Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

"Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"
The Twilight Zone episode
William Shatner stars in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" with Nick Cravat as the gremlin.
Episode no.	Season 5 Episode 105
Directed by	Richard Donner
Written by	Richard Matheson (From his story, first published in Alone by Night, 1961)
Featured music	Stock from "King Nine Will Not Return" and "The Rip Van Winkle Caper"
Production code	2605
Original air date	October 11, 1963
Guest stars
William Shatner: Bob Wilson Christine White: Julia Wilson Ed Kemmer: Flight Engineer Asa Maynor: Stewardess Nick Cravat: Gremlin
Episode chronology
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List of Twilight Zone episodes

"Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is a 1963 episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, based on the short story of the same name by Richard Matheson.

Plot summary

Bob Wilson (William Shatner) is a salesman on an airplane who notices a gremlin on the wing of the plane during mid-flight. Bob tries to alert his wife and the flight crew to the gremlin's presence, but every time someone else looks out the window, the gremlin leaps out of view, so nobody believes Bob's seemingly outlandish claim; his credibility is further marred by the fact that this is his first flight since his nervous breakdown six months earlier, which also occurred on a plane. Bob realizes that his wife is starting to think he needs to go back to the sanitarium, but his bigger concern is that, if nothing is done about the gremlin, it will damage the plane and cause it to crash; in fact, the gremlin has already started to tinker with the wiring under one of the wing flaps.

After repeated attempts to warn the crew, Bob grows desperate, steals a sleeping policeman's revolver, and opens the window marked "Auxiliary Exit" to shoot the gremlin, succeeding despite the fact that he is nearly blown out of the plane himself. Once the plane has landed, Bob is whisked away in a straitjacket, as everyone believes that he has gone insane; however the narrator informs the viewers that Bob's stay will be short-lived, and the final shot reveals why: The gremlin has left evidence of Bob's story, in the form of the damaged wing.

Remake

The episode was remade in 1983, as a segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Unlike Bob Wilson, whose credibility was compromised by a recent nervous break-down in the 1963 version, John Valentine, played by John Lithgow, suffers from severe aviatophobia, again giving the flight crew added reason to disbelieve his wild claims.

The story begins with flight attendants attempting to coax Mr. Valentine from the lavatory as he tries to recover from what seems to be a panic attack. He is repeatedly assured by the flight attendants that everything is going to be all right, but his nerves and antics disturb the surrounding passengers.

As Mr. Valentine takes his seat, he notices a hideous gremlin on the wing of the plane and begins to spiral into severe panic. He watches as the creature wreaks havoc on the wing, damaging the plane's engine, losing more control each time he sees it do something new. Valentine finally snaps, grabs a hand gun from another passenger, an air marshal, shoots out the window (causing a breach in the pressurized cabin), and begins firing at the creature. This only serves to catch the attention of the gremlin, who rushes up to Valentine and promptly destroys the gun. After a tense moment, in which they notice that the plane is landing, the gremlin grabs Valentine's face, then simply scolds him by wagging its finger in a "no, no" manner. The creature leaps into the sky as the airplane begins to make an emergency landing. As Valentine is wrapped in a straitjacket and carried off in an ambulance, the police, crew and passengers begin to discuss the incident, writing off Valentine as insane. The aircraft maintenance crew soon arrives however, and everyone gathers to examine the massive amounts of unexplained damage to the plane's engines.

In other media

Parts of this episode's plot have been repeated and parodied several times in popular culture, including television shows, films, radio, and music. For example, the Treehouse of Horror IV episode of The Simpsons features a segment called "Terror at 5½ Feet". It takes place on a school bus rather than an airplane, and puts Bart Simpson in the role of Bob Wilson. At the end Bart is taken away by an ambulance, but then sees the Gremlin outside the ambulance with the head of Ned Flanders.^[1] In an episode of Muppets Tonight, Miss Piggy sees a gremlin outside on the wing of her plane, and pleads for help. William Shatner appears next to her and comments that he's been complaining about the same guy for years.

John Lithgow's sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun made a couple of references to "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". In season one, episode 12 of 3rd Rock from the Sun, an angst-ridden Dick Solomon (Lithgow's character) is on a plane with Mary and he parodies his character in the film with a comment about something being on the wing, albeit before the flight takes off. In a later episode, a character played by William Shatner tells Dick that he once saw something mysterious on the wing of his airplane, and Dick exlaims, "the same thing happened to me!"

A Saturday Night Live sketch parodying the story features the gremlin doing a series of comical stunts, such as exercising and hanging out with Pearl Jam, and ends with the gremlin actually having been a locked out passenger. In a Season 5 episode of 30 Rock ("Double-Edged Sword"), Liz Lemon is sitting in an airplane seat and suddenly exclaims "There's someone on the wing!" She then realizes it is a maintenance worker, and they are still on the ground. It is also parodied by Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls when Carrey's character is flying in a plane as he looks out the window and exclaims "There's something on the wing....some...thing". It was also parodied in the movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, when the main character sees evil gummy bears ripping apart the wing of the plane.

Reception

Richard Matheson, in The Twilight Zone Magazine, called this episode one of his favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone, praising Richard Donner's direction and William Shatner's performance, though criticizing the appearance of the monster, comparing it to a "surly teddy bear."^{[verification needed]}

References

1. ^ Richmond, Ray; Antonia Coffman (1997). The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family. Harper Collins Publishers. pp. 124–125. ISBN 0-00-638898-1. 

Sources

• Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
• DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
• Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links

• "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" at the Internet Movie Database
• TV.com episode page