|
Twilight Zone |
 |
|
TWILIGHT ZONE EPISODE TIE-INS Here is the most complete list I could develop of references to Twilight Zone episodes which appear on Bally's latest game. There are still few questionable things in this list, so I would appreciate it if anyone could offer any corrections or fill in any blanks - I don't have all of the episodes on tape, and I don't work for Bally. WARNING: THIS LIST CONTAINS TWILIGHT ZONE EPISODE SPOILERS! READ NO FURTHER IF YOU PLAN TO EXPERIENCE THE EPISODES YOURSELF ON THE BACKGLASS Rod Serling If I didn't start with Rod, I would be excommunicated as an official Zoner. The backglass shows Rod Serling entering a Curio shop which houses many of the items which appeared in episodes of the series. He is bathed from behind in brilliant white light as he stands in the doorway of the shop. The Curio Shop itself is ceilingless, exposing a field of stars (wonder what that ceiling fan is mounted to ...?). The name of the game is written in the star field (there's no "box topper" this time). My interpretation of the scene is that Rod has unlocked the door using the key of imagination, giving him access to his own private playground. I will present the items in two parts: those on the lefthand side of the shop (to Rod Serling's right) and items on the righthand side. Left Side of Curio Shop Talky Tina Doll From the episode THE LIVING DOLL (yes, it's Talk"y", not Talk"ing"). Telly Savalas (with a touch of hair!) plays a mean old stepfather who disapproves of the cost of the doll that his wife has purchased for her daughter. The doll always says things like "My name is Talky Tina and I love you very much" to the little girl, but whenever Telly's alone with it, it says things like "My name is Talky Tina and I don't think I like you" which gradually escalates throughout the episode as Telly tries to do away with the doll into "My name is Talky Tina and I'm going to kill you!". Eventually, he steps on it as he's descending the stairs, trips, and tumbles to his death. The doll comes tumbling afterward and lands next to him. When his wife sees what has happened, she picks up the doll and it says "My name is Talky Tina and you'd better be nice to me!". Is it any wonder that the first extra ball explodes when Tina hands it to you? A Radio From the episode STATIC. An old bachelor digs out his radio when he's no longer happy with television. He soon discovers that the radio picks up old programs, but it only happens when he's alone with it. Eventually, the radio transforms him into a younger man. This also explains why the radio is used in the animation for the Fast Lock round: Rod says "It's time to tune into ... The Twilight Zone" and we literally begin receiving broadcasts of sound and music from previous Lawlor games (in reverse order since we're going back through time) on the radio. As the stations are switched (when a fast lock has not yet been achieved), we appropriately enough hear static. Once a fast lock is achieved, the station is "locked in" on the game (at least for the duration of the round). Gumball Machine This is not derived from any episode - it's a Pat Lawlor and friends' original contribution. The gumball machine is Twilight Zone-esque as it contains one gumball that's most unusual: the powerball. While I'm on the subject, ditto for the powerfield: it has flippers that "aren't there" yet you can still mysteriously "flip". Artistic license taken by a creative genius. A Quarter Standing on its Edge From the episode A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS. Dick York (of "Bewitched" fame) buys a newspaper, casually tossing a quarter into the newsboy's coinbox. The coin lands on its edge and he finds that he can now read minds. At first this appears neat, but he soon learns that it's more trouble than it's worth, even to the point of losing his job at a bank (he warns the bank manager that a very prominent customer intends to take his business loan to the racetrack - and he gets canned at the mere suggestion of impropriety on the part of this customer). Ultimately, this is proven correct, however, and his job is restored. As the manager is giving him his job back, a ladyfriend sends him thoughts that he should be more assertive, and he takes her advice: he lets the bank manager know that he knows about his mistress. The bank manager give him a promotion to head of accounting in return for his silence. On the way home, he buys another paper from the same newsboy. He tosses another quarter in the box - and this one knocks the other quarter over (the newsboy had made a conscious effort to leave the first quarter standing all day). Instantly, his power to read minds disappears, and he's very grateful. Where else can you have so much fun for a quarter? Perhaps we should all toss our quarters before feeding them into a Twilight Zone. Who knows? One might land on its edge and you'll be able to instantly know where all the cows, Easter eggs, and other assorted goodies are hidden. If you're not lucky enough to have any of your quarters land on edge, take heart: should any of them land on their heads or tails side, you'll be instantly granted the power to read the mind of the average video game player. Victrola Record Player Possibly from the episode SOUNDS AND SILENCES (I don't have this one on tape). The main character is fascinated by noise, sitting at home playing recordings of navy battles for relaxation! After his wife leaves him, he figures he can enjoy his noise all he wants to now. Except later that night, every little sound begins bothering him (clock ticking, etc.). The next day at work he suddenly yells at everyone to be quiet, but every little sound still bothers him. He finally sees a shrink who tells him it's all in his head. He goes home and spots his wife and concentrates on reducing her voice to a small squeaking sound. The episode ends with him realizing that everything now sounds like that! Skull and Bug From the Episode QUEEN OF THE NILE. A journalist seeks to learn the secret behind a movie star's "ageless" beauty. She lives in a mansion decorated with props supposedly from her first big picture called "Queen of the Nile". An older woman, introduced as the starlet's mother, tells the journalist outside that she is actually the starlet's daughter. After several dates don't sync with her self-reported age, the journalist asks a Hollywood friend to pull his file on the film. His friend asks "which one?" as there were two of them made about thirty years apart. The photos of the two stars are remarkably identical. When the journalist confronts the starlet with this information in her home, she slips him a knockout drug in his coffee. She then retrieves a live Egyptian scarab from a hiding place behind one of her statutes. She uses the scarab to drain all of the journalist's life energy (his skin eventually disappears leaving a skull in its place, which cracks, crumbles, and turns to dust). She then holds the scarab to her breast which transfers the life energy into herself, thus perpetuating her youth. She really IS a queen of the Nile. As the episode closes, we see another young man calling on her. She's more like an Egyptian spider. This was probably the most gruesome ending shown on camera during any episode of the series (there are a few episodes that have more gruesome endings, but Rod leaves their horror in the mind of the viewer. Remember, this was 1959-64 TV!). Television Set (partially obscured by skull) There was at least two episodes that featured a TV set which I recall. The first was A THING ABOUT MACHINES. A middle-aged high society gentleman named Finchley abhors machines of any kind. They of course can sense this and, when he's finally alone with them one day, they come after him. A typewriter spells "Get out of here Finchley", the television broadcasts an image of a Spanish dancer and she utters the same phrase, etc. The scene where his electric razor chases him down the stairs is classic. He finally manages to get outside where he's pursued by his car. He jumps into his pool and drowns. Wonder if Stephen King ever watched this episode ... Christine ... Maximum Overdrive ... ??? The other episode (and the one more likely to have propelled the TV set onto the backglass) was WHAT'S IN THE BOX? William Demarest (one of the two Uncle Charlies from My Three Sons) gets his TV repairman mad, so the repairman slaps the set back together and proclaims that it's fixed. But now the TV picks up a channel it could never receive before - and this channel shows Demarest's character with his mistress. Eventually it shows him knocking his wife out a window to her death. Worried that his wife will find out about his mistress on the TV, he decides to confess to her about having a mistress. But his wife isn't in a forgiving mood. They argue, and sure enough he knocks her out the window. Small Featureless Mannequin/Artist's Model From one of the many opening credit sequences. Fourth season, I think. Life Preserver from the Queen of Glasgow From the episode JUDGMENT NIGHT. Nehemiah Persoff stars as a German passenger aboard the British Steamer S. S. Queen of Glasgow in the year 1942. He has absolutely no idea how he got on board. But somehow he knows that something's going to happen in the wee hours of the early morning. And it does - a U-boat surfaces and torpedoes the ship; the crew of the U-boat shoots the survivors. The captain of the U-boat is discovered to be Persoff's character himself, who has been condemned to a timeloop in which he's forced to relive his evil deed forever. Robby the Robot Robby appeared in several episodes including UNCLE SIMON and THE BRAIN CENTER AT WHIPPLE'S. In UNCLE SIMON, a niece is looking after her uncle whom she doesn't really like very much (but since he's very rich and she's his only heir, she manages to put up with him). Finally, she sends uncle tumbling down a flight of stairs to his death. But the conditions of his will are such that she gets the estate only if she agrees to look after his latest invention: a robot. Of course, the robot is quickly found to have her uncle's personality, mannerisms, and all of his other traits that she detests. In THE BRAIN CENTER AT WHIPPLE'S, Richard Deacon (Mel on the old Dick van Dyke Show) plays Mr. Whipple, an insensitive factory manager who puts the majority of his employees out of work by replacing them with robots. Ultimately, the robots begin voicing the same complaints which the human workers had, so the company's board of directors replaces Whipple with a robot! It was obvious that Robby had further developed his method acting skills as evidenced by the depth of his characterizations. His role in Forbidden Planet was clearly just a springboard to bigger and better things. Rocketship I'm pretty certain that this is from the episode I SHOT AN ARROW INTO THE AIR, but this is one of the episodes I don't have on tape and I haven't seen it in years. I believe a rocketship named The Arrow malfunctions after launch and crash lands on some barren planet. With little in the way of water and survival supplies left, the crew commences killing each other. Just before the second to last crewmember dies, he crawls to the top of a hill and scratches a message in the sand. This is finally discovered by the last crewmember left alive to mean electrical wires - the ship really crashed landed on earth in an Arizona desert. An Invader From the Episode THE INVADERS. Here's a real Zone classic. Agnes Moorhead (another Bewitched star) is an older woman alone in her bleak farmhouse. She hears strange noises coming from the roof, so she goes to investigate. There she spots a flying saucer and soon two tiny, pudgy aliens emerge who only make/speak in mechanical babbling noises. The aliens begin terrorizing her in her house with their tiny ray guns (which causes her skin to blister horribly). One of them even manages to cut into her hand with one of the woman's own kitchen knives. She finally bashes one of them to death and throws it into a box that she finally tosses into her raging fireplace. Grabbing an axe, she pursues the other one back to the spaceship. As she begins chopping the spaceship to pieces, we hear a message being broadcast in English from the creature inside warning its home planet not send any more ships to this world because a race of giants lives here. As the ship is further destroyed by blows from the axe, the camera zooms in on the ship revealing the words "U. S. Air Force" - the ship is really from earth and the invaders are actually humans in spacesuits! One of the neatest things about this episode is that there are some extremely subtle clues as to the ending sprinkled throughout: normal everyday objects don't look quite right (but they don't look so strange that they arouse initial suspicions), and the woman never speaks (she just makes grunts and strange sounds when searching for the aliens, in pain, or swinging the axe). This episode bears many repeat viewings - it's brilliantly done. It's quite appropriate that these little guys get involved in many aspects of the game including delivering extra balls, winding the clock, etc. as they are, after all, inquisitive by nature and enjoy pinball very much. The Pyramid with the Eye This was another item that did not appear in any episode. It turns out that this was something neat-looking that artist John Youssi threw in on the cabinet artwork. Pat Lawlor thought it was pretty cool and this lead directly to its appearance on the powerfield as well. My original conjecture was that it represented GREED (being from the back of the U. S. dollar bill) and that it usually popped up on the game in conjunction with that theme (and greed was certainly a theme which occurred frequently in TZ episodes). Large Wooden Spoon and Curved Knives The scale of this one fooled me, I must admit, and I had to ask someone which episode they were from. He said it's the utensils used by Agnes Moorhead to go after the pesky aliens in THE INVADERS (see above). Once he told me that, it made sense; I guess I was deceived by the paradox of scale employed by artist John Youssi. Since the invaders are really human, they should in theory be about the same size as Rod Serling since many of the objects on the backglass are scaled to Rod as the human yardstick. But this still doesn't quite explain the utensils, which are clearly large enough to slice, dice, and batter someone of Rod's size in the picture, making the invaders and their flying saucer the victims of severe downsizing. I'm not complaining, mind you - I should have been evaluating each object independent of relative scale. It's kind of neat that I was tripped up by such an obvious one. Maple Street Sign From the episode THE MONSTERS ARE DUE ON MAPLE STREET, another Zone classic. A strange sound is heard flying overhead one evening on Maple Street, U.S.A. and, shortly thereafter, the residents notice that there's no electrical power whatsoever. No phones, no lights, nothing. Even battery operated stuff doesn't work, which means they can't start their cars to go for help. As the neighbors begin getting concerned, little Tommy relates a story from a comic book he once read of how invading aliens usually send a team to the planet they intend to conquer several years in advance - the aliens assume human form and take up residence, gathering intelligence for the armada to come. Pretty soon everyone's trying to figure out who the aliens are among them. Despite the best efforts of Claude Akins (in his pre-Sheriff Lobo days) as the neighbor with the most common sense trying to keep the peace, paranoia soon reigns supreme. The petty quirks and idiosyncrasies which all neighbors have are suddenly thrust under the microscope (one guy has trouble sleeping so he's often spotted outside in the early morning hours gazing at the stars - "what are you looking at in the sky?"; Claude has a ham radio in his basement - "sending messages to them aliens?", etc.). Compounding the problem is that several unexplainable coincidences occur during all of this (one guy's car suddenly starts itself when no one's near it and then stops a few seconds later, the lights suddenly go on just in one other guy's house, etc). Eventually, one guy even shoots and kills one of his neighbors because he thinks it's one of them monsters they've been expecting coming down the street (they'd asked him to walk over to the next neighborhood to see if the power was on over there). They finally all freak out and start running around, throwing rocks, and shooting each other in a frantic riot. As the camera pulls back, we're looking down on Maple Street from a remote hillside. There stands a couple of aliens outside of their spaceship. All this time it has been them controlling the power on Maple Street. They note that except for very minor details, that this is the way all humans react when confronted with such a strange situation (they've apparently conducted similar experiments elsewhere on earth). When they do invade, they plan to let the humans destroy themselves. This is most likely the inspiration for the Town Square Madness round on the game as well. Casey's Uniform and Cap From the episode THE MIGHTY CASEY. Jack Warden is saddled with the job of coaching the losingest team in baseball, the Cleveland Indians (OK, OK - they were renamed the Zephyrs and relocated to Hoboken for the show). An inventor presents the coach with Casey, a robot who can pitch a baseball with missile-like speed and accuracy. The team begins doing very well, but when Casey gets hit in the noggin with one of his own pitches compliments of an opposing player's bat, he's hospitalized. When the doctor examines him, he finds that Casey has no pulse! (they almost get away with the scam, but the doc catches on just before leaving). Immediately, the Baseball Commissioner rules that Casey cannot play because the rules say that a team is made up of nine men and Casey's not a man because he has no heart. The inventor asks the Commissioner if Casey would be eligible again if he could install a heart. The Commissioner says yes - and a few days later Casey's back in the lineup after being heart-certified (the doc just listens to Casey's chest, hears the appropriate thumping sounds and says he's legit now - Casey could have just swallowed a mechanical alarm clock to have passed that test). But the heart is soon discovered to be all too real: his Patriot Missile precision pitching is quickly found to have degenerated into SCUD duds during his first game back. The Zephyrs lose it big time. When asked what happened, Casey replies that he just couldn't bring himself to strike out those batters because he figured it would hurt their feelings. At the end of the episode, the inventor takes Casey away (presumably to live a more human-like life now), but he leaves Casey's blueprints with the coach. After a few moments of thought, the coach gets an inspiration and hurriedly chases after the inventor. Rod's closing narration indicates that the Zephyrs were moved to the west coast a few years later where they wound up winning several pennants, primarily because of their excellent pitching staff. Perhaps the coach made up a few more and had them each swallow an alarm clock. Cannon I think this is from one of the Civil War episodes: either STILL VALLEY, THE PASSERBY, or THE 7TH IS MADE UP OF PHANTOMS. In STILL VALLEY, a Confederate soldier comes across a town filled with Union soldiers frozen in their tracks - alive, but motionless. He runs across an old man who's used a book of witchcraft to cast this spell on them. After the old man proves it to him (by casting the spell on him temporarily), the old man gives the book of witchcraft to the Confederate soldier who takes it back to camp. He plans to use it to freeze the entire Union Army. But when he begins reading the spell, he notices that he has to invoke the name of Satan. He decides that if the Confederacy's cause is to die, he'd rather see it die on hallowed ground - and pitches the book of witchcraft onto the campfire. In THE PASSERBY, a number of people are found wandering down a road in the aftermath of the Civil War. A confederate soldier is confronted by a woman who believes her husband is dead. When a blinded Union soldier stops to rest, she shoots him at close range with rifle - and it has no effect. They begin to suspect that everyone walking the road is dead. Eventually, her husband shows up and says it's true. She refuses to believe it, but her husband says he must continue down the road. Pretty soon she sees the last man coming down the road is Abraham Lincoln - and thus convinced, runs after her husband. Didn't an episode of M*A*S*H borrow this idea for one of its episodes (at least in part)? In THE 7TH IS MADE UP OF PHANTOMS, a couple of soldiers from a platoon engaged in wargames near the site of Little Big Horn eventually join the real battle of Little Big Horn (this one's just a sketchy memory, sorry). A Pile of Books
An unnamed book by ROD SERLING A Monster's Head (with tag attached reading 3/62) From the episode THE FUGITIVE. A grandfatherly gentleman who can shape shift is being pursued by two other men. He tells a young girl who wears a leg brace that he's actually a fugitive from outer space. The old man heals the little girl's leg, but his pursuers capture the little girl and make her deathly ill. The old man returns and makes her well again. It becomes clear that the old man is not a fugitive from the law, but rather the benevolent ruler of an alien world - his two pursuers are actually his subjects dispatched to convince him to come back. The little girl wants to go too, but the two men won't let her. When the old man is permitted a few seconds alone with the little girl to say goodbye, the two men are suddenly confronted by two little girls who are identical in every respect. Since they can't tell them apart, they agree to take both with them. This also allows the girl to permanently escape from her domineering stepmother she lives with. The monster head was one of the characters the old man transformed into and the tag indicates that the head was used (that the episode was originally aired) in March of 1962. King Nine Flight Jacket (with tag attached reading 4/62) From the episode KING NINE WILL NOT RETURN. The King Nine, a World War II bomber gets hit while on a bombing run and crash lands in the north African desert. One of the officers regains consciousness and begins looking around for the rest of his crew. He comes across one of their graves, sees mirages of his men, and sees strange aircraft making weird sounds flying overhead: jets! He finally collapses from exhaustion and wakes up in a hospital bed in modern times. Many years before it seems he got sick and was not able to make King Nine's last flight as he was scheduled to. He's had a bad guilt complex about it ever since he heard about it being shot down. At least he was only hallucinating about being there. But that doesn't explain where all the sand came from which he finds in his shoes! The date on the tag is mysterious, since the episode was originally aired in September of 1960. Anyone know the significance of this date? The Box addressed to Jodi with the thing tagged "Simon" Again from UNCLE SIMON. The thing inside seems to be one of Robby the Robot's hands. I don't know who Jodi is as there was no Jodi in the episode. Another dedication, perhaps. Spiral Calendar with Knife Impaled into February 12, 1964 I'm pretty certain that this is the date the series was officially canceled by CBS, although the remaining unseen episodes continued to be shown until the season concluded that May or June. Treasure Map I've drawn a blank here - I can't place this one. I'm fresh out of theories, too. Anyone? Picture of Airplane and Dinosaurs From the episode ODYSSEY OF FLIGHT 33. Flight 33 enroute to New York from London catches a tail wind of mammoth velocity. It pushes the plane through a shock wave. When the plane descends, they see New York (or at least what will be New York) as a wilderness area with dinosaurs roaming about! They have somehow broken through a time barrier. They figure their only hope is to pick up that tail wind again. They do, but when they raise the tower in New York, the controller claims he doesn't know what radar is. Further inspection of the landscape reveals that the 1939 World's Fair is in progress - they haven't come back far enough in time. As the episode closes, the plane is running out of fuel and is making a final attempt to catch that tail wind. Picture of Pyramid-like things on a Landscape From one of the opening credits sequences (and LITZ). Note of Dedication To D.A.D. from L.E.D. We all know who L.E.D. is (right? a major TZ software engineer). Isn't it cool that D.A.D. turns out to be his father's initials? But don't think for a second that this "initials as apropos acronyms" thing is widespread. My initials are B.A.R. and I couldn't spot any meaning whatsoever in them. Matter of fact, I was just discussing that very same issue with my sister Victoria Catherine Rudolph (the movie rental store manager) last night when we dropped by a local pub at my insistence. We both concluded that there's just no way that your initials can have any influence on the direction of your life at birth. Autographed Picture of Casey Again from THE MIGHTY CASEY. This episode must have been another one of their favorites. The Swords and the Calvary 7 Flag Also from THE 7TH IS MADE OF PHANTOMS (see above). It's also possible that one of these swords is actually from THE ENCOUNTER. In this episode, Neville Brand (in real life a highly decorated World War II veteran) and George Takei (in his pre-Lt. Sulu/Federation days) star as two people who must deal with feelings left over from WWII. Takei is a gardener who drops in on Brand, who's cleaning his attic. Brand's character is a bigot; Takei's is a Japanese-American. Brand comes across a sword which he took from a Japanese officer he killed in the war. Takei reads the inscription: "the sword will avenge me". Whenever Takei holds the sword, he gets the urge to kill Brand! After several close calls, they both decide they'd better leave the attic. But the door (which has no lock) is inexplicably jammed - they are trapped. Further dialogue between the two reveals that Brand's character didn't take the sword from a dead soldier - he killed the Japanese soldier after he had surrendered to him! We also learn that Takei's character's father was a traitor who guided the Japanese attack force into Pearl Harbor. Brand tells Takei that he has nothing left to live for - he wants Takei to kill him (he's lost his job, etc. recently). A scuffle ensues, with Brand accidentally falling on the sword and dying. Takei picks up the sword, which causes him to yell "Banzai!" and leap out the attic window to his death as well. The episode concludes with the door gliding silently open. I think this episode was only screened once. It did stir up quite a controversy (there were lots of anti-Japanese slurs made by Brand's character, and there is conclusive proof that there was NO traitor at Pearl Harbor, for example). Three Strange-Looking Masks From the episode THE MASKS. A bitter, rich, elderly gentleman confined to a wheelchair senses that he's about to pass away. He asks that his relatives (and future heirs) remain with him until he dies. As this takes place during Mardi Gras time in New Orleans, the old man distributes a mask to each of the four of them (so why only 3 on the backglass?). The masks are hideous things, made by a Cajun. Each mask stands for the face of an inner-self (cruelty, vanity, etc.). The old man makes each one of his heirs wear the appropriate mask (in his opinion) until midnight. Failure to do so will result in disinheritance. The old man dons a skull (death's head) mask for himself. The heirs think this is all silly and repeatedly ask for an end to this game so they can take off their masks, but the old man refuses. When midnight rolls around, the old man is discovered to have died. The heirs then remove their masks - and find that their own faces have been permanently deformed into the grotesqueness of the mask they were wearing! The Slot Machine From the episode THE FEVER. Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Gibbs win a trip to Las Vegas after Mrs. Gibbs enters a jingle-writing contest. She has a "let's have a little fun gambling" attitude, but her husband wants no part of it - he won't even let her plunk a few small coins into a slot machine. As events unfold, a drunk staggers by and gives Mr. Gibbs a silver dollar and ultimately forces him to play it in a machine over Gibbs' protests. Gibbs pulls the handle and wins twenty more silver dollars. As he's taking them back to his room, he thinks he hears someone calling him (saying his name "Franklin!" in a raspy voice) but he dismisses this. Back in the room, he tells his wife that no good can come of money won in this evil game, so he tells her he's going to take it back downstairs and play it until he loses it all. What an understatement. Every time he thinks about stopping, he finds it's the slot machine calling his name - and it keeps taunting him to play. His wife discovers him downstairs, after having cashed many personal checks with nothing to show for it. He inserts his last silver dollar, hoping that the "long overdue" payoff will drop when he pulls the handle. Instead, the machine jams, refusing to play anymore. Gibbs goes ballistic, finally knocking the machine over. Defeated, he returns to his room where he begins hallucinating that the slot machine is after him. He hears it repeatedly calling "Franklin! FRANKLIN!!!". He opens the door and sees it standing there. His wife sees nothing. Franklin winds up jumping out the window to his death, driven mad by the machine. As the episode closes, a single silver dollar rolls up beside him and spins to a stop – the machine is now outside apparently satisfied enough to return Franklin's last dollar. Rifle (hanging directly above Rod in the doorway) Could be from any of the Civil War episodes mentioned above or it might also be Cliff Robertson's rifle from the episode A HUNDRED YARDS OVER THE RIM. Robertson stars as a pioneer heading west in the late 1840's-1850's. His family members are sick and desperately in need of medical help. He goes over the top of a hill and encounters modern highway. Turning around, his wagons and his family have vanished. After being charged by a monster (a truck), he falls to the ground and his rifle accidentally goes off, firing into his arm. He wanders into a diner where the owners treat his arm and give him some penicillin pills. Robertson eventually spies a calendar dated 1961. He learns from an encyclopedia that his son is destined to grow up to be a famous doctor. The owners become convinced that Robertson is a nut case and they call the sheriff to take him away. But Robertson escapes, crosses back over the hill into his own time where he uses the pills to treat his family. In his hurry to depart, he left his rifle behind in 1961 (pardon the time paradox) and it now looks like an aged antique! Right Side of Curio Shop E=MC^2 From the opening credits, courtesy of a Mr. Einstein. In the opening credits of one season, it rolled across the screen when Rod got to the "... a dimension of mind ..." part of his narrative. A Boxing Card Again from STEEL or THE BIG TALL WISH. Daily Times with Headline "Aliens Land Today" From the episode TO SERVE MAN. This is perhaps *THE* all-time classic episode of the Twilight Zone. The synopsis of this episode is postponed briefly as there's a more appropriate tie-in of it coming up shortly. Santa Claus' Cap From the Episode NIGHT OF THE MEEK. Art Carney (Ed Norton, from the old Honeymooners show with Jackie Gleason) stars as a department store Santa Claus who shows up for work drunk on Christmas Eve and is promptly fired. Stumbling about in an alley (still dressed in his ragged Santa suit), he comes across a magic sack which can produce any gift asked for. He quickly goes about giving away presents to any and all, until he runs into a policeman. The cop assumes that all of the gifts must be stolen, so he runs Carney's Santa Claus in to the police station. Waiting for him at the station is Carney's old boss, who figures the gifts were stolen from the department store. His old boss begins removing items from the bag rapid-fire, without actually looking at them, as "evidence" of the crime. But what he's really getting out of the bag is trash! Old tins cans, etc. He wakes up when he pulls a scrawny cat from the bag!! When Carney explains that the bag is magic, his old boss challenges him to produce a bottle of rare-vintage brandy. The bag provides it! Carney is freed and resumes passing out presents to everyone he can. But at midnight, the bag stops working. A street bum points out to Carney that he didn't take a present for himself. Carney replies that he only wishes that he could do this every year. Rounding a corner into an alley, he comes across an elf, a sleigh, and some reindeer – which are ready to take him to the North Pole! A very Merry Christmas for him indeed!!! A Helmet from a Spacesuit This looks like the one used in THE PARALLEL (and possibly some others). Steve Forrest (was S.W.A.T. the last show he did?) is a Major in the [early 1960's] U.S. space program. While in his space capsule orbiting the earth, he disappears from all radar screens. He wakes up in a hospital only to find that a number of things he clearly remembers are no longer the same. In fact, he's now a Colonel and no one can understand why he's claiming someone named John Kennedy is President of the United States! After skimming a set of encyclopedias, he determines that he's in a parallel universe. Examination of the space capsule reveals that it's not the one the local scientists recall sending up (close, but not the same). When Forrest bolts toward the capsule, he finds himself back in orbit, ready to splash down. Once back in the "real" world, Forrest relates his story. This is considered a delusion by his superiors (even though was out of radar contact for several hours). As the episode ends, they discover that an unidentified space craft was picked up on radar for about a minute, along with a message from a *Colonel* with Forrest's character's name! An Airplane From the episode THE ARRIVAL. An airplane lands with absolutely no one on board. An FAA (U.S. Federal Aviation Administration) investigator who supposedly has a perfect investigative record is called in. The passenger list sounds familiar to him, but he can't recall from where. His associates don't agree on any of the plane's details: call letters, colors, etc. are all debated. The investigator convinces himself that the plane is not really there. To prove this, he thrusts his hand into one of its spinning propellers! Suddenly, the plane and his associates vanish. He finds his associates back in the control room, with no memory of the phantom plane. Just then he remembers: the same flight number disappeared many years earlier and it was never found. There was one case he DID NOT solve, and here it is - haunting him. More Books
A.J.Y., L.E.D. Several Packages The packages are perhaps bundles of things/ideas which were used in several episodes. Each one has a name written on the outside. The four packages are addressed to:
Ventriloquist's Dummy named Willy with Road Trunk and Costumes This one's from the episode THE DUMMY (OK, I know: vents call them "figures", but what kind of a title would that have been?). Cliff Robertson's the drunken vent who thinks his figure is alive and a bit on the evil side. He obtains another figure (which doesn't give him the willies, so to speak) and when their act is a hit, Cliff locks Willy in his trunk, probably forever. But after hearing Willy's voice and seeing what appears to be his shadow on the wall, Cliff unlocks the trunk and smashes the figure inside to pieces. He realizes too late that he's just destroyed the NEW figure, not Willy. Willy lets out a spine-chilling laugh. The next time we see their act, Willy is now the human ventriloquist and Cliff has transformed into the dummy! It is Willy who is holding the now infamous button/joystick with coiled cord thing which made previous appearances on Lawlor's other backglasses like WHIRLWIND and FUNHOUSE. It looks more like a button than a joystick to me. Was Lawlor ever a contestant on Jeopardy? At the 1993 Pinball Show in Arizona, a member of the audience asked him point-blank what this thing was and what it symbolized. He wouldn't say anything other than that we can expect to see it again. It's definitely a Williams/Bally in-joke of some sort. Lawlor did begin his career as a video game designer, so it could be homage to that as well. A Bottle of Professor Daemon's Love Potion From the episode THE CHASER. A man is obsessed with winning the love of a young lady who hardly notices him. He buys a love potion from a curious "professor" named A. Daemon. When he slips her the potion, it works to the extreme. After they've been married for a few months, the man can't wait to get away from her - she's giving him too much attention! He resolves to kill her by buying another potion from the professor, one that leaves no traces. But just as he's about to give it to her in a drink, she reveals that she's pregnant - and he drops the glass. The professor, who's been sitting outside on their patio promptly vanishes after blowing a heart-shaped smoke ring. I don't know about you, but if I ran across some weirdo named A. Daemon, I would think twice about buying *anything* from him. I also make it a rule to avoid wandering into spooky old houses when people suddenly begin vanishing from town. I'm not paranoid (REALLY - I'm NOT!!!), just cautious. A Player Piano From the episode A PIANO IN THE HOUSE. A theater critic visits an antique store looking for a player piano to give to his wife as a birthday present. When the normally sour clerk demonstrates it, he becomes wonderfully sentimental. The instant the music stops, he goes back to being his old self. The critic buys it and has it delivered. As he tries various music rolls in the piano, he discovers that his butler is actually happy and carefree behind his serious appearance, that his wife really doesn't like him, and that a playwright has had an affair with his wife. He decides to use the piano on the rest of the party guests later that night. A portly woman is revealed to have dreams of being a beautiful girl and a delicate snowflake. She is utterly humiliated by this, but the critic is enjoying his power over the partygoers. He tells them that he plans to conjure up a devil, and hands his wife a roll to put on the piano while he refreshes his drink. But she switches the rolls and the resulting piece causes the critic to reveal *his* innermost self. He's discovered to be nothing more than a spoiled brat who can't stand to see other people get more attention than himself. His guests walk out on him, including his wife who leaves with the playwright. He begins demolishing the place in a tantrum as the episode closes. A Pair of Boxing Gloves Again from STEEL or THE BIG TALL WISH. A Tyrannosaurus Rex Hmmm ... ODYSSEY OF FLIGHT 33 is the most closely related episode I can remember, but I don't recall a Tyrannosaurus Rex in that episode (a Brachiosaurus, yes - but not a Tyrannosaurus Rex). Seems that T-Rex's are popping up on pingames everywhere as of late for one reason or another. And I know for a fact that it's not BARNEY - Barney's purple and has had significant cosmetic dental work. Piece of Paper Charred Around the Edges With the Words "Greetings to the People of Earth - We Come in Peace - We Bring You This Gift - The Following Chemical Formula is a Vaccine Against All Forms of Cancer". From the episode THE GIFT. An alien ship crashes outside of a Mexican village. After being shot by a policeman, a friendly doctor pulls a couple of bullets from the alien. While recovering, the alien hands little Pedro a gift which he instructs Pedro to keep until later. The army eventually barges in and when the alien tells Pedro to show the gift to them, they take it from him and set it on fire - and shoot the alien. The doctor fetches the remainder of the "gift" from the ashes. When he reads it, only the words written above remain. The Camera From the episode A MOST UNUSUAL CAMERA. A couple of thieves find out that one of the pieces of "junk" they've stolen on their most recent heist is a camera which takes instant pictures. The neat thing is that the photos reveal the same scene exactly as it will appear five minutes into the future. They decide to take the camera to the racetrack where the thieves take a picture of the toteboard before a race. Sure enough, it reveals the results of the race before it begins. The thieves bet on the last few races this way and wind up with a lot of cash. When they get back to their hotel room, a waiter delivering room service points out that the inscription on the side of the camera says "only ten to an owner". The waiter leaves and the crooks argue over how to use the remaining pictures (I think there's only two left at this point). During the argument, the shutter button is accidentally pressed, wasting another shot (it does reveal that the argument is going to get more heated). Sure enough, the two male crooks get into a punching match and eventually tumble off the balcony to their deaths. This leaves the female crook alone with the loot. She uses the last picture to take a shot of her former partners' bodies. As she begins collecting all of the money for herself, the waiter bursts in and announces that he knows that the guests in this room are crooks. He tries to take the money for himself. When we see the last photo developed, it shows MORE than two bodies on the ground. The female thief rushes to the window, tripping on an extension cord and falling out. The waiter glances again at the photo: it shows FOUR bodies. As the episode closes, the screen is filled with a close-up of the camera - and we hear the waiter scream and fall out the window too. This obviously explains why the camera in the game tells us what award is coming next and why they cycle, rather than appearing randomly. I hope that most players can score better turnaround on these awards than once every five minutes, however. Female Robot Head, sans a Face From the episode THE LONELY. Jack Warden, in one of the earliest aired episodes of the series, is a criminal from the future who has been sentenced to solitary confinement for fifty years on a penal asteroid (he has the whole barren asteroid to himself). The captain of a passing freighter, who sympathizes with the criminal's plight, leaves him a box containing a female robot named Alicia. Warden doesn't take to her at first, but soon he grows very fond of her, and eventually falls in love with her. After a few months go by, the captain of the freighter returns bearing good news: Warden's been pardoned and is free to leave. However, weight restrictions do not permit him to bring Alicia with him. Warden doesn't want to leave her, because he feels that she really is a woman. The captain takes out a gun and blows Alicia's face off, pointing out to Warden that all he's leaving behind is loneliness. Another Invader and their Flying Saucer Again from THE INVADERS. Note that the flying saucer is conveniently turned so as not to reveal the words "U.S. Air Force" (they're written on the top side of the saucer which must be hidden behind the domed part of it). ON THE CABINET AND AROUND THE DOT MATRIX DISPLAY The Pyramid with Eye, E=MC^2, the Featureless Mannequin/Artists Model, the words "TWILIGHT ZONE", the Door, the Eye, and the Gumball Machine All of these (except for the first and the last) are from opening credits from one season or another. The pyramid and the gumball machine were explained previously. ON THE PLAYFIELD Several descriptions of the playfield have appeared in previous postings and in the rules. As such, I'm going to presume that you have a basic feel for the playfield's layout so that if I say something like "on the plastic beneath the clock" you'll know that this is in the upper-right quadrant of the playfield, and that if I try to sneak something like "just to the left of the powerfield" by you, you'll know that I'm really outside the cabinet. I will also not repeat the names of episodes in conjunction with playfield features which have already been discussed. There are a few new ones which crop up, though. The Gumball Machine Again, it's a Lawlor original. There is another quarter standing on its edge on one of the plastics toward the lower part. The Powerfield Has the pyramid with the eye as added by artist John Youssi. Town Square In the jet bumper area. The center piece says "1959 HILLSIDE 1959". Also note that Santa Claus is running through the square. 1959 was the year in which The Twilight Zone debuted. The aliens are observing the madness in town square from a nearby hillside, but I'm not certain if this is the specific reference. Anyone know the significance of HILLSIDE here for sure or have another theory? Spirals Those concentric circles appear again around the magnets in the spiral loop and around the "shoot again" light (and even the credit button which I forgot to mention on the cabinet). More "mad" people appear in the spiral loop as well. Just inside the right spiral entrance, we see Willy the ventriloquist's dummy holding the gumball machine (and Willy has a characteristic evil grin). At the right spiral entrance is Mr. Henry Bemis, wearing his broken glasses. Robby the Robot Standing at the entrance to the left (robot) ramp. Rod Serling Standing at the entrance to the right (Powerfield) ramp. The Clock A real "working" analog clock from the opening credits, complete with Zodiac symbols. The playfield plastic beneath the clock has items from two episodes. First, there are a couple of "buttons" with the letters "CSA" and "USA" on them, along with a patch showing some sort of military rank in stripes. These are from the episode THE PASSERBY ("CSA" is "Confederate States of America"). The other item is from an episode not detailed on the backglass: it's a hand showing part of a wrist which is clearly mechanical inside (wires exposed under the "skin"). This is from the episode IN HIS IMAGE. I only have vague recollections of this episode, but suffice to say that someone who thought he was a man is actually a malfunctioning robot who is finally deactivated by his creator (who made the robot in his image). The malfunctioning robot is given to violent/murderous fits (he kills one woman early in the episode and we become worried that he might attack another one later on). The Player Piano Located beneath the clock. The Camera Near the upper left mini-flipper. The Hitchhiker From the episode THE HITCH-HIKER. A young woman driving across the country on vacation is terrified to see the same hitchhiker almost everywhere as she goes down the road. She picks up a sailor as a traveling companion when she becomes scared. She sees the hitchhiker again and tries to run him over. The sailor, who didn't see any hitchhiker, thinks she's crazy and abandons her. When she calls home, she finds out her mother has suffered a nervous breakdown because her daughter was killed in a car accident a few days earlier. It was her - she had a blowout and apparently didn't survive after all. When she returns to her car, the hitchhiker - who she now knows is "Mr. Death" - is waiting for her in the back seat. The Slot Machine Located at the lower right tunnel. The playfield plastic above the entrance to the slot machine has another pair of broken spectacles and a copy of the book David Copperfield, which Mr. Bemis was reading prior to the end of civilization. This plastic also shows a broken stopwatch from the episode A KIND OF STOPWATCH. A talkative man who has just lost his job goes into a bar to have a drink and forget. There he commiserates with a fellow who thanks him by handing him a very special stopwatch: when the button is pressed, it freezes everyone except the watch's owner. Pressing the button again unfreezes time and no one else is any the wiser. Of course when he tries to demonstrate it to his friends, he cannot because they are instantly frozen too. His frustration soon passes when he decides he'll just freeze everybody while he makes a sizable withdrawal from a local bank vault. On the way out of the vault, he drops the stopwatch; and with the watch thus shattered, he's trapped in a world of frozen people with nobody to talk to. The plot points are very similar to TIME ENOUGH AT LAST, so it's doubly interesting that the artists chose to put items from both of these episodes in such close proximity. The Rocket On the playfield in front of the kicker. The Door In the center of the playfield, with panels indicating the appropriate door prizes. The Slingshot Plastics The left plastic shows the featureless mannequin/artists model,the right plastic shows yet another invader. Flipper Return Lane Plastics The plastics on both left and right side leading to the lower flippers show the rooftops of a residential area, each with an antenna or a satellite dish, presumably tuned into the Twilight Zone. Whew!!! That's the best I could do. As I said, I welcome any corrections or additions to what I've gone over above. I'm certain I've missed a few things given all of the work and detail which the folks at Bally have obviously put into this game (I know I've omitted several of the appropriate dot-matrix animations). Note however that I purposely did not include things which appear on the game that are clearly NOT tie-ins to episodes or the Twilight Zone experience. It's this kind of depth in a licensed game that makes it even more attractive IMHO, no matter which manufacturer it's from. I hope this list gives some of the non-Zoners among you an even deeper appreciation of the game, its license, and the integration of the two.
Brian A. Rudolph |
|
| back to Rule Sheets |
