TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE by Justin Beahm “ I
t meant everything to me,” shares director Joe Dante. “THE TWILIGHT ZONE
was one of the most influential television shows of my generation. There had never really been anything quite like it, and nothing with the level of sophistication that Rod Serling brought with this material.” Dante’s love for TWILIGHT ZONE
runs deep, and while the show initially ran just five years, it had a tremendous impact on the young filmmaker who would go on to his own iconic heights with THE HOWLING (1981), GREMLINS (1984), and THE ‘BURBS (1989). As fate would have it, Dante’s first “studio” picture would be based on the series he so cherished as a child. “I learned that there was a feature script that Serling wrote based on Jerome Bixby’s ‘It’s A Good Life,’ but it didn’t quite work and the film wasn’t made. Several years later when the idea came to do TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE and
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John Landis and Steven Spielberg were already signed, I happened to be in pre- production on GREMLINS for Steven. I sort of lucked into it because I knew them both and got in right after George Miller was brought on board. “We all got to choose what we wanted
to do, but they only wanted to do remakes of TWILIGHT ZONE episodes. I chose ‘It’s a Good Life.’ It had a great script from Richard Matheson and was the one story that was the most different from the way it had been handled on television. I thought, ‘I can disguise this story at least to a point where people might get to the middle of the episode before they realize which one it is that they just saw.’” “It’s A Good Life” tells the story of
young Anthony Fremont, a monstrous child with mental abilities that put him in control of the world around him, including the weather and anyone, or anything, that
FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND • JAN/FEB 2012
gets on his bad side. Adults tiptoe around him nervously, and children want nothing to do with him. The original version of the story, directed by James Sheldon, aired on November 3, 1961 and starred little Bill Mumy, who would appear in three different TWILIGHT ZONE episodes and go on to sci-fi fame as Will Robinson in LOST IN SPACE four years later. “At the time I was happy to play such
a powerful little mutant,” laughs Mumy of his most iconic pre-LOST IN SPACE role. “What little kid wouldn’t be excited to play a character everybody is afraid of, and that everyone groveled to? I remember thinking I was the ultimate super hero. I didn’t think of him as a villain.” In Dante’s take on the story, 12-year-
old Jeremy Licht would step into the role of Anthony. After an initial audition, production stalled and Licht put the project out of mind. Then the phone rang…
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