The Invaders (The Twilight Zone)

"The Invaders"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no. Season 2
Episode 15 (episode 51 overall)
Directed by Douglas Heyes
Written by Richard Matheson
Featured music Original score by Jerry Goldsmith
Production code 173-3646
Original air date January 27, 1961
Guest appearance(s)

Agnes Moorehead as Alien Woman
Douglas Heyes as Human Invaders (voice)

"The Invaders" is episode 15 of season 2 (and episode 51 overall) of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. The episode, which originally aired January 27, 1961,[1] starred Agnes Moorehead. It was written by Richard Matheson, directed by Douglas Heyes,[2] and scored by Jerry Goldsmith. Distinctive features of this episode include a near-solo performance by one character and an almost complete lack of dialogue; until near the end it is played by Moorehead alone and in pantomime.

Opening narration

This is one of the out-of-the-way places, the unvisited places, bleak, wasted, dying. This is a farmhouse, handmade, crude, a house without electricity or gas, a house untouched by progress. This is the woman who lives in the house, a woman who's been alone for many years, a strong, simple woman whose only problem up until this moment has been that of acquiring enough food to eat, a woman about to face terror, which is even now coming at her from - The Twilight Zone.

Plot

An old woman (Agnes Moorehead) lives alone in a rustic cabin. She is dressed shabbily, and there are no modern conveniences in evidence. After hearing a strange noise above her kitchen roof, she is accosted by small intruders that come from a miniature flying saucer that has landed on her rooftop. Two tiny robotic figures, only about six inches high, emerge from the craft.

She battles them for some time, finally killing one and following the other back to the ship, which she proceeds to attack with a hatchet. From within the craft, she hears a voice speaking in English with an apparent American accent (voiced by Director Douglas Heyes). (Prior to this scene, the episode has no dialogue.[3]) The intruder is frantically warning other potential visitors that the planet is inhabited by giants and impossible to defeat.

The camera pans to the markings on the side of the ship, which read U.S. Air Force Space Probe No. 1 revealing that the "invaders" were human astronauts from Earth, and the "woman" in the small farmhouse belongs to a race of giant humanoids native to another planet. The woman finishes destroying the ship and then climbs back down from the roof into the house, exhausted.

Closing narration

These are the invaders, the tiny beings from the tiny place called Earth, who would take the giant step across the sky to the question marks that sparkle and beckon from the vastness of the universe only to be imagined. The invaders...who found out that a one-way ticket to the stars beyond has the ultimate price tag...and we have just seen it entered in a ledger that covers all the transactions in the universe...a bill stamped "Paid in Full" and to be found on file in the Twilight Zone.

On radio

When the episode was adapted for the Twlilight Zone Radio Dramas, starring Kathy Garver,[4] the story was changed from an old non-speaking woman to an elderly couple.

See also

References

  1. VanDerWerff, Todd (April 15, 2010). "TV Club: Gateways to Geekery: The Twilight Zone". AV Club.
  2. VanDerWerff, Todd (March 31, 2012). "TV Club: The Twilight Zone: "The Invaders"/"A Penny For Your Thoughts"". AV Club.
  3. VanDerWerff, Todd (March 31, 2012). "TV Club: The Twilight Zone: "The Invaders"/"A Penny For Your Thoughts"". AV Club.
  4. "The Invaders". The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas.

Bibliography

External links


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