Richard Matheson and his Magic Touch
Richard Matheson is, for some inexplicable reason, not a household name, but considering everything he is responsible for, he Should be. Born in 1926 in New Jersey to Norwegian parents he started writing early and was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1950. He continued writing stories with sci-fi or horror elements and was published numerous times. He was a master of twist-endings, such as can be seen in the many Twilight Zone episodes he wrote, which are all memorable and I would like to mention the top five of my favourites from this Master writer.
By the way, gonna be major spoiler alerts in here, so be aware if you wanna go in fresh.
Nick of Time. This episode starts out with a newly wed couple stranded in a small town when their car breaks down and they enter a little café for some refreshments. When sitting down the husband, played by William (my god) Shatner, spots a little napkin holder which will tell you your future for a nickel and he tries it. He is given 6 answers that kind of makes sense in a row, one including that if they leave the coffee place before 3 o'clock something bad will happen. The husband continues to feed the machine questions, gets more and more convinced it can foretell the future and starts making changes around the answers. Shatner brilliantly portrays the superstitious husband who almost goes mad by believing this machine tells the truth. I not only love this episode because of Matheson's amazing writing and the one and only Shatner but also because I could in reality be the character Shatner plays, I am super superstitious and would probably react in a similar way. And addition to that, as for many Twilight Zone episodes, The ending is amazing, When we see another couple.. not as lucky as the first ones.
The Invaders. Agnes Moorehead plays a lonely woman in a desolate house who one night hears a noise from her attic. She goes up to see what it is and finds a spaceship and two small.. invaders.. She panics and attacks them, however they keep coming back and trying to approach her. The whole episode Moorehead looks for the invaders, attacks them or they attack her and she doesn't say one word. You might think it wouldn't be enough for it to be a great episode, on the contrary. Agnes Moorehead is UNBELIEVABLE as the frightened old woman who desperately tries to get the invaders, she is so intense and strong in her performance it is easy to forget she is acting. The episode also has a spectacular ending.. So when the woman has killed one of the tiny invaders and she goes up to the attic to kill the second one who has retreated in to the ship, she hear a distress call from the little man saying that he has to escape because the inhabitants on this planet are giants and are unbeatable, on the ship we can see U.S. Air Force Space Probe No 1 printed on it, juust after Moorehead smashes it to pieces. It is just SO clever.. and the acting in this episode is, as I've already mentioned, sensational.
Nightmare at 20 000 ft. Ok, Shatner HAPPENS to be in this one as well, can't help he's in all the good ones. A married couple boards a plane to go home after the husband, who suffered from a breakdown, spent some time in a clinic. Shatner plays the husband who in the window seat discovers, after take-off, a furry peculiar monster, climbing on the wing of the plane. Freaked out he tells his wife but when she looks out, the monster is gone. This continues and the monster starts ripping parts out from the wing and the husband now fears for everyones life. The wife becomes more and more worried her husband has suffered from some sort of set back and talks to the personal of the flight who tries to calm his down and they give him sleeping pills. Since no one else than him sees the monster Shatner pretends he is imagining it, and when the people around calms down and let him be he steals a gun and force open the window and tries to shoot the creature. Obviously the have to make an emergency landing and Shatner is taken by force back to a hospital. And when zooming out we can see the wing of the plane severely damaged, like if someone tried to tear it apart… Woo. I So love this episode, and it must be the most famous one as it has been reprised and made fun of in different shows numerous times. Again Shatner is incredible as a panic stricken and frighten husband, helping this classic episode become one of the greatest.
Night Call. This is one of those episodes which are so good I just want the whole world to see it and love it, Now. Lovely Gladys Cooper plays an old women living a quiet life confined to her room with a only a home carer as company, one day her phone starts ringing with no one at the other end. At first she shrugs it off as a prank call or a faulty phone line, but when the calls continues and she can hear a voice in the distance, she gets really frightened and yells to it to leave her alone. She contacts the phone company, explaining about the calls and the operator investigates the location of the alleged call tracing it to an old cemetery.. The home carer tries to calm her down and doesn't really believe her but supports her and takes her out to the location to try to make some sense out of the situation. At arrival they see a loose phone line, hanging down on a gravestone, belonging to... her late husband. When home again, the woman, now in the end, understands that it is her husband trying to call her from beyond the grave, she hopefully waits by the phone. Finally the phone rings.. she picks up with tears in her eyes and begs him to say something..He replies "you told me to leave you alone, I always do as you say.." and hangs up. The woman realise what she has done and breaks down. First of all, Gladys Cooper was a great actress in every way, so just thinking of this episode gives me chills. Such a scary but at the same time beautiful episode which will always be in the top for me.
The Last one of my five favourite Matheson episodes is
Third from the Sun. This episode is one of the first episodes I put on my favourite Twilight Zone list. It starts with a man, nervously smoking a cigarette talking to a strange man about a bomb getting released in a near future that will eliminate the enemy, but will take innocents with it. The man has secretly been, with another man, planning an escape to another planet with their families to save them from the destruction and a safe death. The same night he and the other man tell their families about their plans and and a nightly, hush-hush journey to the shuttle of their choice begins. The strange man, who suspects these two planning an escape, follows and tries to stop them and that story makes this 23 minute long episode without a doubt the most intense and nail biting episode of them all. It also have a twist ending, obviously, where the men, when well off in to space, starts to talk about this new planet they're going to.. a planet with humans as well, a planet called Earth. Ah, so great.
So Matheson created 16 unforgettable episodes of my favourite show of all time so he is a hero in my book. I want to mention other great thing Matheson is responsible for, such as films and another awesome sci-fi tv-show, but since I've already gone on and on about his brilliance I will save that for another post.
