The Sign Post Up Ahead: A Twilight Zone Podcast

Matt, Patrick, and special guest Austin Proctor from the Frightmares podcast go through the twelfth episode of  The Twilight Zone : "What You Need."  It's yet another episode that heavily features a peddler, a profession that appears to have been much more prominent back in Twilight Zone times. And it's another episode that chastises you for wanting things. Originally aired December 25, 1959. Dire...

Patrick and Matt go through the eleventh episode of  The Twilight Zone : "And When The Sky Was Opened."  Three astronauts go into space, and then some Twilight Zone shit happens to them. It's really cool, honestly.  "And When The Sky Was Opened" originally aired December 11, 1959; directed by Douglas Hayes; written by Rod Serling, based on a story by Richard Matheson; starring Rod Taylor, Charles...

Matt Stokes and Patrick Perot go through the tenth episode of The Twilight Zone : "Judgment Night." Carl Lanser finds himself aboard a British cargo liner in 1942, on a foggy night, pursued by an unknown menace out in the ocean. He doesn't know who he is or why he's here. It probably has something to do with hell. It usually does in The Twilight Zone .   "Judgment Night" originally aired December...

Matt Stokes and Patrick Perot go through the ninth episode of The Twilight Zone : "Perchance To Dream." Richard Conte (Don Barzini from The Godfather ) plays Edward Hall, a 35-year-old(!) who is convinced that if he goes to sleep, he'll die. He has a heart murmor, you see, and any excitement will put him down forever. Further complicating things is a sexy BDSM cat lady who visits him in his dreams...

Matt Stokes and Patrick Perot go through the eighth episode of  The Twilight Zone : "Time Enough At Last." Burgess Meredith is Henry Bemis, a freakin' loser who just wants to read BOOKS. Books??? "What's this swill you're reading?!" his shrew of a wife demands. " David Copperfield ? Sounds positively pornographic!" she yells as she rolls over it with a bulldozer. Then the apocalypse happens and He...

Matt Stokes and Patrick Perot go through the seventh episode of  The Twilight Zone : "The Lonely."   Jack Warden plays Corry, a man wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to a most fiscally irresponsible imprisonment: solitary confinement on a faraway asteroid. His only human contact comes every three months, when space merchant marines spend 15 minutes on his asteroid delivering him supplie...

Matt Stokes and Patrick Perot go through the sixth episode of The Twilight Zone : "Escape Clause." Walter Bedeker is a hypochondriac who convinces himself he's constantly dying, even though his doctor repeatedly gives him a clean bill of health. But he knows the truth, and anyone who tells him otherwise must be lying. His only way out of perpetual illness leading to an early grave is to strike a d...

Patrick Perot and Matt Stokes go through the fifth episode of  The Twilight Zone : "Walking Distance." Gig Young plays Martin Sloan, who's just sick of it all. Sick of his successful career as an unspecific 1950s business dad. Sick of all the phone calls. Sick of the hustle and bustle of the big city. Wouldn't it be great if he could just step back in time, back to his lovely 1930s childhood when...

Patrick Perot and Matt Stokes go through the fourth episode of  The Twilight Zone : "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine." Ida Lupino plays Barbara Jean, a former movie star whose early-1930s heyday has long since passed. She spends her days sequestered in a screening room of her house, re-watching her own movies... and maybe doing more than that.  Patrick calls this the first "real" episode of  The Twi...

Matt Stokes and Patrick Perot go through the third episode of  The Twilight Zone : "Mr. Denton on Doomsday." A drunkard used to be the fastest gun in the west, but now all he cares about is the bottle. Actually, being the best shooter around is more blessing than curse. Really makes you think. Anyway, some kind of weird stuff happens.  This episode could use more Satan. "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" or...

Matt Stokes and Patrick Perot go through the second episode of  The Twilight Zone : "One for the Angels." Ed Wynn plays Lew Bookman, a "pitchman." You know, a peddler. A huckster. A hawker. He sells toys, notions, and trinkets, or, as Larry Burns puts it, "If this stuff's too nice for ya, I've also got some crap." Bookman longs to make the world's greatest pitch and sell all of his wares to the mo...

Matt Stokes and Patrick Perot go through the very first episode of  The Twilight Zone : "Where Is Everybody?" An amnesiac wanders through a town, unable to find a single human being, but always feeling like somebody is just out of reach. Creepy! How well does this episode serve as an introduction to  The Twilight Zone ? How well does it stand on its own? And how much does it hold up now?  Plus, th...