The Twilight Zone's Fake Invisible Wall Sent A Real Man To The Hospital
What is it about small towns tucked away far from the bustling streets that is so laden with nostalgia? Perhaps it is the quaint, simple quality of life that defines existence in these spaces, or simply a case of looking back at one's past with rose-tinted glasses. "Valley of the Shadow," the third episode in the fourth season of "The Twilight Zone," examines a town named Peaceful Valley, where a reporter named Phillip Redfield (Ed Nelson) gets lost. However, Phillip's experiences in the town are far from pleasant — he stumbles upon life-altering secrets and is rendered a prisoner with almost no way out. Once Phillip learns that he can steal a technological formula that can make the world a better place, he is faced with obstacles that are designed to test his heart and his intentions as a seemingly well-meaning human being.
The technological gifts that the townspeople enjoy were portrayed pretty convincingly by director Perry Lafferty, and these effects, which were meant to denote teleportation or the de-materialization of a person, could easily be accomplished with jump cuts. Per Mark Scott Zicree's "The Twilight Zone Companion," Lafferty succeeded in pulling these effects off by "reversing the footage" and jump-cutting between two or more shots to provide "the illusion that [a] person has been teleported." These sequences are adequately believable and help establish the otherworldly nature of the gifts that the people of Peaceful Valley were given years ago by an extraterrestrial scientist, along with the sense of jealous covetousness triggered in Phillip after witnessing them in action.
However, one aspect of the narrative — involving an automobile collision against a fake invisible wall — proved to be pretty tricky and dangerous to film.
An invisible wall in The Twilight Zone
Rod Serling's opening narration describes Peaceful Valley as "the capital of the Twilight Zone," which explains the surreal, disorienting nature of the reality that Phillip experiences after getting lost in the town. When his dog Rollie chases a cat, the poor creature disappears after a resident uses a strange device on it, but soon re-materializes after some time. Upon encountering a string of strange events, Phillip decides to leave the town but ends up running into an invisible wall that causes his car to crash, killing his dog in the process. (The dog is brought back to life again with the strange device, don't worry.)
Lafferty talked about the mechanics of filming this sequence, where identical cars (1959 Chevrolet Impala convertibles) were used to create the illusion of a collision with the help of well-timed cuts:
"The critical portion of the sequence was achieved by putting a one-inch chain around the back axle and running it with about twenty feet of slack, to a steady nearby tree where it was tied off. By framing a portion of the road, a stunt man drove the car into the frame of the camera and, when the slack was used up, was slammed against the steering wheel."
Nelson, who played Phillip, was put inside one car going at a normal speed for a quick cut, while a stunt double played out the collision part of the sequence, which ended with a close-up of the wreckage. Unfortunately, the stunt professional went a little bit too hard at the steering wheel while driving at low speed, leading to injuries that landed him in the hospital. Thankfully, no one else was gravely injured during filming, and the sequence was promptly wrapped up without a hitch.