TZ-Movie (1983)**
I think Spielberg should have scrapped the Landis bigot segment that killed Morrow. Just including it leaves, as many critically have mentioned in times past, a bad taste. And, quite frankly, it's not even that good. It's over the top in its loud message about being in the shoes of those you hate whether for race or ethnicity. Landis getting to work on big projects after this is astounding. The death of Morrow and those two Asian kids, working at night in violation of child labor laws, you'd think would have forever blacklisted all involved in the helicopter crash. If that crash hadn't happened, Morrow's character perhaps could have realized his human frailty, acknowledged his racism and bigotry, and if granted a second chance, made the most of rehabbing his personal worldview. Considering the actor was killed in the process of performing for this segment, the least Landis and Spielberg could have done is grant the character an opportunity to see the error of his ways and work to improve himself. Instead Morrow moves through Nazi Germany as a Jew, Crowe South KKK as a black man, and Nam as a Vietnamese man in the jungle, experiencing their terror. No redemption chance. I did enjoy Landis' prologue with hitchhiking Aykroid showing driver Albert Brooks something really scary, and the end with exhausted Lithgow, strapped to a gurney in an ambulance.
The syrupy Spielberg segment serving as a maudlin homage to Kick the Can has a Goldsmith score that really lays it on thick. Scatman Crothers is the sweetheart visitor who weaves some influence and magic allowing old folks at assisted living homes to return to their childhood selves ; this has that kind of hokey feel good sentimental direction that desperately wants to tug at your heartstrings. Yuck. Great cast of elderly actors and the kids surprisingly mimick them well.
Dante brought a lot of winks to TZ fans in his It's a Good Life segment, dropping fan service nods like Willoughby, Homewood, casting Schallert and McCarthy as adults scared of a kid with powers that can do anything he so wishes through thought and action, offering a cameo to Mumy as a guy at a diner pissed off at the kid he once played in the original series, and the beautiful Quinlan as a character named Helen Foley. And Dante cast Dick Miller as the diner operator so that's going to win me over obviously. There are cartoons constantly on rotation at the boy's warped home, designed according to his childish whims, where televisions are everywhere, the cuisine is fast / junk food only allowed, talking back or anything constituted as out of line can result in the loss of your mouth or sent into a toon to be eaten by monsters, and hideous creatures can be conjured up out of top hats or cracked TVs. This is very bright, vibrant, energetic, imaginative, madcap, and weird. Always dug this one.
George Miller's fourth segment based on the classic Shatner episode, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, has a go-for-broke, let-it-all-hang-out Lithgow holding nothing back. Yep, he's over the top with the knob turned all the way up. On board the plane, his sweaty, bug-eyed hysterics are legend. Miller and his claustrophobic camera take us right into faces and the monster is appropriately grotesque.
As a Twilight Zone fan, I don't think anything in the film improves on the episodes inspiring them but you get plenty of conversations talking about the show, Meredith narrates, and Serling's voice gets to close this. Meredith in a cameo would have been cool. Not long after the TZ reboot hit television.
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