Cheap The Twilight Zone: Vol. 2 (DVD) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of The Twilight Zone: Vol. 2

You are traveling through another dimension...
Four great episodes are included in this Twilight Zone Volume. Also included is some background information about the six seasons of The Twilight Zone, as well as a biography of Rod Serling. Like many who have reviewed The Twilight Zone, I became an instant fan of the show and think it still is one of the most intelligent and creative shows ever created. <
> <
>My favorite episode of all time is "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street," so I had to check this out just for that. In this episode, after residents on a block see something mysterious fly overhead all sorts of unusual events begin to happen and the people, suspicious of one another, begin to make accusations and lose their patience. This episode is so intelligent because it really draws on the whole idea of mass hysteria and mob thought, and what can happen when it takes over a community, even a peaceful one. <
> <
>The other episodes are all classics as well... <
> <
>Time Enough At Last-Burgess Meredith plays a bookworm working at a bank. He is dissatisfied with his life at home because he never has enough time to read, so he reads everywhere he goes. He finally gets his wish of having enough time to read, with an ironic twist. <
> <
>Nightmare at 20,000 Feet-This one stars William Shatner, who gives an extraordinary performance as a man who has had a previous mental breakdown, and now must take a flight with his wife. Once the plane takes off, he begins to see that all is not well as he looks outside the window. Is there really someone, or something out there, or is this just his imagination? <
> <
>The Odyssey of Flight 33-A plane takes off trying to get to its destination, but mysterious things begin to happen when the plane apparently breaks the sound barrier and goes back into time. <
> <
>The only beef I have with the volume is that, as others pointed out, it is a little thin (only four episodes) in a day and age where we can get an entire season of other shows on DVD. You can get other larger volumes of Twilight Zone on Amazon, but they cost somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty dollars for approximately thirty episodes. If you are looking for a specific episode, I think you are better off getting these smaller volumes for about six or seven dollars. <
> <
>And this volume is a great way to start! <
> <
> <
> <
>

TZ as zeitgeist of the times
As others have already commented on the technical features of the set and the individual episodes, I just wanted to make a few comments on the series as a whole and perhaps how it was influenced by the cultural milieu of the time. <
> <
>It was the drab 50s and then turbulent 60s, and the Cold War, with its threat of possible nuclear annihilation, was in full swing. Perhaps that explains the pervasive film noir ambience and dark mood that often hangs like a pall over many of the episodes. Although the characters are drawn from all levels of society and from all walks of life--from two-bit criminals to the rich and famous--many are just various and sundry low-lifes, riff-raff, criminals, and grifters. And then there are the simply down and out--the bored or emotionally overwrought, middle-aged and overstressed, desperate housewives, the dyspeptic, dispossessed, or depressed, and your average guy just down on his luck. <
> <
>Almost every human emotion or character flaw or neurosis is explored: loneliness, depression, euphoria, greed, obsession, gambling addiction, hypochrondria, the lust for power, the fear of death, feelings of inferiority, failure, and inadequacy, feelings of ugliness and beauty, the stress of modern life, the old and unwanted, the young and neglected, the dispirited but still hopeful, the dispirited who have abandoned all hope, the highly successful who find their success and fame empty and meaningless, the losers who find their failures just as galling and damning, the boredom of a comfortable marriage, the boredom of the single and lovelorn, the boredom of a respectable middle-class existence, the boredom of grinding poverty, the desire to live forever, and on and on. Modern civilization and its discontents (or more like 20th-century America and its malcontents) seem to march by in all their false and meretricious glory. If this was the dull and malaise-ridden 50s and early 60s, one can only wonder what Serling would make of our frenetic and divided and paranoid post-9/11 world. <
> <
>One funny aspect of the episodes is how unflatteringly writers themselves are portrayed. The episodes starring Keenan Wynn (in the first season) as a America's most famous (but philandering) playwright and Richard Haydn in the second season as a snobbish, effete, arrogant, spiteful, and verbally abusive wine and food writer with a short temper and a sharp wit and tongue, don't exactly portray writers in a positive light. :-) <
> <
>In fact, overall, the series is notable for how many unsympathetic, unprepossessing, and even despicable characaters where often in the lead roles. :-) <
> <
>So all in all, a truly unique piece of Americana from a long lost era whose themes and stories have held up better than I expected.