Favorite Twilight Zone Acting

[WillMunny]

I had interesting fun doing a similar thread of best Star Trek acting, so I figured I'd do the same things with the TZ marathons I watch every New Year's & July 4th. Off the top of my head, my personal standouts:

The Grave - Lee Marvin being every bit the badass you'd expect him to be, maybe a little more!

Uncle Simon - The late Constance Ford was sort of like a female Brad Dourif: she delivers certain lines with such ferocious INTENSITY, it's like listening to the thunderous voice of some angry god! "I am no longer sowing, Uncle, now I'VE COME TO REAP!!!!" What a crazy acting flourish that was!

The Masks - Robert Keith made the greatest, smartest, most interesting grouchy old curmudgeon of a man. I wish it were one of those rare 1-hour episodes so I could enjoy his wonderful scenery-chewing even longer.

Don't worry if I forgot any, I'm sure I'll list more. These were just the first that came to mind.

 

[Auld Phart]

"The Twilight Zone" Time Enough at Last (TV Episode 1959) - IMDb

 

[MarathonMike]

I watched Twilight Zone a lot as a kid. I don't remember the actors usually but there were lots of really cool shows. The one with the kid who had special powers to make anything happen with his mind was one of my favorites.

 

[AnCap'n_Murica]

 

[WillMunny]

"The Twilight Zone" Time Enough at Last (TV Episode 1959) - IMDb

Burgess Meredith was always a solid, TZ regular, in a number of episodes.

 

[WillMunny]

Here's another great one: Fritz Weaver as that raging, dictator Nazi type in "The Obsolete Man." Clearly, Mr. Weaver was having a lot of fun in that role.

 

[WillMunny]

I watched Twilight Zone a lot as a kid. I don't remember the actors usually but there were lots of really cool shows. The one with the kid who had special powers to make anything happen with his mind was one of my favorites.

That would be "It's a Good Life" with that terrifying Anthony little boy. But I think 1983's Twilight Zone - the Movie did an even better job with it by making Anthony's world so much more wildly cartoonish and bizarrely fascinating than the original episode. With the advantage of modern, big-budget effects, of course.

 

[WillMunny]

Of course the great William Shatner's "hamming it up" sort of goes without saying. After all, this is Captain Kirk!

 

[WillMunny]

On any website I really enjoy TZ threads. Because in the 60-something years of American TV history Rod Serling's TZ is demonstrably the most intensely INTELLIGENT TV show in American broadcast history. It had creepy, formidable mind-fuck twists that make M. Night Shyamalan look like a weak like poseur.

 

[WillMunny]

Obviously this is the best TZ music of all time.

 

[MarathonMike]

Rod Serling was a weird genius. That is what made that show so great.

 

[IsaacNewton]

Shatner and the wing demon. He does overact but in that episode it is what makes it so memorable and scary.

 

[Muhammed]

This guy played a great Hillary Clinton.

 

[skye]

I have one

but I can't remember the name or the year

all I know it's was a going back to the past

it was night time....a gate..... a theater.... a mother a father a child.....very haunting....

I can not explain more in words

 

[WillMunny]

This guy played a great Hillary Clinton.

Ah yes, like Hillary he was a career criminal soooo obsessed with money that it became his undoing in the end.

 

[WillMunny]

I have one

but I can't remember the name or the year

all I know it's was a going back to the past

it was night time....a gate..... a theater.... a mother a father a child.....very haunting....

I can not explain more in words

Hmm, interesting question. What you're describing could be applied to a few different episodes. I'll have to review the plot synopses on IMDB to pinpoint the exact one you mean.

 

[Muhammed]

To Serve Men.

 

[Boss]

Burgess Meredith in Time Enough at Last has always been my favorite episode.

Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself... without anyone.​

 

[EvilCat Breath]

On any website I really enjoy TZ threads. Because in the 60-something years of American TV history Rod Serling's TZ is demonstrably the most intensely INTELLIGENT TV show in American broadcast history. It had creepy, formidable mind-fuck twists that make M. Night Shyamalan look like a weak like poseur.

The writers were real science fiction writers. Theodore Sturgeon, Lester Del Rey, DC Fontana, Harlan Ellison, Gene Roddenberry. Great writers. Award winners in their fields. M. Night Shyamalan isn't fit to wipe their shoes.