Nightcrawlers (The Twilight Zone)

"Nightcrawlers"
The Twilight Zone (1985 TV series) episode
Scene from "Nightcrawlers"
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 4c
Directed by	William Friedkin
Written by	Philip DeGuere
Original air date	18 October 1985
Guest stars
James Whitmore Jr.: (Trooper) Dennis Wells Scott Paulin: Price Robert Swan: Bob the cook Exene Cervenka: Waitress Bobby Bass: Ray Sandy Martin: Lindy Matt Levin: Ricky
Episode chronology
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List of Twilight Zone episodes

Nightcrawlers is the third and final segment of the fourth episode of the first season (1985-1986) of the television series The Twilight Zone. It is taken from a short story of the same name by Robert R. McCammon, first published in the 1984 collection Masques.

Synopsis

Just prior to a number of various customers coming into a diner during a heavy rain, a state trooper, Dennis Wells, known to the workers, comes in and describes a massacre at a local motel. Then after a near-collision between two cars on the road just outside, a Vietnam veteran named Price comes into the diner. While Price is having coffee, he asks for a cold beer, but the cook, Bob, tells him that the diner does not have a liquor license. Price laments how a cold beer would taste good and a can of Budweiser appears in his hand.

After a confrontation with Wells, who says he "wishes he could have gone" to Vietnam, Price is compelled to describe how he fled and abandoned his unit during the war, condemning all of them to death in the jungles. He relays that he dreams one recurring nightmare in which his unit, "The Nightcrawlers", are hunting him down to exact revenge. Price explains that he and other soldiers were "sprayed with something" which relates to his mysterious condition.

He apparently was endowed with the power of mind over matter (as were the others in his unit), which he demonstrates by materializing a t-bone steak on the grill. The trooper, who believes Price is a dangerous troublemaker who may be responsible for the motel massacre, pulls his gun on Price, but Price melts it with his mind. The trooper knocks Price unconscious but it is too late. The diner begins to experience Price's nightmare: ghost-like soldiers materialize, destroy the diner and the surrounding parking lot and vehicles, and then force their way inside to kill Price and the trooper, before vanishing again. Bob is wounded but survives.

Bob realizes that Price's powers caused the massacre in the hotel as well as the events in the diner. As he is being taken away in an ambulance, he cries out a reminder to the others that Price said there were still four more soldiers with the same abilities.

Production details

• Based on a short story by Robert R. McCammon
• Original score by Merl Saunders and the Grateful Dead, featuring Huey Lewis on harmonica
• Exene Cervenka of punk group X appears as a waitress.

Syndication

This episode was stretched into a half-hour run time for syndication, as recently shown on the Chiller TV network.

References and links

• Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
• List of The Twilight Zone episodes
• TV Tome episode page
• IMDB page
• Robert McCammon site