Five Characters in Search of an Exit

"**Five Characters in Search of an Exit**"
"Five Characters in Search of an Exit"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 3; Episode 14
Directed by	Lamont Johnson
Teleplay by	Rod Serling
Based on	"The Depository" by Marvin Petal
Featured music	Stock from "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim"
Production code	4805
Original air date	December 22, 1961
Guest appearances
	William Windom as the Major; Murray Matheson as the Clown; Susan Harrison as the Ballet Dancer; Kelton Garwood as the Hobo; Clark Allen as the Bagpiper;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "Once Upon a Time"	Next →; "A Quality of Mercy"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)
	List of episodes

Last updated January 04, 2025

"Five Characters in Search of an Exit" is episode 79 of the television anthology series The Twilight Zone . It originally aired on December 22, 1961.

Opening narration

Clown, hobo, ballet dancer, bagpiper, and an army major—a collection of question marks. Five improbable entities stuck together into a pit of darkness. No logic, no reason, no explanation; just a prolonged nightmare in which fear, loneliness, and the unexplainable walk hand in hand through the shadows. In a moment, we'll start collecting clues as to the whys, the whats, and the wheres. We will not end the nightmare, we'll only explain it—because this is the Twilight Zone.

Plot

A uniformed U.S. Army major wakes up to find himself trapped inside a large metal cylinder, where he meets a hobo, a ballet dancer, a bagpiper, and a clown. All of them theorize wildly regarding their presence here, as no one remembers who they are or how they became trapped, and they do not seem to have any need for food or water. The major, being the newest arrival, is the most determined to escape. He is told there is no way of either breaking through or climbing up the cylinder.

Eventually, the major suggests a plan to escape: forming a tower of people, each person on the other's shoulders. However, the dancer at the top of the tower is still a few inches short of the cylinder's top, and a loud clanging sound shakes the cylinder and sends the five tumbling to the ground. The major demands that they all make a promise to not leave the cylinder until everyone else has left.

Now even more determined, the major fashions a grappling hook out of loose bits of clothing and his sword. By reforming the tower, he manages to grapple onto the edge of the cylinder, only to tumble to the ground outside. Inside, the clown bemoans how the major left without them and will not rescue them if he ever returns, and surmises that the major was right about them being in Hell.

Just then a little girl picks up a doll from the snow, in the dress of an army major. The cylinder is a Christmas toy collection barrel for a girls' orphanage, and all five characters are dolls. The loud clanging was the ringing of a bell, used by a woman to attract donations; she tells the girl to return the doll to the barrel.

The five characters, now dolls with painted faces and glass eyes, lie unmoving. The ballet dancer nonetheless moves her hand to hold that of the major's as her eyes fill with tears.

Closing narration

Just a barrel, a dark depository where are kept the counterfeit, make-believe pieces of plaster and cloth, wrought in a distorted image of human life. But this added hopeful note: perhaps they are unloved only for the moment. In the arms of children, there can be nothing but love. A clown, a tramp, a bagpipe player, a ballet dancer, and a Major. Tonight's cast of players on the odd stage—known as—The Twilight Zone.

Cast

Susan Harrison as Ballerina
William Windom as Major
Murray Matheson as Clown
Kelton Garwood as Hobo
Clark Allen as Bagpiper

Episode notes

The episode's title is a variation on the Pirandello play Six Characters in Search of an Author and existentialist Sartre play No Exit, both of which served as inspiration for the script.^[1]

Dolls were specially crafted for the final shots that closely resembled the actors who had played the parts.

Legacy

The episode was reportedly an inspiration for the 1997 film Cube .^[2]^[3] The TV series Felicity paid homage in its episode "Help for the Lovelorn"; both episodes were directed by Lamont Johnson.^[4] This episode would also serve as one of the inspirations for horror film director Damien Leone to create the character Art the Clown who serves as the main antagonist in Leone's Terrifier franchise.

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References

↑ "What Influenced "The Twilight Zone" Episode "Five Characters in Search of an Exit"? | Read | The Take". The Take. November 19, 2015. Retrieved January 19, 2023.
↑ Eggert, Brian (May 19, 2010). "Cube (1998)". Deep Focus Review. Archived from the original on May 24, 2014. Retrieved May 23, 2014. Vincenzo Natali's Cube extends a scenario seemingly straight from The Twilight Zone for the duration of a full-length feature... filled with sharp ideas and a setup worthy of Franz Kafka..."
↑ Blake, Marc; Bailey, Sara (2013). Writing the Horror Movie. London; New York: Bloomsbury. p. 137. ISBN 9781441195067. Archived from the original on July 29, 2020. Retrieved September 20, 2016. Cube (1997) was reportedly influenced by a Twilight Zone episode, Five Characters in Search of an Exit, written by its creator Rod Serling.
↑ Chan, Lisa (2001). "Sophomore Year (Season 2) Episode 11: Help For The Lovelorn". Felicitypage.com. Archived from the original on March 7, 2001. Retrieved November 25, 2012.

External links

"Five Characters in Search of an Exit" at IMDb
Five Characters in Search of an Exit Review at The Twilight Zone Project

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
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[1] "What Influenced "The Twilight Zone" Episode "Five Characters in Search of an Exit"? | Read | The Take". The Take. November 19, 2015. Retrieved January 19, 2023.

[2] Eggert, Brian (May 19, 2010). "Cube (1998)". Deep Focus Review. Archived from the original on May 24, 2014. Retrieved May 23, 2014. Vincenzo Natali's Cube extends a scenario seemingly straight from The Twilight Zone for the duration of a full-length feature... filled with sharp ideas and a setup worthy of Franz Kafka..."

[3] Blake, Marc; Bailey, Sara (2013). Writing the Horror Movie. London; New York: Bloomsbury. p. 137. ISBN 9781441195067. Archived from the original on July 29, 2020. Retrieved September 20, 2016. Cube (1997) was reportedly influenced by a Twilight Zone episode, Five Characters in Search of an Exit, written by its creator Rod Serling.

[4] Chan, Lisa (2001). "Sophomore Year (Season 2) Episode 11: Help For The Lovelorn". Felicitypage.com. Archived from the original on March 7, 2001. Retrieved November 25, 2012.

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v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"

v t e Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921)
Adaptations	Six Characters in Search of an Author (1959 opera) Six Characters in Search of an Author (1963 TV play)
Related	"Six Charlies in Search of an Author" (1956 radio episode) "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" (1961 TV episode) Staged (2020–2022 TV series) Strangeness (2022 film)