Spur of the Moment

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The Twilight Zone original series Season five (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1963 – Summer 1964 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: In Praise of Pip Steel Nightmare at 20,000 Feet A Kind of a Stopwatch The Last Night of a Jockey Living Doll The Old Man in the Cave Uncle Simon Probe 7, Over and Out The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain Ninety Years Without Slumbering Ring-a-Ding Girl You Drive The Long Morrow The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross Number 12 Looks Just Like You Black Leather Jackets Night Call From Agnes—With Love Spur of the Moment An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Queen of the Nile What's in the Box The Masks I Am the Night—Color Me Black Sounds and Silences Caesar and Me The Jeopardy Room Stopover in a Quiet Town The Encounter Mr. Garrity and the Graves The Brain Center at Whipple's Come Wander With Me The Fear The Bewitchin' Pool

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

[edit] Details

Episode number: 141
Season: 5
Production code: 2608
Original air date: February 21, 1964
Writer: Richard Matheson
Director: Elliot Silverstein
Producer: Bert Granet
Director of photography: Robert W. Pittack
Music: Rene Garriguenc

[edit] Cast

Anne Henderson: Diana Hyland
Robert Blake: Robert J. Hogan
Mr. Henderson: Philip Ober
Mrs. Henderson: Marsha Hunt
David Mitchell: Roger Davis

[edit] Synopsis

A young woman, Anne, is engaged to be married to a nice young investment broker, whom her father likes, while rebellious David Mitchell is trying to get her to elope with him. One day while horseback riding, she sees a terrifying woman dressed in black on horseback, who begins yelling at her to stop. The woman in black gallops toward her at full speed, and the young woman flees in terror, escaping her pursuer. Just before she is to be wed, the young woman is met by the no-good Mitchell, who convinces her to elope.

Twenty-five years later, Mitchell has driven the ranch his wife's father left her into bankruptcy and her to alcoholism. Anne has a fight with her husband and goes horseback riding, where she sees herself as a young woman on a horse. She now realizes that she was the terrifying woman in black who had frantically chased her younger self in the hope of warning her not to make the mistake of eloping with Mitchell. Anne is her own "ghostly double" from the past seeking to warn herself.

When the older Anne goes horseback riding, she repeatedly sees herself as a youngster and gives chase, but can never catch up, and thus can never change her past.