Cinema
Shadow boxing
Peter, Ackroyd
The Twilight Zone, from which this film has been adapted, was a staple of American television in the early Sixties, when television sets themselves looked like diving bells and took minutes to 'warm up'. On the principle that junk is acceptable on- ly when it has become ancient junk, a cult now seems to be developing around that series as well as its frightening presenter, Rod Serling (he was the one whose suits looked as if they had been welded onto him). No doubt episodes of Crossroads will be shown at the Hampstead Everyman in 1995.
As you will see from the episodes about to be repeated on BBC 2, The Twilight Zone was never particularly good but it had the advantage of being the first of its kind and of being shown when the makers of this film were very young. The present genera- tion of American directors were brought up on bad television: that is why they are ex- tremely sophisticated visually while remain- ing illiterate in every other respect. The
The Spectator 10 September 1985 Twilight Zone — The Movie is the cinematic equivalent of 'On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer'.
The absence of grey matter (they have
technicolour instead) does mean, however, that these directors remain close to their au- dience; and although they take an almost professional interest in cheap television such nostalgia is widely shared. There are few people in their thirties who can remain unmoved by the spectacle of Bill, Ben and Little Weed and the stages of our infaneY can be charted in the decision to switch off Muffin the Mule and turn on Rin Tin Tot; early puberty arrived when we tried to click our fingers to the tune of 77, Sunset Strip: In fact The Twilight Zone — The Movie opens with two men playing the notorious game of 'theme tunes': one madly hums the opening bars of a television show, and the other has to guess its title. He has no dif- ficulty with that of The Twilight Zone itself, which sounded like a police siren orchestrated by Schubert. And the something ghastly happened: I am not sae what It was, since my eyes were averted. As one grows older, 'horror' on the screen becomes harder to bear. Four separate stories follow, conceived on the model, and in the tone, of the original series. The first is set in a tYPleal Twilight Zone area: the neighbourhood bar where the customers hardly seem to realise that 'another dimension' is about to throw everything into confusion. One of their; makes remarks about Jews and `niggers only to find himself in one of those famous 'time warps' which have been an ingred!e°.! of television mysteries for many years. It 1' a simple idea and although simplicity was no doubt at least half the secret of' the original stories, the same effects can seen.' heavy-handed in the cinema, especiallY°i when they are compounded by the Ofle! banal moralising which appears to be enJoY" m g a revival in the United States. The second segment is directed by. the famous Mr Spielberg, who begins with a typically succinct Twilight Zone observa_ tion: 'It is sometimes said that where there is no life there is no hope. Case in point: the Sunnyvale Rest Home.' In this moral cable having votuntg the eold mwishingis f o misfortune for to Spielberg has effortlessly recaptuiftired. " sentimentality of television at its UP' tuyountIntdanictl, thiv the worse (the sort of thing now saved 1°,, documentaries) — although I suspect that tigr comes naturally to him. Certainly it bore au the marks of a Spielberg producti.on groups of people standing around with.q. turned faces, preferably with the Wind rill!. ing their hair and an inexplicable hgnfli bearing down upon them from the like flank. The theme of adults behaving 0.".. children is, in any case, one close to heart: the size of his audiences dep upon it.eon' The third of the items is the most sut.ca- cessful. Since it concerns the powers o small boy whose nasty fantasies have. bee!! fuelled by watching too much television, st' a. could hardly fail to elicit the deePe
responses of its director Joe Dante. The fourth story, about an hysterical air- Passenger who is clearly destined for a one-
Way trip to the twilight zone itself, is harmless.
And that is, more or less, it; The Twilight Zone — The Movie could have ,"'en much worse and one pauses before awarding it a 8 minus only to reflect that the success of the film suggests that the au- diences of the Eighties are no more s_oPhisticated than those of the Sixties. Perhaps rather less so, since we no longer expect even an attempt at originality.
Previous page
