The Twilight Zone: The Howling Man
Jun. 2nd, 2026 07:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWhen I saw the next-episode preview for “The Howling Man” I did wonder if The Twilight Zone was getting around to “an old-fashioned scary story,” regardless of the differing amounts of time between the the horror films of the early sound movie era and The Twilight Zone’s then-contemporary fantasies and between the TV show and today. The title gave me a certain impression of just what sort of scary monster would be involved.
As it turned out, though, after a brief introduction setting up what would follow as a flashback to “after World War I” and enough scene-setting of a dark and stormy night that I was wondering just when Rod Serling would show up (he looked to have done that via a process shot), the potential monster was a lot bigger than what I’d supposed. The main character being told by the leader of a religious order, distinguished from his hirsute companions first of all by his greater age, that the world hadn’t been so troubled in the years since they’d imprisoned the devil himself did have me thinking the years following World War I had still involved wars, but I did wind up wondering if the later years of the 1920s might have seemed a bit better. There was also a brief invocation of “oh, these latest troubles are the ones people are supposed to grow via enduring.” The tilted camera got to tilting in the other direction during some shots, increasing a sense of disorientation. One uncertain “if you are who you say you are...” question was asked just before the expected sort of unfortunate development, and what followed looked a bit more conventional than a previous “deal with the devil” story in the series. In any case, a concluding twist in the present day did add a bit more room for thought.
As it turned out, though, after a brief introduction setting up what would follow as a flashback to “after World War I” and enough scene-setting of a dark and stormy night that I was wondering just when Rod Serling would show up (he looked to have done that via a process shot), the potential monster was a lot bigger than what I’d supposed. The main character being told by the leader of a religious order, distinguished from his hirsute companions first of all by his greater age, that the world hadn’t been so troubled in the years since they’d imprisoned the devil himself did have me thinking the years following World War I had still involved wars, but I did wind up wondering if the later years of the 1920s might have seemed a bit better. There was also a brief invocation of “oh, these latest troubles are the ones people are supposed to grow via enduring.” The tilted camera got to tilting in the other direction during some shots, increasing a sense of disorientation. One uncertain “if you are who you say you are...” question was asked just before the expected sort of unfortunate development, and what followed looked a bit more conventional than a previous “deal with the devil” story in the series. In any case, a concluding twist in the present day did add a bit more room for thought.