Cheap Twilight Zone Vol 38 (DVD) (Twilight Zone, Pat Hingle) Price

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Customer Reviews of Twilight Zone Vol 38

You can never go home again in "The Twilgiht Zone"
Once you get by the lame first episode there are a couple of decent lessons on why you can never go home again on Volume 38 of "The Twilight Zone" DVD series. "The Gift," written by Rod Serling, is one of the most unsatisfying Zone episodes. The story has to do with an alien (Geoffrey Horne) whose ship crashes outside a Mexican village. After the alien accidentally kills a police officer and is wounded, he befriends Pedro (Edmund Vargas), an orphan. The alien gives the boy a gift, but the superstitious townspeople want nothing to do with this agent of the Devil. Toss up on what is worst in this episode, the acting or the racial stereotyping. In "Young Man's Fancy," written by Richard Matheson, Alex Walker (Alex Nicol) takes his new bride, Virginia (Phyllis Thaxter) to visit his old family home. There it seems that the spirit of Alex's dead mother (Helen Brown), refuses to let the boy go. This episode actually has one of the few Twilight Zone twists that I did not see coming. Finally, "The Incredible World of Horace Ford," written by Reginald Rose, the writer of "Twelve Angry Men," stars Pat Hingle as the title character, a toy designer who never grew up. Then he gets an opportunity to go back and revisit his childhood. An above-average Zone episode that turns out to be a rather chilling little horror story with an excellent performance by Hingle. This was one of the best hour-long Zone episodes, even if Rose was not allowed to do his original more terrifying, less upbeat, ending.

Horace Ford Saves Two Unrealized Episodes
'THE GIFT' and 'YOUNG MAN'S FANCY' are two episodes that should have been much better. 'THE GIFT' written by Rod Serling and Directed by Allen Parker deals with a man, played by Geoffrey Horne, who may be an extraterrestrial or not who is held up in an isolated Mexican town. Geoffrey Horne does poses strange self-healing powers and resistance to pain, which he demonstrates to a small boy and a village doctor. He befriends the small boy and leaves with him 'The Gift.' The best episodes of "The Twilight Zone" either intrigued us and hit us over the head with a shock ending or slowly drew us in to what would be an inevitable conclusion, but one which we and/or the characters would be challenged to learn or realize something about ourselves as human beings. 'THE GIFT' falls short of giving us a shock ending and it does not really challenge us to bring away some human experience, at least nothing we have not seen before. I think Geoffrey Horne was supposed to represent some Christ-like figure presenting mankind an incredible gift, but that idea really never comes to fruition. Laurindo Alimeida's acoustic guitar score is very good on its own but I think it actually hinders the story with its neither-here-nor-there quality leaving the viewer uninterested. 'THE GIFT' does not seem like a very typical "Twilight Zone" episode. 'YOUNG MAN'S FANCY' on the other hand seems very much like your typical "Twilight Zone" episode. Written by Richard Matheson it gives us a story of a man, Alex Nicol, who becomes increasingly obsessed with the mementos of his childhood as he returns and prepares to sell his deceased mother's house with his long-time fiancée, Phyllis Thaxter. Thaxter, representing objective reality, sees Nicol quickly degrade into the throes of "The Twilight Zone" with some unexpected results, which however do not really leave the viewer in that much amazement. With the exception of Thaxter, thanks to her great ability at visual histrionics, character development is sparse. Alex Nicol's character is poorly developed and his motivations seem cardboard and unnatural. 'YOUNG MAN'S FANCY' really leaves the viewer unfulfilled. 'THE INCREDIBLE WORLD OF HORACE FORD' is another forgotten episode from the 4th Season and it single-handedly saves this DVD. This excellent episode was written by Reginald Rose and directed by Abner Biberman about a toy designer, brilliantly played by Pat Hingle, who constantly daydreams and reminisces about his childhood to uninterested and befuddled fellow employees and family. Pat Hingle is just incredible in this role, as he was 180 degrees cast against type. Hingle captures the essence of Horace Ford, this man-child, in every mannerism and gesture. You feel the frustration of this character like a little child who does not get his way. His dialogue at times becomes fragmented as he goes of on tangents about the good times he had as a kid. At work he is the perfectionist designer of quality toys and he will not compromise those designs to budgetary constraints to the chagrin of his employer. Frustrated, Horace Ford returns to his old neighborhood for solace but is met with surprising results. This episode uses strains of Bernard Herrmann's score from 'WALKING DISTANCE' but unlike that episode Horace comes away with a different realization about his youth. Yet, like Martin Sloan, Gig Young's character in 'WALKING DISTANCE' Horace comes away with knowledge and a new understanding of his present world which gives him a second chance to deal with the everyday world. 'THE INCREDIBLE WORLD OF HORACE FORD' is a great episode.