Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (The Twilight Zone) - Definition and Overview

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet is an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone.

Details

Episode number:123

Season: 5

Production code: 2605

Original air date: October 11, 1963

Writer: Richard Matheson based on his story of the same name, first published in the collection Alone by Night in 1961

Director: Richard Donner

Music:stock

Cast

Bob Wilson:William Shatner

Ruth Wilson:Christine White

Gremlin: Nick Cavat

Synopsis

Bob Wilson is a salesman on a plane for the first time since his nervous breakdown six months ago, also on an airplane. He spots a gremlin on the wing of the plane. Every time someone else looks out the window the gremlin flies away. Bob steals a gun and opens the window to kill the gremlin who is trying to sabotage the plane.

Trivia

"Matheson and I were going to fly to San Francisco... It was like three or four weeks in constant daily communication with Western Airlines preparing a given seat for him, having the stewardess close the [curtains] when he sat down, and I was going to say, "Dick, open it up.' I had this huge, blownup poster stuck on the [outside of the window] so that when he opened it there would be a gremlin staring at him. So what happened was we get on the plane, there was the seat, he sits down, the curtains are closed, I lean over and say, 'Dick-' at which point they start the engines and it blows the thing away. It was an old prop airplane... He never saw it. And I had spent hours in the planning of it. I would lie in bed thinking how we could do this."

• Rod Serling quoted in The Twilight Zone Companion

• This episode was spoofed in The Simpsons fourth Treehouse of Horror episode. Instead of an airplane, the segment took place on the schoolbus.

• In one of the revival series John Lithgow, also known for his part on the sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun, appears as the same character. On one episode of Third Rock featuring William Shatner as a guest star as "The Big Giant Head." Both of them are on a plane and acknowledge that there is "something on the wing!"

Critical Response

"Of all the Twilight Zones I wrote, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" remains one of my favorites. It was well directed by Richard Donner, and I loved William Shatner's performance. I still wish, though, that Pat Breslin had played his wife (as she did in the Twilight Zone segment "Nick of Time"), and I thought the monster on the wing was somewhat ludicrous. It looked rather like a surly teddy bear."

• Richard Matheson writing in The Twilight Zone Magazine

References

• Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)

Back to: The Twilight Zone, Episode List, Season 5