The Shelter (The Twilight Zone)

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The Twilight Zone original series Season three (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1961 – Summer 1962 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: Two The Arrival The Shelter The Passersby A Game of Pool The Mirror The Grave It's a Good Life Deaths-Head Revisited The Midnight Sun Still Valley The Jungle Once Upon a Time Five Characters in Search of an Exit A Quality of Mercy Nothing in the Dark One More Pallbearer Dead Man's Shoes The Hunt Showdown With Rance McGrew Kick the Can A Piano in the House The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank To Serve Man The Fugitive Little Girl Lost Person or Persons Unknown The Little People Four O'Clock Hocus-Pocus and Frisby The Trade-Ins The Gift The Dummy Young Man's Fancy I Sing the Body Electric Cavender Is Coming The Changing of the Guard

“The Shelter” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 68
Season: 3
Original air date: September 29, 1961
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Lamont Johnson
Producer: Buck Houghton
Director of photography: George T. Clemens
Music: uncredited

[edit] Cast

Dr. Stockton: Larry Gates
Jerry Harlowe: Jack Albertson
Henderson: Sandy Kenyon
Marty Weiss: Joseph Bernard

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The local neighborhood of a typical suburban community is having a small dinner to honor the local Dr. Stockton at his house. Everybody is especially friendly and mention is made of his late night work on a fallout shelter that he has built in the basement. A scary radio announcement is made that unidentified objects have been detected heading for the United States. Everybody knows what it means: nuclear attack. The doctor locks himself and his family into the shelter. The neighborhood becomes hysterical and wants to occupy the shelter. All the friendliness disappears and is replaced with hate. The last scene shows the once-friendly neighbors breaking down the door to the shelter with a battering ram. Just then, the radio announces that the objects have been identified as harmless satellites. Rod Serling makes the final statement. “For civilization to survive, man must remain civilized.”

[edit] Trivia

Aired one year and 17 days before the Cuban Missile Crisis.

One of only a few episodes in the series which contain no supernatural or science-fiction elements. Other such episodes include “Where Is Everybody?”, “The Silence” and “The Jeopardy Room”.

The plot is reused in The Simpsons episode "Bart's Comet", Ned Flanders builds a bomb shelter, and due to his meek nature cannot refuse anyone in town from entering, until he himself is forced out by the cramped quarters.