[Theme music playing]
(Narrator) you're traveling through another dimension.
A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind.
A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.
Your next stop, the twilight zone.
[Metallic echoing]
[Laughing]
The fleet's in. No, no, it isn't the fleet, is it? It's the army.
The army's in. Hooray for the army!
Get the troops out of the hot sun. Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!
Your orders, colonel, general, whatever you are.
I'm a major.
Don't fret. Advancement comes quickly, even in the peacetime army.
Today, a major. Tomorrow, a brigadier.
Major to brigadier, that's not bad.
You're generous, old sport. You-you're really very generous.
Problem?
Problem? No. No, no problem.
It's just that --
Just that what?
A couple of very unimportant items seem to have eluded me like, who I am.
You said you were a major.
Hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute.
Who are you? What are you doing here?
Is there a circus around here somewhere?
A circus?
Yeah.
Yeah, there must be a circus.
A clown. A circus?
An officer. A w*r!
That's logic, isn't it?
But it doesn't figure at all.
Not at all.
Why not?
Because there is no circus, and there is no w*r.
You're just like the rest of us.
The rest of us?
[Bagpipe playing]
What's going on here?
Where are we? What are we?
Who are we?
Who are we?
None of us knows, major. We don't know who we are.
We don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment.
Here we were in the darkness.
How could that happen?
That's the question we asked ourselves.
A question with no answer, major.
Nameless things with no memory.
No knowledge of what went before.
No understanding of what is now.
No knowledge of what will be.
How long will we be here?
That's a very good question.
That's the best question of all.
But nobody knows the answer.
(Narrator) clown, hobo, ballet dancer, bagpiper, and an army major.
A collection of question marks.
Five improbable entities stuck together into a pit of darkness.
No logic, no reason, no explanation.
Just a prolonged nightmare in which fear, loneliness and the unexplainable walk hand in hand through the shadows.
In a moment we'll start collecting clues as to the whys, the whats and the wheres.
We will not end the nightmare. We'll only explain it.
Because this is the twilight zone.
[Thumping]
Very active chap. Got to function. Compulsive worker.
You're a big-time psychologist, huh?
I'ma clown, which is neither here, there or anyplace.
I could be a certified public accountant, a financier, a left-handed pitcher who throws only curves.
What difference does it make?
J we're here because we're here j7
#Z because we're here j7
#Z because we're here j7 you're wasting your time. You know that, don't you?
You're an idiot.
An energetic idiot, but an idiot.
I want out of here.
I'm not satisfied to sit around here heaving deep sighs.
I want out of here!
You've got no monopoly on that, major.
We all want out of here.
Seconded. But you're wastin' your time, major.
Each of us has gone around like a bloodhound.
Nose to wall, nose to floor.
What's up there?
You name it.
Sky, artificial light, fluorescent lamp, an illuminated microscope. You name it.
One guess is as good as the other.
Maybe we're on another planet.
Or maybe we're on a spaceship going to another planet.
Maybe we're all insane.
Or maybe this is a mirage, an illusion.
We're dead, and this is limbo.
We don't really exist. We're dream figures from somebody else's existence.
Or we're each of us having a dream, and everyone else is part of the other person's dream.
You call it. You can have it.
That's the one thing we have an abundance of: possibilities.
An infinite number of possibilities.
How about getting out of here?
Anybody examined that possibility?
Have you, major?
We're trapped down here. There's no way out, man.
This is a nightmare.
It must be a nightmare.
Is indeed, but whose? Yours? Mine?
The scotsman, the ballet dancer?
Just whose nightmare is it?
Someone knows we're here.
How so?
They have to. You've all been here awhile. Possibly a long while.
Someone must feed you. Someone must give you water.
Well? Someone must bring food down.
There's been no food or water.
But we'll starve to death, or we'll die of thirst.
Do you feel hungry, major? Or thirsty?
Or heat or cold or fatigue or discomfort?
Or anything? Do you feel anything, major?
No, no, I don-- I don't feel anything, but it is understandable that I don't feel hungry or thirsty. This is--
This is shock. Or the aftermath of shock.
None of us feel anything.
None of us have felt anything since we've been here.
And we've been here for an endless time.
This is incredible!
This is really incredible!
Have you shouted?
Endlessly.
Well, have you-have you pounded on the walls? I mean, loud?
Have you taken off your shoe and pounded on the walls?
Have you done that?
Often.
Have you looked all around? Have you felt the walls?
Maybe there's a button or a lever, or maybe there's a panel of some kind.
Maybe there's a control button.
For a while. For a long while, that's all we did.
Hunted and searched, peered and looked and felt.
Then we discovered that this was the universe right here.
For our purposes, this /s the universe. This little room.
[Church bell tolling]
What was that?
What was that noise?
A giant bell or something. That's what it sounds like.
Hey!
Hey, up there!
Let us out!
Let us out of here. Please!
[Church bell tolling]
Please, major, don't be afraid.
It's hard in the beginning, but after a while--
Girl, why don't you dance for us?
It makes the time pass.
I'll play for you.
The major's never seen you dance.
[Bagpipe playing]
The major doesn't want to see her dance. The major is not interested!
All the major wants to do is get out of here!
(Hobo) too high.
Nothing!
Through the wall! Did you ever think of that?
That's very bright! Terribly ingenious!
Highly imaginative! Incredibly inventive!
[Laughing]
With what? With our hands?
With our fingernails?
With this!
With this!
[Clanks]
[Sobbing]
Please, major.
After a while, it'll be a lot easier.
Perhaps there are a lot of dungeons like this.
Maybe we've just never heard of them before.
Perhaps they're for the unloved.
Perhaps that's who we are.
The unloved.
We must have names. We're people.
And-and that means we belong somewhere.
There must be others who care about us.
Because somewhere, somehow, we have a life that has been cut away from us.
We've got to get it back, each one of us.
We'll dig a tunnel.
I know where we are. It suddenly occurs to me.
(Ballerina) where are we?
Why, my dear young lady, how-how unobservant when the whole thing all fits together.
Please, tell me where we are.
Ladies and gentlemen, it seems very apparent, it seems quite unequivocally, we, all of us, we are in hell.
God help us.
We are in hell.
[Clown laughs]
Never say die, that one.
He'll come to it eventually, just as we did.
Let him be. Let him have his fun.
At least he's trying.
He is, indeed! He's been trying for several hours now.
It's metal, I think.
We'll have to think of something else.
Do! Do! Perhaps we could pretend that we're acrobats.
Alley oop!
And over the top!
Wait a minute.
Oh, come, now.
This is becoming a little ridiculous.
Why not?
Why not what?
What you said. Acrobatics.
A figure of speech, my dear. Not meant to be taken seriously.
I grant you that we have somehow forfeited some of our human dignity, but we are nonetheless governed by human frailty, not the least of which is gravity.
Perhaps you know some acrobatics I'm quite unaware of.
I see what she's getting at.
Don't any of you see it?
One on top of the other, standing on each other's shoulders.
How about that? Isn't that the way they do it in circuses?
I'll ask him when he comes in.
I assure you that, though I may wear the costume of a clown, I have no recollection whatsoever of having been one.
It is true we don't feel hunger or thirst, but pain is quite another thing.
And a drop from 20 feet up down to this hard floor, that is a sensation I would as leave do without.
It's a chance.
Begging your pardon, ma'am, but no, thank you.
But she's right. Itis a chance.
Now, come on! We'll go on the first person, so i-i'll start. The clown on my shoulders, and the tramp and the bagpiper, and then the girl.
Now, how about it?
We'd never reach it.
(Hobo) we could try.
Who-who's to say we wouldn't reach it?
We're not sure how high it is.
That's the point. We would be exerting ourselves for nothing.
Now, all sit down and we'll have a little entertainment.
Come on. Let's try it.
Come on, clown! On my shoulders!
Observation: things were far more simple before you arrived.
However, I go with the majority.
(Bagpiper) all right, miss. It's up to you.
Can you see the top? Is there a ledge or anything?
It's several more feet to the top.
Come on.
Take your time. You can make it.
I can't reach it.
It's just a little above me.
Try. Stretch.
Stretch a little. All of us stretch.
Try. You've got to try.
[Bell tolling]
How is your leg?
[-1-1 Think I strained it, but I'll be all right.
How much farther? Mow much more would it have taken?
I could almost feel it.
You were almost there.
A miss is as good as a mile.
Not in this case.
A miss by two or three inches, that's hardly a mile.
Oh. Here's what we'll do next.
The-the same thing without the girl.
The clown on the bottom.
Then the tramp. Then the bagpiper.
Then I climb up.
A rope around the haft of this sword.
Fling it over the ledge and let it hook on the edge.
Very ingenious! But hadn't one of us better run over to the hardware store and pick up the rope?
He's right. We have no rope.
But strips of cloth. Part of anything we're wearing.
Now, come on! It's a chance! Here!
All right.
Six yards of excellent material.
Courtesy of pagliacci, or whatever I am.
This time we make it.
A rope around the haft of this sword.
Fling it over the edge and let it hook right on the ledge.
I'm up and away.
Then what?
We'll worry about that when it happens.
Somehow I'll get you out of here, but none of us gets out until one of us gets out.
Now, that is a logic that you can live with.
Well, what's there?
What do you see?
Major, where are we?
[Screams]
Brave man.
Not a very bright one.
He'll come back for us.
I know he will.
He may be back, but it won't be to get us.
He may have been right at that.
He may have been very right.
This may be hell.
I found this in the snow. Someone must have dropped it.
Oh. Thank you, dear.
Just drop that in the barrel over there, will you?
You don't have very many, do you?
Oh, dear, no, not nearly enough.
It's for the orphans, you know. But it's early, and we've only just started.
[Bell ringing]
Dolls for christmas!
Dolls for christmas! Dolls for christmas!
Dolls for christmas!
Open your hearts, dear people!
(Narrator) just a barrel.
A dark depository where are kept the counterfeit make-believe pieces of plaster and cloth wrought in the distorted image of human life.
But this added hopeful note.
Perhaps they are unloved only for the moment.
In the arms of children there can be nothing but love.
A clown, a tramp, a bagpipe player, a ballet dancer and a major.
Tonight's cast of players on the odd stage known as the twilight zone.
(Male presenter) rod serling, creator of the twilight zone, will tell you about next week's story after this message.
And now, mr. Serling.
Next week, mr. Dean stockwell makes his journey into the twilight zone playing the role of a platoon lieutenant on corregidor during the last few hours of world w*r ii.
What happens to him provides the basis of a weird, and yet, we think, haunting excursion into the shadowland of imagination.
On the twilight zone next week, mr. Dean stockwell stars in the quality of mercy.
[Eerie music]
This is james arness.
You know, it's only a short hop from the twilight zone 70 dodge city and gunsmoke.
Saturday nights over most of these stations.