Twilight zone still packs some of the best scares in TV. I know what you are thinking; “It’s not THAT scary. I used to watch that on Thanksgiving with my Granny when I was little.”

Though it might not have seemed scary to you then, dollars to donuts you haven’t seen the show since you were little.
While some episodes may not seem that scary on the surface, they make you think. Perhaps in a way you didn’t consider when you were younger.

I have loved this program since I was a kid. Before I could really understand the deeper complexities of this show, I still found it interesting for some reason.

There were a few black and white TV shows still in syndication in the 1980’s, so the look, or old clothes wasn’t THAT unusual for young eyes. Twilight Zone, however, seemed different than the others.

No laugh track or exaggerated characters like the other old shows.
It had an eerie vibe and the characters seemed so relatable until whatever bizarre Twilight Zone circumstances drive them to some kind of madness. This created a lifelong interest in things such as Sci-Fi and retro-everything.

In this episode, we meet Henry Bemis. An odd little man in the thickest glasses you’ve ever seen played by Bergis Merideth of Rocky and Batman fame. He is nose deep in a book, gives a customer the wrong change and gets chastised by both the customer and his boss.

The boss really tears into him, and Bemis’s reading is to blame.
Things aren’t much better at home for poor ol’ Bemis. We meet his wife. Possibly the most stone-cold, sour-faced, cruel voiced woman I have ever seen. She is seriously scary. Professor McGonicle ain’t got nothin on her frown.

We learn that she has about had it with Mr. Beemis and seems utterly repulsed by everything about him.
After a really long gripe session, we discover the extent of her hostility. In an ice-cold move, she fains interest in Henry reading to her from his favorite book of poetry.
Elated, Henry hurriedly opens the book to his favorite passage; only to discover the words crossed out with a thick marker. In fact, all the words in the entire book were painstakingly crossed out.
Henry begins to sob in despair and she starts to rip the pages out as the final blow.

So life is already a sad nightmare for Mr. Bemis.
The next day at work, seeming defeated, he resigns to sneaking off to the bank vault to sneak in some newspaper reading during his lunch break. This time he closes the vault door behind him.

The newspaper forebodingly warns that the H-bomb is capable total destruction. Just then his book flies open and the glass on his stopwatch shatters followed by immense shaking and the screen blacks out.

When we come back from commercial break we learn that Mr. Bemis survived. Without his glasses things look frighteningly blurry. He puts them on. We realize his whole town has been completely destroyed possibly by that aforementioned bomb?

Mr. Bemis goes on a search for his wife and finds only a smoking crater. He gathers enough canned food and sets up a shelter. He falls into a bleak lonely despair when he realizes how alone he is. In a particularly dark scene, he holds a revolver to his head as he contemplates ending it all. Then he notices a book. Excited he tosses aside the pistol and looks for the library.

In what we can only assume is days later we see Mr. Bemis with stacks of books greedily contemplating the order in which he’ll read them. He is exuberant and relishing the fact that he finally has “time enough at last” to read them all.

As he’s moving a stack of books, his thick glasses unexpectedly slip off his face and shatter on the ground. We then see things as out of focus and distorted as Mr. Bemis does. It’s apparent he won't be reading anytime soon.

In fact, it seems his world will be a blurry nightmare for the rest of his life. In a scene that anyone who has ever dropped an ice cream cone or spilled a beer can relate, he laments “it’s not fair. I had time now.”

When you stop to think about the fate of poor Mr. Bemis, it opens a lot of questions. How long can he manage to survive not being able to see? Wasn’t he radiation poisoned? How is he going to deal with the loneliness now? All scary to ponder.

We never learn what happens to him of course, but you can imagine it will be a sad end to a dreary life for poor old Mr. Bemis.

One cannot possibly imagine the loneliness that Mr. Bemis will face. Or the fact that even if he had his glasses, he would probably succumb to radiation sickness.

Fear of the terrible new weapons that came forth in the cold war is a recurring theme that we shall see time and again in the Twilight Zone. This episode is adapted in part from a short story by Lynn Venable for a 1953 issue of “If” magazine. This is a SUPER rad Sci-Fi magazine from the peak of the sci-fi craze of the midcentury. The other bit influence came from Rod Serling driving around the backlots of MGM seeing a destructed city set, and imagining the possibilities.

This is the first Twilight Zone episode staring Bergis Meridith. You may know him from the campy 1960’s Batman series as the Penguin, or as Rocky’s trainer/mentor in the first couple Rocky movies. He would star in a few more episodes as the seasons progressed.

I find this episode eerie because it reminds us that something unexpected and deceptively small like dropping your glasses at the wrong time can have terrible consequences. Like Mr. Bemis, you’ll never see it coming.

Stay tuned here, for more of the best episodes of the Twilight Zone!  
- Mike O.

The Twilight Zone is Available on
Hulu. [Complete Series]
Netflix [Seasons 1,2,3, and 5]