[Chefelf]

A Little Peace and Quiet

When I was a kid I was terrified of nuclear war. It's something I remember thinking about a lot. It fascinated me while also keeping me scared enough to have trouble sleeping some nights. Looking back on it, it's not too surprising that it would have made a big impact on me. Movies like Red Dawn (while it didn't actually show any nuclear warfare to my recollection), War Games and The Day After were movies that were popular around the time I was trembling in fear of mushroom clouds.

I remember distinctly thinking that Red Dawn was one of the coolest movies I'd ever seen. Renting it one day when I was in my early twenties quickly disproved this memory. The premise of a war between the United States and the Soviet Union was a pretty popular one. Red Dawn took an unconventional approach to telling this story by leaving out radiation and 50 megaton explosions and replacing them with a rather flawed Russian war strategy. Somehow the Russian strategy of dropping paratroopers into random schoolyards throughout the midwest actually worked to topple the American government. The Americans hadn't mapped out such a war strategy and this is presumably why they failed to win World War III in Red Dawn's alternate reality.

While these movies interested me, none left such a distinct impression on me as did an episode of The Twilight Zone called A Little Peace and Quiet. Based on the original airdate from imdb.com it aired shortly before my seventh birthday. This means I most likely saw it sometime between the age of seven and eight.

I don't remember where I saw it or when exactly but I remembered the episode vividly to this day. In fact, I just rented the first DVD from this series and watched the episode again. Normally when you've only seen something once (take Red Dawn as an example) it tends to morph and mutate in your mind into something all together different. Red Dawn for example mutated into an awesome movie in my mind over the course of twelve years.

Over more than twenty years this episode of The Twilight Zone didn't change at all. It was exactly as I remembered it down to very specific details. The plot is quite simple:

<<<<< SPOILER alert>>>>>

The following text contains spoilers... but who are you kidding, you're never going to watch this twenty-two year old episode of The Twilight Zone.

An over-worked, underappreciated housewife gets annoyed with her kids and her husband and needs a little peace and quiet. While gardening one day she finds a weird amulet and discovers that while wearing it she can stop and start time back up. Throughout the episode there are warnings of nuclear war that she ignores (social commentary) and she purposefully avoids listening to radio programs about the subject (symbolism). Finally a nuclear attack on the United States is launched and she freezes time knowing that she can never start it back up without destroying everything she knows and loves.

Powerful stuff.

The thing is, I remembered nearly every detail exactly. I remembered her finding the amulet while gardening. I remembered the exact wording she used to control time ("Shut up!" to stop time, "Start talking." to start it back up. I remembered the peace activists that came to her house to talk to her about the dangers of nuclear weapons. I remember her freezing time and dragging the peace activists to the front lawn, laying them down and starting time back up again to make them go away. I remembered her returning to the house and smugly saying, "Start talking," in a sing-songy voice with a cut back to the confused activists on her lawn. I remembered the family at the breakfast table frozen in time with the daughter frozen pouring orange juice into a glass. I remembered the emergency broadcast system on the television set when the missiles were launched. I remember her freezing time by yelling, "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" in a panic. I remember her leaving her house in her bathrobe and wandering around town amongst a frozen mob of panicked citizens. I remembered the final shot of her looking up into the night sky and seeing a frozen missile hovering over her city about to detonate.

It was amazing. Everything fell in place exactly as I'd remembered. There weren't any lines that had been changed in my mind or situations I'd assumed or exaggerated. It was all as I remembered.

The only things I didn't remember were very small details that a seven or eight-year-old generally doesn't notice. I didn't remember that the main character was played by Melinda Dillon, the mother from A Christmas Story. I didn't remember that the "frozen time" effect was achieved simply by having the actors stand really still, an effect that didn't work particularly well because you could see the characters moving pretty obviously. I didn't remember that the main character seemed to receive sexual pleasure at first while using the amulet's powers. That was rather odd. I didn't remember that she had the worst husband and kids in the entire world. If I were her I would have walked a few hundred miles outside of town and started time back up to watch them get nuked out of existence (seriously, they're the worst people you could imagine). Finally, my mind seemed to create her wandering through the parking lot of a grocery store (probably from the grocery scene at the beginning of the segment) rather than outside a movie theater in the final scene. Other than those minor details, every action, every word I remembered as if I'd seen this show fifty times rather than once when I was in the first grade.

It's a little surprising that I remember this obscure memory from my past so distinctly. What was it that seared this into my mind so permanently? I saw plenty of crappy TV in the eighties... what made this program different?

I'm on a quest for answers.

To be continued ... (except probably not)

[Laura]

The randomest Twilight Zone episodes can make a huge impression on a kid. I was terrified of the one where the Earth is hurtling into the sun, and the woman's oil painting melted.

That plot sounds like a Philip K Dick story--I don't mean in the sense that all Twilight Zone episodes do, but a specific one. But maybe it's just a PKD story I'm confusing with that episode of Twilight Zone.

[barend]

firstly, red dawn still rocks.


(from memory, and confirmation from a friend who rented it out recently)


secondly, I totally remember that episode. I've always loved the idea of stopping time so i never forgot that episode. my best frined and I watched it together when we were about 12. (I think we rented it out, I'm not sure). but we used to talk about it heaps forming solutions like dragging everyone out of the zone, or stacking stuff up to access the missle and using one's new found unlimmited time with no distractions to read up on diffusing nuclear weapons (assuming one could gain the reading material from somewhere, but hey, there awas plenty of time to search and all security personel were frozen).

i loved that episode.


and the one where the guy finds out his whole life is a tv show. If they could make truman show based on this wothout an eyelid batting, how can people say there are no ideas left? lazy no good hollywood hacks living in fear of trailer park trash test audiences.

with old episiodes of the twilight zone, along with fantasy novels as far as the eye can see (preferably not written by 15 year olds), there are is an endless scorce of material for films to come....

but screw it lets all just remake successful 70s films.

This post has been edited by barend: 20 April 2007 - 09:21 PM

[Chefelf]

It's great to know that I'm not the only one that remembers that episode!

Chilling.

[civilian_number_two]

I remember that one. I thought it was a ripoff of the one with Burgess Meredith, where the whole world IS destroyed and he survives by accidentally being locked in a bank vault. Pleased to finally be alone with his books, he then breaks his glasses.

I remember that nuclear war hysteria quite well. I think exaggerated fear of communism (along with reminders of Vietnam-War guilt) were hand in hand with US military action in South America. But I can't prove it.

[barend]

It's great to know that I'm not the only one that remembers that episode!

Chilling.

that and the one with bruce willis.

we had very parallel childhoods.

[Jordan]

I remember the episode where the guy goes for a stroll in the woods and comes along the cross roads to heaven and hell.

There are two sales men at the cross roads, one for hell and one for heaven. The guy trying to get the man to go to hell tells him to go down the left path, because it's a non-stop party (you can hear a party going on). Then a bunch of stuff happens and he meets the representative for heaven. The guy's like "that road leads you to hell, take mine".

It was creepy and weird.