Twilight Zone, The: Season 5 (Blu-ray)
Steve Barton
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Starring Rod Serling, William Shatner, Bill Mumy, George Takei, James Coburn, Lee Marvin, Martin Landau, Mickey Rooney, Shelley Fabares, June Foray, Mariette Hartley, Alan Sues, and many, many more
Directed by Various
Created by Rod Serling
Distributed by Image Entertainment
“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call … The Twilight Zone.”
This is it, folks. The final season of the amazing television series “The Twilght Zone”. Your Blu-ray collection finally complete. Before we get into the review itself, we here at Dread Central would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at Image Entertainment for painstakingly taking the time to go above and beyond the call of duty with their stellar Blu-ray editions of this slice of small-screen history. The love that went into each of these editions pours out onto the screen, and as fans we couldn’t be more grateful.
Season Five of “The Twilight Zone” is easily one of the best, and it sends the experience out on a very high note. This show never jumped the shark. Here you will find such memorable episodes as “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, which is home to one of William Shatner’s most memorable performances, “A Kind of a Stopwatch,” “Living Doll” and of course the Cannes Film Festival/Oscar-winning French short film “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” On a personal note Season Five is also home to two of the three episodes (the third being “The Howling Man”) that actually scared the hell out of me as a child – “Night Call” and “Mr. Garrity and the Graves.” If you’ve never seen them or forget which ones they are – “Night Call” tells the tale of a woman getting … shall we say … mysterious phone calls in the middle of the night, and “Mr. Garrity and the Graves” tells the story of an old west snake oil salesman who claims to be able to raise the dead. Seeing these again, restored and remastered in all of their incredible black and white vintage spookiness, actually got me a little teary. It was like visiting an old long gone friend in the prime of their lives. Truly stellar stuff.
Speaking of stellar …
Once again Image hits it out of the park with its exceptionally restored prints that are nearly completely artifact free. Blacks are deep and natural looking, and the amount of detail you’ll see oozing from your screen is just staggering. The only one here that looks different (but not by any means worse) than the rest is the aforementioned “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” episode, which was shot in an altogether different way than the rest of the series. As with Seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4, you have the choice of the original mono recording or a stellar restored PCM lossless soundtrack as well as the option to dig on the isolated scores themselves. Oh. So. Sweet.
Then there are the extras. Those delightful extras. First up we have twenty new audio commentaries featuring The Twilight Zone Companion author Marc Scott Zicree, author/film historian Gary Gerani (Fantastic Television), “Twilight Zone” directors Ted Post, Richard Donner and Robert Butler, writer Earl Hamner, actors George Takei and Peter Mark Richman, author/historian Martin Grams Jr., authors/historians Jim Benson and Scott Skelton, American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties author Bill Warren, Sandman writer Neil Gaiman, “BSG” writer/director Michael Nankin and Coast to Coast AM radio host George Noory. These new tracks join the preexisting ones ported over from the DVD release.
From there we have a multitude of vintage audio interviews and recollections that will delight the eardrums. Commercials. Promo appearances. Home movies of George Clayton Johnson. Radio dramas. Conversations with the master himself, Rod Serling. A billboard gallery. Even the great Alfred Hitchcock makes an appearance. Mind you, all of this will take you hours … and hours … and hours to sift through, but wow, is it worth it! Everything here is detailed below. Your mind will be thoroughly blown.
This is television history. As dangerous as it was revolutionary. With its “Twilight Zone” Blu-ray packages, Image Entertainment has provided the world with time capsule quality collections of each season, thus completely ensuring that this stellar series will live on in the hearts and minds of fans everywhere forever.
Bravo.
Season 5 Episodes
In Praise of Pip, Steel, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, A Kind of a Stopwatch, The Last Night of a Jockey, Living Doll, The Old Man in the Cave, Uncle Simon, Probe 7 Over and Out, The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms, Ninety Years Without Slumbering, Ring-A-Ding Girl, You Drive, The Long Morrow, The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross, Number Twelve Looks Just Like You, Black Leather Jackets, Night Call, From Agnes, with Love, Spur of the Moment, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Queen of the Nile, What’s in the Box, The Masks, I Am the Night Color Me Black, Sounds and Silences, Caesar and Me, The Jeopardy Room, Stopover in a Quiet Town, The Encounter, Mr. Garrity and the Graves, The Brain Center at Whipple’s, Come Wander with Me, The Fear, The Bewitchin’ Pool.
Special Features
5 out of 5
Special Features
5 out of 5
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