The Twilight Zone Review: “Mute”

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By William Kozy

This is the third episode that received zero votes in my survey asking writers and Facebook Fan Groups of “The Twilight Zone”, “What is you favorite episode of that series?” The other two episodes with no votes were the vastly underrated “Showdown With Rance McGrew” and “The Whole Truth.” So here’s “Mute,” one of the hour-long episodes from “The Twilight Zone’s” ill-fated fourth season. No votes for this one. Out of 3,000 respondents to the poll, voters were mute for this one.

Watching “Mute” is an unusual experience in that it doesn’t actually strike you as being a “bad” episode in the way that say “Black Leather Jackets” is bad. It’s just that “Mute” remains so dull and obtuse that even after watching three or four times, I always realize by the end that my attention has wandered and my grasp on the plot has deteriorated.

Opening monologue:

What you’re witnessing is the curtain-raiser to a most extraordinary play; to wit, the signing of a pact, the commencement of a project. The play itself will be performed almost entirely offstage. The final scenes are to be enacted a decade hence and with a different cast. The main character of these final scenes is Ilse, the daughter of Professor and Mrs. Nielsen, age two. At the moment she lies sleeping in her crib, unaware of the singular drama in which she is to be involved. Ten years from this moment, Isle Nielsen is to know the desolating terror of living simultaneously in the world – and in The Twilight Zone.

The premise is a worthy one, with a script by Richard Matheson, based on his own 1962 short story, also called “Mute” published in the 1962 anthology The Fiend in You. The collection was edited by Charles Beaumont, another popular “Twilight Zone” contributor.
The scene Serling describes in his opener starts out in 1953 in Düsseldorf, Germany (although the river that is shown is not the Rhine—it is instead the Danube River coursing not through Düsseldorf, but through the town of Passau, in Bavaria). Four adult couples hold a meeting at a table where they all promise to adhere to an experiment on their own children in which they agree not to raise them with any sort of oral communication. This they will do, to bolster and develop their childrens’ telepathic abilities. This, to anyone with common sense feels like child abuse, and yet the episode depicts this group as having the sincerest of intentions. Concern and care are etched on their faces. So right away the episode has a schizophrenic approach, couching its underlying cruelty behind a façade of deceptively well-meaning performances.

We jump ten years later in the story and one of those couples, who have emigrated to German Corners, Pennsylvania, live with their 12-year-old daughter who cannot read, write or talk, but does indeed have telepathic abilities to get by. Mother and Father of the Year. Their house however, catches fire and the parents perish. Their little girl Ilse (played by future platinum blonde sitcom sexpot Ann Jillian) however, has survived.

Matheson has done some gender-swapping for this script, changing his short story’s little boy Paal to the little girl Ilse. This was not the first time a “Twilight Zone” episode switched the gender of a character from the original source material in an attempt to build more sympathy: the classic episode “The Hitch Hiker” also changed the sex of its lead character to the fetching female Nan Adams whereas the original radio drama’s lead was a man.

But Sheriff Harry Wheeler (played by Frank Overton who was the father in “Walking Distance”) and his wife Cora (Barbara Baxley) take the little girl into their home. Cora is dead set on keeping this little girl, in large part to compensate her for the death of her daughter Sally (again, a switch from the short story’s dead son David). Cora seems like such a nutcase, with her frantic over-emotionalism, and obsessively destroying her husband’s letters when he attempted to find relatives of Ilse’s. The father is a bit of downer on the other end of the spectrum from Cora; he seems cold and unfeeling. This poor kid Ilse cannot catch a break in this world—an unenviable series of adults raising her as one could possibly find. But the weird thing is that the episode itself seems unaware of this. That’s where the failure is. So in essence it doesn’t even function as a commentary on the plight of children.

Will there perhaps be a teacher who saves the day? Sadly, no. Even this character, Miss Frank (played by Irene Dailey who was Aunt Helena in 1979’s “The Amityville Horror”) is a mess. Watch the film “Five Easy Pieces” to see her performance as Samia Glavia to see what a deliciously awful snob she can be! Miss Frank detects that Ilse is telepathic and this brings up in her the memory of her terrible childhood in which her father tried to force her into becoming a medium so they could contact her deceased mother. Again this was switched from the short story’s dead father and obsessive mother raising her to become a communicator with the beyond. It seems that sometimes “The Twilight Zone’s” producers are compelled to hedge their bets and cling too formulaically to the notion of: women = vulnerable, men = less able to attract sympathy.

So Miss Frank embarks on a crusade to break Ilse of her resistance to communicate “normally.” Surprisingly antagonistic, she sternly enlists the assistance of Ilse’s classmates in mental exercises intended to make what Miss Frank sees as a stubborn girl surrender. And isn’t it a rather big coincidence that Ilse would find herself in the hands of a teacher who just like Ilse, was also the victim of this very specific sort of mistreatment when she was a girl?

Toward the end, the Werners, one of those original four couples finds their way to German Corners searching for the Nielsens (Ilse’s original parents). They hadn’t heard from them in a long time after all. Mr. Werner is played by three-time TZ player Oscar Beregi (“Death’s Head Revisited” and “The Rip Van Winkle Caper”). The Werners have surmised that Ilse’s telepathic abilities have been broken and that she’s assimilated. This all reminds me of the bothersome notion that afflicts many plot devices—the idea that characters have an either/or course of action as opposed to being able to have it both ways. And overall it strikes me in this episode that we’ve been led down the false premise that one can’t develop language and telepathy at the same time.

In the end, the Werners realize that Ilse is better off in her new home, with parents that love her. Where were you two when Ilse needed you—back when this cockamamie scheme was hatchedin Dusseldorf? Sheesh.

Closing monologue:

It has been noted in a book of proven wisdom that perfect love casteth out fear. While it’s unlikely that this observation was meant to include that specific fear which follows the loss of extrasensory perception, the principle remains, as always, beautifully intact. Case in point, that of Isle Nielsen, former resident of The Twilight Zone.

I rate this episode a 3.8.

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