The Twilight Zone found a thousand and one ways to scare audiences throughout its five seasons. None of those scares, though, was conventional. You weren’t going to get ghostly chains rattling from some decrepit attic, or classic vampires going after virginal brides in faraway castles. The Twilight Zone went for the weird. It wanted to unsettle rather than produce a few fleeting screams. This means that the scariest episodes from its run tap into a special kind of weird that disturbs the mind while leaving its signature ethical questions floating around to haunt the psyche.
One of the best episodes to achieve this was “The After Hours,” entry #34 of season 1 (which aired on June 10, 1960 on CBS), directed by Douglas Heyes and written by Rod Serling. A woman called Marsha White enters a department store in search of a golden thimble. She takes an express elevator that mysteriously opens just for her and is taken to the 9th floor. Once she gets off, she notices the floor to be empty. And then a single, sharply dressed saleswoman steps up to help her find what she’s looking for. Things get very strange after that.
This episode succeeds in building a very mysterious character in the form of Marsha White early on. She comes off as a bit paranoid, as if she’s going to get caught for something that isn’t even clear to her. The department store is a kind of panopticon for her, a place where suspicious eyes follow her around. Actress Anne Francis plays up the paranoia that emanates from her character to perfection. She captures the very palpable feel of being surveilled in a public space, the uncertainness of it specifically. It really helps make “After Hours” truly disturbing. And just wait for that ending.
You can’t go wrong with any Twilight Zone episode this Halloween. Be it science fiction, fantasy, or straight up horror, the series as a whole is a showcase of the weird. Additionally, if you see Serling’s name credited as writer for any of the episodes, know you’re in for a masterclass in storytelling. So sit back, enjoy, and see yourself existentially doubt every single visit to a department store from this point on.
English (US) · 