The Twilight Zone -- The Devil is Loose!

 

I was looking forward to this one. This is just a gem for an old Universal Monster movie fan like me. The angles are plenty, John Carradine as Father Jerome looking like Moses with the big poofy hair and long white beard, in the big robe, carrying his staff, wearing his sandals, and the Devil locked up in a cell. An American in Europe, caught in a storm, coming across this leaking relic of a monastery, quite ill and barely able to stand, collapsing when Jermone and the Brotherhood request he leaves. What does the Devil do? He presents himself as this well-spoken, quivery-voiced prisoner in rags who happened to kiss the wrong girl in the nearby village, angering the jealous Jerome who retaliates by putting him in a cell.

Then Jerome gets his turn to try and explain to HM Wynant's Ellington that the supposedly innocent prisoner held by some madman is in fact Satan himself. Ellington, to no surprise, believes the prisoner because Carradine looks and sounds outrageous. Ellington is explaining to a maid as an older man how this visit to the monastery was after the first World War and for the five years he's been held captive, the very worst mankind could face it hasn't due to that very captivity. But Ellington, much like the maid later, just rationalize through the behavior of captor and captive why the held man deserves to be let go. Ellington looks as crazy as Jerome did. So the Devil made the maid to do it just as he made Ellington in the past...he can prey on the gullible because the greatest trick the Devil has is who rational man might not believe he exists.

Giving us a literal devil has been the subject of discussion and critique since this episode's debut. Because this is The Twilight Zone, providing the viewer a Devil isn't really hard to accept within the context of what the show is about. And this episode's Devil is basically just a Monster unleashed to bring corruption and pestilence, and, apparently, another world war.

Ellington not thinking about why the staff couldn't be removed from the cell door by the prisoner since it seemed like an easy enough action might be my lone problem with the episode. He doesn't even considerate long, with the Devil able to divert his attention away from that just long enough to be freed. 

But the stormy night in the castle with evil howling along with the thunder and lightning and Carradine there with his bug eyes and questionable presence...how can I resist all that?!