Like many people in the early eighties, I heard about the terrifying accident that killed Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le, and Renee Shin-Yi Chen during the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Because of that I steered away from ever seeing it. I grew up loving The Twilight Zone, and I was probably enough of a self-assured critic at twenty to suppose the movie would never have been as good as the original series had been. Still, it didn’t leave my consciousness. Not entirely. There have been a couple of television reboots of the series—most recently by Jordan Peele—and it seems that those of the present day still see the cultural value in the original. Peele’s relaunch, although short-lived, brought the movie back to mind and I finally decided to watch it when I learned that one of the segments was based on “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” given my recent gremlin kick.
I knew the film was an anthology and those are always dicey. I also knew I’d be watching an actor in his final role—the scene in which he and the children actually died was not used in the movie, of course. I didn’t realize how many stars were in the cast, and I didn’t even know what the other three episodes were. Critics (paid and un) have opined that the episodes increase in appeal as the movie progresses, and the opening segment has been hailed as one of the scariest introductions among films. So some forty years after it released I watched it. I actually found it to be largely in the spirit of Rod Serling. I don’t know what he would’ve thought of the movie, but it seems to have continued his message. The first segment, the one in which Morrow starred, wasn’t based on a single original Twilight Zone episode as the other three were. A few “Easter eggs” exist for fans, such as Burgess Meredith narrating and Helen Foley saying she’s headed to Willoughby on the remake of “It’s a Good Life.” No doubt, “It’s a Good Life” and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” are among the most famous of the episodes in the series.
Part of me is surprised that the film was released at all. Deaths have occurred, of course, in the making of other movies. Some in which millions of dollars had already been invested. Still, watching a final performance like this has a haunted quality to it. At times it seems that acting can be a dangerous profession. And certain movies may always be difficult to watch because of it. But should we expect anything different from this Twilight Zone in which we live?
