A Memorial Day Twilight Zone Mini-Marathon /A Quality of Mercy

I had already planned a little marathon for Monday, recording a few episodes from SYFY early morning showings in the past week or so. This was before the conclusion of the first season, though, completed on Friday. Because I'm saving the icon episodes for 4th of July weekend, I thought this marathon could feature lesser tiered ones, plenty available from the fifth season. Because I don't want it to be just episodes from that season, though, I will perhaps sprinkle in some fully unedited episodes from Netflix or my DVD set.

SYFY

• Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room (second season)
• Ninety Years Without Slumbering
• Ring-a-Ding Girl
• Queen of the Nile
• The Jeopardy Room

I had planned to watch Come Wander With Me and The Fear but sort of decided to hold off. But early part of Memorial Day, the selection above I felt was a good mix of episodes that aren't among the classics list. No doubt every TZ fan is unique, so some of the above may actually be on favorites lists. 

I think you can see creative fatigue at the end of the series' run. The more you watch the show, the more obvious those involved, including Serling, were just spent. Queen of the Nile felt like a Universal Horror plot modernized, with Blythe's Pamela Morris from Egypt, using a scarab, along with her seductive allure and enchantment, to draw men to her, then drain victims of her their lifeforce in order to remain young. My problem with that was the suspicious trail that would lead to her. Even though she used her elderly, guilt-stricken daughter to clean up the suit and ash of male victims, it's a bit obvious enough missing guys last seen at her place would invite trouble. And Philips' journalist just sort of serves as a fly in her web, even as the worried daughter fails to scoot him away from harm.  The Jeopardy Room is another episode about an unfortunate guy sweating it out in an unpleasant, shoddy apartment much like Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room. While Landau is a Russian defector placed in peril by agents assigned to kill him, Mantell is battling himself, his conscience, when faced with a job ordered by a gangster to kill a mark at a bar. Landau uses his smarts to outwit a kommisar who delights in using subtle, delayed tactics, mind games, with those targeted, the very booby trap meant for him, while Mantell's nail-biting, anxious mess has heated words with a side of his conscience in mirrors wanting to take over and choose a different life and career path. The twist at the end where the phone ring motivates the brutal Russian killer to impulsively lift it from the receiver might give pause to many viewers who might consider that far fetched, much less these agents so ignorantly acting like Bond villains letting their quarry get away. The mirror gimmick does allow Mantell to perform his ass off, but the name George is repeated as much as like in sentence structure, quite obnoxious.

Ring-a-Ding Girl is quite fascinating, and leaves the main ongoing plot up for debate. Maggie McNamara, as Hollywood movie star, Bunny Blake, arrives in her home town after seeing the image of her sister's face in a ring sent to her by the town as a gift. Bunny continues receiving faces of folks, like the janitor and a news reporter, asking for help in the gem of the ring. She works to stop a founder's day park picnic, looking to perform a play at the school. Meanwhile a plane could very well crash at the picnic. McNamara later in life had a barbiturate overdose, reminding me of the eerie death of Inger Stevens. Both struggled emotionally and in the Twilight Zone episodes were up against an inevitable tragedy. That moment where McNamara walks into the rain, knowing she was successful, vanishing, left an impression with me. Her smile and relief, potent. Her being on the plane and at her home town asks us how.

Wynn as the grandfather fearing his death was sure if his grandfather clock stops, both the same age of 76; Ninety Years Without Slumbering I have probably watched more recently than I had in years. It grows on me because I just enjoy watching Wynn, I guess. He's aware how his granddaughter and her husband, and a shrink, think he should be rid of the clock due to his obsessing with its continued "life", but this clock is waning and any maintenance seems futile, as the time for it to tick is ending. But does he let the clock determine his own mortality?

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I did watch for the holiday specific, A Quality of Mercy, about a bloodthirsty Lieutenant (Dean Stockwell) looking to kill "sum Jaaps" at the waning hours of WWII, arriving at the hill of a tired, traumatized group (led by Albert Salmi, with a young Leonard Nimoy answering the phone when headquarters calls) who are sick of seeing men die and spending their endless time returning fire with "the enemy". It takes Stockwell finding himself in the form of a Japanese lieutenant, in a position of strength with the Americans stuck in the cave wounded, starving, vulnerable, to realize that perhaps their plan to move in and blow up the enemy, "men", is perhaps just simply too much. Serling, with record of trauma from his time as a paratrooper in the second world war, clearly makes a statement about the fatigue, wearing and tearing of war on men's health and psyche, having to live with what they have seen and done. Using Twilight Zone as a creative lens to ask us to see it from both sides, one young man looking to leave his mark, get involved, kill the enemy, and how Salmi and his men clearly have had their belly full, the war is painted as hard, exhausting, ill-advised, and numbing. When you are fresh instead of battle tested but beaten down, the difference between Stockwell and the others is palpable. Serling can tell this story and it has weight and realism. And we as viewers are confronted with the reality that men killing each other comes with an incredible price.