Editorials
Sixty Years Ago, “The Twilight Zone” Pilot Became One of the Most Influential TV Episodes of All Time
Sixty years ago, on October 2, 1959, television was irrevocably changed with the airing of The Twilight Zone’s pilot episode, “Where is Everybody?” This episode, and its writer Rod Serling, blended science fiction with adult drama and fear in a way that hadn’t really existed before. In a decade dedicated to atomic monsters aimed toward kids, no less. The pilot episode heralded in an anthology series that spanned 156 episodes and multiple revivals, which paved the way for more grown-up sci-fi fare like Star Trek and The Outer Limits. Moreover, it established the blueprint for the show, and classic tropes and elements that made it one of television’s most influential episodes of all time.
In “Where is Everybody?”, Mike Ferris (Earl Holliman) finds himself alone on a road with no memory of how he got there. As he explores the nearby town, he finds signs that life was recently there – cigarette smoke, running faucets- but no actual human beings. Only mannequins. The further he investigates, the more desperate and panic-driven he becomes. Once Ferris finally snaps from loneliness and isolation, the episode’s twist is revealed; he’s an astronaut in training, confined to an isolation chamber to test his ability to withstand being alone for the length of a trip to the moon and back.
The episode established Serling’s opening and closing narration, a central mystery, and the infamous twist ending. “Where is Everybody” also happens to be one of the few episodes that don’t have any supernatural or otherworldly elements, but the lack of supernatural is only revealed in the twist ending- when the viewer ultimately discovers Ferris’ broken mind was hallucinating the empty town.
Serling, an Army vet and radio and television scriptwriter, had grown tired of corporate censorship. An activist, he purposely wrote and created a sci-fi/fantasy show, knowing he could hide his social commentary from the censors within the genre space. It worked like a charm, too. Each episode focused on psychological or emotional drama, and the critics ate it up. Serling went on to explore all sorts of mature subject matter through the morality tales in this series.
As for the pilot episode, “Where is Everybody?” helped set a standard for the Last Man on Earth trope. Ferris winds up mistaking a mannequin for a woman in the episode, and once he realizes his mistake, he strikes up a conversation with the inanimate object. How many times have we seen that before? In the Omega Man and I Am Legend, both adaptations of Richard Matheson’s novel, the lead protagonist and last man on Earth speaks to mannequins in lieu of actual human interaction. In May, the titular character is isolated despite actually being near people, and uses her doll Suzy as a stand-in for a real-life friend.
The episode opens with Ferris coping with amnesia. He’s immediately dropped into a new setting with no idea how or when he arrived. We’ve seen this in the decades since, too. In episodes of Doctor Who and The Outer Limits. The entire plot revolves around this in Dark City, and even Hancock. Then there’s Jacob’s Ladder, a movie about an Army combat medic that begins in Vietnam before suddenly waking up in New York City, where he subsequently embarks on a hallucinogenic trip that blurs the lines between reality and horror fantasy. Only in the final moments do we see the twist that clicks the truth in place. American Psycho follows a similar formula as well. The town of Oakwood that Ferris is exploring might look familiar to eagle-eyed cinephiles; The Oakwood town square is the same set used as Hill Valley in the Back to the Future films.
“Where is Everybody?” wasn’t even the initially intended pilot. Serling planned to kick off the series with “The Happy Place”, which revolved around society killing citizens once they reach the age of 60. The network, CBS, felt it was a bit too grim, so Serling gave in and wrote the pilot that came to pass. What made this series, and this episode, resonate over the past six decades was Serling’s ability to tap into the human condition in thought-provoking ways with the palatable delivery system of fantasy and sci-fi. Isolation was a recurring theme of The Twilight Zone, but also in general fiction stories and media.
Serling didn’t invent science fiction, but he did permanently alter perception of what it could be. Both his series, and the pilot, remains one of television’s most influential of all time.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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