A Trip to the Twilight Zone

By Bill Kunkel

"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call... The Twilight Zone." - Rod Serling's original introduction to The Twilight Zone.

That introduction - with evolutionary variations like the revised finish: "That's the signpost up ahead. Your next stop is... The Twilight Zone!" - and its eerie, electric guitar-dominated theme song, evoked the epitome of the offbeat, the weird and the unexpected in the 1960s.

With the possible exception of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, no anthology series has proved as enduringly popular Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. Serling was a pretty big name screenwriter when he sold CBS on the concept in the late 1950s; he had written several major dramas for the Playhouse 90 circuit which were made into motion pictures (including Patterns and Requiem for a Heavyweight). His idea was that Twilight Zone would employ fantasy and science fiction elements in service of serious ideas, and the ending to each episode would involve an ironic, O. Henry-style twist.

While the show moved to a one-hour format in May of 1965, the episodes that remain imprinted on our memories are almost all from the original half-hour run from October 1959 to September 1964 (102 episodes). Installments such as "Eye of the Beholder" (in which a "horribly disfigured" woman is revealed to be beautiful, while the previously-unseen doctors and nurses are alien-looking monsters), "It's A Good Life" (in which an all-powerful little boy holds an entire town in terror), and "The Howling Man" (in which a well-meaning visitor unwittingly liberates Satan) sent chills up America's collective spine, while other episodes made us think. The show moved easily from sentimentality ("In Praise of Pip") to cynical dissections of the human spirit ("The Monsters are Due on Maple Street") on a weekly basis, using genres like science fiction and horror as contexts in which to tell morality tales.

Those script writers, especially Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, and Serling himself, inspired a generation of creators, including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Joe Dante.

It should come as no surprise, given the nature of the show, that most of the Twilight Zone collectibles are scripts, books, and video recordings. With no continuing characters, no subjects existed for action figures or pewter sculptures.

Issues of the Gold Key comic book from the '60s are especially popular items, along with the various magazines and hardcover and paperback books that featured prose versions of selected episodes and original stories.

Serling himself, of course, is a popular subject among collectors. There are various autographs floating through collector circles, as well as signed photos, and even a hand signed (by subject and artist) and numbered caricature by Mike Burrell. Serling's biography, Serling: The Rise & Twilight of TV's Last Angry Man by Gordon F. Sander, is also a popular item.

Today, the show is an icon, and because of the scarcity of related collectibles, we have seen items as simple as an advertising flyer for a circa-1993 Bally pinball machine bearing the Twilight Zone logo sell for more than $20!

Most of us seem to be very happy in that fifth dimension.

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The preceding material was written by Bill Kunkel. These are the opinions of the author, not the opinions of eBay, and therefore eBay does not validate the accuracy of or endorse these opinions.