Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

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“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”
The Twilight Zone episode

William Shatner stars in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"
Episode no. Season 5
Episode 123
Written by Richard Matheson
(From his story, first published in Alone by Night, 1961)
Directed by Richard Donner
Guest stars William Shatner : Bob Wilson
Christine White : Ruth Wilson
Asa Maynor : Stewardess
Nick Cravat : Gremlin
Featured music Stock
Production no. 2605
Original airdate October 11, 1963
Episode chronology
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List of Twilight Zone episodes

"Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Contents

[edit] Opening narration

“ Portrait of a frightened man: Mr. Robert Wilson, thirty-seven, husband, father, and salesman on sick leave. Mr. Wilson has just been discharged from a sanitarium where he spent the last six months recovering from a nervous breakdown, the onset of which took place on an evening not dissimilar to this one, on an airliner very much like the one in which Mr. Wilson is about to be flown home - the difference being that, on that evening half a year ago, Mr. Wilson's flight was terminated by the onslaught of his mental breakdown. Tonight, he's travelling all the way to his appointed destination, which, contrary to Mr. Wilson's plan, happens to be in the darkest corner of the Twilight Zone. ”

[edit] Plot summary

Bob Wilson (William Shatner) is a salesman on an airplane for the first time since his nervous breakdown six months ago. He spots a gremlin on the wing of the plane. Every time someone else looks out the window the gremlin moves out of view, so nobody believes him. Bob realizes his wife is starting to think he needs to go back to the sanitarium, but also, if nothing is done about the gremlin it will damage the plane and cause it to crash. Bob borrows a sleeping policeman's revolver, and opens the window to shoot the gremlin, succeeding despite the fact that he is nearly blown out of the plane himself. Although he is whisked away in a straitjacket, there is evidence of his claims: the unusual damage to the plane’s engine nacelle yet to be discovered by mechanics.

[edit] Closing narration

“ The flight of Mr. Wilson has ended now, a flight not only from point A to point B, but also from the fear of recurring mental breakdown. Mr. Wilson has that fear no longer, though, for the moment, he is, as he said, alone in this assurance. Happily, his conviction will not remain isolated too much longer, for happily, tangible manifestation is very often left as evidence of trespass, even from so intangible a quarter as the Twilight Zone. ”

[edit] Quotations

"Gremlins! Gremlins! I'm not imagining it, he's out there! Don't look, he's not out there now. He jumps away whenever anyone might see him, except me."

"There's.....Something on the wing. Some...... Thing!."

[edit] Critical response

Richard Matheson writing in The Twilight Zone Magazine:

Of all the Twilight Zones I wrote, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” remains one of my favorites. It was well directed by Richard Donner, and I loved William Shatner’s performance. I still wish, though, that Pat Breslin had played his wife (as she did in the Twilight Zone episode “Nick of Time”), and I thought the monster on the wing was somewhat ludicrous. It looked rather like a surly teddy bear."

[edit] In Twilight Zone: The Movie

This episode was remade into a segment of the 1983 movie version of the series, with John Lithgow portraying the main character, who has been renamed John Valentine. The story is somewhat shortened, but the plot in general is the same, although with some greater differences. In this version, Valentine travels alone, and his fear of flight seems to be more emphasized, as the segment begins with an almost hysterical Valentine hiding in the bathroom. When he eventually spots the gremlin, he reacts more strongly than the original incarnation of the character. He yells at the flight crew and his fellow passengers on several occasions. At the end of the segment, in a scene not shown in the original version, the mechanics discover the damage to the plane. The damage is also more severe.

The appearance and behavior of the gremlin has also been altered. The original gremlin was an ape-like creature which seemed to be driven by curiosity rather than a will to cause damage. In the movie, the gremlin more resembles a goblin or a troll, with greenish skin and a frightful grin. It also seems to be more intelligent and menacing and immediately begins to destroy the wing, rather than curiously roaming about as the original gremlin did, and taunts Valentine several times, holding up a piece of wing and demonstratively tossing it inside the engine to damage it. When Valentine tries to shoot the gremlin, it walks up to Valentine, grabs his face and then waves its finger in a dismissive manner. The original gremlin never made physical contact with Wilson, and it is quite possible that he wounded or even killed it. The gremlin in the movie, however, actually flies off, seemingly unharmed.

The epilogue features Valentine being driven to the sanitarium by the passenger from the prologue (played by Dan Aykroyd) who killed his driving companion after asking, "Want to see something really scary?", the same question he poses to Valentine before the movie ends.

[edit] Background

Rod Serling quoted in The Twilight Zone Companion:

“ Matheson and I were going to fly to San Francisco... It was like three or four weeks in constant daily communication with Western Airlines, preparing a given seat for him, having the stewardess close the [curtains] when he sat down, and I was going to say, “Dick, open it up.” I had this huge, blown-up poster stuck on the [outside of the window] so that when he opened it there would be a gremlin staring at him. So what happened was, we get on the plane, there was the seat, he sits down, the curtains are closed, I lean over and say, “Dick”—at which point they start the engines and it blows the thing away. It was an old prop airplane... He never saw it. And I had spent hours in the planning of it. I would lie in bed thinking how we could do this. ”

[edit] Cultural references

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  • This episode was spoofed in The Simpsons fourth installment of the “Treehouse of Horror” series, in the segment "Terror at 5 1/2 Feet." Instead of an airplane, the segment took place on the schoolbus where Bart shouts in panic to Otto the bus driver as this dangerous interloper takes the bus apart, that there is a Gremlin on the side of the bus. Otto looks out the window but only sees Hans Moleman driving an AMC Gremlin. Otto shoves Hans off the road and although the AMC stops short of colliding with a tree it bursts into flames anyway. Eventually the gremlin was thrown off the bus into the arms of Ned Flanders. In this version of the story, at the end of the trip, the other students and Principal Skinner see the damage to the bus, but Skinner decides to have Bart committed anyway, as punishment for his "disruptive" behavior. At the end of the short, the gremlin is seen through the window in the bus leading to the mental institution, holding the head of Ned Flanders.
  • In 1983’s Twilight Zone: The Movie, John Lithgow—star of the sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun—plays the same character. References to The Twilight Zone abound in the 3rd Rock from the Sun series. One episode of the series had Lithgow's character flying on a plane, but screamed in horror when he thought the plane engine was a monster since he had never flown on a plane. A later episode featured William Shatner as “The Big Giant Head”. Lithgow picks up Shatner at the airport and when Shatner mentions he saw something on the wing of the plane, Lithgow exclaims, “The same thing happened to me!”
  • This episode was spoofed in a segment of "Balinese Slapping Fish", only the fish are atop the wing, who then begin slapping each other.
  • On a brief parody, a Jhonen Vasquez comic entitled True Tales of Human Drama! about a man's paranoia of flying, shows one panel of him screaming "There's something on the wing!!"
  • This episode was spoofed in the episode "Tryptophan-tasy" in the The Bernie Mac Show, where Bernie has hallucinations after eating his own personal undercooked turkey and enters a dream where Vanessa plays the gremlin on the wing of the plane and Bernie has to stop her.
  • The episode is spoofed in the film Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls when Ventura (Jim Carrey) looks out the window of a plane and — speaking in William Shatner’s voice — claims he sees something on the wing.
  • In Futurama, Fry and Bender are watching The Scary Door (a spoof of The Twilight Zone). The episode they see is a reference to "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and several others. A gambler is run over by a car and finds himself with a slot machine in front of him. He uses it twice then finds out that he is neither in Heaven nor Hell but on an airplane. “There’s a gremlin on the wing! You gotta believe me!”, the Gambler shouts. “Why should I believe you? You’re Hitler!” the flight attendant says as he shows the gambler a mirror where his reflection is Hitler. He begs Eva Braun for help, she doffs her head to reveal that she's a giant insect. Bender then states that he "saw it coming."
  • A Johnny Bravo episode spoofs this episode. Instead of a gremlin, the antagonist is a clown. An animated spoof of William Shatner (wearing Star Trek gear) appears in the episode sitting before Johnny and catapulting out of the plane. At the end, after Johnny knocks the clown off, it is revealed that there was a clown on both wings, used to stabilize the plane. Johnny is given the task of stand-in stabilizing clown for the remainder of the flight.
  • A sketch on Muppets Tonight spoofed this episode. Miss Piggy spots a creature devouring the wing of the airplane on which she's flying. She starts screaming until the camera pans out to show William Shatner sitting next to her as he tells her, "It's no use. I've been telling them that for years." He then offers her a copy of his autobiography.
  • The metal band Anthrax has a video spoofing this episode. Instead of a gremlin, however, the William Shatner character looks outside to see the band playing the song Inside Out on the wing.
  • This episode was also spoofed in a segment of the Tiny Toons Night Ghoulery special, in which Plucky sees a gremlin (whose appearance is based on the one Bugs Bunny fought in the Looney Tunes short Falling Hare) through the window as it straps a bomb to the wing. When he sees the gremlin struggling with a lighter to light the bomb's fuse, he opens the emergency exit and jumps out with a fire hose. The gremlin kindly asks Plucky for a lighter, and Plucky gives it to him, but then tries to spray the hose at the fuse. The scene cuts to the plane on the ground with a huge hole in its wing, and Plucky being taken away in a straitjacket as the segment ends. In reference to the original character being played by Shatner, Plucky plays the role as a parody of James T. Kirk, with the flight attendant clearly modelled on Uhura.
  • In an episode of Angry Beavers, Barry Bear is thrown in the air and a voice is heard yelling, "There's a bear on the wing!," before an airplane is seen crashing.
  • The videoclip for the song "Something Beautiful" by the band Cauterize features a girl who boards a plane and in mid-air realizes that there is someone on the wing; in this case, the lead singer. Just as in the original, she becomes more and more agitated as no one believes her. In the end the evidence left is a hanging microphone.
  • In the X-Men episode entitled "A Rogue's Tale," flying mutant Rogue briefly sits on the wing of a plane, only to take off moments later. A man clearly sees her and reacts, but after she's gone, others disbelieve him.
  • Tapping a Hero, an episode of Robot Chicken features a skit where the gremlin first scares the passenger, then follows up with two less-scary pranks.
  • The anime series Dragonball Z makes an homage to the movie version of this scene during an episode of the Imperfect Cell Saga. Cell, interrupted in his plans to kill Krillin and the airplane's crew, instead places his hand over Krillin's face, wags his finger, and flies off.
  • In The Critic episode 'Siskel and Ebert & Jay & Alice', Jay sees Siskel and Ebert fighting on the wing of the plane, then they are frightened by seeing him.

[edit] Twilight Zone links

[edit] References

  • Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)

[edit] External links

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