The Jeopardy Room

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“The Jeopardy Room”
The Twilight Zone episode

Martin Landau as Ivan Kuchenko
Episode no. Season 5
Episode 149
Written by Rod Serling
Directed by Richard Donner
Guest stars Martin Landau : Major Ivan Kuchenko
John van Dreelen : Commissar Vassiloff
Robert Kelljan : Boris
Production no. 2639
Original airdate April 17, 1964
Episode chronology
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"Caesar and Me" "Stopover in a Quiet Town"
List of Twilight Zone episodes

"The Jeopardy Room" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Contents

[edit] Opening narration

“ The cast of characters: a cat and a mouse. This is the latter, the intended victim who may or may not know that he is to die, be it by butchery or ballet. His name is Major Ivan Kuchenko. He has, if events go according to certain plans, perhaps three or four more hours of living. But an ignorance shared by both himself and his executioner is of the fact that both of them have taken a first step into the Twilight Zone. ”

[edit] Synopsis

Trying to defect, former KGB Major Ivan Kuchenko is trapped inside a hotel room. Commissar Vassiloff, a hitman, and Boris, his assistant, are watching him from a room across the street. Vassiloff is a sadistic killer who has tricked Kuchenko into drinking a sleeping draught in the hotel room after pretending to surrender to Kuchenko. Kuchenko wakens to find that Vassiloff has planted a bomb in the room: Ivan must find it within three hours, or he will be shot by Vassiloff and Boris, who have a gun trained on him at all times. Vassiloff has hidden the bomb in the room’s telephone, where it will be triggered by an incoming call. Ivan manages to escape and avoid being shot. Later, Vassiloff and Boris enter the room and try to figure out what went wrong. The phone rings, and Boris - without thinking - picks it up, causing an explosion which kills him and Vassiloff. On the other end of the phone line is Ivan Kuchenko, who makes it to freedom.

[edit] Closing narration

“ Major Ivan Kuchenko, on his way west, on his way to freedom, a freedom bought and paid for by a most stunning ingenuity. And exit one Commissar Vassiloff, who forgot that there are two sides to an argument--and two parties on the line. This has been the Twilight Zone. ”

[edit] Trivia

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  • This was the second-to-last episode written by Rod Serling to be produced, before Mr. Garrity and the Graves
  • This was an unusual entry in the series as it contains no supernatural or science-fiction elements. Other such episodes include “Where Is Everybody?”, “The Silence” and “The Shelter," this one being the only one to not even include "strange" elements, dealing only with a complex assassination plot.
  • On September 18, 1964 this became the final Twilight Zone to be broadcast (as a rerun) in its original Friday night timeslot on CBS. The following week saw the debut of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. in Twilight Zone’s place.
  • To the modern viewer, the tape scene has a déjà-vu flavour: it is similar to the beginning of the Mission: Impossible episodes, a TV series that Martin Landau, who plays Major Kuchenko in this episode, was to feature from 1966.

[edit] References

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

[edit] External links

[edit] Twilight Zone links

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