The Twilight Zone Review: Nightmare as a Child

By William Kozy

One of the most nonsensical episodes of the “The Twilight Zone”, “Nightmare as a Child” presents the opportunity for spotting more plot holes than a cemetery, and more poor direction than a blind crossing guard. It’s an episode in which after every step of the way you’ll find yourself thinking, “Wait, but why didn’t he…” or “If that’s her purpose then why is she so…”. Undoubtedly, it’s many faults account for it receiving only 6 votes in my survey of fans and writers asking, ‘What is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?’ tying it with 11 other episodes for 106th thru 116th place of the 156 episodes.”

Actress Janice Rule plays school teacher Helen Foley (named after one of Rod Serling’s favorite teachers) who is hiding a secret so well, even she isn’t aware of it. And this is the essence of the plot. There is something about her past that is haunting her, and almost immediately we are introduced to an annoyingly precocious child, who is tasked with getting Helen to remember the details of a traumatic incident from her past. But instead of coming out straightaway with her purpose, we are treated to taunts and teases from the little girl as she tries to extract the past from Helen for her to see. One could of course rightly make the case that this represents the mind of Helen Foley struggling to dig deep and figure out what’s bothering her, and the seemingly unnecessary style of chiding Helen is simply Helen dealing with her own psychological blockades. But it doesn’t explain why the little girl should be so obnoxious about it. Obtuse, yes I can see that approach, but needling Helen seems like a miscue.

Here’s what happened. Helen arrived home to her apartment and as she puts the key in her door she senses someone behind her, and when she turns slowly we see a little blonde girl who will call herself Markie sitting quietly on the steps. Helen goes over to her, brimming with a nurturing approach as she sits beside the silent girl who stares straight ahead. (Pretty soon you’ll which she stayed that way.) After a few attempts to break through, Helen tells her about being familiar with all kinds of children since she teaches school. Little Markie (11-year old Terry Burnham) snips, “I know. I now all about you.” Helen invites the girl in for a cup of hot chocolate, and the girl presciently seems to know that Helen doesn’t like marshmallows in her hot chocolate. Cue the ominous chord of music, but a big thank you to actress Janice Rule for NOT making too big a moment of it.

Inside, Helen starts making the hot chocolate and when she asks Markie about letting her mother know where she is, the little girl ominously informs Helen, “That won’t be necessary” Helen putters, and then we see her suddenly overtaken with a dark, troubling thought during Serling’s monologue. Helen brings a cup over to Markie who intones, “I’m glad it isn’t too hot. I don’t much like very hot things.” Helen sides with her saying, “I don’t blame you” and Markie comes back with “Of course you don’t. You got burnt once. That scar, right below your elbow.” Cut to a shocked reaction from Helen who looks quickly at her too-conveniently positioned arm already displaying the scar for the camera. And of course another ominous music chord. This style of music scoring will continue cheesily throughout the episode, but more puzzling is the continuous reference made to Helen’s getting burned as a child. We’re fooled into thinking it will become a plot point in the mystery, but nothing ever develops from that red herring. Now, nothing’s wrong with a red herring in a mystery, but a red herring should distract the viewer from the actual clues. The function here could’ve simply been another indication of the little girl’s eerie way of knowing about Helen’s past, and that would be fine, but to keep referring to it as the episode moves on, feels like it’s going to play a part in the unraveling, but it never ever does.

And this red herring actually runs counter to the struggle that is going on in Helen. She had seen someone earlier that played a part in the past trauma of her mother’s murder, but she doesn’t realize that just yet. It triggered her subconscious and that’s what’s eating at her. The burn on her arm has not a thing in the world to do with anything, so why then would little Markie–who I will tell you now, is not a real person, but is instead Helen herself as a young girl– why would Markie lead her on a path so far astray from the key matter? It’s an ominous exchange but it’s one that Markie should never have initiated:
Markie: “You remember?”
Helen: (annoyed) Of course I remember.
And then Markie gives the biggest, most suspicious looking expression you can imagine as she asks leadingly, “How did it happen?”
Helen: Well…actually I don’t remember.
But it’s pointless!

Helen says sullenly to Markie that she’s a little vague about some things from her childhood, and again, Markie’s response is less than commiserating: “I know that. I know that very well. I know all about you. Don’t you remember?” But then Markie indeed does get on the right track and asks Helen about what’s really at stake: “Do people look familiar to you sometimes?” But Helen gets upset, perhaps not wanting to face a scary memory, and she gets up in a huff, giving a terse “No!”. “Really?” counters Markie, but why has little Ms. Burnham been directed to give such a teasing smile, as though she takes pleasure in Helen’s getting annoyed? It’s as though the episode wants the red herring to be that we think Markie is an enemy instead of the man, Peter Selden, who will soon come to the door. A man who as performed by actor Shepperd Strudwick will remove all doubt from the viewers’ minds who the villain really is.

But before he arrives, Markie’s little nudges seem to be doing the trick and Helen starts to look grave and concerned. She remembers with Markie’s prodding, a man in a car near the school earlier in the day, who was stopped at a red light before she came home. Markie pushes more, trying to get Helen to admit that the man frightened her. But Helen reaches the point where she becomes alarmed and curious at how Markie is able to know all this and she demands to know who she is and where she’s from. When a noise is heard out in the hall, Markie panics, knowing that whoever it is has come to see Helen, so she runs out the back door. The visitor knocks and announces that he used to work with Helen’s mother. Helen opens that door and he asks if she remembers him. When her eyes register surprise, they both mention how they saw each other at the school, he in his car. He is friendly enough, but boy oh boy if ever there was an actor who conveyed suave menace, it was Mr. Strudwick.

What’s hilarious is the ensuing interrogation involving leading questions that he asks her which you’d have to be completely naive not to see as pointing to his trying to figure out if she remembers his murderous presence the night her mother was killed, when Helen was Markie’s age (hint hint). The questions are like a bad high school play that thinks it’s laid a huge surprise on the audience when it reveals the smooth talking man in a woman’s apartment is actually the killer. He asks, “Were you ever able to recall exactly what it was that…What I mean is, Miss Foley, you drew a blank after that evening. I wonder if it ever came back to you.” He probes further, “You were in the room when it happened.” She tells him about going into shock and going off to live with an aunt for many years before moving back. But why did she move back to this same town? I presume she didn’t have family here, or else they would have taken her in, so what was the pull to come back?

Selden continues his unlikely story, saying that he was in town on business and “someone pointed you out to me, and I wanted to stop and just say hello.” Maybe Helen caught on to how suspicious that sounded and she asks, “You say you worked for my mother?” He says, “I handled some of her investments at the time” and you’ve got to laugh at how he accentuates the word “investments”. Aha, yeah I see what you did there.

Now here’s the really creepy part if you didn’t get suspicious of him yet: He then says, “Well it’s wonderful to see you, grown up the way you have. Just as beautiful as you were when you were a little girl. I had quite a crush on you. I lived in the same apartment building.” What?! The adult Peter Selden back then had a crush on 10-year old Helen?

And he follows that “compliment” up with further inquiries into her mother’s murder, telling her that he was the one to have found her, which doesn’t make sense when you watch the replay of the murder played out in silhouette. He asks, “And they never found the man who did it, did they?” As she relates the details of what she did and didn’t remember, the fox-like look on his face couldn’t be more suspect.

Got room for another ominous music chord? Sure thing. Helen starts straightening up and picks up Markie’s cocoa cup only to discover that it’s full. As she shows Peter to the door she mutters what an odd little girl Markie was. This catches Peter’s attention who reminds Helen that “Markie” was Helen’s nickname when she was a little girl. Helen thinks deeply on that as we hear Markie singing “Twinkle twinkle little star how I wonder what you are” repeatedly. Helen seems happy to suddenly feel the connection to her memory of being called Markie. Things are coming back to her and this can’t be good news to Selden. In fact he says quite insidiously, “I’m sure that given time you’ll remember a lot of things. Didn’t the doctors tell you that your memory of things would come back?” Helen muses some more on Markie’s singing, but Selden doesn’t hear the singing. That registers with Helen, but before she thinks more on it, Selden pulls out a snapshot that he says Helen’s mother gave to him when Helen was a little girl. Well, he did have a “crush” on her after all. And of course the snapshot looks just like…that’s right, Rod Serling. No, the snapshot look just like Markie. I suppose what I find unsatisfactory is not just that Terry Burnham in a million years looks nothing like Janice Rule, the more unbelievable thing is that given the fact we now know that Markie is Helen as a little girl how could Helen not see that? If you were 30 don’t you think you’d recognize your 10-year-old self, from only 20 years earlier?

In any case, Selden has left and Helen has a dream about the murder those many years ago, and it’s the best sequence in the episode, imaginatively staged I admit. But when you watch it, you do see that Selden could not have been the person to have found Helen’s mother. But okay maybe he lied about finding her. People lie after all. But what would be the purpose of that particular lie he told her when he and Helen were talking earlier? There is no purpose to it.

Getting up from the couch, she hears Markie singing again, and slowly goes to the door to find her sitting on the stairs again. Helen tells Markie she should go to bed, and that her mother must be worried, but Markie tells her she has no mother, “Not anymore.” Helen gets angry again, insisting that Markie reveal who she is. And again the direction has Markie act like a little creepy weasel instead of a lost part of Helen’s mind trying desperately to find its way back: “You don’t know? You don’t have any idea? And you were doing so well, Helen.” Oh god I just want to shake this kid! It gets worse as a smarmy smirk comes over Markie’s face as she marches into Helen’s apartment and picks up the snapshot and holds it out like a little smart-ass saying, “Familiar?”

Helen comes up with the explanation that the snapshot must be of Markie, which is the last straw for Markie who then confronts Helen with the cold hard truth that she and Helen are the same person, just years apart. Markie narrates the whole murder as it really happened. How Helen’s mother caught on to the man’s financial chicanery and when she insisted on reporting it, he choked her and hit her over the head with a heavy blunt object. And how Helen screamed. The filming holds Helen in a one-shot with Markie’s voice off-screen and when Helen slowly turns to her, she gasps in fright as we now see that Peter Selden has returned and hovers over her. He tells her in the measured, emotionless tone of a sociopathic killer , “I want to bring you up to date Miss Foley. You’ve been living with ignorance too long. I want to impart some information because it’s obviously coming back to you anyway, and I want to be the first. I want to be the very first.” He goes on to confirm what we all figured out when we first met him.

So the first problem with this climax is, why did Selden leave the apartment after his first visit if he wanted to kill her? He paid her a visit and reached the conclusion that she is remembering more and more about that murder and that he must kill her. So he leaves, only to return a little while later? Why? He explains here, he’s been “keeping tabs” on her, following her around over the years to see how her memory was progressing, which seems a ridiculously prolonged course of action. So why not kill her upon that first entry to the apartment instead of leaving and risking her piecing it together and summoning the police? And secondly, why is he coming off like a sociopathic lunatic anyway? Isn’t he really just someone who criminally altered the accounting books, got caught, and out of desperation to avoid jail murdered the person threatening to turn him in? I suppose it’s more fun to write a character who has the morbidly intense demeanor of a serial killer.

Helen eludes Peter and runs into the hallway and for some reason avoids screaming for help as she bangs on doors. They tussle and he falls down the stairs and dies. In the denouement, as the police take care of the crime scene, a psychiatrist comes out of Helen’s apartment informing the detective that he gave her a sedative. We then needlessly hear yet again, (oh yes, let’s hear it from a professional just to be sure), “the child is her. At least she conjured up the child. It was a part of her buried deep inside. A memory, a recollection, that finally had to come out and when it did, it took the form of herself as a child.” Ooooh, NOW I get it.

As Helen rests on her divan, we here a little girl singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” again, coincidentally. Helen opens her door and sees a little girl playing with her doll on the stairs. She is played by Morgan Brittany, who would grow up to become an 80’s sex symbol on “Dallas.” She would also get her own chance to play a precocious brat on “The Twilight Zone” in the episode “Caesar and Me.”

I rate this episode a 2.7

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