Robert Bloch - Twilight Zone: The Movie

[sean]

What a dilemma! To post this here or under 'Book of the Film'...



BLURB:

You're travelling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind; a journey into a wonderous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Next stop

TWILIGHT ZONE THE MOVIE

# where demonic tyrants of the past live again to terrorise a man who carries the seeds of their hate into the present...

# where evil perches on a plane wing taunting the psycic who dare not beileve his eyes - and still hold onto his mind...

# where the power to control the world rests in the fantasy-fraught imagination of a lonely child...

# where the joys of eternal youth are offered to those who remember childhood and are not too old to dream...


Some of the small print is quite useful too:

A four part fantasy novel by Robert Bloch, author of the novel Psycho 2

Segment 1: written by John Landis

Segment 2: story by George Clayton Johnson, screenplay by George Clayton Johnson and Richard Matheson and Josh Rogan

Segment 3: screenplay by Richard Matheson, based on a story by Jerome Bixby

Segment 4: screenplay by Richard Matheson, based on a story by Richard Matheson


By the author of 'Psycho 2'... makes a change, I suppose.

Actually, the credits on segment 3 aren't 100% accurate, as there was also a bit taken from the original TZ episode 'Nightmare as a Child' (a Matheson episode, I think - but I could be wrong and I'm too damn lazy to check!), including the names of some of the characters and the home setting.

I think the kindest way to describe the film is 'misguided'. It appears to have been beset by problems from day one, and the tragedy with the death in a helicopter crash which killed Vic Morrow and several children was the morbid icing on the cake. The court cases with that dragged on for years, as apparently many health and safety type guidelines had been flouted.

Too many writers were involved, and the problem was made even worse by having four seperate directors directing their own segment (I think Landis also did the 'do you want to see something really scary' intro piece). Also it never seemed clear whether the film would consist of remakes of classic episodes, or completely new stories - the result being a bit of a mess, compromises abounding.

Still, there are one or two bits which are quite good, but I don't think I could sit through the whole thing these days...

Back to the book, and here is Bloch pretty much writing on autopilot, barely putting the old grey matter under any strain at all. They paid for a straight novelisation, and thats what they got - 200 pages of big print. Presumably he was asked either because of his work on other 'anthology' films, or because his name would fit in with the TZ ethos (which, incidentally, his work as a whole doesn't).

Anyway, I'm going to make tea now, I'll do the story by story bit later on...

[sean]

In the book, the stories are in a different order from the film, with the gremin and the old folks swapping places. Imaginative titles, too.

Bill
The only completely new story, it still seems like a mishmash of old TZ episodes ('Deaths-Head Revisited' etc etc). A grumpy racist gets to change places with the victims of his hate - he becomes a Vietcong, a jew under the Third Reich and so on. The novelisation version is slightly more coherent than the film version, as filming had not been completed when Morrow and the child extras were killed and it had to be cut together out of what they had.

Valentine
'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet' by Richard Matheson re-written basically. Bloke on plane, recovering from breakdown, sees a gremlin on the wing of the plane, ripping chunks out of the engine. The original written story is better, but one advantage the film has over the old TZ episode is the gremlin looks less like a squashed teddy bear.

Helen
Helen accidentally knocks the kid with eerie powers off his bike and, instead of turning her into a jack in the box or something he invites her into the house where his hysterical relative pretend everything is fine, except for the sister with no mouth (a creepy moment when she appears). People get put in cartoons, eyeballs roll in front of doors, and for some reason, there is a happy ending and Helen starts the process of teaching the boy to use his powers only for good. Oh for fucks sake, way to mess up the bleak ending there.

Bloom
A straight re-make of the 'Kick the Can' episode, which was pretty dull in the first place, with old folks getting a chance at a real, physical second childhood. Meh.

I've been a bit harsh on this one, but its simply not very good. One for Twilight Zone or Bloch completists only. Saying that, it is still better than anything else done under the Twilight Zone banner since Serling's death.

Oh, and here's one of the 'The Scary Door' spoofs from Futurama:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYWI7IDRHt0

[goathunter]

Jul 19, 2008 16:41:34 GMT @sean said:

I've been a bit harsh on this one, but its simply not very good. One for Twilight Zone or Bloch completists only. Saying that, it is still better than anything else done under the Twilight Zone banner since Serling's death.

The '80s Twilight Zone TV revival had a few good episodes, most notably "Nightcrawlers," directed by William Friedkin and based on Robert McCammon's story.

Hunter

[jettwoodward]

The stories are in a different order from the film because Robert Bloch got an earlier copy of the script where "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet"was the second story,and "Kick The Can" was the 4th, and the prologue and epilogue aren't in the book because Bloch says they weren't in the script and no one told him there was a framing story.Too bad! I'd have liked to see how he interpreted the framing story.

[jettwoodward]

Landis sis direct the prologue.you're right.He said it was a short film he'd always wanted to makle, and it was good. I wonder if John Belushi would have played the driver if he'd lived.

[jettwoodward]

I meant make,mot makle. Sorry.

[jettwoodward]

And sorry for sis,instead of did,and not capitalizing "You're": I don't know what happened to my fingers!