The Twilight Zone Zone – Episode 4: “A Nice Place to Visit” and “The After Hours”

Every week on The Twilight Zone Zone,we go down Donald Liebenson’s list The 26 Episodes We Talk About When We Talk About The Twilight Zone from Vanity Fair, chronologically by release date and compare two episodes and choose which one to recommend. This week we watched “A Nice Place to Visit” and “The After Hours.”

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“A Nice Place to Visit”

The Twilight Zone also delighted in dicking around characters in need of retribution. Another case in point: Rocky Valentine, a petty criminal shot to death. A jovial guide (Sebastian Cabot) in the afterlife tends to his every desire, giving him a swinging pad, sure-thing bank robberies, and beautiful dolls on demand. Sounds like heaven, right? This was the first episode to employ a classic Twilight Zone trope, in which the come-upper gets the last maniacal laugh at the eternal expense of the come-upped. (See also on this list: “The Grave” and “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”)

“The After Hours”

A.k.a. the “Marsha episode.” Anne Francis stars as a department-store shopper who gets some very off-putting service by a strange clerk when she purchases a thimble on the otherwise-completely empty ninth floor. Her eerie odyssey begins when she complains to management, only to be told that the store has no ninth floor. Locked in overnight, she will come face to face with her reality.

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There are many paths in life, but which one will you travel down in the Twilight Zone, Zone…

Host: Nic Hoffmann

Panel: Daniel and Matthew Quinn