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Rating:  -
The film, true to many Twilight Zone episodes, starts with a seemingly common place setting. This prologue stars the always wonderful Dan Ackroyd and Albert Brooks and is accompanied by a soundtrack of "Midnight Special" as covered by CCR. Suffice it to say it concludes with the Twilight Zone's trademark twist ending. This clever beginning is followed by four segments with different casts and directors. They're all narrated by Burgess Meredith, who starred in some of the original television episodes.
The first segment is the only one that was originally written for the movie rather than being a reworking of one of the episodes from the 1960's series. Vic Morrow, who famously died in an on the set accident while filming this portion stars as a bigoted man who learns what life would be like if he was viewed differently by others. But does he learn his lesson too late? Probably because the real life tragedy that accompanied this part of the film necessitated it, this segment seems both too short and somewhat cobbled together.
KICK THE CAN has a wonderful performance from Scatman Crothers, but other than that it didn't do much for me. It feels too sentimental. You can tell it was made by Spielberg in one of his more sappy, family friendly phases.
ITS A GOOD LIFE is a surreal and darkly comic take on the original. In the beginning, those not familiar with the source material will believe Anthony is innocent, but is he...? This segment is marred by a happy ending which is quite different than the disturbing one in Rod Serling's TV series.
The final segment, NIGHTMARE AT 20,00 FEET is decent. You do see too much of the monster but what you see is frightening. John Lithgow is convincing as the paranoid main character.
So like many anthology movies this is a mixed bag. All in all the movie just doesn't quite come up to the perfection of the original show.
Rating:  -
This movie is a must have for the Twilight Zone fan. It includes four stories with two or more of them being remakes of original twilight zone episodes.
Rating:  -
It is not a movie, but a remake of 4 episodes. What were "classics" in their original form, are now under performing and obsolete. Not to fault the cast, they did a good job. It just did not work at all.
Rating: -
Loved the remakes of the twilight zone episodes...shipment was fast and the product was in excellent condition.
Rating: -
TWILIGHT ZONE - THE MOVIE made headlines long before it opened when actor Vic Morrow and two Asian child actors were killed in a horrific accident during filming.
The scandal, the trial, and the resulting publicity cast a dark shadow on what is otherwise a harmlessly sentimental trip into the Twilight Zone.
The opening with Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks is pure John Landis, more of the same laugh/fright effect that worked so well in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. But Landis' contribution to the tales, an original story not from the Zone canon, isn't up to Rod Serling standards. The comeuppance of bigot Vic Morrow get repititious and--honestly--problematic when you consider that the US soldier is lumped with the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
Spielberg's choice is the lamest: cute elderly people get to become cute little kids for a night. Any otherworldly wonder is lost under a heavy flow of Speilberg syrup.
Joe Dante has fun with his tale but his sappy ending--far different than the original TV version!--could've been directed by Spielberg.
This is THE TWILIGHT ZONE, people, not THE GOONIES.
Only the last time, my personal favorite of all Twilight Zone episodes (the original starred William Shatner, hilariously lampooned in the second ACE VENTURE movie), reaches the Zone. John Lithgow is brilliant as a spazzing passenger in Richard Matheson's "Nightmare at Thirty Thousand Feet." George Miller (THE ROAD WARRIOR) does an awesome job of putting you in the plane by filming the sequence with a handheld camera.
Lithgow's performance was so good that he SHOULD have been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards. Well, he was. But since THE TWILIGHT ZONE was tainted by the tragedy of Vic Morrow's death, Lithgow was nominated for his six minutes of standing around in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (you forgot he was even in that, right?). Such is Hollywood.
Think of all the Zone scripts that screamed for a big screen, big budget treatment. "To Serve Man"? A condensed version of Burgess Meredith as the librian who survives the world-ending nuclear holocaust? "The Martians Have Landed on Maple Street"? And Spielberg picks a story with adorable little tykes and codgers.
Not what it should have been.
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