The Chaser (The Twilight Zone)
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Template:Infobox TTW season one The Chaser is an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone.
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Details
Episode number:31
Season:1
Production code: 173-3636
Original air date: May 13, 1960
Writer: Robert Presnell, Jr. based on the story "The Chaser" by John Henry Collier, first presented (under the title "Duet For Two Actors") as an episode of The Billy Rose Show in February 1951
Director: Douglas Heyes
Cast
Roger Shackleforth: George Grizzard
Professor Daemon:John McIntire
Leila:Patricia Barry
Homburg: J. Pat O'Malley
Synopsis
Roger Shackleforth is desperately in love with Leila and he visits an old professor looking for advice on how to win her. He purchases a love potion, which does makes Leila fall under his spell. After her love has becomes stifling, he goes back to the professor to buy poison. When he gets home, he slips it into her glass of champagne. But when he discovers that she is pregnant, the shock is so great that he drops and breaks the glass before he is able to give it to her.
Trivia
- The only episode of the first season not to be written by Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont or Richard Matheson.
- "That was one of the great things about The Twilight Zone. I had total freedom. Sometimes I would think of an idea that make the episode more Twilight Zone-y [but] that would require some expense. I remember one episode, "The Chaser", in which I devised a huge bookcase that must have doubled the budget, but they [Serling and producer Buck Houghton] never blinked an eye. They just said, 'Okay, great!' I didn't have to argue with anybody over the money-they'd argue about the money and let me have it! I knew that they were having problems with Jim Aubrey, but they kept them away from me. My responsibility was to get the job done."
- Douglas Heyes quoted in Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man.
Themes
"Love must be won, not bought," seems appropriate here.
References
- Sander, Gordon F.:Serling: The Rise And Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man. New York: Penguin Books, 1992.
- Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
Back to: The Twilight Zone, Episode List, Season 1