Little Girl Lost (The Twilight Zone)
|
|
Little Girl Lost is an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone.
| Contents |
Details
Episode number: 81
Season: 3
Original airdate: March 16, 1962
Writer: Richard Matheson from his short story of the same name, published in his collection "The Shores of Space" in 1953.
Director: LaMont Johnson
Music: original score by Bernard Herrmann
Cast
Chris Miller: Robert Sampson
Ruth Miller: Sarah Marshall
Tina: Tracy Stratford, Rhoda Williams (Tina's voice)
Bill:Charles Aidman
Synopsis
This episode starts in the serenity that precedes most nightmares, in the middle of the night when most people are sleeping in their beds, oblivious to circumstances that are about to behave entirely outside the scope of reality.
The opening scene shows a couple sleeping in their bedroom. We soon hear the distant whimpering of their little girl and her parents slowly stir from their deep sleep. Like most parents of small children, this is nothing new to them and they are slow to relinquish their slumber to a more conscious state of mind. The dog in their yard begins to bark.
Dad gets out of bed and shuffles off towards her room. Arriving there, he turns on the light only to see her empty bed. He can hear her plea to help her and it is obvious from her voice that she is scared. Looking around the room, he says, "I'm here, where are you?"
Again, we hear the dog barking in the back yard.
Dad lowers himself to his hands and feet next to the bed while trying to talk her out from underneath it where she must be hiding from her nightmare. The camera follows him down from the opposite side of the bed, our view level with his head. We briefly lose sight of him as the mattress comes between us. Then we see him again from underneath the bed, our view unobstructed by the child that should be between him and us. Her voice is in the room, but she is not. He can hear her and she can hear him, but neither can see each other.
The torpor from his sleep has completely left him as he explains to his entering wife that even though they can hear her, their little girl is no longer with them.
The dog is now barking incessantly. Dad calls a neighbor for help and opens the door to let the dog in as he waits for the neighbor to join them. The dog runs into the girl's room as Mom, still in the room, watches it go under the bed. She bends over calling it back, but becomes quiet when she sees that it has disappeared. We hear the dog barking and the little girl's voice from somewhere, but where are they? They are in another dimension. Their daughter's nightmare has become theirs as well.
Trivia
Matheson wrote the short story based on a real-life incident involving his young daughter, who fell off her bed while asleep and rolled against a wall. Despite hearing her daughter's cries for help, Matheson's wife was initially unable to locate her daughter.
Back to: The Twilight Zone, Episode List, Season 3