Nothing in the Dark

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

“Nothing in the Dark” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 81
Season: 3
Production code: 3662
Original air date: January 5, 1962
Writer: George Clayton Johnson
Director: Lamont Johnson
Producer: Buck Houghton

[edit] Cast

Wanda Dunn: Gladys Cooper
Harold Beldon: Robert Redford
Contractor: R.G. Armstrong

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Opening Narration

"An old woman living in a nightmare, an old woman who has fought a thousand battles with death and always won. Now she's faced with a grim decision—whether or not to open a door. And in some strange and frightening way she knows that this seemingly ordinary door leads to the Twilight Zone."

A lonely old woman, called Wanda Dunn, will not leave her apartment because she’s afraid Death is waiting for her outside. There is a scuffle outside and Wanda investigates. There is a young man at the door lying on the ground saying he is a policeman (Officer Harold Beldon) and that he has been shot. After much convincing Wanda finally opens the door and brings Harold in. He talks to her about her fear, and she tells him she once saw Death as a man, and has been afraid of him ever since. When there is a knock at the door, Officer Harold convinces her to open it. A contractor barges in and tells Wanda her house is condemned and she must leave. She asks Harold for help but the contractor can't see him. After looking in the mirror and seeing only the bed itself, Wanda realizes Officer Harold is in fact Death coming to claim her. He explains that he set up the elaborate ruse to get her to trust him, so she could understand that Death itself is nothing to be scared of. She is finally convinced to touch him but before she even realizes it, she is beside her dead body and Death explains to her that death is painless. He leads her soul out the door, where we see Wanda as a young woman again through the window.

[edit] Closing Narration

"There was an old woman who lived in a room and, like all of us, was frightened of the dark. But who had discovered in the minute last fragment of her life that there was nothing in the dark that wasn't there when the lights were on. Object lesson for the more frightened among us, in or out of the Twilight Zone."