The Twilight Zone Season 4
Created by: Rod Serling
Review by Brian M. Sammons
Twilight Zone Season 4 is the fourth complete season to be released on Blu-ray, with an incredibly polished picture and a ton of extra features. That should be all you need to hear before deciding to run out and buy this today. But just in case you’re one of those weirdoes that don’t instantly start drooling at the thought of the Zone, keep reading and I’ll give you all the info you’ll need to start Pavlov Dogging it.
This new Blu-ray set by Image has all 18 episodes from season four. Now admittedly, this season of TZ isn’t the strongest of that show’s run and at just 18 episodes, it isn’t the longest, but just like pizza, even when Twilight Zone isn’t great, it’s still pretty darn good. So why only 18 episodes? Well TZ was used as a midseason replacement for another show that got the axe. Oh and even though there’s only 18 episodes, they were lengthened to an hour long each to fill the timeslot, so that’s sort of like getting 36 episodes, right? Oh and I don’t want to totally dismiss these Zones out of hand as there are some good episodes to be found here, like “Mute” and “Death Ship” both penned by Richard Matheson or the Serling-written “The Thirty-Fathom Grave” that combine the horrors of war and the mystery of the Twilight Zone perfectly. All I’m saying is that there is no “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” or the like to be found here. No, “Nightmare” doesn’t appear until next season.
As for the extras, there’s a ton to choose from. There are brand new audio commentaries for 13 out of the 18 episodes. If that wasn’t enough jabbering, there even more commentaries from the old DVD release. There are interviews with a handful of behind the scenes people. Seven radio dramas are present featuring the vocal acting talents of Jason Alexander, Lou Diamond Phillips, Blair Underwood and others. All of the episodes have their soundtracks isolated, just in case you want to listen to the music of the Zone and each has promos for next week’s episode from Mr. Serling himself. There are bloopers, classic commercials, a promo for a famous writers school, and even a pretty funny skit from Saturday Night Live.
This is Twilight Zone, people. If you love horror, sci-fi, mystery, and just plain weird stories then getting this is a no brainer. The Zone has never look or sounded this good or had this many extras. Simply put, this is the best version of this classic TV show ever produced. So stop reading already and go, get it today and you can be scaring yourself silly tonight. Consider this on highly recommended.
