. He also credited Ray Bradbury as an influence, and "Walking Distance" certainly has that Bradbury feel of longing for small-town America of the 20's and 30's. Combine that with the Bernard Hermann music and the Victorian town set, with a vintage bandstand and carousel, and this is more like a short film than a TV show. But it is the Serling script and the performance by Young that make make this sparkle.

In Rod Serling's classic episode "Walking Distance," Martin Sloan (Gig Young) leaves his car at the gas station and walks into his hometown, where suddenly everything is just as it was when he was a child. In fact, he encounters his younger self (Michael Montgomery), and has to come to terms with the fact that he has not been happy with his life for a long, long time. The episode, directed by Robert Stevens, is one of Serling's best evocations of nostalgia, with a cast that includes Pat O'Malley and young Ronnie Howard. "Kick the Can" was George Clayton Johnson's final script for the series, and was the episode adapted by Steven Spielberg in "Twilight Zone: The Movie." Charles Whitley (Ernest Truex) and his friend Ben Conory (Russell Collins) are residents of Sunnydale Rest, a home for the aged. Charles becomes convinced that the secret to being young is acting young, and one night he begs the others to join him for a game of kick-the-can. Everyone agrees to join in the game, except Ben. Because this is the Twilight Zone, this is a tragic mistake and one that Ben will regret the rest of his life. This is an okay episode, but not a classic like the first one on this tape.

One of the best "Twilight Zone" episodes to enjoy again and again. There is much more here in this piece than just reflections by the author. Fatalistic(in real life) , Gig Young is cast as the man who yearns for simple times of his past. Frank Overton and Irene Tedrow play his parents. Bernard Herrman,s score is as always terrific and moody. Montage is in effect here also and its for the viewer to decide what are the meanings...as you note the camera angle in the beginning of the merry go round sequence and at the end of the sequence. Rod Serling at his best. See also " A Stop at Willoughby" with similiar themes

As previous reviewers have said, here are two of the finest episodes of a TV series known for its exceptional quality & human insight. Both start at the same point: a man looking back on the past, one from midlife, one from old age. Both men have been disappointed, worn down -- their lives haven't taken them to the promised place of fulfilled hopes & expectations. And both are given a second chance, although in very different ways.

In "Walking Distance," Martin Sloan (a superb Gig Young) finds himself yearning for his idyllic childhood, and suddenly finds himself walking through it as a grown man. It's a quiet but powerful story, one that any viewer should find evocative -- but if you're Martin's age, it'll resonate deeply indeed. Not simply a cautionary tale about living too much in the past, it also offers what so many grown men undoubtedly hunger for: the chance to speak with their fathers openly & honestly, man-to-man, each in the prime of life. If you've lost your father, this story will strike an almost unbearably beautiful, bittersweet chord.

In "Kick the Can," Charles Whitley (Ernest Truex) waits out his remaining days in an old folks' home, abandoned by his son, feeling the weight of his years but unwilling to simply fade away. He also remembers his childhood -- but in his case, it's not an unhealthy flight from the present into the past. Charles remembers the energy, the joy, the wonder of experiencing the world for the first time ... and he's sure there's a way to recapture it. The well-meaning owners of the home only see him as an old man, the little that's left of a long life. Charles still knows himself to be the sum of that long life, with all of its sorrows & wisdom.

On the face of it, two obvious lessons that everyone knows: don't live in the past, and remain young at heart. But the writing, the acting, the cinematography, and the music all combine to make these two stories something special, something that remains with you long after the closing credits. There's nothing mawkish or sentimental here, no easy clichés to make everyone feel better. This is the stuff of life, poignant & heartfelt. Most highly recommended!

Often called the greatest episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE ever made, "Walking Distance" epitomizes the series at its finest. Everything about the episode is extraordinary: the script, which is Rod Serling's most personal; the acting by Gig Young, Frank Overton, Ronnie Howard, and the rest of the cast; the direction by Robert Stevens; the photography by George T. Clemens; and the moving score by Bernard Herrmann, which could stand on its own as a concert piece. Serling's emotional identification with this story of a tired advertising man who revisits his old hometown in a desperate effort to "put in a claim to the past" is clearly audible in his narrations, particularly the middle one ("A man can think a lot of thoughts..."), in which he sounds close to tears. Other reviewers have called "Walking Distance" the finest study of humanity ever put on television - and I can believe that this is true.
The theme of "Kick the Can," the second episode on this video, is also that of a mature man reencountering youth (the episode even uses some of Herrmann's music from "Walking Distance"). Old friends Charles Whitley and Ben Conroy live at Sunnyvale Rest, a home for the aged. Abandoned by his son and threatened with confinement by the home's doctor, who thinks him "senile," Charles realizes that it will take a children's game, such as "kick the can," to save him from a fate akin to death. But will his best friend Ben join him in The Twilight Zone? "Kick the Can" is a charming, magical piece, even if it does pale a bit next to "Walking Distance," which is greatness itself.

This is another fine package in the series, two classics that have obvious but effective stories to tell. "Walking Distance" is about Martin Sloan, successful in business but not successful in that walk of life that all men try sooner or later: trying to go home again. "Kick the Can" is an enormously moving and engrossing piece with Charles Witley dilivering the goods as an old man who refuses to die in Sunnydale Rest. He is a man who knows that he will die in this world if he does not escape...into the Twilight Zone. This is one you should see.

Perhaps the best of the seventy or so scripts Serling penned in the first years of the series, it is often overlooked by science fiction buffs as all that's involved is a little time distortion. In fact it is a superb example of the author's craft in its blending of the autobiographical and supernatural. The small-town-America-as-obtainable-and-ideal plays as strongly and vividly today for baby boomers seeking to escape the pressures of life at the brink of the millenium as it did for TV fantasy escapists of the early '60's. Maybe Gig Young's performance is a little sentimental and over-the-top cutesy but the real star is the script originally written by Rod as a short story. (It probably was one of those quickie dictates into the mike that someone transferrred later.) I believe it is the only example in the Zone collection that features mid-story narration by Rod. I think the episode was special to him as perhaps his deepest desire in life: to return to his boyhood home, family, and self for just one more look.

The Twilight Zone, 2585

Walking Distance, 10-30-1959

A sports car drives fast, then stops at a gas station. "Fill it up." Martin Sloan stops for service, then decides to walk to his old home town. He stops at a drugstore for an ice cream soda, still a dime. Life is slow paced, as in past decades. People live in big houses along main street. A boy uses a knife to carve his name in a wooden post. The couple at his old house don't recognize him! A brand new 1934 roadster! "Who are you?" He is told to go away from his old house. Martin jumps on a merry-go-round, there is an accident. The boy will be alright. "I know who you are." Do people only get one chance? "Try looking ahead." He returns to the drugstore. Things have changed. Martin goes back to his car and drives away.

Kick the Can, 02-09-1962

An old man says goodbye to the other residents at an old age home, his son came to get him. But there was a misunderstanding. Boys play "kick the can" outside. It annoys some of the elderly, they don't like noise. Does time affect people's outlook? Or is it a way of looking at things? Can you become young by acting young? Will he be put in a special ward? [We now know that some exercise keeps you young.] At night Charles rouses the others to play outside. Are you ever too old to play? Is he serious? Can they leave unobserved? The manager is notified. Who are those kids? Where did the old people go?

The lesson here is that a sedentary life can bring on aging. People should stay active as long as possible. Being in an old age home is like a jail without bars. Living with your children is better than in a home where you wonder who will die next. [Note how few obese people are shown here.]