The Twilight Zone - Seasons 2 & 3 (1986 - 1988)
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Movie Reviews of The Twilight Zone - Seasons 2 & 3 (1986 - 1988)
Movie Review: Shame, but More OK than Great.
Summary: 2 Stars
Although it's stupid to compare these episodes of the twilight zone to the originals that inspired it, it's hard not to feel a little let down by the pay-off at the end of most of the stories on offer here, season one of this run had some what could be loosely described as 'Classic Episodes' and very much justified there existence plus season one had the ambition that season 2 and 3 are sadly lacking. Shorter and more rushed you could see that the poor writers and directors were working on a shoe string and ideas are never fully realised which is a shame because some of the ideas here could have been played out so much better none more so than in the very first episode on disc one ' The once and future King ' Where an elvis impersonator is transported back to before elvis cut his first demo. The premise is set up brilliantly but is let down at the pay off. other episodes of note 'shelter skelter', 'the Hellgramite method', 'curious case of edgar wetherspoon' show traces of genius and are well worth writing home about however the real 'classic' on offer here is ' the Cold Equations ' where real character and depth go hand in hand with just plain twisted sadness, it is brilliant if just a tad depressing. However the bad out weighs the good. The sign of a great tv series is if it bears repeated viewing and remains as sharp the second time around and with Mr Serlings originals you could more or less say that about 90% of them. These however, with the exception of the said episodes above, do not stand up so well. But still you need to buy it to finish the collection.
Movie Review: TWILIGHT ZONE WILL ALWAYS BE ONE OF THE BEST TV SHOWS OUT TODAY!!!!!!!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Twilight Zone the tv show was great to watch and not only di it have great storeiss,but they took us to some weird and strange places which was cool in my book!!!!!!! This box set is a must for anyone that likes Talke from the Crypt or The Outer Limits or even The Hitchhiker!!!!!! GO AND GET IT!!!!!!!!Movie Review: Could have been a 5-star DVD, but buy it anyway :-)
Summary: 4 Stars
First things first: I'm extremely happy these Seasons finally are available to own. They have never been released commercially anywhere in the world before, so it was about time. It's also great to have commentary tracks on some of the highlight episodes of Season 2 and deleted scenes from three episodes ("Road Less Traveled", "Time and Teresa Golowitz" and "Nightsong") that would have otherwise been lost forever. Also hats off to the producers for finding most of the stereo-tracks of these episodes for the DVD. Sadly though this item is not as good as it could have been with just a little more effort. It would have been nice to have some commentaries for Season 3, there are some good episodes in there that would have deserved them. Most glaring however is that three of the stories included are not the originally aired versions (I compared them to nearly 20 year old VHS-copies of the original CBS-versions from 1986):
"After Hours" is missing the whole opening narration by Charles Aidman (just audio missing) and missing 30 sec at end.
"Lost and Found" is missing full 3 minutes of this 8-minute story!
"World Next Door" is actually about 45 seconds longer than the aired version, which mostly is differently cut stuff at the very beginning. Also the ending is missing the music over the end-credits (the bit before the usual credits start)
These versions were created when the show was going from full-hour to half-hour format as they were also shown on European TV back then. This was still years before the stories got yet another cut for syndication. Perhaps the original master-tapes of these stories couldn't be found anymore, CBS was known to keep a lousy archive of this show. However most of the damage could have been repaired by taking the missing scenes from the syndicated versions of these stories, which are intact for the most part, as the stories were grouped together differently there.
As it stands the DVD-producers probably didn't even notice something was missing before the DVD was released, which could have been prevented by comparing old VHS-recordings of the original aired versions.
However this should not keep anyone from purchasing this otherwise great DVD-set. Naturally every fan would like a "Definitive Edition", but given that this series is a small gem and sadly not nearly as well known as the original series, this will probably be the only way to get these episodes for a long time to come.
Movie Review: Second and third season of the 80's Zone-revised with new info
Summary: 4 Stars
Although the second season was cut short (the series was cancelled by CBS mid-way through the run), there were still enough gems produced to make Rod Serling proud and make this worthwhile for fans. George R. R. Martin's "The Once & Future King" about an Elvis impersonator's encounter with the King himself is quite good. "A Saucerful of Lonliness" adapted by David Gerrold from Ted Sturgeon's story and featuring Shelley Duvall also works quite well. Likewise "The Toys of Caliban" works as an update of Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life". The real gem, though, is Alan Brennert's "Time & Teresa Golowitz" (he also wrote the script for third season gem "The Cold Equations" which was remade as a TV movie for the Sci-Fi Channel).
The third season although wildly uneven (it existed primarily so CBS would have enough episodes for syndication)does have a handful of memorable episodes. J. Michael Straczynski's "The Wall" and "The Mind of Simon Foster" recalled the (all too brief) glory of the 80's Zone. While the third season doesn't have any extras or commentary tracks, some of the stronger performances, scripts and direction (particularly by Atom Egoyan and Paul Lynch) help make the better episodes here shine. Working with a virtually nonexistant budget, writer/producer J. Michael Straczynski managed to make the third season distinctive because he wrote a lot of the scripts (part of the reason why is he had the ideas for a story but the other reason was because they didn't have all that much money to hire outside writers).
The audio is very good and the video shows a slight improvement over the first season boxed set. Both that season and the second season (I don't know about the third season) were edited on video with effects added in video as well which means that the videotape masters are the only complete versions of the shows. As a result, the image quality varies a bit with some digital flaws. The most glaring, though, is due to something called an interlace problem. This occurs during the telecine process (where video is transformed into a home video format like DVD). You'll notice on an HDTV compatible TV that there will be a momentary visual "wire mesh" that occurs during cuts between scenes. It's distracting but shouldn't prevent fans from picking up the series. This error will be most noticeable when using progressive scan DVD players and HDTV.
I've seen the series in both its original run and in its horrible syndicated cut version where forty-five minute episodes were butchered to 22 minutes and where 15 minute vingettes were expanded to 22 ruining a perfectly good story
Since the second second was shot on film and edited on tape, the image quality varies quite a bit. Overall it's pretty solid with nice colors although the image can occasionally be a bit blurry or lacking fine detail. The third season tends to look a bit better primarily because it was shot on 16 mm and edited for film before being transfered. These are the uncut (and unexpanded) original presentations pulled from the original 1 inch videotapes for the series. Image quality is pretty good overall. What's important is that these episodes will be seen (at least for the second season) in their original first run length since they were originally broadcast. This set, like the first set, has a booklet with credits for every single episode and nontating which ones have commentary, deleted scenes, etc. Since the third season had more episodes (but they were designed to fit into a 1/2 hour format)this set runs to 7 discs. It's a pity that Straczynski wasn't asked to do a commentary track for some of the stronger episodes he wrote.
Movie Review: Completing your New Twilight Zone Collection
Summary: 5 Stars
This collection completes the NEW TWILIGHT ZONE run during the '80s (Season 2 & 3 had 51 episodes).
Some of the outstanding episodes were "AQUA VITA" (about a "fountain of youth" w/ side effects), "SHELTER SKELTER" (w/ Joe Mantegna & Joan Allen, an abusive man and his neighbor is trapped in his bomb shelter), "THE HELLGRAMMITE METHOD" (an alcoholic has an alcohol tapeworm in his body which threatens to kill him unless he starves it), "THE COLD EQUATIONS" (an astronaut must decide between ejecting an innocent stowaway into space or risk the lives of the colony which needs an emergency vaccine), among some other gems.
The picture quality may not be HDTV but it's still crisper and more clear than when it was broadcast back in the '80s (and definitely better than even SuperVHS quality.)
SEASON 2 & 3 Episode List:
* The Once And Future King
* A Saucer Of Loneliness
* What Are Friends For?
* The Storyteller
* Nightsong
* Aqua Vita
* The After Hours
* Lost and Found
* The World Next Door
* The Toys Of Caliban
* The Convict's Piano
* The Road Less Travelled
* The Card
* The Junction
* Joy Ride
* Shelter Skelter
* Private Channel
* Time And Teresa Golowitz
* Voices In The Earth
* Song Of The Younger World
* The Girl I Married
* The Curious Case Of Edgar Witherspoon
* Extra Innings
* The Crossing
* The Hunters
* Dream Me A Life
* Memories
* The Hellgrammite Method
* Our Selena Is Dying
* The Call
* The Trance
* Acts Of Terror
* 20/20 Vision
* There Was An Old Woman
* The Trunk
* Appointment On Route 17
* The Cold Equations
* Stranger In Possum Meadow
* Street Of Shadows
* Something In The Walls
* A Game Of Pool
* The Wall
* Room 2426
* The Mind Of Simon Foster
* Cat And Mouse
* Rendezvous In A Dark Place
* Many, Many Monkeys
* Love Is Blind
* Crazy As A Soup Sandwich
* Special Service
* Father And Son Game