September 22, 2010 THE VILLADOM TIMES I & IV • Page 21
‘Twilight Zone’ releases include ‘Time Enough at Last’
by Dennis Seuling Rod Serling wrote extensively for early live television, hitting his creative peak with the “Playhouse 90” production of “A Requiem for a Heavyweight” in 1956. Before the days of rampant reality TV shows, the networks had hours to fill, and talented writers who could work quickly were coveted. By the late 1950s, live TV was waning. Networks realized that a filmed drama could be aired more than once, thus increasing profits from reruns. In this climate, Serling pitched a new anthology series to CBS. It would focus on dramas involving fantasy, science fiction, occasional horror, and the unexplained. A pilot, “The Time Element,” was aired on “Desilu Playhouse” in November 1958. Despite some initial misgivings on the part of network executives, the show was bought, sponsors signed, and a production crew hired. “The Twilight Zone” premiered on Oct. 2, 1959. Now, “The Twilight Zone: Season One” (Image Entertainment) is available for the first time on Blu-ray. The five-disc set contains 36 half-hour high-definition episodes re-mastered from the original camera negatives. Season One set the standard for the program and captured the imagination of viewers. “Time Enough at Last” stars Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis, a henpecked bookworm. His wife won’t tolerate his incessant reading, and his boss at the bank is displeased because Henry’s head is always buried in books while he is in the teller’s cage. Reading over lunch in the solitude of the bank’s vault one day, Henry hears a loud boom. He comes up, and realizes that a nuclear bomb has been detonated. Henry is the last man on earth. Depressed and contemplating suicide, he is thrilled to come upon the ruins of a library, with thousands of books strewn about and enough time finally to enjoy them all. “Walking Distance” contains a theme to which the show returned frequently: longing for a less complicated past. “Mad Men”era advertising executive Martin Sloan (Gig Young) visits his old home town, where things are exactly as he remembers them. Somehow, he has returned to the past and encounters himself as a child. Look for a very young Ron Howard in a small role. “The Hitchhiker” is about a woman making a cross-country drive who spots the same hitchhiker again and again along the route. “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” an allegory about fear and finger-pointing, shows neighbors turning on each other during an unexplained blackout. “The After Hours” tells what happens
Burgess Meredith in ‘Time Enough at Last,’ one of 36 episodes in the Blu-ray set, ‘The Twilight Zone: Season One.’
with department store mannequins when the doors close for the night. “The Fever” is a cautionary tale about the dangers of gambling addiction. “People Are Alike All Over” tells of an astronaut who lands on an inhabited planet, fears its inhabitants, is eventually won over by their kindness, but comes to realize they have an ulterior motive. Among the actors who appear in Season One are Anne Francis, Ida Lupino, Jack Klugman, Inger Stevens, Jack Warden,
Richard Conte, Sebastian Cabot, Ed Wynn, Earl Holliman, Everett Sloane, Roddy McDowall, Rod Taylor, Kevin McCarthy, and Vera Miles. Extras include “The Time Element,” hosted by Desi Arnaz and not seen since its original airing 42 years ago; 19 new audio commentaries; 18 radio dramas; 34 isolated music scores by Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith, and other composers; vintage audio recollections with actors Burgess Meredith and Anne Francis; the original unaired version of the episode “Where Is Everybody?” with Serling’s network pitch; and an episode of the early sci-fi series, “Tales of Tomorrow.” “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” (Anchor Bay) is a four-disc set containing all 13 episodes of the Starz original mini-series, available in both Blu-ray and DVD formats. The series was inspired by the actual slave of the Roman Republic who, in 73 B.C. led a slave revolt that grew to more than 120,000 fighters. Torn from his homeland and the woman he loves, Spartacus (Andy Whitfield), a Thracian warrior captured by Romans, is enslaved into a gladiator training school owned by Batiatus (John Hannah) and his wife Lucretia (Lucy Lawless). (continued on Crossword page)
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