The Twilight Zone Review: Still Valley

By William Kozy

There are a handful of Twilight Zone episodes centered on The Civil War (“Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, “The Passersby” “Back There”) and of those, “Still Valley” received the fewest votes, just 4, in my survey of fans and writers asking, “What is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?” This ties it with 9 other episodes for 124th thru 132nd place.

The episode is buoyed by the low key strength of Gary Merrill’s performance in the role of Confederate Sergeant Joseph Paradine. Set in 1863 Virginia, a little before the Battle of Gettysburg, Paradine thinks he hears some soldiers in the small hamlet near his encampment. “Yanks?” one of his men, Dauger, asks with trepidation. But Paradine doesn’t hear them anymore. Dauger’s hands shake in fear as he sips from his coffee mug. Disgusted, Paradine tells Dauger, “You ain’t a right arm to me or a left arm.

You’re just some extra baggage that breathes hard and splits my rations. You figure you’ll shape up by the end of the war?” But Paradine softens slightly upon hearing Dauger’s tale of an excuse leading to his breaking point. Paradine offers a simple form of advice that amounts to taking a more focused view of things, and not fretting over all the dead bodies. Focusing on the individual and current mission which, for now, is to scout the village below where Union soldiers will be taking position. By the episode’s end, we’ll see if Paradine still thinks ignoring the big picture is the advisable thing to do.

The name Paradine, coming from the Ancient Greek “paradeisos” meaning garden, has a nice suggestive link to that early choice Adam and Eve made in the Garden of Eden in which they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil. Paradine will have a similar choice to make as we will see at the climax of the episode.

The neighing of horses coming from the town alert the two soldiers to get a closer look. From the sound, Paradine estimates a platoon of about thirty men with horses, but suddenly the sounds stop abruptly. Paradine wants to get a closer look, but Dauger wants to pull out, satisfied that they can report back that the Yanks are there. But Paradine wants to get a head count, a more helpfully specific reconnaissance. When Dauger suggests even going down there to surrender, Paradine gives him the back of his hand and a pithily scripted admonishment: “Mr. Dauger, I extend my sympathy so long as your yellow eats at your inside. But when it crawls onto my bivouac and tries to climb up on my horse, I withdraw my sympathy and give you the back of my hand.”

After a few more insults, Sergeant Paradine heads down the valley to the town on his “brave horse” riding right down the middle of main street in what would seem a very careless disregard for safety and stealth. Regardless, he ties up his horse at a post and then walks quietly around holding his rifle. Just then a church bell rings, startling him into throwing himself to the ground. He looks up at the bell and registers a kind of bemusement. It’s not however, the last joke that God will play on him.

Suddenly he spies a battalion of Union soldiers all lined up in formation, but….frozen stiff. They are all completely stationary and silent, unmoving. He gets the nerve to go up close to them to investigate further, but sure enough they are all fixed in still positions no matter what activity they were performing. Here’s where I think Merrill shines—as he roams from one to the other all over the town he voices his thoughts aloud, trying to figure out what’s going on. Sleeping? Plague? And he answers himself with reasoned rebuttals for each. He’s a well-layered character; his gristly beard and fixed gaze, puzzled but not exactly afraid, are offset by his keen intelligence. His adept way with words was evident from his conversation with Dauger in the opening scene, and now in this scene, and the next few we get a glimpse into his ability to scientifically analyze situations.

His mind spins after running out of explanations and he becomes almost giddy with bewilderment as he runs about yelling “All right Yanks! You’re all my prisoners!” He comes upon a supply wagon (look for the lingering boom microphone shadow in the lower left corner of your screen), and indulges in some taunting of the frozen soldiers. But he then succumbs to the weirdness, muttering almost glumly, “I just don’t understand” as he looks upon a very young soldier holding an American flag. Maybe Paradine meant he doesn’t understand why the flag has 50 stars on it. Oops.

As Paradine is about to enjoy some meat from the wagon, a flower pot falls over from a window across the road from him. He sees someone inside and warns them to come out. And out from the door creeps an ancient old man holding onto a book. Both men thought each other was the enemy and are relieved to find that they are both Confederates. Both mention how close the other had come to dying, and Paradine condescendingly asks the old man, “What was you gonna use Grandpa? That book? That’s a pretty heavy thing to be throwin’”. But the old man sets Paradine straight by explaining he would’ve used the book the same way he used it on the soldiers. Again, Paradine conjures up the more rational scientific explanation that there must be “some natural explanation” for what happened to them. The old man laughs and reveals that his book is for conjuring witchcraft. Scoffing at the old man’s foolishness, Paradine knocks his book to the floor, inciting the old man to recite a spell that freezes Paradine in mid-sentence. The old man tells his story to the captive audience Paradine; he is a witch-man named Teague, the seventh son of his father who was also was the seventh son. Teague releases Paradine from the spell, who stubbornly says simply, “Hypnotism.” But he doesn’t hold on long to that idea in the face of the proof there in the streets. The name Teague after all is Gaelic for “bard, or philosopher”, and in this case his poetry is of the spell-casting kind.

Teague says he can do this to the entire Union Army, but then he tells Paradine he won’t be able to because he knows he’s “going to die before the Sun goes down.” And then Teague drops the bomb: he tells Paradine that he has chosen him to take over the task of using conjuring to defeat the whole Union army. Teague hands him the book, but Paradine is deeply troubled, expressing that, “It don’t seem right at all. There’s something unclean. Like being in league with…” And Teague finishes the thought for him, “the Devil.” Teague pats Paradine on the shoulder, happily announcing “That’s who we’ll have fighting on our side!”

By nightfall, Paradine has returned to his encampment where the Lieutenant awaits his report. The lieutenant mentions they haven’t heard a sound all day, but Paradine assures him that there is an advance party in the town. Without hesitation Paradine comes out with it, unafraid of what they’ll think of him. The lieutenant thinks Paradine needs rest and orders him to bed, but Paradine persists and tells him that on his way back, he used the book to cast a spell on some Yank troops that had camped out by a ridge where their fellow Confederate officer Mallory had gone with some men. And just then, Mallory himself has returned to the camp and approaches the Lieutenant and Paradine, reporting with utter bafflement, that they were walking up to the ridge and when they came upon the Union soldiers they were all “frozen like statues!”

Paradine again offers the book, “This done it.” Without even looking through it, the Lieutenant knows, “This is the devil’s work.” Paradine freely admits that it is, but argues that maybe they need the devil. He pleads on behalf of the Confederate army that he says hasn’t enough food or supplies, saying outright that they are losing the war, “this cause of ours is dying right in front of us.” Historically, that doesn’t feel completely accurate because in this story the Battle of Gettysburg hasn’t taken place yet (according to Serling’s closing monologue), and before that battle many thought that the South was winning the war up to that point.

But anyway, Dauger comes forth at this point and urges Paradine to read from the book, and cast a spell on every Union soldier in the field: “Freeze them, put them into the earth or something.”

Paradine opens the book and begins, “Satan. I call upon ye. And in so doing, I revoke the name of…” But he stops short as he sees the next word. Dauger urges him on, but Paradine says with reluctance, “It calls upon us to revoke the name of God.” Dauger grabs the book and he and Paradine scuffle over it. Dauger argues, “You said yourself it’s the only thing we got left!” Paradine, with a change of heart, realizes that if he reads from the book, it’s the Confederacy that will be damned. And in a beautifully written bit of dialogue he sermonizes, “Then let it be the end. If it must come, let it come. If this cause is to be buried, the let it be put in hallowed ground.” And with that, he casts the book into the campfire.

My question would be, since Paradine already used the book to cast a spell, didn’t he notice at that point that it said “…revoke the name of God”? But let’s even forget about that. Isn’t it basic common sense that if you’re calling upon Satan, as had been mentioned over and over again, that they are by definition revoking the name of God? How can they be so surprised when they come upon that sentence at the end? This bunch must be from the Valley of the Dullards.

And for that, I lower my rating from 6.66 to 5.9.

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