Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

Best movie of this year hands down!

That was an excellent one.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Twilight Zone: The Movie is both scary and enchanting. Man oh man, did it frighten me. I would not want to eat peanut butter sandwiches while watching that scary bunny. Poor Grandpa Pete. Whatever happened to his mind.Funny eyeballs and monsters that eat airplanes. Old people that play kick the can and become young again. Dan Akyroyd becoming the scary man. It was truly terrifying.

The movie was a sorted affair dealing with four directors, script rewrites, tragedy and high expectations that nearly canceled the entire production. Starting off in the right direction with a bookend of a man picking up a hitch hiker until everything goes terribly wrong. Staying true to the heart of the original series the morality cautions are ever present with the dangers of picking up strangers, racism, staying young at heart, abuse of power and disbelief. The first take would be an instant new classic in the vain of his image if a helicopter hadn't crashed on the set and killed three actors (two children). Legally able to proceed on Landis was force to shorten his segment so the man never leans his passion but receiving punishment for crimes again humanity. Forcing Spielberg to make his second segment more light hearted with a charming remake of Kick the can which has its cute moments yet doesn't work in a horror movie setting.Joe Donte for it back on track with it's a good life, but it's plagued with humor, fake noticeable props and comes out to cartoonist to get the willies. Last and least was the most shocking, scary and best directed segment by George Miller updating terror at 50,000 feet which seems lasted by three duds preceding it. Such a shame as it had potential to spawn off countless sequels instead of direct to TV short living series.While not bad in the least it could've been a grand masterpiece.

I'm cheating. I'm only here to review "It's a Good Life".Some background: I had already read the Jerome Bixby short story that this segment was based on, but I had not seen the original black and white Twilight Zone episode.So, yes. I love this story. The rest of the film is okay (I love the Nightmare at 20 000 feet segment as well, I might do a separate review for that) but this one was my favourite, not least because I realised the story it was based on halfway through.Anyway, it's just full of all sorts of fun things that I love. I love the cartoon house appearing on the TV screen as an exact copy of the real one just as Helen and Anthony walk in. I love the bizarre cartoon furniture and the loopy Joe Dante lighting all the way through the house (he was born to fill this segment of the Twilight Zone movie, I tells ya). I love the creepy cartoons on all the TV sets in all the rooms, just the whole way the sense of something reeeeeally off-kilter building up slowly as the story progresses I think is really well handled. I think it's the most "Twilight-Zoney" of all the four segments.And my favourite bit of all is Nancy Cartwright getting sent into Cartoonland and the way all the awful violence in cartoons suddenly takes on a new meaning. It was very unsettling and very clever. I was quite young when I saw this! So it made a big impression on me.But my favourite things of all are the sentences "I hate this house. I wish it away... I wish it all away..." and "It's not fair! You're supposed to be happy when your wishes come true!" There was something so poignant and oddly profound about that to me, and my little sisters. We taped the movie when it came on TV and watched that segment over and over again, all falling quiet as Helen finally walks into Anthony's world properly, the first person he's ever met who makes any attempt to see him as a normal little boy. The only one who tries to help.We fell in love with the movie. For us this segment of the movie is up there with Poltergiest, ET and Little Shop of Horrors as 80s stories that we still quote constantly, even though we're now in our forties...I like the fact that they changed the ending. I like the fact that he found a way for his wishes to come true and still be happy.And then there's the final shot of Helen and Anthony driving away into the weird, cartoon pink sunrise surrounded by a field of flowers all bursting into bloom spontaneously. How many Twilight Zone stories have happy endings? I think we're allowed one.

The prologue and first segment are both directed by John Landis. While the prologue is one of the best parts of the film due to how great the dialogue is and the ending, the first segment is an uneven and mediocre part of the film, left unfinished due to a tragic accident on set. The plot of the first segment is similar to two episodes of the show, "A Quality of Mercy" and "Deaths-Head Revisited", and though while the segment does have a very Twilight Zone feel to it, it is obviously unfinished, and thus very flawed.When people say Steven Spielberg makes saccharine films that have no real point, his segment of this film must be what they're referring to. Spielberg is among the greatest directors of all time, but his segment is definitely what I feel is his worst directorial work. Scatman Crothers is good in it, but it just seems like Spielberg was half-asleep when directing this. A shame, because originally Spielberg was planning to direct a far more interesting segment involving a nasty kid being pursued by real monsters on Halloween night.The film definitely picks up a great deal with Joe Dante's segment. A new version of the episode "It's a Good Life", it involves a young schoolteacher dropping off a strange young boy off at his house, and is invited to stay for dinner by the boy and his family, but something's a bit off about the family, and it becomes clear something is seriously wrong with the boy. This segment has great and intentionally cartoonish special effects, with many unnerving and creepy moments.The fourth segment is easily the best, and I feel it's actually better than the episode it's based on, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". John Lithgow plays a passenger on an airplane with an extreme fear of flying, and while he at first has it somewhat under control, it soon becomes quite severe when a lightning storm continues to get worse, and worse yet when Lithgow's character seems to be the only one to notice a gremlin tearing apart the wing of the plane. The gremlin causes more damage to the plane, and as the storm gets worse, so does the man's fear. Lithgow's performance is great, and the special effects for the gremlin are excellent, it looks menacing and expressive.Though uneven, this film is definitely good, and should be an enjoyable viewing experience whether or not you're familiar with the TV series.