The Twilight Zone Season 2
Created by: Rod Serling
Review by Brian M. Sammons

Here are 29 complete episodes of the original and classic Twilight Zone, on Blu-ray for the first time ever, with tons of goodies and extras. Go get it.

What, you still here? Do you really need more than that to convince you to get this new BD set from Image Entertainment?

Really?

It’s the freaking Twilight Zone!

Some things sell themselves and should be no brainers when deciding if you want them. If someone offers you some pizza, you say, “yes, thank you” because as the old saying goes, even when it’s bad, pizza is still pretty damn good. Well that goes double for The Twilight Zone.

Sure not every episode is a winner but I honestly can’t think of any that are bad. More to the point, there are quite a few great episodes here in Season 2. “The Howling Man,” “The Odyssey of Flight 33,” “Will the Real Martians Please Stand Up?” “The Invaders,” “Nick of Time,” and perhaps the most famous TZ episode ever, “The Eye of the Beholder.” If these titles don’t fill you with fond, shuddery memories then you desperately need to watch more Twilight Zone. Great stuff doesn’t even begin to describe these episodes. If you are a fan of horror, sci-fi, or the weird and you haven’t seen these episodes, then you’re just not really a fan. That’s like saying you like classical music and you’ve never bothered to listen to Mozart.

Ok, so the show is great, that’s a given, but how about this new Blu-ray set, is it worth getting?

Well all the episodes have been digitally buffed and polished to look great. Each comes with their original audio soundtrack or a new remastered one. 15 of the episodes have been done as fully produced radio dramas with sound effects, music, and recognizable actors such as Jane Seymour, Michael York, Jason Alexander, Ed Begley Jr., Fred Willard, and one interesting surprise to this old punk rock fan; Henry Rollins. There are a bunch of vintage audio interviews with the director of photography, the makeup artists, and a few of the actors from various episodes. 25 out of the 29 episodes found here have audio commentaries by a whole slew of authors, actors, writers, and film historians. There is quite the collection of photos and 22 music scores if you just want to jam to the Twilight tunes.

Some of the real neat extras that I really dug was an episode from a completely different TV show called Suspense that was written by Rod Serling called “Nightmare at Ground Zero” that seems liked a “lost” Twilight Zone episode. Then there were the vintage commercials and Mr. Serling hosting a “next week’s show” promos for upcoming episodes. As I wasn’t yet alive when this show originally aired, I got a kick out of the glimpses of TV days gone by.

There are other goodies to be found here, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourself.

Here’s the final praise I can give to this new TZ set: I am the proud owner of the complete Gold Edition of The Twilight Zone on DVD and these new Blu-rays are clear improvements. I eagerly await the next season and the one after that as long as Image Entertainment keeps the quality so high. So even if you already have all the Twilight Zones at home, these BDs are worth upgrading to.

About Brian M. Sammons

Brian M. Sammons has penned stories that have appeared in the anthologies: Arkham Tales, Horrors Beyond, Monstrous, Dead but Dreaming 2, Horror for the Holidays, Deepest, Darkest Eden and others. He has edited the books; Cthulhu Unbound 3, Undead & Unbound, Eldritch Chrome, Edge of Sundown, Steampunk Cthulhu, Dark Rites of Cthulhu, Atomic Age Cthulhu, World War Cthulhu and Flesh Like Smoke. He is also the managing editor of Dark Regions Press’ Weird Fiction line. For more about this guy that neighbors describe as “such a nice, quiet man” you can check out his infrequently updated webpage here: http://brian_sammons.webs.com/ and follow him on Twitter @BrianMSammons.

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