The Twilight Zone: Collection 2

The First Collection in this series left you wondering if it had gotten all the "big" episodes but "Collection 2" shows that there's still plenty more out there. This collection has a couple of the later, hour-long shows that the first collection didn't have. The first one, "In His Image", was one of the old episodes that stuck with me for years and I was surprized to find that it was an hour-long show. It seemed then and now to move along at the same pace as the half-hour episodes. The second, "Death Ship", however, gives a hint that the extra half hour tended to drag down the pace too much. The rest of the episodes includes some of the great ones of the series. There are the humorous ones such as "Once Upon a Time " (with Buster Keaton), "One for the Angels" and "Escape Clause". There are the ones with happy endings such as "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim", "In Praise of Pip", and "Still Valley". There are the true morality plays such as "The Fever", "A Quality of Mercy", "The Man in the Bottle" and "I Shot an Arrow into the Air". Finally, there are the down-right chilling episodes such as "The Dummy", "Living Doll", and "The After Hours".

I watched these episodes with my son, now 12, who seemed to enjoy them just as much as I did. We'd only watch them at night with the lights turned out. Sometimes we'd just look at each other afterwards and say "Wow!". When there was the occassional episode that I thought might not interest him, he still talked with me about it afterwards. They seemed to work just as well for him as for me and that may be the ultimate testimony to "The Twilight Zone". With all the glitz and sparkle that TV has today, impressing a kid with a half-hour black and white show with (for him) no recognizable stars seemed too tall a task. However, true greatest meets and exceeds the test of time. Time now for "Collection 3".

Not bad, eh? The only difference between the box set DVDs and the individual ones are the cases. They are better, in my opinion, because they are more compact and yet aren't those [inexpensive] cardboard things. You also get a nice box to house them in.

Onto the content. If you're a fan of only some of the episodes -- the most popular ones that people always talk about, chances are you should buy Collection 1 first (contains "To Serve Man", "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet", etc.). But there are definitely some classics contained in Collection 2. Among the 36 episodes (Volumes 10-18 of the individual DVDs) are:

--The After Hours: Anne Francis visits a department store's mysterious 9th floor. Didn't that mannequin just sell her a thimble?

--Living Doll: If you remember the TZ and don't remember "Talky Tina", there's something seriously wrong with you!

--The Obsolete Man: Has Burgess Meredith become obsolete?? This one has landed in the Fans' Top 15 Episodes.

--The Midnight Sun: The sun is inching closer and closer to Earth. That can only mean one thing... It's hot!

--A Hundred Yards Over the Rim: A man traveling with a wagon trains crosses over a rim in the Nevada desert in search of water, game and way to heal his son... but winds up in the Twilight Zone!

Complete Listing: A Hundred Yards Over the Rim, Once Upon a Time, The Last Flight, The Trouble With Templeton, Living Doll, The After Hours, The Dummy, The Fever, Mr. Denton on Doomsday, The Lateness of the Hour, The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine, The Trade-Ins, A Quality of Mercy, Judgment Night, The Obsolete Man, The Purple Testament, In Praise of Pip, One For the Angels, The Arrival, The Man in the Bottle, A Kind of a Stopwatch, Escape Clause, Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room, The Midnight Sun, And When the Sky Was Opened, In His Image (Hour-Long Show), The Last Night of a Jockey, The Mirror, The Old Man in the Cave, What You Need, What's in the Box, Death Ship (Hour-Long Show), I Shot an Arrow Into the Air, Still Valley