I have to confess, it's very hard for me to watch horror movies. It's not that I don't enjoy the occasional scare, and it's not that I'm worried about ghosts and monsters following home (although I will confess to a mild fear of zombies). No, it's just that when the body count starts rising, I start feeling, well, sad. I don't come out of the theater pumping with adrenaline; I'm too distracted thinking about the people who died and the loved ones they've left behind.

The plots of several pieces of horror are discussed below, so be warned there may be spoilers.

The movie that really hit this home for me is not a science fiction movie, but Wes Craven's Scream. In the movie's opening sequence, Drew Barrymore is terrorized by a knife-wielding serial killer one night while she's home alone. As the killer is chasing her down, her parents pull up in the driveway. For a brief moment, it looks like she's saved, but in the next shot, we see the parents, happy from a pleasant evening out, and their daughter pulled down by the killer before she has the chance to cry out for help.

How horrible. It's a suspenseful moment to be sure, but one that evokes horror more than terror. Horrifying that she was so close to salvation only to meet a brutal end, and horrifying that her parents will find their daughter mutilated on their lawn and spend the rest of their lives wondering what would have happened if they have come home just a little sooner. It's a scene tinged with more tragedy than terror.

Horror is a genre that picks and pokes at our deepest anxieties. It's a reminder that we live in an unstable world, and that no matter how careful or good we are, we could at any time be struck with death, disfigurement, or madness. A lot of horror movies appeal to our limbic systems, to that part of our brain that wonders what lurks in the shadows and triggers a happy release of hormone every time someone shouts "Boo!" And there is undeniably an artistry to that, to the sort of jumps and thrills so frightening that, weeks later, you're still checking under the bed for demons from Hell. But often the horror that still lingers for years afterwards are the ones that play on the less primal — but still very human — fears of losing the ones you love and being left alone in the world.

When Heartbreak Drives the Horror

Horror protagonists don't always make the best choices. They insult powerful witches, run up the stairs when they should run out the door, and try to capture the man-eating alien instead of killing it. And when Louis Creed buries his son Gage in the Micmac burial ground in Stephen King's Pet Sematary, we know it's a bad idea. He knows it's a bad idea. But he so desperately hopes that he can repair his wounded family that he is willing to make a terrible and utterly wrong decision. And when Gage comes back only to murder his mother, Louis too easily manages to talk himself into burying his wife in the same graveyard.

It should be a forehead-slapping moment, but it's depressingly relatable. That Gage comes back as an undead monster is pretty horrifying (he did make our list of scariest characters in film), but what's more horrifying is what grief can drive Louis to do. His grief is so potent, so unbearable that he's willing to make monsters out of his loved ones in the hope that seeing them again will mend his heart.

It's an idea that harkens back to WW Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw," that famed exercise in truly depressing horror. After the Whites receive a wish-granting monkey paw, they wish for money, only to lose their son in an accident and receive compensation for his death. In that moment, they understand the nature of the monkey paw: it grants wishes, but in a perverse way. Still, the husband defers to his wife's terrible, maddening grief and wishes their son back to life. But, like Louis Creed, Mr. White must make his son dead again — knowing what comes back couldn't possibly be right — doubling his guilt and grief.

There are reasons why stories like "The Monkey's Paw" endure, and why its ideas find its way into so many other works of horror. They force us to access our fears of losing those closest to us, asking us how far we would go to keep them with us. Perhaps the most frightening thing about these stories that many of us will face terrible grief in our lives — and perhaps even guilt at the deaths of our loved ones — and we could be capable of making the same terrible decisions as the people in these stories, even if we don't get the opportunity to act on them.

When Losing Someone Makes Things That Much Worse

Even when grief and loss aren't the focus of a horror story, a moment of terrible loss can have more impact than even the most terrifying monster. 28 Days Later adds a frightening bit of realism to the zombie apocalypse, but it never forgets that the fear of losing your life is little match for the sadness that comes in a world suffused with death. When Jim discovers that his parents committed suicide in the face of violent death (leaving a note begging him not to wake from his coma), it's a bright spot of pain in a movie already filled with terror. But when our merry band of survivors becomes something of a family, with Frank playing the wise and protective father, the apocalypse seems survivable, almost manageable. Then Frank becomes infected with the Rage virus, and it's not just another zombie movie death. It puts a lump in your throat and reminds you that the zombie outbreak isn't all fun and killing the Infected — it's actually horribly sad.

This threat of loss adds dimension to other horror movies as well. Take The Ring, a film already terrifying in its J-horror weirdness. That The Ring turns a VHS cassette into an object of terror is incredibly impressive, but it's when Rachel's son Aidan watches the tape that the clock really starts ticking. Faced with the death of her son, Rachel must not only save herself, but survive long enough to keep Samara from killing her son as well. It adds a deeper, driving motivation to an already scary movie.

Joss Whedon is perhaps the master of this particular brand of horror. Though the series was filled with man-eating monsters, death in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is often random, senseless, and poignant. Few moments in the show stand out as clearly as Joyce's death from an aneurysm, or Tara's from a stray bullet. The central theme in Buffy is that family and friends make life grand, even when your life is filled with mayhem and violence. In such a world, few things are as horrifying as losing part of your family, and such deaths always left the characters unbalanced, even psychotic with grief. Even the show's most calculated death, Angelus' slaying of Jenny Calendar, is designed to maximize heartbreak. It's not enough that Angelus kills her; he also has to place her in Giles' bed with a trail of roses leading up to it, in a mockery of romantic seduction. And that heartache, far more than fear, drives Giles to hate and try to destroy Angelus.

When Your Loved One Turns Monstrous

This is a staple of vampire and zombie movies, when you find you must destroy the creature wearing your loved one's face. Buffy tried this in the very first episode, turning Willow and Xander's friend Jesse bloodsucker and forcing Xander to kill him an episode later. It's not the strongest instance of this particular trope (I'm not sure if Jesse is even mentioned later in the series), but it's a solid introduction to the horrible nature of vampires. Zombie movies are stronger in this regard. Even Shaun of the Dead, a movie mostly devoted to the funny side of the undead, goes suddenly tearjerker when we learn Shaun's mother has been bitten by a zombie. This bit of sadness is then compounded by the ensuing debate over shooting Shaun's dead mother in the head. Even though everyone knows it has to happen, Shaun can't bring himself to let it happen, and even the normally logical Liz argues against it. And when his mother inevitably rises from the dead, Shaun is the one who must shoot her body, a shockingly tearful moment from the zombie romantic comedy.

It's another work from Stephen King, The Shining, that offers a more realistic view on why this concept is so horrifying. Jack Torrance is a man so driven to drink that he gives his soul over to the hotel for alcohol. In the movie, it's played more as slasher horror, with Jack Nicholson gleefully hunting down his wife and child, but it's a grim reminder that the people we love could become the people we fear, or that we ourselves might be capable of inflicting terrible harms on our loved ones.

When Hope Is Your Worst Enemy

Few genres are as relentlessly obsessed with death as post-apocalyptic fiction. In Cormac McCarthy's The Road, death abounds; most of the world is dead, bands of rapists and murderers prowl the road, and the protagonist's wife has killed herself. The protagonist is not concerned for his own survival — he's already dying — but for his son's. He's confronted with the wrenching knowledge that he might have to kill his son to save him from an even worse fate. But he hopes for something better, hopes that he will find good people with whom his son could make a future. The whole book is a dirge for civilization, but the father's hope might only leave his son open to future horrors — and tragically, the father dies without knowing his son will fall in with good people after all.

In The Walking Dead, zombies are less agents of fear than they are death incarnate, and the comic often plays on themes of hope and how we cope with loss. Hope is tragic as much as it is necessary for survival. A farmer keeps his undead family in a barn by his house, hoping there will someday be a cure. The survivors hope to rebuild some semblance of civilization, but lose some of their number every time they think they've found peace. And as brutal and horrible as death is for the ones who die, the grief of the survivors is far more powerful and frightening.

The Fear of Dying Alone

It's telling that the very first episode of The Twilight Zone , "Where Is Everybody?" deals with loneliness, and the human need for companionship. It's a theme that inspired one of the more unnerving episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In "Remember Me," Dr. Crusher sees the her son and everyone else aboard the Enterprise disappear, until she's the only one left (of course, it turns out that she's the one who has actually disappeared, in this case into a static warp bubble). The episode has a Twilight Zone quality to it, but it's especially bleak that Crusher is at the center of it. Here is a woman who has already lost a husband to the hazards of Starfleet, whose closest friends routinely put their own lives in danger, and whose son is joining the very military organization that took her husband. "Remember Me" is, more than anything, a metaphor for the very real possibility that she could end up alone. Even Garfield, of all things, played with this idea in its surprisingly depressing 1989 Halloween run, where the orange fat cat wakes to a future where his house is abandoned and he never exists.

Even the episode of The Twilight Zone that was most optimistic about the apocalypse, "Time Enough at Last," deals with loneliness. After a nuclear attack wipes out everyone around him, Burgess Meredith is about to commit suicide until he realizes there's a library full of books to keep him company. It's only when he breaks his glasses that he feels truly alone, and that loneliness is more frightening than anything that goes bump in the night.

(Thanks to Graeme for suggesting "Remember Me").

Richard Kelly's The Box is based on Richard Matheson's story "Button, Button," which was adapted into an episode of the 1980s run of The Twilight Zone. And this clip, in which James Marsden has a strange encounter with a girl he drives home, feels like something out of The Twilight Zone with its ominous dialogue, methodical pacing, and tense soundtrack:

[via /Film]

Carol Serling, Rod Serling's widow and a consultant on later Twilight Zone projects, has collected 19 stories for the 50th anniversary anthology. Although the nature of the different medium lends a slightly different tone to the stories — often planting us firmly inside the head of the protagonist — many of them play clear tribute to the television series. By far the clearest of these tributes is the opening story, David Hagberg's "Genesis," a story set in the Philippines during World War II that pays homage not only to individual Twilight Zone episodes, but to Rod Serling himself. A second war story, Jim Defelice's "The Soldier He Needed to Be," is a delightfully straight update of the series, about a flailing soldier in Afghanistan who turns his life around after receiving an iPod he believes to be magical.

Most of the stories are, however, set in that slightly sinister suburbia we see so often in Serling's show, where people trip and fall while chasing down the American Dream. Deborah Chester's "The Street That Time Forgot," one of the anthology's more science fiction entries, is set in one of those anonymous condo complexes that dot the United States. It's only when one of the residents adopts a stray dog and begins to wake from the slumber of his daily grind that he begins to suspect that his condo association may be taking more away from him than his HOA. And in Whitley Strieber's "The Good Neighbor," a middle class man worries about the falling value of his home after insectoid aliens move in next door.

Other standouts include Timothy Zahn's "Vampin' down the Avenue," in which a movie star goes to extreme lengths to foil the paparazzi — a story that's amusing enough even before the satisfying twist at the end — and Mike Resnkick and Lezli Robyn's beautifully sad "Benchwarmer," which takes us into the world of imaginary friends, and introduces us to one friend who simply can't let go of the boy who created him. And for fans who want a peek into Serling's process, Carol Serling has included his previously unpublished treatment for a possible episode, entitled "El Moe."

The stories in this anthology do stick a little bit too close to home; we get none of the space travelers or robots we would see from time to time on the show. But each tale is a quick and fun read where ordinary people are ensnared by the extraordinary, the wicked get what's coming to them, and nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems.

The End of The World Isn't The Worst Thing That Can Happen

The Twilight Zone loved to threaten us with the end of the world over and over again. And every time good character or bad, the end of the world is always eclipsed by something even worse happening. Take the little man with the huge glasses, Burgess Meridith. All he wanted was peace and quiet so he could read, then the world ends and he's the last man on the face of the Earth with plenty of reading material. Then he breaks his giant coke-bottle glasses. Even fake end of the world can get one-upped by our neighbor's gusto to break down our doors to get into the only shelter.

Aliens Are Dicks

Whether they want to trick us into coming home with them so they can cook us for dinner, gloating that they're about to colonize our planet right under our noses, or just shooting us with tiny guns, aliens are always jerks. Even when they're just dressed as aliens and from our home planet. They are not to be trusted, and nine out of ten times are merely just messing with you. Meet an alien? Turn the other way, or you may wind up in their zoo.

If You Can't Be Good, Be Clever

Bad people getting their comeuppances is pretty much a Twilight Zone mainstay. So either be a good person, or you'll either die, or spend your life regretting it. Especially, don't steal. But if you can't be good, be smart. When someone tells you, you can get a large sum of money for wearing a mask until midnight, and then that person dies, that's a "too good to be true" deal. And you'll probably be paying for it, forever. Also should you discover a great gimmick, like a camera that tells the future and just made you a ton of money, don't get greedy. Take the first pay-out and call it a night. A good person wouldn't try and hide a dead hitchiker, but a clever person wouldn't have hit them in the first place.

Children And Other Small Things Are Evil And Must Be Destroyed

Kids always have god-like abilities and/or vengeful dolls. There's nothing good about children or their toys. This scene from "The Good Life" still haunts me.

Machines, Robots, And Technology In General Are Evil. Smash It All With A Hammer

Machines can erase your memory and leave you stuck in some godforsaken town. They can keep you locked up in a cave for years pretending to be a human, they can even fall in love with you and ruin your chances with another human. Avoid machines, computers, and especially airplanes. They are the devil. And never ever get on a plane with William Shatner. Note: the episode "From Agnes With Love" is also where I learned the term "sex machine."

War Is Hell

Anything and everything can happen during wartime. You can be time-warped to another dimension where you find out you past self was a big fat coward or. one day you're fighting on your side the next morning you wake up, and you're the enemy. Also, you can never leave the war behind you it will always come back to haunt you. So, no thanks.

But on the off chance that the Doctor can't stop River, here's the clash many of you have been clamoring for:

And if River beats Brock Samson from the Venture Bros. as well? How about this:

That's right, the kid from the Twilight Zone. He'll send her to the Cornfield! What's she going to do about that?

If River wins all of these contests of badassery, she'll go on to face Batman, the Dark Knight, Gotham's watchful avenger tomorrow.

If any one of River's challengers beats her, than he'll face Batman tomorrow. If two of River's challengers win, then they'll have to face each other before going on to Batman. And if all three challengers win? We'll worry about that when it happens.

River Tam faces a threefold challenge — will she still be swinging tomorrow? You decide!

It's been a year since we first announced that DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way, was hunting down scripts for a Twilight Zone film. And it appears that they have finally chosen their scribe, writer and television producer Rand Ravich. Ravich is probably best known for creating the NBC police drama Life, but he also scripted the B-movie-inspired thriller The Astronaut's Wife (which he also directed) and the horror sequel Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh.

And, in fact, Ravich has also written for a series modeled on TV anthologies like The Twilight Zone — but instead of science fiction or horror, the stories featured in Playboy's Inside Out anthology are, naturally, based around sex. Still, the description from IMDB of his entry "Put Asunder" suggests that Ravich would have rather been writing for Rod Serling than Hugh Hefner:

A battling divorced couple cannot keep their hands off of each other, so they hire a hitman to kill one of them, based on chance.

Still no word from Appian on whether the film, like its ill-fated 1983 predecessor, will feature remakes of old Twilight Zone episodes or an original (and potentially pornographic) tale from Ravich.

[Variety]

Panspermia is the term for the most scientifically plausible version of this concept, but it isn't necessarily what science fiction usually presents. The panspermia hypothesis holds that the building blocks of life are not found exclusively on planetary bodies but are instead found scattered throughout the cosmos, and it is these spaceborne particles that are at least partly responsible for life on Earth. There's a little circumstantial evidence for the theory (although far, far more to support the reliable old "Life comes from Earth" hypothesis), and there is something undeniably fascinating about the subtext – the aliens are already here, and we are they. But science fiction barely ever depicts the actual theory of panspermia, mostly because it's just a physical process that takes billions of years to play out and is pretty boring unless you're willing to get really mystical.

What science fiction more properly deals with is exogenesis, which simply states that humanity or its genetic ancestors didn't always live on Earth. That generally means one of two things – either an ancient alien race introduced life to a previously dead Earth (sometimes as part of a larger directed panspermia project) or a bunch of humans from some other civilization colonized Earth, a fact that somehow slipped the minds of their descendants (you know…us). Plenty of science fiction deals with both, including two of the big science fictions works currently in the news. (The occasional spoiler may lie ahead.)

Outlander
One of the most satisfying little details of everybody's favorite Vikings vs. aliens epic is its answer to why Jim Caviezel's character, the alien Kainan, looks exactly like the Norsemen and how he can possibly speak their language.Outlander solves both of these problems by revealing Earth is an "abandoned seed colony" of Kainan's spacefaring civilization. Unfortunately, the whole notion that Earth was colonized by an interstellar race really opens up a far bigger plot hole than the one it was meant to fill. After all, Kainan's people would have had to have "seeded" Earth eons ago. If they could pull off planetary engineering on that sort of scale way back then, you'd think they wouldn't have so much trouble with a bunch of bioluminescent dragons. In the end, it's probably best not to think too much about the logistics of the whole abandoned seed colony concept. Because, ultimately, the very inclusion of the idea in the first place is, like so much of Outlander, awesome.

Battlestar Galactica
In both the original and new versions of the series, humans originally came from Kobol, the legendary planet of the gods, and Earth is just the fabled lost colony. The new series is busy dealing with Earth, so it's entirely possible a couple "What the frak?" moments still lie ahead that will reveal humanity actually did come from Earth. The original series, however, left no doubt that Kobol was where we all came from, as the no-budget god-awfulness that is Galactica 1980 established contact between the Galactica and contemporary Earth. Flying motorcycle chases ensued.

Star Trek
The Next Generation episode "The Chase" sought to acknowledge and explain the genetic improbability of a galaxy full of nothing but humanoid aliens with rubber foreheads. The solution – ancient aliens who, upon finding themselves all alone in the galaxy, seeded various planets with their genetic codes – is surprisingly deft, and actually turns a three-decade failure of imaginations and budgets into something almost elegaic. As one would expect, Picard takes this existence-altering revelation in his usual stride, while the Cardassians look a bit grumpy.

Stargate
Honestly, between all the genetic engineering, forced relocations of ancient humans, and universe-altering civil wars between godlike aliens it all gets a bit difficult to keep track of which species actually came from where. In short, a bunch of plague-decimated demigods maybe used this thing called the Dakara superweapon millions of year ago to shoot their genetic information throughout the Milky Way, which maybe had something to do with humanity's evolution. Or maybe not.

Babylon 5
Since we might as well finish off the sweep of nineties science fiction, the Centauri initially tried to dismiss Earth as one of their lost colonies. Sure, this probably wasn't true, but how else are you going to haze the new interstellar species?

Isaac Asimov
Most aliens seem to create life on Earth for slightly more practical (well, relatively speaking) reasons than the Star Trek aliens' "monument to our existence." Asimov imagined Earth as an eons-old alien experiment not once but twice – in "Jokester", the aliens did it to explore the concept of humor, while in "Breeds there a Man…?" the aliens are engaged in a more vague exercise in genetics. There’s also "Death Sentence", where an anthropologist for the Galactic Federation discovers that a previous civilization created a planet of robots as part of a larger psychological experiment. Realizing the Federation will surely have to destroy the planet as a potential threat, he decides to take his dire warning to one of the robots' biggest cities: New York.

Wildstorm Comics
The Kherubim people sent their genetic seed throughout the universe in a bid to conquer the universe without their genetic descendants even knowing it, which they then followed up by actually conquering much of the universe.

Ringworld, by Larry Niven
It turns out we're all part of a larger plan by the Pak race to create a galaxy full of ultra-lethal, ultra-intelligent superhumans. Apparently, the plan failed because there wasn't enough of the right kind of fruit.

Mission to Mars
In this Brian de Palma stinker, a bunch of Martians that didn't flee their dying planet shot the neighboring Earth – then a barren chunk of rock – full of the building blocks of life because…um, because they wanted to take Gary Sinise on a tour of the universe? (And that was probably the least nonsensical part of that movie.)

Salvage Rites, by Eric Brown
One of the very few times when a race made from directed panspermia confronts their creators, this short story finds a group of Benedictine monks in a cathedral-shaped starship seeking out what is, for all intents and purposes, God.

South Park
In easily the most awesome use of the concept, the anniversary episode “Canceled” revealed Earth for what it really is – one giant reality show. At least in South Park, someone is actually bothering to watch.

Starliner, by David Drake
In this 1992 novel, the narrator explains that no one bats an eyelid at botanists cross-breeding plants from different worlds because panspermia is "no longer a hypothesis but simple observation." Not the most earth-shattering application of panspermia, but still.

Ej-es by Nancy Kress
A rather less mundane spin on that same idea, as members of an interstellar marine corps realize a deadly plague on one planet threatens all the intelligent species in the universe – because panspermia makes them all genetically related.

Doctor Who
The classic "City of Death" features a more accidental case of aliens creating life on Earth. In the midst of all the ridiculously complex art forgery, random acts of violence, Monty Python cameos, and endless location shots that prove the thing really was shot in Paris, writer Douglas Adams somehow squeezes in the origin of all life on Earth. As it turns out, an exploding Jaggaroth ship kickstarted the whole "life" thing. That was nice of them.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Speaking of Douglas Adams, his most famous work envisions the noblest version of the alien-built Earth. Indeed, the emphasis here is on "built", as Earth is not a planet at all but instead a ten million year old computer program supervised by hyper-dimensional mice designed to determine the question to life, the universe, and everything. Of course, as is so often the case, this wondrous philosophical pursuit was interrupted by a bunch of hairdressers, TV producers, and telephone sanitizers from the planet Golgafrincham, who obliviously managed to replace the native humans and almost wreck the entire program. All of which rather neatly leads us back to wandering, forgetful colonists.

The Hainish Cycle, by Ursula K. Le Guin
In ancient times, colonizers from the planet Hain came to Earth and, for a time, coexisted with its native hominids. Whether the settlers ultimately killed the native Earthlings or simply bred them out of existence is anybody's guess, but the Hainish now consider modern humans their descendants.

Women of the Prehistoric Planet
This MST3K entry builds a whole parable of post-War American-Japanese relations around two rival alien races, time dilation, and giant iguanas, with plenty of sixties-era chauvinism left to go around. After a whole lot of silliness (as that previous sentence probably suggested) the marooned lovers Tang and Linda settle down on the titular prehistoric planet, which they decide to call…well, I think you can guess, but it rhymes with "Mirth."

Earthsearch
The classic BBC radio series had one of the best twists on this idea, as the four teenaged survivors of the massive starship Challenger search for Earth-like planets to colonize. It's slowly revealed that the planet they call Earth has some rather unrecognizable geography, but that the Earth-like planet they finally do discover, with its saltwater oceans covering two-thirds of the planet, sounds very familiar.

The Twilight Zone
But stories don't get much more familiar than the 1963 episode "Probe 7, Over and Out." Astronaut Adam Cook finds himself stranded on a faraway planet just as nuclear war is breaking out back home. He encounters Eve Norda, an alien who cannot understand his language. The pair ultimately agrees to start a new life together on the planet that Eve keeps calling "Irth." Judging by their first names, I’m guessing they'll do just fine.

In addition to inspiring numerous TV episodes (including the original Star Trek pilot “The Cage,” which is based on the episode “People Are the Same Everywhere”), The Twilight Zone spawned its own anthological movie in 1983. But these movies were inspired by individual episodes of the series:

“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” (1960): A power outage strikes a small suburban town and the residents find that not only has the electricity been cut off, but the phone lines and vehicles have stopped working as well, completely isolating the town. The residents become convinced that this is the sign of an imminent alien invasion, and become suspicious of one another as lights and cars start coming on at random. Soon riots ensue, and it is revealed to the audience that this is, in fact, part of an alien plot. The aliens sow the seeds of suspicion and then leave the humans to destroy each other.
Inspired The Trigger Effect (1996): A widespread blackout reveals how tenuous humanity’s grip on civilization is. Although there is no threat of alien invasion, the blackout causes panic that results in theft, property damage, and murder. The film plays explicit tribute to The Twilight Zone, with the lead characters living at the corner of Maple and Willoughby (the latter a reference to the episode “A Stop at Willoughby”).

“Five Characters in Search of an Exit” (1961): An army major, a ballerina, a clown, a hobo, and a bagpiper find themselves in a cylindrical prison with no memory of who they are and no apparent means of escape. They never need to eat or drink, and the only change in their surroundings is an occasional shaking that knocks them to the ground. They speculate on where they are and how they get there, and begin to fear they may be in Hell. Finally, the major manages to escape, and it is revealed that the prisoners are actually dolls sitting in a collection bin.
Inspired Cube (1997): Cube operates from the same starting point as “Five Characters,” with seven characters waking to find themselves in a mysterious prison, with no idea as to how they ended up there and why. They engage in similar speculation as to their situation, but the nature of their prison is never revealed. And, when they try to escape, many of the prisoners meet with unfortunate ends.

“Living Doll” (1963): When Christie’s mother buys her a pricey Talky Tina doll, her stepfather Erich is displeased. As it turns out, the feeling is mutual, and Erich starts hearing some nasty talk from the angel-faced doll. When the doll threatens to kill him, he becomes intent on destroying it, but Tina gets to him first.
Inspired Child’s Play (1988): Karen can’t afford to buy her son Andy the expensive talking Good Guy doll he desperately wants for his birthday. When she manages to get one from a homeless vendor, it has been imbued with the soul of a notorious serial killer. The doll first eliminates Andy’s nasty babysitter, but soon starts pursuing his own interests.

“I Sing the Body Electric” (1962): Based on the short story by Ray Bradbury. A father gets his children a robotic grandmother after their mother has died. The oldest daughter, Anne, is distraught at the idea of getting attached to this sweet, matronly android after losing her mother. But when Anne is nearly hit by a truck, her electric grandmother comes to the rescue, and is hit by the truck instead and left unscathed. Anne realizes her electric grandmother is indestructible, and the grandmother stays with the children until they are grown.
Inspired The Electric Grandmother (1982): Bradbury’s story was also the basis for the award-winning made-for-TV movie starring Maureen Stapleton and Edward Hermann. An android surrogate helps three children deal with the loss of their mother, although one child just wants to send grandma back to the store.

“Little Girl Lost” (1962): A couple wakes to hear their daughter Tina’s distant cries for help, but they are unable to find the girl. Eventually, they discover that Tina has slipped through a portal under her bed and into another dimension. The father must enter the other dimension and pull his daughter back before the portal closes.
Inspired Poltergeist (1982): During a storm, ghosts pull five-year-old Carol Anne into another dimension through a portal in her closet. Her family is unable to locate her after the storm, but can hear her voice coming through the TV. In this version, it’s the girl’s mother who must enter the other dimension and pull her daughter back.

“A Stop At Willoughby” (1960): Gart Williams is an advertising executive who encounters nothing but stress at work and at home. The only enjoyment he gets in his life is during his daily commute, when he sleeps and dreams of the pastoral, 19th Century town of Willoughby. One day, he simply steps off the train in his dreams and remains in Willoughby, though to those around him, it appears he has leapt to his death.
Inspired For All Time (2000): Charles Lattimer finds himself frustrated with the pace of his daily life and trapped in a crumbling marriage. But when his train goes through a certain tunnel each day, he finds himself in the 19th Century, where he finds love and a more satisfying life.

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1962): This short film, based on the Ambrose Bierce story of the same name, was a Cannes Film Festival darling before it was purchased for The Twilight Zone. A Civil War prisoner is about to be hanged when he makes a lucky escape. But just as he is about to be reunited with his wife, his neck breaks and it becomes apparent that he has been hanged and that his escape was all in his imagination.
Inspired Donnie Darko (2001): After a jet engine mysteriously lands in Donnie Darko’s bedroom, a series of events conspire to lead Donnie back in time, to the exact moment when the engine crashed. Director Richard Kelly has mentioned the episode in interviews, suggesting an alternate interpretation of the film. Bierce’s original story like inspired numerous other films, including Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.

“Button, Button” (1986): A couple low on cash receive a visit from a mysterious stranger carrying a box with a button on it. The stranger tells them that, if they push the button, they will receive $200,000 in cash, but someone they don’t know will die. Eventually, the wife pushes the button and they receive the money. When the stranger takes the box away, he tells them that he will give the box to someone else – someone the couple doesn’t know.
Inspired The Box (2009): Richard Kelly plans to revisit The Twilight Zone this year, with Cameron and James Marsden as the button-pushing couple. But he could use the ending of Richard Matheson’s original short story, which is more along the lines of the classic horror tale “The Monkey’s Paw.”

Aspects of other episodes have worked their way into numerous films. The 1969 film Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (also known as Doppelganger) has a plotline similar to that of the alternate universe episode “The Parallel.” The ending of Payback draws directly from “The Jeopardy Room,” one of the few episodes with no science fiction or supernatural aspects. The deathly premonition at the start of Final Destination resembles a similar foresight in “Twenty Two,” and the death of the shapeshifting T-1000 in Terminator 2 pays homage to “The Four of Us Are Dying.” And M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village may have its roots in “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim,” in which a man from 1847 wanders into the 20th Century looking for medical supplies.

Famous Names: Rod Serling (Creator/Writer/Host); Stars who spent time in the Zone include Robert Redford, Burgess Meredith, Dennis Hopper, William Shatner and many more.

Crunchy Goodness: 4

Sequels: A 1983 movie, a 1985 TV re-launch that ran for three seasons and a single-season TV run in 2002.

Bang for Your Buck: No, not every episode's a keeper, and even Serling would admit that. But when Twilight Zone episodes work, they still have big-idea power nearly 50 years later. ...

Deadliest Spoiler: It's a cookbook! He breaks his glasses! She's not ugly, but everyone else is! The spaceship's from earth! And many, many more.

The Twilight Zone Museum