Rod Serling's Lost Classics

Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Lost Classics was a 1994 telefilm consisting of two Rod Serling stories. The film was co-produced by Serling's widow Carol Serling. Reportedly, she found the two pieces in a trunk in the family's garage.

The first and shorter segment, entitled The Theatre, was expanded and scripted by Richard Matheson from a Serling outline. It starred Gary Cole and Amy Irving.

The longer segment, Where The Dead Are, was a complete script Serling penned in 1968. Patrick Bergin and Jack Palance starred. (As it was written four years after the end of the original series, this was not originally a Twilight Zone story.)

James Earl Jones hosted and narrated the special. He previously worked with Serling on the 1972 film The Man.

Introduction

The Theatre

Opening narration

Synopsis

A young woman, Melissa Sanders (Amy Irving), goes to the theatre to see the classic film His Girl Friday. Suddenly, she begins to see scenes of her own life as they happened earlier involving her fiancé James (Gary Cole). No one else can see them except herself. At first Melissa thinks it's a practical joke plotted by James, but when she returns to the theatre, she sees scenes of her future, in which she dies getting run over by a bus on March 20. When she tells James about it, he assures her it will never happen. Unfortunately, it does happen, and afterwards, James begins to see his own life in the theatre just like his recently deceased fiancée.

Closing narration

Where the Dead Are

Opening narration

Synopsis

Four years after the Civil War, a university professor, Dr. Benjamin Ramsey (Patrick Bergin), performs an appendix operation on a patient named O'Neill, who dies seconds later. At that moment, Ramsey notices a severe skull fracture O'Neill had endured twelve years earlier. Since no one could survive such an injury, Ramsey travels to a mysterious island to seek answers from Dr. Jeremy Wheaton (Jack Palance), who used to experiment with tissue regeneration, which might explain how O'Neill survived his skull fracture. As soon as the two doctors meet, they discuss O'Neill and how Wheaton decided to play God when he revived the dead people who now roam the island. Ironically, later that night, Jeremy Wheaton, the man who brought the dead back to life, dies himself. Instinctly aware of this, the living dead arrive and attack Ramsey, for whom they blame the death of Wheaton since on the island, nobody dies. The next morning, it's revealed that Ramsey managed to survive the ambush, just as the boat that brought him to the island arrives to take him home. Before leaving, however, he finds a note from Wheaton's niece, who reveals that she was dead, too, until her uncle revived her. With this shocking truth, Ramsey decides not tell his colleagues in the university what happened, knowing that no matter how hard people try to live forever, they must die.

Closing narration