The Twilight Zone: Where Dreams Come True! (A Land of Shadow and Substance Watches the Twilight Zone S1E4 "16 Millimeter Shrine" and S1E5 "Walking Distance")

So, it turns out that "Dreams come true!" and an emphasis on "Wishes!" aren't just slogans that appear endlessly in Disney parks advertising and shows.  They're also a big, canonical part of the Twilight Zone!  Seriously!

 This pair of episodes ("The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine" and "Walking Distance"), but especially "The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine", have such weirdly direct takes on those concepts that they almost seem to be weirdly not-quite-parodying Disney advertising's uses of the phrases and their implications... all the way back in 1959, long before they probably got overused.  Although, Disney has always laid the schmaltzy sentimentality on thick, so perhaps it already was starting to wear thin after only 4 years of the park being open.

That's not the only Disney thing about "Sixteen Millimeter Shrine" either.  Tower of Terror seems to have taken the aesthetic, era, and even some of the events in this episode!  As far as I can tell, none of the Towers had official Easter Eggs from "The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine", but there's so many similarities that I think it was a definitive influence on the designers.

The plot goes thus: Barbara is a former movie star who obsessively wishes to return to her glory days in the 1930s.  She spends most of her time binge-watching all her old films in her private study, which looks a lot like Tower's libraries.  Her house is a grand gothic mansion, lavishly decorated with carved doors and flower arrangements reminiscent of the 30s and shown to be in sharp contrast with the sleek "present day" (i.e. 1950s) studio offices she visits.  Her housekeeper and friend/agent desperately try to get Barbara to move on from the past, but she refuses.  Finally, one day they discover her missing from her closed-off study, only to look in horror at the still-running movie screen to see it now projecting the mansion they're in--but now with Barbara as her ideal movie self, surrounded by her old characters and friends, happily running off into movie land after waving them goodbye with a scarf.  When they leave the study, her scarf is still where she dropped it on the ground in the supernatural film.

The final narration is a real kicker:

"To the wishes that come true, to the strange, mystic strength of the human animal, who can take a wishful dream and give it a dimension of its own.  To Barbara Jean Trenton, movie queen of another era, who has changed the blank tomb of an empty projection screen into a private world.  It can happen... in the Twilight Zone."

That could damn well near run in front of a Disney fireworks show.

Admit it, you heard this in your head too.

Admittedly, as I watched this episode, the message seemed really muddled.  For most of its runtime, it seems like the moral is going to be about having to move on from the past--but then Barbara gets her wish to re-live her glory days, and it's presented as a mostly happy ending.  Her friend and her housekeeper will probably miss her (and have a lot of explaining to do about her disappearance), but there's not really shown any reason she shouldn't take the opportunity to go to her dream world permanently.  "Mixed message" is putting it mildly, especially given that this episode is followed by, and definitely contradicted by, "Walking Distance".  I'll get to that episode in a second.

Like I mentioned earlier, I think Tower of Terror got a lot of ideas from this episode.  The idealized (or at least glamorous) era is the 1930s, and Barbara's house basically makes it look like she's living in Tower of Terror's lobby.  Furthermore, the guests end up supernaturally inside a television episode, much like Barbara ends up in her old films.  The common interpretation of one of the Tower ghosts as a movie star might also owe a bit to this episode, but that's more of a reach.  I'd actually seen this episode before, back in 2002, but never noticed all the similarities until now.

It also feels really fitting that an almost cloyingly "Disney" episode (what with all that talk about wishes) would lend so much to the literally Disney ride.

Now, as for "Walking Distance"...

I really wasn't excited about rewatching this one.  Not only had I seen it before, but I feel like it's one of the most heavy-handed, over-hyped, over-discussed Twilight Zone episodes of all time.  I honestly considered either skipping it, or not blogging about it.  However, it formed such a shocking contrast with the previous episode, and also might have inspired a scene in Tower of Terror, so I had to still mention it.

In this story, Martin is an advertising executive disgruntled with his life.  Upon taking a drive in the country, he stops to have his car serviced, only to find that the service station is walking distance from his childhood hometown, which he fondly remembers, especially in contrast to his current hectic life.  When he walks there, however, he finds himself literally back in his childhood past.  The episode then proceeds to VERY heavy-handedly hammer home how Martin no longer fits in and cannot stay in the past.  Eventually, Martin's father explains to him that he can't stay in the past, but perhaps he should reevaluate the present and learn to find joys in his own time.

The end narration is:

"Martin Sloan, age 36, vice president in charge of media.  Successful in most things, but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives: trying to go home again.  And also, like all men perhaps, there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and places of his past.  And perhaps, across his mind there'll be flit a little errant wish that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and merry go rounds of his youth, and he'll smile then, too, because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind that are a part of... The Twilight Zone."

Huh, there's those wishes again.  Also, I can't help but think about how Main Street USA was Walt Disney doing his best to bring nostalgic memories of his childhood into physical form, and how in many ways Disney Parks are where anyone can to an extent indulge their childhood memories.  The fact that a Twilight Zone attraction ended up in such a park feels either ironic or incredibly appropriate--maybe both.

The most extreme awkwardness of this episode, though (besides how eye-rollingly heavy handed it is about its message), is that it's directly in contrast with the seeming message of the previous one.  Barbara getting to live in the past is a happy ending, but Martin instead needs to find joy in the present.  Perhaps these are two halves of the same coin... Martin's story shows why Barbara's wish might be the wrong choice.  Or, you know, it's just inconsistent writing.

As for the Tower of Terror connection, I believe the mirror scene from DCA/Paris was inspired by a shot from this episode.  When Martin walks away from the gas station (and into the Twilight Zone), it is shown as a reflection in the mirror.  Likewise, the second generation of Towers used the mirror as the transition into the Twilight Zone.

My takeaway so far has been that a lot of Season 1 ended up in Tower of Terror, despite the pre-show using the season 4-5 opening theme.  I wonder why...

You have just... exited the Twilight Zone? Interpretations of the Ending Sequence of Tower of Terror (and also A Land of Shadow and Substance Watches the Twilight Zone S1E2 and S1E3)

When discussing the Tower of Terror, the story's framing device as a "lost Twilight Zone episode" is one of the more difficult-to-wrangle aspects of the ride and its design.  To start with, there's the issue of how "properly" Twilight Zone the plotline even is, which I wrote an entire post about (I highly recommend you read that post before this one).  Furthermore, here's also the question of what exactly the contents of the episode are, including the outcome of its plot.  For the majority of my time writing for this blog, I already had one rather credible, but also unfortunately dark interpretation.

Namely, that the characters that we (the guests) represent are dead at the end.

Or, at least, some of them.

"A warm welcome back, to those of you who made it, and a friendly word of warning, something you won't find in any guidebook: the next time you check into a deserted hotel on the dark side of Hollywood, make sure you know just what kind of vacancy you're filling, or you may find yourself a permanent resident... of the Twilight Zone"--Florida's ending sequence (emphasis mine).  

(Note that DCA's ending omitted everything before the line starting with "the next time you check into a deserted hotel...")

If one subscribes to the "karmic justice" interpretation of the Twilight Zone, then it makes sense that at least some of "us" are dead, as the punishment for trespassing on the site of a tragedy and taking unwise dares.  It's possible, especially in the shortened DCA finale, that Rod Serling's lines are being delivered to an unseen television audience, presumably over shots of the crashed elevator that contains "our" corpses.

Not only would this interpretation be part of the "karmic justice" story, but it would fit with the general popular perception of the Twilight Zone as a creepy and dark dimension.

However, the last two episodes I watched (S1E2 "One For the Angels" and S1E3 "Mr. Denton on Doomsday") both notably paint the Twilight Zone as a place of significant optimism and mercy, albeit in perhaps-unexpected ways.

In "One for the Angels", a salesman encounters Death (who is surprisingly friendly, if frustratingly bureaucratic) on his intended death day.  He negotiates for more time by insisting he not die before he gets to make one great sales pitch, with the intention of just never making another pitch again in order to escape the deal.  When Death insists on taking another person's life instead to balance the celestial scale, the protagonist instead makes his great pitch to save a neighborhood child's life.  Hilariously, the pitch is not some great argument for the life itself, but instead distracting the personification of Death with sales speeches for ties, souvenirs, and toiletries!  In the end, the protagonist fulfills his bargain, and is informed that he's made it to heaven, peacefully walking off with Death at the end.  It's a solidly happy ending, with the protagonist having fulfilled his life's goals, saving a child's life, and being welcomed into a pleasant afterlife.

This isn't the only episode I remember where Death is a surprisingly nonthreatening person.  In fact, I'd consider "Death is a surprisingly chill dude" to potentially be a theme in the series!  It's a rather optimistic theme, too.

"Mr. Denton on Doomsday" (an episode I'd never seen before, incidentally) is a western.  A straight-up western, about a gunslinger-turned-alcoholic, in a series usually marketed as science fiction or horror.  In truth, The Twilight Zone really can't be categorized as any one genre...but that's beside the point for this post.

Anyways, Mr. Denton was the fastest gun in the West, until he took to drinking to forget the horror of having killed so many people who challenged him to duels.  A possibly-supernatural traveling elixir salesman intervenes in his fate, first by giving him his gun back to get him to stop drinking, and then by giving both Denton and the latest challenger a maybe-magic-maybe-mundane elixir that's supposed to make them both better shots, but instead makes them mutually disarm each other.  However, both their hands are irreparably injured, so neither will be able to duel again.  Denton is free to live his life clean and without the pressure to kill people, as is his challenger.  Once again, a happy ending, with the supernatural providing mercy and giving everyone a better fate than before.

So, anyways, back to Tower's finale.  Sure, the supernatural definitely punished "us" for trespassing, but maybe it didn't punish us as severely as I initially assumed.  Perhaps it shook us up a bit (quite literally), but then let us go, hopefully as better people for the lesson.  We might literally just get to... exit the Twilight Zone.  Maybe, despite what that "for those of you who made it" might imply, just for once...