It's a Good Life (The Twilight Zone)
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It's a Good Life is an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone.
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Details
Episode number: 73
Season: 3
Production code: 4801
Original airdate: November 3, 1961
Writer: Rod Serling from the story "It's a Good Life" by Jerome Bixby, first published in the 1953 collection Star Science Fiction Stories No. 2.
Director: James Sheldon
Music: stock
Cast
Anthony Fremont: Billy Mumy
Mr. Freemont: John Larch
Mrs. Freemont:Cloris Leachman
Dan Hollis: Don Keefer
Synopsis
Six-year-old Anthony Fremont (Billy Mumy) can control the town he lives in by disfiguring or killing people (wishing them into a cornfield) who don't think happy thoughts or otherwise act according to his wishes--just by using his mind. Everyday is a living hell for the people in Peaksville, Ohio.
Trivia
- In early 2003, a Twilight Zone revival series on UPN showed a sequel called "It's Still a Good Life" in which Bill Mumy reprised his Anthony Fremont role. His on-screen daughter was played by his real-life daughter Liliana Mumy.
- The song "Cemetery Girls" by Barnes and Barnes makes use of samples from the original 1960's episode. Mumy also happens to be half of the band Barnes & Barnes, as well as a solo musician and member of The Jenerators.
- On Serling's never-realized plans to make a feature-length version of this episode:
- "Back in 1974, one year before his death, Serling told an interviewer that he was working on a third draft of the screenplay for Alan Landsburg Productions, for whom he had narrated Chariots of the Gods? and other documentaries. The script was essentially an elaboration of the award-winning teleplay, according to Dante, who has read it. Unlike Bixby's story, however, "the screenplay starts with the child being born," Dante recalled in Fangoria magazine. "He can talk right away. He's very smart and dangerous...It falls upon the townspeople to get up enough courage to do something about Anthony. It's a little like a more sophisticated version of what It's Alive turned out to be."
- "It's possible that the screenplay included scenes from the original story too grotesque for television: Anthony's making a rat eat itself, from the tail up; his turning some of his neighbors into truly horrific creations; and the actual process of his "wishing someone into the cornfield," i.e. executing someone - although Dante claims that the script contained no "exploitation."
- James H. Burns, excerpt from "It's a Good Life: Rod Serling's Forgotten Screenplay" published in the October 1984 edition of The Twilight Zone Magazine.
Themes
An examination of the corrupting influence of power. Similar themes are visited in The Little People.
References
- Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
Back to: The Twilight Zone, Episode List, Season 3