Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
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| "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" | |||||||
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| The Twilight Zone episode | |||||||
 William Shatner stars in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" |
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| Episode no. | Season 5 Episode 123 |
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| Written by | Richard Matheson (From his story, first published in Alone by Night, 1961) |
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| Directed by | Richard Donner | ||||||
| Guest stars | William Shatner : Bob Wilson Christine White : Julia Wilson Asa Maynor : Stewardess Nick Cravat : Gremlin |
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| Featured music | Stock | ||||||
| Production no. | 2605 | ||||||
| Original airdate | October 11, 1963 | ||||||
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| List of Twilight Zone episodes | |||||||
"Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, based on the short story of the same name by Richard Matheson.
Contents |
[edit] Opening narration
| “ | Portrait of a frightened man: Mr. Robert Wilson, thirty-seven, husband, father, and salesman on sick leave. Mr. Wilson has just been discharged from a sanitarium where he spent the last six months recovering from a nervous breakdown, the onset of which took place on an evening not dissimilar to this one, on an airliner very much like the one in which Mr. Wilson is about to be flown home - the difference being that, on that evening half a year ago, Mr. Wilson's flight was terminated by the onslaught of his mental breakdown. Tonight, he's traveling all the way to his appointed destination, which, contrary to Mr. Wilson's plan, happens to be in the darkest corner of the Twilight Zone. | ” |
[edit] Plot summary
Bob Wilson (William Shatner) is a salesman on an airplane for the first time since his nervous breakdown six months ago. He spots a gremlin on the wing of the plane. Every time someone else looks out the window, the gremlin leaps out of view, so nobody believes Bob's seemingly outlandish claim. Bob realizes that his wife is starting to think he needs to go back to the sanitarium, but also, if nothing is done about the gremlin, it will damage the plane and cause it to crash. Bob steals a sleeping policeman's revolver, and opens the window marked "Auxiliary Exit" to shoot the gremlin, succeeding despite the fact that he is nearly blown out of the plane himself. Once the plane has landed, although he is whisked away in a straitjacket, there is evidence of his claims: the unusual damage to the plane's engine nacelle — yet to be discovered by mechanics — that presumably can only be explained as caused by something that clawed at the structure's mainframe.
[edit] Closing narration
| “ | The flight of Mr. Robert Wilson has ended now, a flight not only from point A to point B, but also from the fear of recurring mental breakdown. Mr. Wilson has that fear no longer, though, for the moment, he is, as he said, alone in this assurance. Happily, his conviction will not remain isolated too much longer, for happily, tangible manifestation is very often left as evidence of trespass, even from so intangible a quarter as the Twilight Zone. | ” |
[edit] Preview for next week's story
| “ | Next time on The Twilight Zone, we probe into the element of time and present a very oddball opus entitled, "A Kind of a Stopwatch". We tell the story of a man, a stopwatch, and an incredible deviation from the norm, said norm being the usual 24 hour day, said deviation involving what happens when a stopwatch is pushed and everything stops, not just time. To titillate and intrigue - "A Kind of a Stopwatch". Next on Twilight Zone. | ” |
[edit] In Twilight Zone: The Movie
This episode was remade into a segment of the 1983 movie version of the series, with John Lithgow portraying the main character, who has been renamed John Valentine. The story is somewhat shortened, but the plot in general is the same, although with some differences. In this version, Valentine travels alone, and his fear of flight seems to be more emphasized, as the segment begins with an almost hysterical Valentine hiding in the bathroom. When he eventually spots the gremlin, he reacts more strongly than the original incarnation of the character. He yells at the flight crew and his fellow passengers on several occasions. At the end of the segment, in a scene not shown in the original 1963 TV episode, the mechanics discover the damage to the plane. The damage is also more severe.
The appearance and behavior of the gremlin has also been altered. The original gremlin was an ape-like creature which seemed to be driven by curiosity rather than a will to cause damage. In the movie, the gremlin more resembles an alien, with slimy beige skin and a frightful grin. It also seems to be more intelligent and menacing and immediately begins to destroy the wing, rather than curiously roaming about as the original gremlin did, and taunts Valentine several times, holding up a piece of wing and demonstratively tossing it inside the engine to damage it. When Valentine tries to shoot the gremlin, it walks up to Valentine, grabs his face and rubs some kind of mucous or slime on Valentine's face. At that moment the lights of the landing field appear below, and the demon waves its finger in a dismissive "tut-tut-tut" manner, evidently forestalled from doing Valentine any worse damage. The original gremlin never made physical contact with Wilson, and it is quite possible that Wilson wounded or even killed it. The gremlin in the movie, however, actually flies off, seemingly unharmed.
The epilogue features Valentine being driven to the sanitarium by the passenger from the prologue (played by Dan Aykroyd) who killed his driving companion after asking, "Want to see something really scary?", the same question he poses to Valentine before the movie ends.
[edit] Reception
Richard Matheson, in The Twilight Zone Magazine, called this episode one of his favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone, praising Richard Donner's direction and William Shatner's performance, though criticizing the appearance of the monster, comparing it to a "surly teddy bear."[verification needed]
[edit] References in other media
Parts of this episode's plot have been repeated and parodied several times in popular culture, including television shows, films, radio, and music. For example, the Treehouse of Horror IV episode of The Simpsons features a segment called "Terror at 5½ Feet". It takes place on a bus rather than an airplane, and puts Bart Simpson in the role of Bob Wilson. [1]
In an episode of Third Rock from the Sun, John Lithgow (as Dick Solomon) was meeting William Shatner (as alien-leader The Big Giant Head) at the airport. Both referenced their roles in the Twilight Zone segments by referring to the strange things that both have seen on airplane wings. Shatner: "I kept seeing this thing on wing of the plane." Lithgow: "You too?!"
Michael Cunningham, who survived a rupture in the hull of Southwest Airlines Flight 2294 in July 2009, referenced this episode in a following interview with CNN's Campbell Brown.[2]
[edit] Background
Rod Serling quoted in The Twilight Zone Companion:
| “ | Matheson and I were going to fly to San Francisco... It was like three or four weeks in constant daily communication with Western Airlines, preparing a given seat for him, having the stewardess close the [curtains] when he sat down, and I was going to say, “Dick, open it up.” I had this huge, blown-up poster stuck on the [outside of the window] so that when he opened it there would be a gremlin staring at him. So what happened was, we get on the plane, there was the seat, he sits down, the curtains are closed, I lean over and say, “Dick”—at which point they start the engines and it blows the thing away. It was an old prop airplane... He never saw it. And I had spent hours in the planning of it. I would lie in bed thinking how we could do this. | ” |
[edit] Twilight Zone links
[edit] References
- Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
- DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
- Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0
- ^ Richmond, Ray; Antonia Coffman (1997). The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to our Favorite Family. Harper Collins Publishers. pp. 124–125. ISBN 0-00-638898-1.
- ^ CNN. "A Lot To Take In". http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2009/07/15/cb.hole.plane.cnn.html. Retrieved on 2009-07-16.
