The Twilight Zone Review: Dust

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By William Kozy

I’ve come to feel as I watch this episode over and over that it rates up there with the best of Twilight Zone episodes. It is surely one of the most underrated episodes, receiving only 4 votes in my survey that asked, “What is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?” tying it with 9 other episodes for 124th thru 132nd place. Rod Serling’s writing is in peak form and that is saying a lot. The plot construction is a very simple one and yet utterly rich in emotion and ethical conundrum. Many wise people have said: “Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.” And he’s wrapped this story that tears at your heart with some beautiful choice lines of dialogue, some of the sharpest he’s ever come up with. Every time I listen to the characters, I’ll hear a new line that I’ll think, “Oh boy that is a good one. Damn.”

In support of his screenplay, the direction by Douglas Heyes is unfussy and to the point, and there are a few marvelous performances to go around. What a terrible shame this episode received only 4 votes compared to the over 100 other episodes that got more. Well, that’s the way the wind blows the dust of life I suppose. And so, onward we go.

A corpulent and sweaty Peter Sykes is a seller of trinkets, and he comes sauntering down the street, pausing to taunt with disgusting relish one Luís Gallegos, a “killer of children” who is to be hung that day. And immediately, despite that epithet “killer of children” we are no doubt overcome with disdain for Sykes instead of Luís. That’s how fully committed actor Thomas Gomez has entrenched himself into the role of a man so bereft of morals he would sell a bag of dirt to an old man, telling him it was magic dust and would save his doomed son.

Sykes enters the jail and continues his heartless jabs at the condemned man, played by the way by the future award-winning cinematographer John A. Alonzo who would shoot such films as “Star Trek: Generations”, “Steel Magnolias”, “Scarface”, “Norma Rae”, “Sounder”, “Vanishing Point”, and the masterful “Chinatown.” Sykes turns to the Sheriff, played by John Larch, who I will admit was better in “It’s a Good Life.” His Sheriff Koch here, is overcome with the heat and depression, you see, Luis while driving his wagon drunk, had hit a little girl he didn’t see and killed her. And for that he will be hung. I think it’s to the writing’s credit that it didn’t shy from the drunk driving aspect. If it had our sympathies would be obvious—you can’t execute someone for an accident. But drunk driving…hm. How many of us reading this would not call for the same fate to befall the drunk driver of a car that destroyed your own little girl. Some of you wouldn’t for sure, but many of you would, and I couldn’t say for sure that any of you would be “wrong.” And that’s what gives this episode so much of its power.

The ensuing exchange between Sykes and Sheriff Koch is rife with some great zingers:

After Sykes asks the Sheriff what he might be looking to buy, Koch responds “I’d like you to take your fat carcass, and your loud mouth out into the open air. This is a small room and it’s a hot time of the morning.” And later after another insult, Sykes warns, “You talk big behind a badge, Koch” to which Koch answers with the most world-weary delivery he can, “It just sounds big to you because you’re a midget, Sykes.” Again, Larch isn’t bad, but it has been commented by many critics, that he overdoes the lethargy. And yes I might agree. But perhaps he shouldn’t be blamed for it. Director Heyes’ one misstep was changing Larch’s original instincts on how to play the character. In Marc Scott Zicree’s “The Twilight Zone Companion” he quotes Heyes as saying, “John Larch came in and I changed him quite a bit, because he was written as a strong sheriff.”

Heyes directed Larch to instead play him “as a sheriff who had no energy at all, who represented the listlessness of that town. It was hard for John to do, because he’s a man with energy.” Well I think that says it there. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the same thing happen in this industry whereby a director tells an actor to play against his. Sometimes it works out better, but most of the time, directors need to trust that something in the actor’s soul that’s telling him to play it the way he feels flows naturally.

And then there’s this exchange—Sykes asks Koch, “You know, I always had a little question about you. You always had a thing for foreigners and strays, but you’re mighty tight-lipped when it comes to one of your own.” “You’re not my own, Sykes, so don’t claim any kinship” says Koch which brings me to the following casting issue.

The clever, humane casting of this episode points out the ironies of racism. Actor Thomas Gomez, the first Spanish-American actor to be nominated for an Oscar, is cast here as the anti-Latino racist. And Luis’ elderly Spanish father will be played by the Russian actor Vladimir Sokoloff, who will later appeal with a blatantly emotional tactic to the parents of the deceased girl. He will kneel beside his own little daughter (played by the Jewish child actress Andrea Margolis) and coach her with the words to express her family’s sorrow and beg them to spare Luis. All this crossing races serves to remind us of the common bonds we all have. How the veneer of racism is so easily punctured and exposed for the easily invalidated assumptions we make about each other.

When Gallegos’ father speaks to his son through the cell window he offers his lucky coin to him, and Sykes of course takes notice. But his presence has stirred some of the angry onlookers (one even throws a rock), and Luis and Koch gently tell Gallegos he should go home for his own good. Gallegos’ monologue here provides some tough food for thought: “You’ve never been drunk Mr. Sheriff? You never felt such misery rising in you, that salvation seemed to look at you from only out of a bottle? You never felt pain? Such pain that you had to ride through the night and not look behind you? My son was hungry and he felt such pain and he drank too much. He rode down the street, not looking, not seeing. And he had a sadness deep inside. Sadness that there was not enough to eat. Sadness that he had no work. Sadness that the Earth all around him was growing barren in the Sun. He did not see the little girl. He never saw her for an instant.” Sokoloff’s performance is among the best supporting performances in any episode.

And then the most despicable of all Sykes’ actions unfold. He grabs hold of that little girl and tells her to go tell her father that he has magic dust he will sell him for 100 pesos. And he laughs with the evilness of the irredeemable. How irredeemable? You’ll see in the end. But it’s just that awfulness just now that justifies yet another Debbie Downer line reading from Koch who stands by the cell window, keeping Luis company: “When was it God made people? Was the sixth day? He should have stopped on the fifth.”

The time comes, and all are gathered around the hanging post as the priest reads last rites. The crowd yell out the usual ugly taunts and calls for hastening “justice.” (Hm. Now where have we seen that sort of mob mentality before?…) Meanwhile, Gallegos meets secretly with Sykes at the jail, and Sykes assures him that sprinkling the dust over the crowd’s heads will make them feel sympathy for his son. Your heart breaks some more when you hear Gallegos relate how all his friends and family gathered up as much money as they could, selling a wagon, a horse, borrowing. Our disgust for Sykes grows almost impossibly intense, and it’s a credit to Gomez that he makes us believe a man can be so unholy. The scene between these two veteran actors is the TZ at its best.

Gallegos races back to the execution and tells them all they must wait for the magic—he desperately tosses the dust over all their heads: “It is for love! Magic! It’s for love!” But they laugh at him, and as he begs on his knees, he hears the agonizing sound of the gallows trap door bang open. But from the reactions of the onlookers we know something has not gone as expected. We cut to the rope on the platform and see that it has snapped, and we tilt down to see Luis on the ground below, alive. Everyone murmurs their befuddlement. “But it was a new rope, “ says Sykes, “Five strand hemp. Nobody could’ve broken it. It couldn’t have gotten broken!”

Sheriff Koch looks to the girl’s parents, the Canfields, and asks them how to proceed. The Gallegos father pleads to the surly crowd calling to continue. Koch dictates that there are only two people who have the right to say, but you get the feeling he has an instinct about how the Canfields will vote. Sure enough, Mrs. Canfield after some processing turns almost reflexively to her husband saying, “No more today John. No more.” He offers up, “He killed our child” which is not really a rebuttal when you think about it, and she summarizes it this way, “And part of himself while doing it. And he’s suffered enough.” Mr. Canfield surmises that the “hand of providence” must have had something to do with it. “One victim is enough,” he tells one of the mob members.

Gallegos weeps with joy as he escorts his son away, and only Sykes is left at the scene. He walks over to the rope and picks it up, looking at it as he tries to make sense of it all. Many creative writing teachers will tell their students, that their protagonist should undergo a change. So who is this story’s protagonist? The next moment may give us the very unexpected answer. Sykes tosses the rope aside and starts fidgeting with the gold coins he had taken from Gallegos. Just then, a trio of the most heart-melting beautiful little local ragamuffin children stand before him. Kudos to the casting director, and the hair and make-up department. Sykes looks down at them and then drops the coins at their feet. I like how he tells them not with warmth but with surliness, “Go ahead. Take them They’re yours!” His tone was spot on. Softening him would have been too corny. As he walks away he continues puzzling it over until finally an admittance, “It must be magic. That’s what she is, Magic!” and he exits laughing giddily. So there it is, as despicable and hateful our feelings for Sykes had been, it turns out he is the one who undergoes a change; will the transformation take hold? We don’t know, but for now perhaps we can forgive him, which is the lesson of the episode after all. The power of forgiveness.

I will rate this episode an 8.75

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