User Reviews

Using Buster Keaton in the twilight of his career was an interesting choice. He may have been the most talented comedian of the silent age. This gives him a chance to display those talents in a little time travel story. He get hooked up with a guy living in modern times, and it becomes obvious that we are best left in our own times Keaton is able to do his sight gags very well. I've heard his voice before. I believe he did some of those Beach Party films, playing some vacuous characters just to earn a few bucks. Serling seemed to have respect for him and portrayed him that way. It's not a bad story. It shows how one reacts when we wish for something we don't have and get that wish.

Rod Serling had a wonderfully recurring penchant for nostalgia and a desire to get back to the good old days. In this episode, the small town of Harmony, New York replaces the locales of Homewood and Willoughby of earlier stories. Interestingly, this one presents a more balanced picture from both sides of history, as the 'good old days' are shown as not all they're cracked up to be with the absence of creature comforts like frozen TV dinners and bikinis.

Just as cool as it was to see Buster Keaton winding down his career in this presentation, the presence of Jesse White as an appliance repairman is one of the great unheralded coincidences of modern times. Who knows, maybe he got the Maytag repair man gig from someone who saw this show. I had to chuckle, he owned 'Jack's Fix It Shop', whereas I grew up in a small village where a four mile drive would get you to 'Joe Fix-It's' place the next town over.

I always get a kick out of those stories that illustrate the price of things while I was growing up. In this case, the tale did one better by taking you back to the economics of 1890. In the space of seventy years, sirloin steak moved from seventeen cents a pound to a dollar forty nine. Holy cow, what kind of inflation is that? Today price increases like that can happen virtually overnight if you're not looking.

For those not aware of Buster Keaton's illustrious career in silent movies, don't judge him too harshly by this effort. I guess there wasn't much else for him to turn to some four decades after his heyday as a pioneer comedian in film. If anything, I would have preferred he call it quits right here rather than get saddled with an appearance in such travesties as "Beach Blanket Bingo". He probably should have put the time helmet back on and gone back to the early 1920's.

This is a clever episode of TWILIGHT ZONE that was comic rather than strange or tragic. Buster Keaton is Woodrow Mulligan, a janitor from 1890 America, works in a laboratory. He is constantly griping about the life problems around him: meat is too expensive (it's like $1.00 / lb. Unheard of!). He is always yelling after crazy speeders (on bicycles - autos haven't appeared yet). Griping to the end, he sees a helmet like device by a scientist, and puts it on and tries it. Suddenly he is in modern America. The beginning was a seven minute silent film. Now it is all noise, all talking, all beeping, all blowing. Keaton is here only a few minutes when he realizes that the world has changed and not for the better. He runs into Stanley Adams, a Professor Rollo, who realizes that Mulligan is from c. 1890 (he mentions President Cleveland). Rollo has always wanted to live in that charming, quiet age. He helps Mulligan get the helmet repaired, and they go back in time. Rollo gets bored after awhile, due to the lack of scientific equipment that he can use. Mulligan puts the helmet on him and sends him into the future. But now Woodrow is fully content with the quiet, simple age he lives in. He has found contentment.

In his last fifteen years Buster Keaton was frequently on television (many times for Allan Funt on CANDID CAMERA, where he could help set up sight gag tricks on the public). He did make a few films as well (most notably A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM and THE RAILRODDER). But he occasionally popped up in television plays and episodes. He is in his element here, presumably advising the director (old comedy film director Norman McLeod - he directed the Marx Brothers in HORSE FEATHERS) on the tricks he could do. Watch how Stanley Adams and he time Adams picking him up when he is snatching a pair of trousers he needs. In terms of timing it reminds one of gags he did in the 20s in films like SHERLOCK JR. The episode does show Keaton in fine fettle for a man in his sixties.

The appearances of Jesse White (here as a repairman, of all things) is always welcome. But look a bit at "Professor Rollo". Stanley Adams was a well known figure in movies and television from the 1950s onward to his tragic suicide in 1977. Plump, with unkempt appearance, and heavy, booming voice, his best known dramatic role was as the wrestling promoter in the film version of REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT (he wants Anthony Quinn to be a wrestler wearing a costume as an Indian). His best known television appearance was as the space trader who introduces the crew of the Starship Enterprise in STAR TREK to those furry, fertile little creatures "Tribbles" (as in "The Trouble With"). Adams was always worth watching (like Jesse White, and certainly like Keaton), enhancing most of the productions he appeared in. I have never understood his suicide, but it was a sad end to a first rate character performer.

This episode of Twilight Zone combines a silent section (1890) with melodramatic acting and sight gags, an homage to the early Buster Keaton films. Lots of slapstick: Buster falling on a bulkhead door, falling in a puddle, running around pants-less. Silly scientist's invention of a Time Helmet, reminiscent of a Flash Gordon idea of what the future would be. Cheap prices, like $1.95 for ladies hats, or 17 cents a pound for beef seem outrageously high to Buster. Even the world of 1890 is too much for Buster/Mulligan. How shocking when he is mistakenly transported to the "modern" world of 1960! Buster was trying to go backwards! The "scientist" of that time wants to return to a calmer world, the 1890 that he has studied and admired. They go back together, and Buster/Mulligan is now happy and the "scientist" regrets not having electronic equipment, modern beds or an electric blanket. So Buster sends him back with the crazy helmet.

This Twilight Zone doesn't have a heavy message. Since Buster Keaton died in 1966, it is one of his last efforts. That's enough.

One other cute thing--longtime underutilized Maytag Man Jesse White is a repairman who fixes the Time Helmet--foreshadowing his washing machine career.

I've seen this lighthearted episode several times and, I must admit, it never gets old.

Silent screen legend Buster Keaton plays the part of Woodrow Mulligan, a janitor working for an inventor back in 1890. He's dissatisfied with his job and the world around him as he sees it as becoming increasingly expensive and dangerous. After overhearing his boss and his helper talking about his latest invention, a time travel helmet, Mulligan decides to try it for himself. He propels himself 72 years into the future and a crazier and more dangerous place than he had left.

While there, he meets Rollo played by Stanley Adams (you may not know his name, but you've no doubt seen his face). Rollo imagines 1890 as the more desirable time. After having the helmet repaired, both men find their way back to 1890. Mulligan is quite content to be back, but Rollo misses the modern conveniences 1962 had to offer.

This episode was played mostly for laughs but, as with every Twilight Zone, there was a lesson to be learned from it. Both Mulligan and Rollo may have had their own ideas about how they imagined a different time than their own, but that doesn't mean they'll be happy there. Big thumbs up to Richard Matheson and Rod Serling.

This was a perfect blend of Keaton's wonderfully impossible humor and whimsy, and a wonderfully moral Twilight Zone tale. Keaton's silent film always portrayed a cold and cynical universe, but one that did always somehow end up caring about the idealistic Keaton. Keaton's plans and hopes are usually dashed to pieces by fate, but just as he seems doomed, fate steps in to help him. That is what happens here. Woodrow Mulligan hates the 1890s world that he lives in, but doesn't find the 1961 world he time travels to any better. Yet it is his adventures to the worse world that makes him happy to return to his own time. Keaton was one of the kings of silent comedy alongside Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon, from 1922-1928. His films are the most amazing of them all the great silent film comedians. His sound career was uneven, at best. Most of his talking short films perhaps 50 or more, were amusing, but none amazing. He starred in about a dozen features between 1929 and 1936, and only three or four can be called good. His appearances in a dozen other features are small parts and cameos, with the exceptions of Charlie Chaplin's "Limelight," and "A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum," (his last film in 1965). Although these are great films and he is great in them, he is only onscreen in both for about four minutes. Was there ever a funnier time travel movie Than this little Twilight Zone episode? I don't think so. For more Keaton time travel, see his first feature film, "Three Age," (1923), a spoof of DW Griffth's "Intolerance."

I am one of the biggest fans of silent comedians and have probably reviewed more Buster Keaton films for IMDb than any other person. Every film he made from the beginning of his career to the early 30s with only two exceptions have I reviewed, so you can tell I am a major fan. It's because of this that I found this episode so painful and hard to watch. I loved this man's films and kept thinking "Buster, how could you?!". Well, now that I think about it, I guess I can see why Buster Keaton starred in this god-awful episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. He'd lost much of his fortune after a messy divorce in the early 1930s and his film career as a leading man was long passed as well. Now, in the 1960s, Keaton needed the money and loved his resurgence in popularity so he whored himself out to anyone willing to pay--appearing in Beach films and this mess of an episode of a great series.

The biggest problem with the episode is that it is just terribly written and Buster deserved much better. The show is supposed to be funny but isn't and instead of a homage to silent films is just painful to watch--particularly with Keaton putting that stupid time travel helmet on as well as all the poorly executed slapstick. Do yourself a favor, SKIP THIS ONE--it's a pale imitation of the greatness that once was Keaton's career!!!

Even with the talkie sequences, the outstanding pantomime is like something that Keaton, Lloyd, Chaplin or Langton would be getting huge laughs from 35 years before this episode of "The Twilight Zone" was made. It's actually the only episode of the series that could have been pitched to become its own series since the early 1960's had a fascination with time travel.

The great stoneface himself, Buster Keaton, is terrific as a janitor to a scientist, fed up with increasing traffic (bikes speeding buy at 6 miles an hour!), and all of a sudden ending up in 1961 when he takes his employers time travel hat, meeting scientists Stanley Adams who desperately wants to go back to 1890 with him. The problem is that the time travel hat is broken, and it's up to Mr. Fix it, grouchy Jesse White, to get it working again. But Adams finds life in 1890 to be tedious, and Keaton, quickly fed up with him, besides to get rid of him in his own way.

Utilizing sensational, terrifically timed gags, Keaton and Adams go from being able to talk to each other in 1961 (after early sequences with Keaton communicating only through titles) and back again. Keaton, who had gone through many problems since the end of the silent era, proves that he still has it and dealing with pratfalls, funny faces and droll asides. Adams is terrific in support, and White is sensational. "The Twilight Zone" didn't always succeed when they tried comedy, but kiss episode is absolutely brilliant in every way.