The Twilight Zone Review: Four O’Clock

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By William Kozy

The overly histrionic ranting of “Four O’Clock” led to its receiving only 3 votes in the survey asking “What is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?” This put it in a tie with 6 other episodes for 133rd thru 139th place. It’s an unpleasant episode to sit through, despite Theodore Bikel’s thoroughly immersed characterization in the role of Oliver Crangle, a pathetic shut-in who spends his whole waking life as a clerical bully: “I compile [people] and I investigate them, analyze them. Then I categorize them, and I judge them. If they’re impure and evil then they must be punished.”

We first see him on the phone, telling Mr. O’Connor’s employer that his worker is a Communist and must be discharged immediately. “Never mind how I know, I just know” he tells the employer. In that phone call, and in other exchanges throughout the episode we do get the impression that luckily for us all, the people he calls and writes letters to in general seem not to be cowed by him. This however, does lessen our sense of danger, our feeling of “Oh God, how many lives is he ruining?!” Thus our antipathy is more because he’s a schmuck, and not because he poses any substantial threat.

But there is an even greater drawback to the episode than that. Crangle is such an over-the-top lunatic, and Bikel’s performance so juicily indulgent in its judgmental aspect of the character’s “evil” that we feel zero ambivalence and depth about the character, leading to perhaps the most predictable comeuppance of any TZ episode, once you find out his intention. Theodore Bikel in reality was a human rights activist who fought bravely against McCarthyism and blacklisting in the 1950s, so it’s perhaps possible he felt so close to the subject he could muster no subtlety or desire to grant the slightest acknowledgment toward what inner life could have led this character to his actions.

Rod Serling’s writing however, also has a hand in the one-sidedness of the story-telling. He has adapted this script from a short story by Price Day published in the April 1958 edition of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. The screenplay has no explanation for what so suddenly impels Crangle to come up with the scheme to make all the subversives and communists and criminals of the world two feet tall. It just enters his mind, seemingly because he simply looks at a clock on top of his filing cabinet. And then you have to wonder, well why not just do it immediately? Why would set it for some arbitrary time in the future? Just do it now. The answer we as the audience understand all too well is that it’s a clunky way to pad out the half hour with more encounters between Crangle and those he is attacking.

What I think a lot of critics get wrong about the episode is that they call Crangle a “bigot” or “prejudiced.” I applaud Serling’s writing for actually not doing that, for not painting Crangle that way. You’ll notice watching, that Crangle never makes any sort of ethnic, religious, or racial slur about the people he harasses. And that I think is a good call. Serling is concerned about something perhaps more universal; if he piled on bigotry to Crangle’s make-up it would confuse the issue that Serling wants addressed: tyranny and the abuse of power, the harm that calling rumors facts can do. Crangle’s next phone call is to a teacher’s school superintendent, reporting that he “has it on good authority” that the teacher’s morality is objectionable. “Never mind who this is” says Crangle, “I happen to be giving you facts, and these facts are what is at issue.”

Crangle hangs up and leans back with a deep sigh that right at the 2:56 mark…sounds like a fart, a la Rudy Giuliani testifying before Congress. It alarmed me at first. I had to replay the scene twice before realizing it was just him sighing an “Oh!” Perhaps just “an undigested piece of meat” in this Scrooge-like scenario in which Crangle is then visited by three characters. His landlady, bringing today’s special mail delivery, and then the wife of a hospital intern who Crangle has spent much of the past trying to ruin with a letter writing campaign to the hospital accusing the young doctor of murder. The wife pleads her case that her husband tried his best to attend to the victim of a traffic accident, but she died before he could get to her. Crangle however, has not an ounce of sympathy or understanding, despite her confessing to Crangle that although the hospital pays no heed Crangle’s letters, they are disturbing her husband’s sensitive nature.

The third visitor is someone Crangle has actually summoned—an FBI agent who spells out the future for Crangle by the end of his exchange with him. The agent is here to respond to Crangle’s repeated calls to Washington, D.C. about “the Reds.” Crangle tells Agent Hall (a nice understated performance by Linden Chiles), “It’s a complete conspiracy you know. All the evil people of the world have banded together, communists, subversives, thieves. It’s a total, complete worldwide conspiracy.” Something I didn’t catch until a later viewing is the actual reason an FBI agent would bother to show up at this crackpot’s apartment: Hall asks Crangle, “Now, Mr. Crangle. On the phone you said that you had some sort of plan which you felt…” Aha, now that makes sense. He’s not really here out of concern for Crangle’s theories which probably sounded ridiculous over the phone, no, he’s here to see what sort of terrorism Crangle is proposing.

And here’s where the script commits I think it’s biggest mistake—in equating mental illness with evil. As Crangle elaborates to the agent his theories and his intentions, the true picture of his paranoia and sociopathy emerge. His musings defy logic as he describes one plan he had regarding making all the wheels in public transportation squares or triangle to inhibit all the evil people from getting around—how does a man so attentive to details in his filing system overlook that all these oddball plans would harm the innocent as well? Even his pet parrot Pete food blurts out “Nut!” (when calling for food). His monologue gets crazier the more he goes on until finally the agent says to him, as Crangle giggles maniacally, “Mr. Crangle, I’d like to ask you a question sir. I hope you won’t take offense at it.” He continues, “Have you ever had any psychiatric help?” Crangle is aghast at the question and Agent Hall tells him, “Mr. Crangle you don’t seem rational to me. I…I think you’ve developed some kind of obsession here. I think you need some help.”

So the script even admits that Crangle is mentally unbalanced, and yet it will soon mete out a harsh justice usually reserved for the truly evil. Were the ‘60s really this backward in getting mental illness confused with evil?

Crangle’s rantings increase in absurdity, to which Hall coolly tells him, “Mr. Crangle we have something in this country which makes all of this stuff quite unnecessary.”

“What’s that?”

“The law Mr. Crangle, we have the law. Now, we like people’s help and their support, their cooperation, but interference is quite another matter.”

Crangle can only see this as a sign of Hall’s complicity with the evil people. And just in case we haven’t already spotted the twist ending so obviously coming, Crangle calls out after Hall as he exits, “You’d better enjoy yourself for the next 15 or 20 minutes, you’d better enjoy yourself to the utmost because you’re going to be 2 feet tall! 2 feet tall Mr. Hall! That’s what you’re going to be! 2 feet tall, do you hear me? All the evil people, they’re going to be 2 feet tall!”

Let me get this straight, does he mean 2 feet tall? Yes Crangle yes, we get it, we get it.

At a minute before 4 o’clock Crangle stands by the window gloating, talking to Pete the Parrot. Then the clock strikes four and you will never guess in a million years what happens.

I rate this episode a 4….um, make that 2…..o’clock.

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