Memories: Leave 'em as they are!

Twilight Zone The Movie (1983)

One thing I learnt after watching the film is that nostalgic memories should be confined only to the .avi and jpg files. We should not try to recreate the beautiful memories and spoil it. We can only pleasure ourselves by reminiscing the thoughts which seem so heavenly at that moment of time and space.The reasons I decided to watch this flick is twofold, the first being it is a Twilight Zone Movie - the black and white series that we enjoyed so much in RRF days and the second being Vic Morrow (again in RRF, we used to enjoy Combat! where he used to act with Rick Jason) is acting in it. Unfortunately, he died during the shooting of the film.
TZTM comprise 4 segments- One original whilst three remakes of the stories of the original TZ.
#1. Vic Morrow is angry for losing a promotion which was given to Jew instead. He meets up with in a bar and makes derogatory remarks about blacks, Jews, Orientals, Arabs and everybody for taking away his chances, a true blue American. He leaves the bar and lands into the heart of Deutschland in middle of WW2. He is hunted, chased, shot at and yo yos into midst of KKK lynching where he is a black victim and also into Vietnam War where he is the hunted. He returns to the WW2 scene, he is branded as Jew and is shoved into a train which would send him to a concentration camp. Through the cracks of the train, he can see his friends coming out of the bar they were in earlier. His screams and call for help fell into deaf ears.

#2. Is a scene in a retirement home. In comes a cheerful man who suggests that they should relive the childhood days by playing 'Kick the Can' after midnight. During the game, the inmates of the retirement home actually relive their childhood days literally. They become children! After playing and reminiscing all the things that happened in their lives, they realized that living life again also means also going through all the sad moments all over again. They concluded that they should think young, rather than be young.
#3. Is a remake of the classic TZ series 'It's a good life' starring Billy Mumy (of Lost in Space) where a young cute boy controls adults through his mind reading ability. Of course it fell flat here.
#4. Another remake of TZ of a claustrophobic in a flight creating havoc in the plane because he keeps seeing a creature on the wing of the plane trying to destroy the engine. John Lithgow (of '3rd Rock from the Sun') gives a promising rendition of psychologically disturbed passenger.

Your next stop...TWILIGHT ZONE!

Children of the 70s must have been exposed to various interesting TV shows. Undoubtedly, 'Twilight Zone' (TZ) must have captured  the imaginations of many young minds of that era with their bizarre twisted story lines. I remember staring at the 16-inch black and white TV in the dark nights of RRF 

with the volume way down low as Appa would have slept by then.

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone. —Rod Serling
[Opening credit for the First Season]:(FYI the credits varied from Seasons 1 to 4)]

Rod Serling

I doubt if anyone would ever despise this show. A couple of years ago, I decided to have a little self indulgence and decided to purchase a collection of many episodes from all 5 seasons. It has been a real mesmerizing experience re-living the yesteryears. Rod Serling who would introduce the show with a smoking cigarette between his fingers, expectedly had heart problems at the age of 50 but sadly succumbed to complications of open heart surgery!  

Even before re-watching this black and white series this time around, I vividly remember watching an episode of TZ in the comfort of RRF titled 'The eye of the beholder'. The story and the scenes imprinted vividly on my mind because the camera only revealed the faces of the actors almost at the very end of the show. 

It starts with a whining lady whose face is heavily bandaged (pic). She is complaining to a nurse (whose only her back is shown to us) about her predicament of having undergone 10 previous unsuccessful surgeries to make her face not so scary. Her face had been so unsightly that it frightened children in public and she had become a social recluse. She yearns for the success of her last Government sanctioned operation so that she can be accepted into society. If that corrective surgery were to fail, she would be quarantined in a village at the edge of the country where she will be placed amongst people with her type of deformity.

Eye of the beholder

An interesting feature that you regularly see in these shows of the 60s is how nurses and doctors of that bygone era smoke at the nurses' counter and sometimes offer a stick to a patient. Smoking was a sign of affluence and was politically correct then to do so. The day finally arrived for the bandage to be removed. Alas, a pretty captivating blonde lady's face is revealed under the covers. The doctor sighs, "Oh, we failed again!"

Only then are we shown the faces of all the actors - the faces are all deformed, canine-baboon like and plain ugly! Our heroine sees her face in the mirror, shrieks in horror and runs from her room in 'disappointment'. Along the corridor we see images of their leader on TV who appears unsightly and horribly frightening by earthlings' standards, like the rest. She is pacified by a hunky 'normal looking' orderly who persuades her to follow him to the sanctioned village for the handicapped where he stays. He tells her about an old saying which says 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder'! And the closing credits....

As in all TZ stories, there is always a take home message. It is interesting to note how we are constantly bombarded with images of aesthetically pleasing models that the world defines as beautiful. A beautiful girl has to be thin, tall, fair skinned (not the typical ebony hued oily haired) with Caucasianoid features. This, to most people is accepted as norm and would go at great length, risking their lives, pain, money to this end. They dye their mane or crowning glory, bleach their skins, undergo painstaking limb lengthening and plastic surgeries to attain their definition of a perfection which coincidentally varies from time to time!
Another episode that I had to luxury of watching recently is what I thought is a very thought provoking episode. The title of the episode just escapes my memory bank. Anyway, the story goes something like this....

The story starts on a quiet summer afternoon in a suburban housing area. Everybody is happy - waving at each other, washing their cars, children playing, people cycling, some walking delightfully - all hallmark of a peaceful neighbourhood. This serenity is somewhat disturbed when one by one the utilities gets cut, the water, the electricity then followed by the telephone line. Everyone in the neighbourhood is hit, except for one particular house whose occupant likes to keep to himself. Many speculations are hurled. Some suggesting that the occupants may be Communists' spies and basically up to no good. One thing lead to another and the town is totally convinced of their ill-intent. The town then decides to march to this house to clarify matters. Just then,  something else happens and the suspicion turns on to others in the neighbourhood and before long the whole peacefully tranquil suburbia turn into a disaster zone with looting and in-fighting.

At this scene, the camera rolls back.... And what do we (the audience) see? We see one Martian explaining to his superior how easy it was to defeat the Earthlings, by just planting a seed of doubt and suspicion and the whole civilization will crumble and fall!
How come they do not have shows like that anymore?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlG28B-R8Y