Anyone who gives this a score of a 4.5 lower is nuts. This is how all classic TV and movies on Blu-ray should be treated. While there might be a few small hiccups in the picture quality (most notably the six episodes presented in 1080i), it’s not ever going to look so good. Packed with hours (days?) worth of features, this is such a great value for consumers.
The Twilight Zone: Season 2 (1960-61)
Genre(s): Television, Science-Fiction
Image | NR – 749 min. – $99.98 | November 16, 2010
MOVIE INFO:
Directed by: NA
Writer(s): Rod Sterling (created by)
Cast: NA
DISC INFO:
Features: Commentaries, Interviews, Isolated Scores, Promos
Number of Discs: 4
Audio: English (PCM 2.0), English (Stereo 2.0)
Video: 1080i/1080p/Full Frame 1.33
Subtitles: NA
Codec: VC-1
THE MOVIE – 4.75/5
Season Two of the hit show offers up even a better selection of some of the best episodes that the show produced over its 5 seasons on the air. Season One seemed more like a test launch for the Network (and Serling), and in season two it appears he was given a bit more leeway to create some truly fantastic episodes that didn’t rely on ‘network notes’.
As a whole, does the show still hold up? Absolutely. Now fifty years later, some of the episodes feel very dated, but others could have easily fit in if they were still being aired today (of course, in color and wish some advances in clothes and such).
Since I find it nearly impossible that someone has never seen an episode of “Twilight Zone”, I’ll go ahead and discuss a few of my favorites from this season:
The Eye of the Beholder – Janet’s hideous face has made her an outcast all her life. As she awaits the results of her last-chance surgery, she ponders the consequences of failure – to be banished forever to a village of freaks!
- – There are probably a dozen or so “Twilight Zone” episodes that have been spoofed so much in Hollywood that the ‘twist’ is long gone. Eye is one of those episodes. If you’re watching it for the first time, you probably expect everyone to be ‘normal’ looking and Janet to be ‘hideous’, but just as the title of the episode says, it truly is in the eye of the beholder!
Will the Real Martin Please Stand Up? – State troopers follow tracks from an unidentified flying object to a diner where they try to determine which of the seven bus passengers stranded inside is really a Martian
- – Just like the previous episode I discussed, this surprise here has long been ruined but watching it again with a fresh eye (after not seeing it in close to a decade), I was still unsure of who the ‘real’ Martian was. This episode plays on the strengths of people’s emotions and trying to determine who appears to be an outcast.
Nick of Time – A superstitious newlywed becomes obsessed with a penny fortune-telling machine. But are his pennies revealing his future – or determining it?
- – Easily one of my favorite episodes of the Season, this one stars a regular on “Twilight Zone”; William Shatner, in one of my favorite roles – a man who continues to plop pennies into a machine to see what his fortune might be. It’s definitely an interesting episode to watch, as one man is willing to destroy his new relationship over what some silly machine has to say.
Episodes (Favorites Marked with asterisk):
King Nine will Not Return
The Man in the Bottle *
Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room
A Thing about Machines
The Howling Man
The Eye of the Beholder *
Nick of Time *
The Lateness of the Hour
The Trouble with Templeton
A Most Unusual Camera *
Night of the Meek
Dust
Back There
The Whole Truth
The Invaders
A Penny for your Thoughts *
Twenty-Two
The Odyssey of Flight 33
Mr Dingle, The Strong
Static *
The Prime Mover
Long Distance Call
A Hundred Yards Over the Rim
The Rip Van Winkle Caper *
The Silence
Shadow Play
The Mind and the Matter
Will the Real Martial Please Stand Up *
The Obsolete Man
SPECIAL FEATURES – 5/5
BLU-RAY EXCLUSIVES – 5/5
“Twilight Zone” Season Two is packaged in a slightly thick Bu-ray case housed in an attractive, shiny Slip Cover with an Episode Guide!
Let me start this off by saying this is probably one of the most packaged releases I have ever reviewed – or watched – on Blu-ray.
Audio Commentaries:
(25 New Ones from) Author Marc Scott Zicree (of The Twilight Zone Companion), author and film historian Gary Gerani, author and music historian Steven Smith, author and film historian Martin Grams Jr., writer and music historian Jon Burlingame, writer Len Wein, writer and producer Joseph Dougherty, writer and producer Matthew Weiner, writer and director Michael Nankin, writer Marv Wolfman, authors and historians Scott Skelton and Jim Benson and finally writer George Clayton Johnson . ** Blu-ray Exclusive**
- – An Additional 5 Commentaries from the DVD sets have been carried over as well
Interviews with actors Joseph Ruskin and H.M. Wynant (14 Minutes; SD) ** Blu-ray Exclusive**
Suspense Episode “Nightmare at Ground Zero” written by Rod Serling (28 Minutes; SD) – This is a fairly interesting episode that Serling penned. Great to see Image included these random episodes on Season Sets. ** Blu-ray Exclusive**
Vintage Audio Interviews with Director of Photography George T Clemens (26 Minutes; HD) and Makeup Artist William Tuttle (1 Hour; HD) ** Blu-ray Exclusive**
Radio Dramas - Back in 2002, 15 of these were produced and are now available on Blu-ray. It’s simply a retelling of an episode in Audio form with famous actors like Fred Willard, Henry Rollins, Jason Alexander and more! Too bad these are not available on a separate DVD so I could listen to them on my iPhone. ** Blu-ray Exclusive **
Isolated Scores – 22 out of the 29 episodes include the option to watch and listen to only the score for that particular episode (by legendary Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith and others).
Rounding out the Discs is Promos for next week’s episode (which are very cool in themselves and last maybe 20 seconds), Sponsor Promos for various brands (Sanka Coffee) that last mere seconds and various other Promos for the syndication market.
VIDEO – 4.75/5
“Twilight Zone” Season Two is presented in 4:3 (1080p; VC1) on four 50GB Discs. ALL 29 First Season Episodes are Present plus the bonus ones mentioned above. Blu-ray has only seen a few shows/movies that were in Black and White, and “Twilight Zone” is now one of the best looking. Even though we got the definitive version on DVD a few years back, Image has once again restored and cleaned up the show for Blu-ray and it looks fantastic. Blacks are very sharp and the detail being shown rivals even some newer films hitting Blu-ray. That’s not to say its perfect – there are still some marks/dirt/hair that show up on occasion, but c’mon, this show was shot with an incredibly low budget and its fifty years old. Worth noting is six episodes from this Season were shot on a much more low budget tape to try and save some money (they are randomly sprinkled throughout the Season and in 1080i), but I was hard-pressed to tell the difference between them and the others. This is a good sign that Image has done a great job of making everything shine.
AUDIO – 4.75/5
The disc has a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track that is very low key. Although I did notice most of the channels being used save for the subwoofer, none of it really sounded that good. Now, the dialogue, coming through the center channel primarily, sounds alright but everything else from the Banshee scream to the eerie forest sounds, are kind of flat. It’s not the worst HD audio I’ve come across, but it is close to the bottom.Image has included the original 2.0 Mono tracks and well as lossless 2.0 PCM tracks for this release. Purists will be thrilled by the inclusion of the ‘original’ tracks, but swapping back and forth between the two I only really noticed a little bit more ‘oomph’ with the lossless versions. Dialog is well placed with only an occasional hiccup, but much like the picture quality, I doubt it’ll ever sound as good as it does here.
OVERALL – 4.75/5
Anyone who gives this a score of a 4.5 lower is nuts. This is how all classic TV and movies on Blu-ray should be treated. While there might be a few small hiccups in the picture quality (most notably the six episodes presented in 1080i), it’s not ever going to look so good. Packed with hours (days?) worth of features, this is such a great value for consumers.
Brad Lowenberg
Published: 12/12/2010
Related Links (opens in new window):
The Twilight Zone: Season 1 Blu-ray Review