Twilight Zone Review & Trivia: Death’s-Head Revisited

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By William Kozy

Thanks again to all who answered the call to this survey: “What is Your Favorite Twilight Zone Episode?” In 21st place so far with 81 votes from Facebook fan groups of “The Twilight Zone” is the haunting tale “DEATHS-HEAD REVISITED.”

The PLOT:

A former Nazi SS captain by the name of Gunther Lutze comes to a small village and enters an inn where he tells the proprietor he just arrived in town and asks her if he can have accommodations. She tells him yes, and asks if he’d like to see one of the lovely rooms overlooking the square. He takes his gloves off (in a real SS Captain movie-style way) and slaps them on the desk as he tells her he’s sure the room will be satisfactory.

He turns to face her and she blanches. He signs the check-in book using the name Schmidt instead of his own, but the woman is still shaken. Lutze notices her unease, but doesn’t really try to assuage her. In fact he almost enjoys the discomfort she is feeling–a good touch that lets us know how truly this man relishes whatever kind of power he can wield, how much pain or fear he can inflict. “Anything wrong?” he practically taunts. He keeps pressing, and the woman says that he reminds her of someone–that there used to be an SS stationed here during the war years. He insists he spent the war years on the Russian front, in the Panzer Division.

“Of course”, she says, yet we can tell she’s unconvinced. This innkeeper was played by Kaaren Verne; she had been a longtime member of the Berlin State Theatre until she and her first husband, musician Arthur Young, fled Nazi Germany in 1938. She came to the United States eventually and became an activist speaking out against Nazism. In 1945 she divorced her first husband and married actor Peter Lorre (“Casablanca”, “M”), another famous expatriate German actor.

Lutze/Schmidt really turns on the pomposity and temerity when he asks, “Was it a prison or something you had here?” The glee in his demeanor is palpable.
“Something of the sort,” she answers.

Angrily he presses “Was it a prison?”

“A camp, sir” she says softly to which he tortures, “How’s that?”

She uncorks her emotions, “A camp, Mr. Schmidt! A – concentration camp!”

He smiles upon breaking her. “A concentration camp? Really? Now that’s odd.” And he lights up a cigarette, real Nazi-like. Almost like sex for him–break them down, and then have a cigarette. “For the life of me, I can’t seem to recall the name of this town.”
“Sir?” she again softens.

“The name of this town! What is the name of this town?!!”

With the pain of remembrance she answers, “Dachau sir.”

Lutze is satisfied. “Dachau. Dachau. Of course. Dachau.” What an ass.

Dachau was the first concentration camp in the Nazi regime; many others would follow. About 32,100 prisoners were killed in Dachau.

Lutze spots it out the window and fondly asks the innkeeper if that group of buildings he sees is it. Of course it is, and we know he knows. The innkeeper confirms that it is and tells him, “…most of us would like to see it burned to the ground.” And at that he walks back to her desk and stubs out his burning cigarette into the ash tray, and takes his leave, glaring at her the whole time.

OPENING NARRATION:

“Mr. Schmidt, recently arrived in a small Bavarian village which lies eight miles northwest of Munich… a picturesque, delightful little spot one-time known for its scenery, but more recently related to other events having to do with some of the less positive pursuits of man: human slaughter, torture, misery and anguish. Mr. Schmidt, as we will soon perceive, has a vested interest in the ruins of a concentration camp—for once, some seventeen years ago, his name was Gunther Lutze. He held the rank of a captain in the SS. He was a black-uniformed strutting animal whose function in life was to give pain, and like his colleagues of the time, he shared the one affliction most common amongst that breed known as Nazis… he walked the Earth without a heart. And now former SS Captain Lutze will revisit his old haunts, satisfied perhaps that all that is awaiting him in the ruins on the hill is an element of nostalgia. What he does not know, of course, is that a place like Dachau cannot exist only in Bavaria. By its nature, by its very nature, it must be one of the populated areas… of the Twilight Zone.”

We next see Lutze get out of a taxi and enter the concentration camp. He gives it a nostalgic lookover and then emboldened, he starts strutting, almost goose-stepping even, from the opening gate to the inner confines of the area. He stops at Block 6, and turns to look out over the guard tower and hanging posts. He watches with smug proudness, as corpses materialize out of his memory and hang from the posts.

Playing Lutze, is actor Oscar Beregi, who actually made his first Twilight Zone appearance in an episode called “The Rip Van Winkle Caper” playing the leader of a gang of criminals. Sort of like here. But Mr. Beregi’s background is the polar opposite: he was part of a renowned Yiddish stage acting family. Tragically, most of his family’s European relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.

He enters the barracks and remembers himself in his uniform. The imprisoned souls again materialize in his memory. He calls out exercises for them to do, and then wanders back outside. He looks at the Detention Building, saying, “I remember you. We had some good times in this building. Such good times.” He marches up to the door and kicks it down and enters. He recalls torturing a prisoner as we see the materialization occur again from memory, the prisoner kneeling before the uniformed Lutze: “You’d like water number – 23575? Is that what you’d like?

You’d like water? But why should you care? It’s only been five little days since you’ve been fed. Five little days!” And he kicks the prisoner.

Back outside, he strolls across the camp pausing at the hanging posts. Just then a figure appears, and this time it is no materialization from memory.

Dressed in prisoner clothes, the figure stands on the porch of the prisoners’ quarters and says, “Good afternoon captain, and welcome back.” He gestures with his hand for Lutze to come closer, “We’ve been waiting.”

Lutze steps toward the gate entrance, but the door closes by unseen forces and a bolt locks it shut.

Lutze turns back to the man who is now very close (kinda like how that little girl in “The Ring” would suddenly appear so close so quickly.)

“That’s right, captain. We’ve been waiting for a long time.”

Then suddenly Lutze recognizes the man: “You’re – you’re Becker! Alfred Becker! I remember you,” to which Alfred Becker replies “And well you should. How well you should, Captain Lutze.”

Becker is played by actor Joseph Schildkraut, who had a very similar history to Oscar Beregi. Schildkraut also came from the Yiddish theatre, and also had many family members wiped out by the Nazis. Mr. Schildkraut is also one of about a dozen Twilight Zone actors who won Academy Awards for acting. He won Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Captain Alfred Dreyfus in 1937’s The Life of Emile Zola. Hey, wanna see a list of the others? Here ya go:

Jack Albertson was in the episodes “The Shelter”, and “I Dream of Genie”. He won Best Supporting Actor for The Subject Was Roses.
Martin Balsam was in the episodes “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine”, and “The New Exhibit”. He won Best Supporting Actor for A Thousand Clowns.
Art Carney was in the episode “The Night of the Meek”. He won Best Actor for Harry and Tonto.
James Coburn was in the episode “The Old Man in the Cave”. He won Best supporting actor for Affliction.
Robert Duvall was in the episode “Miniature”. He won Best actor for Tender Mercies.
Dean Jagger was in the episode “Static”. He won Best supporting actor for Twelve O’Clock High.
Martin Landau was in the episodes “Mr. Denton on Doomsday”, and “The Jeopardy Room”. He won Best supporting actor for Ed Wood.
Cloris Leachman was in the episode “It’s a Good Life”. She won Best supporting actress for The Last Picture Show.
Lee Marvin was in the episodes “The Grave”, and “Steel”. He won Best actor for Cat Ballou.
Cliff Robertson was in the episodes “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim”, and “The Dummy”. He won Best actor for Charly.
Gig Young was in the episode “Walking Distance”. He won Best supporting actor for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Now, there are also three more performers who won Honorary Oscars for their careers, but they weren’t competitive acting awards. Yes, Robert Redford did win a competitive Oscar, but it was for directing Ordinary People. He had appeared in the episode “Nothing in the Dark”. Mickey Rooney, who was in the episode “The Last Night of the Jockey”, and Buster Keaton who was in the episode “Once Upon a Time”, were also both awarded Honorary Oscars.

And besides Mr. Redford, two other Twilight Zone actors won Directing Oscars: Ron Howard was in “Walking Distance” and won Best Director for A Beautiful Mind, while Sydney Pollack was in “The Trouble with Templeton”, and won a Best Director Oscar for Out of Africa.

So back to the episode, Lutze tells Becker that he actually looks well, that he hasn’t changed. He assumes that Becker is the caretaker of the camp now, to which Becker wryly answers, “In a manner of speaking”. Lutze has the gall to say cheerfully that it’s odd how the past changes and how people can meet again under happier circumstances, and he is about to actually hug Becker, but the look on Becker’s face chillingly conveys, that oh no, you will not be hugging me.

Lutze hears a creepy sound–not quite the wind though…what was it? Becker intones, “It was what captain?”

Lutze turns angrily to him, “Stop calling me Captain! “I’m not a soldier anymore.”

Becker counters, “You never were a soldier. The uniform you wore cannot be stripped off, it was part of you. Part of your flesh, part of your body. It was a piece of your mind.” Becker raises his arm, displaying a tattoo on his arm, “A tattoo captain. The skull and crossbones, burned into your soul.”

“I was a SOLDIER, Becker!”

“No captain, you were a sadist. You were a monster who derived pleasure from giving pain.”

Lutze tells Becker that it’s ridiculous to dwell on the past, “You did as you thought best, and I…”– but the realization of that sentence’s ending gives Lutze pause. He comes up with, “I functioned as I was told.”

The moaning wind sound returns, grabbing Lutze’s attention. Becker tells Lutze that it’s strange he should be stirred by the sound now; he never used to be. He never used to be sensitive to his victims’ screams, but they aren’t screaming now, they are reacting upon hearing what Lutze mentioned. “They just heard you offer the apology for all the monsters of our time: We did as we were told, we functioned as ordered, we merely carried out directives from our superiors. Familiar, is it, Captain? It was the Nazi theme music at Nuremburg. The new lyrics to the Gotterdammerung. The plaintive litany of the master race as it laid dying. We did not do, others did, or someone else did it. We never even knew it was being done or We did it, but others told us to.” Becker steps toward Lutze. “Captain Lutze, ten million human beings were tortured to death in camps like this. Men, women, children, infants… tired old men. You burned them in furnaces, you shoveled them into the earth, you tore up their bodies in rage. And now you come back to your scenes of horror, and you wonder that the misery that you planted has lived after you?”

Lutze runs to the gate but can’t unlock it. Becker asks why he came back from the safety of South America, and Lutze tells him that “One misses the Fatherland, Becker. One grows nostalgic for the good old days. I thought, I hoped that with the passage of times, sanity would have returned, people would be willing to forget the little mistakes of the past.”

Becker is aghast. He tells Lutze that he asks for too much in forgiveness, and then tells him that his trial is about to begin “in Compound 6, for crimes against humanity.”

Lutze is angrily befuddled, “Is this a joke?!” and “by whom? who will try me?” and he asks this as though it is unimaginable that some other entity has the right to even judge him.

Lutze makes a mad dash for who knows where, but he is suddenly thrust into the compound as the door shuts, barring his leaving. Wide-eyed, he gets up off the floor as he sees he is faced by dozens of former prisoners. “Shall we proceed Captain Lutze?” Becker asks.

A list of Lutze’s transgression is read off a scroll, and the crimes are horrors. Lutze screams in agony as the list goes on. He slumps unconscious against the door. When he awakens, he looks out the compound window. Becker is still in the room with him. Lutze tells Becker that he had quite a dream but Becker tells him that it was no dream–that the ghosts still roam the camp. Perhaps not buried deep enough, or maybe the bullets were two small a caliber, or the flames not hot enough, or maybe there was not…enough…gas.
Lutze asks, “Becker, who ARE you?”

Becker tells him that the trial is over and that he has been found guilty, and it time to pronounce sentence. Lutze laughs at this. You get the distinct feeling that that is a big mistake. Lutze smashes the window and laughs defiantly at the unseen judge and jury. Lutze yells at Becker, “Why didn’t I kill you when I had the chance!?” and he lunges for him before stopping and realizing, “Becker? Becker, I did kill you. I killed you the night…”

Becker finishes, “You killed me the night the Americans came close to the camp. You tried to burn it down, remember? You tried to kill everyone who was left. In my case, you succeeded. So, I think it would be a waste of time, Captain, wouldn’t it. A waste of your precious time, of that little time you have left to murder me again.”

Suddenly appearing outside, Lutze undergoes his punishment: He is made to feel the physical pains of the various deaths he handed down. Machine gun fire, hangings, and then Lutze begins a long anguished wild-eyed dance of agony as he feels things in his eyes, his stomach, his groin. Becker tells Lutze, “Captain Lutze, if you can still reason, if there’s still any portion of your mind that can still function, take this thought with you: This is not hatred, this is retribution. This is not revenge, this is justice. But this is only the beginning, captain. Only the beginning. Your final judgment… will come from God.”

There’s a time jump and we are back to reality. Two men lift Lutze up and carry him away, as a doctor is left kneeling, having finished his examination. The taxi driver is also there and tells the doctor that he drove him here only two hours ago. What could’ve happened?

The doctor informs him that right now Lutze is so filled with sedatives that he doesn’t even know he’s on the Earth. The producer of the episode Buck Houghton had much praise for the actor Ben Wright playing the doctor. Houghton said that Mr. Wright had an amazing ability to perform any sort of dialect that was called for in a character. The doctor continues, “I have no idea. I only know that he is screaming through pain. No, it’s more than pain, it’s agony. And there isn’t a mark on him. He’s insane, a raving maniac. But what could happen in two hours to turn a man into a raving maniac? That, somebody will have to tell me that. Dachau. Why does it still stand? Why do we keep it standing?”

CLOSING NARRATION:

“There is an answer to the doctor’s question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes – all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God’s Earth.”

This is one of the rare closing narrations that has the title “Twilight Zone” in the middle of a sentence and not at the conclusion of the narration.

TRIVIA:

The titular “Death’s-Head” refers to the “Totenkopf”, the German word for the skull and crossbones symbol used by the SS during World War II. It is distinguished from similar traditions of the skull and crossbones and the Jolly Roger by the positioning of the bones directly behind the skull.

Producer Buck Houghton explained how they fashioned a Dachau set: “CBS had made a pilot for a western [which wasn’t picked up by the network], and they had built a four-sided frontier fort. It was a hundred-fifty or two-hundred-thousand-dollar set [over $1.6 million by today’s cost] to pilot this western, and it was standing out on Lot 3 at MGM. We just had to downgrade it, it was nice and fresh, so we had to take some doors off the hinges and put some dust around and that sort of thing. As I recall, the look of it was quite splendid.”

In the Twilight Zone DVD boxed set, producer Buck Houghton recalled that the director of this episode, Don Medford was known for being an “action” type of director, so he was picked to helm this episode and create “shock” moments, but also for his sensitivity to play out emotional scenes as long as necessary. Medford was also known for his thorough preparation. Houghton also remembered however that Medford was prone to frustration if production matters didn’t go along as planned, forcing a deviation from the original course of action.

This episode was set in 1962, and though it depicts Dachau as having been abandoned, at that point it was actually functioning as a sort of museum, with small exhibits describing the terrors.

I rate this episode a 9 out of 10.

Watch it for free HERE.

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