Twilight Zone – Spur of the Moment

★★★★ Feburary 21, 1964 Season 5 Episode 21

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

An eerie opening makes this one very promising. There are things you dream about happening and there is reality that actually happens. Diana Hyland plays Anne Henderson who gets a frightening visitor while riding a horse …or is it a warning? This episode makes you think about the choices you make and how those choices make you who you are…good or bad. Sometimes we all have red flags…not necessarily someone screaming on a horse but things that we know we shouldn’t ignore.

Richard Mathesons final four Twilight Zone scripts run the gamut from mildly disturbing to outright horrific. In Spur of the Moment, the romantic situation is a familiar one…Annes family wants her to marry the proper-but-dull stockbroker, but she is in love with the romantic, headstrong young fellow of whom they disapprove. We just know what she picks. The characters show Serling’s usual level of humanism but with a disturbing realistic edge.

This episode takes place on June 13, 1939, and in 1964.

This show was written by Rod Serling  and Richard Matheson

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration: 

This is the face of terror. Anne Marie Henderson, 18 years of age, her young existence suddenly marred by a savage and wholly unanticipated pursuit by a strange, nightmarish figure of a woman in black, who has appeared as if from nowhere and now, at driving gallop, chases the terrified girl across the countryside, as if she means to ride her down and kill her, and then suddenly and inexplicably stops to watch in malignant silence as her prey takes flight. Miss Henderson has no idea whatever as to the motive for this pursuit. Worse, not the vaguest notion regarding the identity of her pursuer. Soon enough, she will be given the solution to this twofold mystery, but in a manner far beyond her present capacity to understand, a manner enigmatically bizarre in terms of time and space – which is to say, an answer from… the Twilight Zone.

Summary

While out horseback riding on June 13, 1939, 18 year-old Anne Henderson comes across another rider, a middle-aged woman dressed in black, who chases after her. She’s terrified and races home. It’s the day of her engagement party. She’s supposed to marry Robert Blake but childhood friend David Mitchell wants her to break it off and marry him instead. As for the woman in black, she is someone who knows Anne quite well.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

This is the face of terror. Anne Marie Mitchell, 43 years of age, her desolate existence once more afflicted by the hope of altering her past mistake – a hope which is unfortunately doomed to disappointment. For warnings from the future to the past must be taken in the past. Today may change tomorrow but once today is gone, tomorrow can only look back in sorrow that the warning was ignored. Said warning as of now stamped ‘Not Accepted’- and stored away in the dead file, in the recording office… of the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Diana Hyland … Anne Henderson
Robert J. Hogan … Robert Blake
Philip Ober … Mr. Henderson
Marsha Hunt … Mrs. Henderson
Roger Davis … David Mitchell
Jack Raine … Reynolds

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball fan, old movie and tv show fan... and a songwriter, bass and guitar player. View all posts by Badfinger (Max)