A Flight from Fear

“I was on an airplane. I looked out the window and thought, ‘Jeez, what if I saw a guy out there?” — Richard Matheson, writer of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”

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I know what I saw. I’m NOT crazy.

Easy to say, sure. And why should they believe me? What I’m saying would sound crazy if the most sane man on the face of the earth said it. And I’m far from that.

See, I had a little breakdown a while back. Spent some time in the Waldorf for wackos. Recovered nicely. The doctor said I was cured, my wife came to get me, I boarded the plane … which was probably a mistake. I mean, this happened before on a plane.

But face your fears, right? Get back up on that horse, they say. So I did. I boarded the plane. We took off. Then I looked out the window. And I saw …

I saw a man. On the wing.

Okay, it wasn’t exactly a MAN. It was more like a … creature. A hulking, furry thing. Like Bigfoot decided to take up wing-walking. At night. In a thunderstorm.

I know, I know. When you’re flying at that height, and that speed, there’s no POSSIBLE way that ANYTHING could even hold on, let alone walk or tamper with the engines.

That’s what he was doing, you see. That’s why I had to warn them. You think I wanted to have everyone looking at me like I’m a lunatic? I didn’t! I could have just shut up about it! Lord knows I tried.

But I couldn’t just sit there and watch us all crash! I had to say something.

Of course Julia looked at me as if I’d just sprouted a third eye. The stewardess, too. And that flight engineer? Pulling the old “we see it too” gag? It was just like being right back here among the padded cells and the leather restraints. Smile and play along, right? Then kick you into a room, lock it and lose the key for a few days, is that it? Well?

I’m telling you, if I hadn’t pulled the marshal’s gun, and actually DONE something about that monster, you wouldn’t have a patient here to psychoanalyze! Me, Julia, that smirking flight engineer, and everybody on board would be spread across a few miles of charred wreckage right now! I mean, that’s all there is to it!

Wait, no. Set the phone down. I’m calm. See? Sitting nicely. Voice is normal. Just talking.

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It’s among the most iconic images in television history, let alone the annals of The Twilight Zone: a man on the wing of a plane.

A “gremlin”, to be exact. It’s up there with Henry Bemis’s smashed eyeglasses, the unbandaging of poor Janet Tyler by pig-faced doctors and nurses, and the badly timed translation of a Kanamit cookbook.

On Oct. 11, 1963, William Shatner made a second trip to the fifth dimension. He’d already won a secure place in TZ history playing superstitious Don Carter in Richard Matheson’s Season 2 gem “Nick of Time”, gripped by the conviction that a napkin-holder with a grinning Devil’s head could predict the future.

Now, armed with another surefire script from Matheson, Shatner was about to do battle again. His opponent this time appeared much larger and more menacing.

I say “appeared” because in my view, his ultimate opponent was the same in both cases. It wasn’t a penny-ante fortune-teller or a high-flying sabateur. It was self-doubt.

First as Don Carter and then as Bob Wilson, Shatner gave pitch-perfect portrayals of men haunted by a lack of faith in their own abilities and judgment.

Don can’t make a move without paying an inanimate object for a vague answer. Bob can’t speak up without leaving everyone convinced he’s lost his mind. Again.

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It would have been so easy to swallow that sleeping pill. I’d gone mad before, hadn’t I? Maybe I WAS seeing things. And the looks people give you. It’s awful.

But not as awful as crashing. Because if I was right, we were all going to die. I’d rather be locked up here, and know that Julia and the rest of those people are alive and well, than sit there and not lift a finger.

So yes, I took that gun. And I fired every last bullet right into that … THING.

And you know what? I’d do it again.

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That’s the thing about Don and Bob. Each one finally acts. Don shakes off the paralysis of superstition and believes in his wife. It’s hard, but he takes a leap of faith, and goes on to live a life free of mental enslavement.

Bob spits out the sleeping pill, takes the extraordinary risk of stealing an air marshal’s gun, and nearly takes a parachute-free ride to the ground, he’s so determined to kill the gremlin. The episode ends with him wrapped in a straitjacket, but look at the smile on his face, the relief in his eyes. He did the right thing, so he’s never been freer.

Shatner’s penchant for overacting has become so legendary that he himself has played on this stereotype for years. But “Nick of Time” and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” show that he was actually a very capable actor.

“William Shatner was just wonderful,” Matheson said. “In ‘Nightmare’, he was so, so restrained. You could see him struggling to maintain his sanity, after just getting out of a sanitarium.” It’s a beautifully controlled performance.

There’s another reason, I believe, for this episode’s success — one that is seldom mentioned. It goes beyond Matheson’s writing, Shatner’s acting, and Richard Donner’s direction. (Donner would helm five more TZs before going on to direct such films as “The Omen”, “Superman” and the “Lethal Weapon” series.)

It’s the fact that the gremlin was real.

So often in stories like this we’re faced with a hero who never gets the satisfaction of being proven right. We either know no one will ever believe him, or we’re not sure.

Not this time. When we see that very last shot of the damaged wing — the “tangible manifestation” that Serling mentions in his conclusion — we know Bob will be exonerated. His incarceration will be temporary. He’s won.

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It’s funny. You’d think people would be grateful to learn the truth. I mean, if your life was in danger, wouldn’t you want a warning?

But no. People just want you to keep your head down and shut up. Don’t rock the boat.

And I get it, I really do. I didn’t want to interrupt their reading. I didn’t want to shake them out of their naps. I was looking forward to a peaceful flight myself!

But no. Sorry, gang. That creature had other plans. Are they mad at HIM, though? No. Shoot the messenger.

Well, I had a different idea. Shoot the gremlin.

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Nick Cravat, a former circus acrobat, was hired to play the gremlin. It was a tough, demanding role, with Cravat getting soaked with water and buffeted by wind machines throughout the shoot. Matheson was no fan of the make-up and suit (“I didn’t think much of that thing on the wing”), but Cravat lends the part just the right air of menace and turns in a solid performance.

So does Christine White, who plays Julia. Matheson was hoping for Patricia Breslin, who played Shatner’s wife in “Nick of Time”, but White (who also starred in TZ’s “The Prime Mover”), is well cast as a woman put in an impossible situation: believe in your poor husband and appear just as mad as he is, or reject this ridiculous story of his and rob him of the support he so desperately needs.

But the whole thing rests on Shatner’s carefully balanced portrayal of a man faced with a terrible dilemma. It’s an unexpectedly subtle performance, one that Matheson justifiably called “really marvelous.” Even a skeptical reviewer in the Tucson Daily Citizen noticed it, noting that “the only redeeming quality of this far-fetched half-hour is the acting of William Shatner”.

The shoot itself was, not surprisingly, a logistical “nightmare” of its own. The left airplane wing that jutted out from the interior cabin mock-up was suspended over a huge water tank to catch all the “rain” as they filmed each take. There was plenty for director Donner to keep track of:

A man flying in on wires. Wind. Rain. Lightning. Smoke, to get the effect of clouds and travel and speed. Actors. You couldn’t hear yourself think because of the noise in the machines outside. And fighting time, all the time. It was just unbearable. If any one of those things went wrong, it ruined the whole take.

But no one could say that it was a wasted effort. “I love it, I do love it,” Donner added. “It’s just such an unusual thing for television, really, to see that much energy go into a half-hour film. And the story was good, too.”

Serling, ever the practical joker, had a perfect post-script in mind. One that, in true Zone fashion, didn’t quite come off as planned:

Matheson and I were going to fly to San Francisco. It was like three or four weeks after the show was on the air, and I had spent three weeks in constant daily communication with Western Airlines preparing a given seat for him, having the stewardesses close the [curtains] when he sat down, and I was going to say, ‘Dick, open it up.’ I had this huge blown-up poster stuck on the [outside of the window] so that when he opened it, there would be this gremlin staring at him.

So what happened was we get on the plane, there was the seat, he sits down, the curtains are closed, I lean over and I say, ‘Dick –‘ at which point they start the engines and it blows the thing away. It was an old prop airplane … he never saw it. And I had spent hours in the planning of it. I would lie in bed thinking how we could do this.

Fortunately for Twilight Zone fans, the episode itself came off just as planned. Another Zone classic had been born.

We had already enjoyed Don Carter’s victory over superstition. Now we had Bob Wilson’s triumphant journey — “a flight not only from Point A to Point B,” Serling says in his final narration, “but also from the fear of recurring mental breakdown”.

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Face your fears, they say. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I did it.

Shooting the gremlin? No. Oh, that was scary. I won’t deny THAT. I wasn’t sure I’d live through it, to be honest.

No, the real challenge was refusing to deny what I saw merely to win some cheap approval. I had to face down that man inside who might have done that. Hell, who likely WOULD have done that. Standing up to him was hard.

So I didn’t just kill the gremlin. I killed the old Bob Wilson.

I wasn’t cured when I walked out of that hospital. But I am now.

Julia: It’s all right now, darling.
Bob: I know. But I’m the only one who does know… right now.

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Hope to see you in some corner of the fifth dimension soon!