The Twilight Zone Review: The Midnight Sun (Aired November 17, 1961)

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By William Kozy

The Poll:

“What is your favorite episode of The Twilight Zone original series?” In 16th place with 124 votes, “Midnight Sun” has heated up the ongoing survey of Facebook fan sites and writers.

The PLOT:

In her apartment, we see Norma Smith painting at an easel (she is played by actress Lois Nettleton, who I always thought looked here a lot like actress Dee Wallace from the films “Cujo” and “The Howling.” Oh, and a little film called “E.T.”) She is painting a picture of the Sun, a big Sun beating down on a city. (This would’ve made a good episode for “Night Gallery!”) She wipes her brow, looks at the thermometer: 110 degrees! (Oh, but it’s a dry heat). She looks out the window, wincing from the extra-bright sunlight. So, it’s hot. She takes a break and pours a glass of water which she savors slowly.

A knock at the door reveals a cute little blonde girl who then looks at Norma’s glass of water. Now, the little girl could not have possibly known she had water, so I will assume she knocked on her door to say goodbye, as we soon discover she will indeed be doing with her family. As decent a woman as she is, Norma offers the little girl her water to drink. It’s a nice touch this silent inference makes:

that the two of them had a sweet relationship. The girl’s parents though come down the stairwell packed up and ready to leave the building, intent to head as north as possible where a modicum of cooler temperatures reside. “Susie! Don’t take the lady’s water!” But Norma tells him, “It’s all right, Mr. Schuster, I have plenty.” “Nobody’s got plenty” he responds. It’s a nice succinct way of letting us know something’s wrong on a grander scale. Schuster knocks on the door of the landlady, Mrs. Bronson, and lets her know they are leaving, despite that the radios still report bumper to bumper conditions on the highways. Mrs. Bronson tells Norma, “Building’s empty now except for you and me.”

At this point in the development of this episode one of the two characters that were cut from Serling’s original script was to have appeared. In the original script, a refrigerator repairman was to have emerged from Mrs. Bronson’s apartment having fixed her fridge. Apparently, these refrigerator companies have started price gouging people, charging hundreds of dollars for repairs. Mrs. Bronson doesn’t have the cash and he’s not supposed to accept charge accounts anymore. So Mrs. Bronson holds out her wedding ring. Thank goodness in the script the repairman leaves, saying “I ain’t taking a lady’s wedding ring. Goodbye, Mrs. Bronson. Good luck to you.” But this scene was never filmed even though they went so far as to cast the role with an actor, Ned Glass. It was never shot because apparently, when James T. Aubrey, Jr took over as chief executive of CBS during the Twilight Zone’s second season, issues with the budgets for the episodes arose. An associate producer on many of the show’s episodes, Del Reisman, had said, “I spent a lot of time with Buck Houghton, Twilight Zone’s producer trying to reduce scripts, some by Rod, by one speaking part or two speaking parts because we were just about to start shooting the show and we were over budget. And Aubrey was really tough on this subject even if it were a small number of dollars.”

So okay, that repairman scene doesn’t exist. Mrs. Bronson then mentions to Norma that the radio also reported that “They’ll be turning the water on only an hour a day.” Norma confesses to her that “I keep getting this crazy thought. This crazy thought that I’m gonna wake up and none of this will have happened. I’ll wake up in a cool bed and it’ll be night outside and there’ll be a wind and branches rustling. Shadows on the sidewalk. A moon.” As she looks out the window, we see the empty streets and abandoned cars and litter, signs of a society breaking down. Interesting to note that with things so hot, Norma is content to have Mrs. Bronson stand there with the apartment door wide open while Norma’s air conditioner keeps running. You’d think they would value the cool air more. Maybe that’s a sign of how muddled the heat has affected their thinking? Hm. Yeah, let’s go with that. Standing there at the open door Mrs. Bronson goes on, “There was a scientist on the radio this morning. He said that it’ll get a lot hotter more each day. Now that we’re moving so close to the sun…and that’s why we’re . . . that’s why we’re. . .”

Cue the OPENING NARRATION:

“The word that Mrs. Bronson is unable to put into the hot, still, sodden air is ‘doomed,’ because the people you’ve just seen have been handed a death sentence. One month ago, the Earth suddenly changed its elliptical orbit and in doing so began to follow a path which gradually, moment by moment, day by day, took it closer to the sun. And all of man’s little devices to stir up the air are now no longer luxuries—-they happen to be pitiful and panicky keys to survival. The time is five minutes to twelve, midnight. There is no more darkness. The place is New York City and this is the eve of the end, because even at midnight it’s high noon, the hottest day in history, and you’re about to spend it in the Twilight Zone.”

Norma returns from the grocery store where there were no clerks and people were taking whatever they could. Mrs. Bronson hears her and comes out of her apartment. She is especially desirous of the fruit juice she sees. As Norma opens it she tells Mrs. Branson about the sorry state of affairs out there. On the radio, we hear “Ladies and gentlemen, this is station WNYG coming on the air to bring you essential news…” And then a police bulletin: “Keep your doors locked and prepare to protect yourselves if necessary with any weapons you may have. The majority of the police force has been assigned to the crowded highways outside this deserted city, and citizens remaining in New York may have to protect themselves from the cranks and looters known to be roaming the streets. From the Weather Bureau: the temperature stood at 110 degrees at 11 o’clock this morning. Humidity 91%.” [Oh, okay forget about that dry heat joke I made earlier] The radio continues, “Forecast for tomorrow…forecast for tomorrow…hot…more of the same only hotter.” We can then hear a very slight interruption on the unseen side of the radio report as the reporter then says to someone there, “I don’t care, who are they kidding with this weather report stuff?” And then back to the listening audience, “Ladies and gentlemen, tomorrow you can fry eggs on sidewalks, heat up soup in the ocean and get help from wandering maniacs if you choose…” Then again he addresses other people in the newsroom with him: “What do you mean panic? Who’s left to panic?” He chuckles. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m told that departing from the script might panic you…and…let me alone! You hear me! Let go of me…” The women turn off the radio.

The ladies share some grapefruit juice and then the radio goes off along with the fans and A.C. The current goes off for a temporary period. It seems for longer each time Mrs. Bronson says. Looking over Norma’s painting, Mrs. Bronson practically begs Norma to paint something cool. Hysterically she grabs one of Norma’s many Sun paintings and throws it to the floor, “Don’t paint the Sun anymore!” Mrs. Bronson laments her behavior after a pause, and Norma consoles her.

And here’s where the second of two eliminated characters would have appeared; this time a policeman who had been cast with actor John McLiam. In the screenplay, he enters the building to warn anyone still around that tomorrow there won’t even be a police force in the city. He warns them to keep their doors locked and when he learns they don’t have any weapons, he unholsters his gun and gives it to them. They ask him what will happen to them, and he tells them that in 4 or 5 days it’ll be too hot to tolerate. He then looks meaningfully at the gun. We understand what he’s implying. To me that sounds like it would have been a cool scene, dismal, but cool. But alas, it was never even shot.

Later, Norma wakes up from a slumber, walks to the window and burns her hand on the sill because it’s so hot. She goes to check on Mrs. Bronson, who doesn’t look like she’s doing too well when she answers her door. But then they hear something smash up on the roof. They stare up at the door leading to the roof, and it starts to open. Norma grabs Mrs. Bronson and rushes her into Norma’s apartment where they lock the door. They hear footsteps come down the stairs, and then someone starts jiggling their door handle. The man’s voice outside taunts them: “Come on baby. Come on out and be friendly, I ain’t got all day! You don’t come out I’m gonna come in!”

Question: How’d he know there was a woman?

Well anyway, Norma rushes over to get the gun. She brings it to the door, cocks it, and calls out to him, “Did you hear that? That was a gun. Get out of here. Down the stairs and out the front door. Leave us alone.”

The man acquiesces, saying “Never argue with a lady with a gun.” Norma goes to the window to see him outside, as Mrs. Bronson says she’s glad he’s gone. She opens the door.

But why does she unlock the door? I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t she reason that the two should stick together at this moment, and be extra careful. It’s not a believable action for her to take, but okay yeah, their brains are fried. So of course the man is right there and he bursts into the apartment. Norma points the gun at him, but doesn’t fire even as he approaches. As Clint Eastwood’s Will Munny said in “Unforgiven”, “It’s a hell of a thing, killin’ a man. Take away all he’s got, and all he’s ever gonna have.” He seizes the gun from her and goes to her fridge and steals some water. He even pours some on his head. Um…here’s a suggestions: TAKE OFF YOUR HEAVY SUIT JACKET! I guess he doesn’t want to discount the possibility of finding a restaurant that requires men wear jackets.

He tells the women about how his wife and child died. He tells them he’s a decent man who’s been walking around all day just trying to find some water. He tells them he wouldn’t do them any harm, and he begs their forgiveness. Why then did he say all those creepy things when he was locked outside the apartment door? Why not say what he just said now to them? Anyway he then leaves.

Mrs. Bronson is crying, but then looks up and sees a painting of a waterfall that Norma made.

“Oh, it’s beautiful, Norma. I’ve seen waterfalls just like that before. There’s one near Ithaca, New York. It’s the highest waterfall, the highest waterfall in this part of the country. And I love the sound of It. That wonderful blue water tumbling over the rocks. That wonderful cool clear water. You hear it Norma? You hear it? You do hear don’t you Norma? That wonderful sound. We could swim in that waterfall. Let’s do that, let’s swim in it shall we? I used to do that when I was a little girl, just sit there and let the water come down over me.” She looks out the window and then collapses, dead. Mrs. Bronson mentioned that it was the tallest waterfall in Ithaca, New York; which would be Taughannock Falls in Taughannock State Park. It’s 11 miles north of Ithaca, where Rod Serling lived and taught at Ithaca College for several years.

Norma cries over the dead woman, and a montage of heat effects ensues: the huge hot sun out the window, Norma drenched in sweat looking up, the paint melting right off the painting, dripping down, the mercury in the thermometer rising and bursting out of the glass tube. The effect of the oil paintings melting was done by painting the pictures in colored wax on the surface of a hotplate, and then turning on the heat. On top of that, the episode was shot during the summer, on a set with no air-conditioning. The director, Anton Leader, actually turned up the heat on certain scenes to create the discomfort for the actors. As he says, “I remember that there were a couple of scenes in which I asked the electrical grip to add heat, not so much heat that it would show on the film, but heat that we would feel on the set. It made us distinctly uncomfortable, but I think it helped us develop the feeling that we had of heat. I didn’t do that throughout, because its effect would have been lost eventually. We would have just been plain simply miserable and angry with each other for being involved in this thing.”

Well, Norma can’t take it anymore, and she screams, collapsing to the floor. CUT TO: Norma’s apartment window, only now it’s snowing outside! As Mark Twain once said, “If you don’t like the weather in New York now, just wait a few minutes.” Okay he said it about New England, but gimme a break this is an episode where people leave their windows open with the A.C. on!

Mrs. Bronson plugs up any drafts in the window as a doctor sits by Norma’s bedside. They’re all wearing coats. Norma apparently has had a fever but the doctor tells her it broke. He gets up and tells Mrs. Bronson quietly, “I wish I had something left to give her. It’s pretty much all gone now.” He tells her also that he will be trying to move his family down south, so he won’t be back.

Mrs. Bronson offers, “They say on the radio that Miami is warmer.”

The doctor takes that in saying glumly, “So they say.”

She says, “There was a scientist on the radio this morning. He was trying to explain what happened. How the earth had changed its orbit and…and was started to move away from the sun. And within one, two, or three weeks at the most. There wouldn’t be any more sun…we’d all freeze.”

The doctor leaves, and Mrs. Bronson goes to Norma’s bedside, where Norma tells her she had such a terrible dream. She recounts the horrors to Mrs. Bronson. Norma says, how wonderful it would be to have coolness and darkness.
“Yes my dear” says Mrs Bronson, recognizing the irony. “It’s wonderful.”

CLOSING NARRATION:

“The poles of fear, the extremes of how the Earth might conceivably be doomed. Minor exercise in the care and feeding of a nightmare, respectfully submitted by all the thermometer-watchers in the Twilight Zone.”

And so the joke’s on me! All those snarky comments I made above about illogical behavior from the characters. It was all a dream, where things aren’t logical! A final twist from the Twilight Zone in this analysis of an episode.

TRIVIA:

In “America’s Twilight Zone”, J. Hoberman wrote, “Whether explicitly nuclear or otherwise, the apocalypse was never far away [in the Twilight Zone]. “The Midnight Sun” was telecast on the day the U.S. consolidated its drive for “push-button warfare” with the first successful launching of a Minuteman missile from an underground silo. The episode substitutes a kink in the Earth’s orbit—an analogue to what we currently call “the greenhouse effect”—for an atomic holocaust. Instead of blowing up, the planet is falling into the sun. Rape and pillage seem imminent, and even the pigment is boiling on the heroine-artist’s canvases as the radio weatherman goes nuts on the air.”

How prescient!

Rating for this episode: 8 out of 10

Watch it for free HERE.

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