Nothing in the Dark

"**Nothing in the Dark**"
"Nothing in the Dark"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 3; Episode 16
Directed by	Lamont Johnson
Written by	George Clayton Johnson
Featured music	Stock
Production code	3652
Original air date	January 5, 1962
Guest appearances
	Gladys Cooper ; Robert Redford ; R. G. Armstrong ;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "A Quality of Mercy"	Next →; "One More Pallbearer"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 3)
	List of episodes

Last updated April 06, 2024

"Nothing in the Dark" is episode 81 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone , originally airing on January 5, 1962. This is one of two episodes that were filmed during season two but held over for broadcast until season three, the other being "The Grave".

Opening narration

An old woman living in a nightmare, an old woman who has fought a thousand battles with death and always won. Now she's faced with a grim decision—whether or not to open a door. And in some strange and frightening way she knows that this seemingly ordinary door leads to the Twilight Zone.

Plot

Wanda Dunn, a frail and elderly woman, huddles in a dark basement apartment in an abandoned tenement. She is awakened by an altercation outside, in which Harold Beldon, a young police officer, is shot and falls just outside her door. He cries out that he is dying and pleads for her help, but she is afraid that he is "Mr. Death" trying to trick her into letting him in. She has no phone to call a doctor, but he continues begging her to help him, so she relents. She is relieved when she touches him and doesn't die, which convinces her that he is not Death after all.

Inside she explains her reluctance to help him, describing how she saw Death in the form of a man take an old woman's life just by touching her, and that she has seen him many times since then with different faces. Consequently, she has not left her home in years, preferring to live unhappily than to not live at all.

There is a knock at the door and Harold persuades Wanda to answer it. The man forces the door open and she collapses from terror. When she regains consciousness, the man apologizes and explains he is a building contractor and is tasked to demolish the building in an hour. He tries to persuade her that his work is both necessary and good, since tearing down clears way for the new. He affirms that she has been given due notice, and if she will not leave he will call the police. She turns to Harold for help, but the contractor doesn't see him, and leaves to get the authorities.

Wanda looks in a mirror and does not see Harold in the reflection; it dawns on her that Harold is Death. He explains with a friendly smile that he set up the ruse to gain her trust and convince her that he means her no harm. Wanda continues her protests, but he gently assures her she has nothing to fear and finally persuades her to give him her hand. Before she even realizes anything has changed, she finds herself standing beside her own dead body. Wanda and Harold walk arm in arm through the doorway, up the stairs, outside into the sunlight.

Closing narration

There was an old woman who lived in a room. And, like all of us, was frightened of the dark. But who discovered in a minute last fragment of her life that there was nothing in the dark that wasn't there when the lights were on. Object lesson for the more frightened amongst us in or out, of the Twilight Zone.

Cast

Reception

IMDb lists this episode at number seven in a ranking of all 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone.^[1]

At the 2014 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Redford stated he has been told by the production company of the series that it is the most often viewed episode of The Twilight Zone.^[2]

Sources

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

Related Research Articles

"One for the Angels" is the second episode of the American anthology television series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on October 9, 1959, on CBS television.

"Judgment Night" is the tenth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. In this episode, a passenger aboard a British cargo liner has no memory of how he came aboard, and is tormented by unexpected clues to his true identity and a sense that the ship is headed toward impending doom.

"The Hitch-Hiker" is the sixteenth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone which originally aired on January 22, 1960, on CBS. It is based on Lucille Fletcher's radio play The Hitch-Hiker. It is frequently listed among the series' greatest episodes.

"The Fever" is the seventeenth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on January 29, 1960, on CBS. The complete, original text for this story was run in the debut issue of Harvey Kurtzman’s Help!, cover dated August, 1960.

"Mirror Image" is the twenty-first episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on February 26, 1960, on CBS.

"Nightmare as a Child" is episode 29 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on April 29, 1960, on CBS.

"The Chaser" is episode 31 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

"A World of His Own" is episode thirty-six of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It was the last episode of the show's first season and essentially comedic in tone. It originally aired on July 1, 1960, on CBS.

"Eye of the Beholder" is episode 42 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on November 11, 1960, on CBS.

"Long Distance Call" is episode 58 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on March 31, 1961, on CBS. In the episode, a 5-year-old boy named Billy communicates with his dead grandmother using a toy telephone that she gave him on his birthday. It was one of the six episodes of the second season which was shot on videotape in a short-lived experiment aimed to cut costs.

"The Obsolete Man" is episode 65 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, starring Burgess Meredith as Romney Wordsworth, the accused, and Fritz Weaver as the Chancellor. It originally aired on June 2, 1961, on CBS. The story was later adapted for The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas starring Jason Alexander as Wordsworth.

"The Passersby" is the 69th episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It was written by series creator and showrunner Rod Serling.

"Little Girl Lost" is episode 91 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It is about a young girl who has accidentally passed through an opening into another dimension. Her parents and their friend attempt to locate and retrieve her. It is based on the 1953 science fiction short story by Richard Matheson. The title of the episode comes from a poem by William Blake, from his collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

"The Masks" is episode 145 of the American television series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on March 20, 1964 on CBS. In this episode, set on Mardi Gras, a dying man coerces his relatives into wearing grotesque masks that reflect their true personalities.

"Kick the Can" is episode 86 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on February 9, 1962, on CBS.

"Caesar and Me" is episode 148 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone starring Jackie Cooper as a ventriloquist. It is not to be confused with a similar episode "The Dummy", starring Cliff Robertson as a ventriloquist.

"The Bewitchin' Pool" is the 156th and last episode of the first incarnation of the American anthology television series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on June 19, 1964 on CBS.

"Cavender Is Coming" is episode 101 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on May 25, 1962 on CBS.

"Black Leather Jackets" is episode 138 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. In this episode, three aliens disguised as young men in leather jackets encounter a kink in their plan to exterminate humankind when one of them falls in love with a human girl.

"Come Wander with Me" is the final episode to be filmed of the American television series The Twilight Zone. This episode introduced Bonnie Beecher in her television debut.

References

↑ "The Twilight Zone: Episodes Ranked". IMDb . 2016. Retrieved August 19, 2022.
↑ "2014 SBIFF - Rober Redford Discusses The Twilight Zone". 2014. Retrieved August 19, 2022– via YouTube.

External links

"Nothing in the Dark" at IMDb
Nothing in the Dark 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.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] "The Twilight Zone: Episodes Ranked". IMDb . 2016. Retrieved August 19, 2022.

[2] "2014 SBIFF - Rober Redford Discusses The Twilight Zone". 2014. Retrieved August 19, 2022– via YouTube.

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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"