The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode Ten “Judgment Night”

Original Air Date: December 4, 1959
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: John Brahm

“Her name is the S.S. Queen of Glasgow. Her registry: British. Gross tonnage: five thousand. Age: Interdeterminate. At this moment she’s one day out of Liverpool, her destination New York. Duly recorded on the ship’s log is the sailing time, course to destination, weather conditions, temperature, longitude and latitude. But what is never recorded in a log is the fear that washes over a deck like fog and ocean spray. Fear like the throbbing strokes of engine pistons, each like a heartbeat, parceling out of every hour into breathless minutes of watching, waiting and dreading.. For the year is 1942, and this particular ship has lost its convoy. It travels alone like an aged blind thing groping through the unfriendly dark, stalked by unseen periscopes of steel killers. Yes, the Queen of Glasgow is a frightened ship, and she carries with her a premonition of death.”
-Rod Serling

The year is 1942, the height of World War II, and we meet a German-born man named Carl Lanser (played by Nehemiah Persoff who was born in 1919 and is still alive as of the time of this writing, living in Cambria, CA). Lanser has found himself aboard a British freighter called the S.S. Queen of Glasgow as it crosses the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York. He has no memory of how he got there. He seems to have become afflicted with short-term amnesia but he vaguely recalls that something terrible is planned for the ship at 1:15am.

The tone is ominous, ghostly, and foggy as we await a terrifying conflict of some sort at 1:15am. Is Carl insane? Do we trust him? Is he a German spy who has been brainwashed? Has he been given some sort of chip implanted in his brain? Or was he deliberately sent by the enemy to deliver a vague warning?

Lanser goes mad scrambling through the ship while crew members grow suspicious of him (he appears nervous and possesses remarkably detailed knowledge about Germans and U-Boats) and he finds a German submarine captain’s hat in his closet bearing his own name (it reads “Carl Lanser Kapitän Leutnant Kriegsmarine”). When 1:15am arrives he pulls out a pair of binoculars and gazes out from the ship to find a German U-Boat stalking the freighter. The big reveal comes when he spots none other than himself at the enemy helm. The U-Boat mercilessly attacks the British vessel killing all aboard –we watch as Lanser, too, slips beneath the waves.

In the end, we are given an epilogue. A German officer approaches Kapitan Carl Lanser aboard the German U-Boat. He expresses shame and he wonders whether or not damnation awaits them for killing so many civilians, but Lanser is remorseless. Moments later, we see Lanser again on the deck of the S.S. Queen of Glasgow without any idea of how he arrived there, and the whole situation begins anew. He is doomed to repeat his fate for all of eternity like Sisyphus pushing his great stone or the pirate myth of the Flying Dutchman or even Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Lanser has become a hostage to his own cruelty.

“The S.S. Queen of Glasgow, heading for New York., and the time is 1942. For one man it is always 1942 – and this man will ride the ghost ship every night for eternity. This is what is meant by paying the fiddler. This is the comeeuppance awaiting every man when the ledger of his life is opened and examined, the tally made, and then the reward or the penalty paid. And in the case of Carl Lanser, former Kaptian Lieutenant, Navy of the Third Reich, this is the penalty. The is the justice meted out. This is judgement night in the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

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My Thoughts on “Judgment Night”

“Judgment Night” is a classic episode of The Twilight Zone focused on the all-encompassing human struggle between war and peace. In the 1950s, the recent memory of German U-Boat attacks would have been fresh in the minds of television audiences, and the horrors of civilian casualties were well-known. Rod Serling, a Jewish-born World War II veteran, had personal reasons for placing Nazis into an unending hellish nightmare in The Twilight Zone.

In “Judgment Night” we cannot help but accept that the punishment fits the crime for Carl Lanser. With echoes of another classic Twilight Zone episode in the series, Season 3’s “Deaths-Head Revisited,” the idea of cosmic retribution is a recurring theme throughout The Twilight Zone, particularly when it comes to unrepentant Nazis.

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Credits

• Director: John Brahm
• Written by: Rod Serling
• Music: Stock
• Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
• Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson
• Art Directors: George W. Davis and William Ferrari
• Film Editor: Bill Mosher
• Assistant Director: Edward Denault
• Set Decorations: Henry Grace and Rudy Butler
• Sound: Franklin Milton and Jean Valentino
• Casting Director: Mildred Gusse
• Cast:
  • Nehemiah Persoff…..Carl Lanser
    • Nehemiah Persoff (1919-2022) appeared in more than 200 television series, films, and theatre productions, and also performed as a voice artist in a career spanning 55 years. He appeared in films like Some Like It Hot (1959) as well as television shows like The Twilight Zone, Gilligan’s Island, Hawaii Five-O, Adam-12, The Untouchables, and Law & Order. He and his wife had four children. She died of cancer in 2021, and Persoff died at the age of 102 in San Luis Obispo in 2022 (he has since died after I first wrote this review).
  • Ben Wright…..Captain Wilbur
    • Ben Wright (1915-1989) was best known for playing Herr Zeller in The Sound of Music (1965). He also played numerous roles in famous films and worked as voice actor, having roles in Disney animated films. He had small roles in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), and Billy Wilder’s The Fortune Cookie (1966). He appeared in television shows like My Three Sons, Hogan’s Heroes, Get Smart, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Wild Wild West, The Twilight Zone, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, It Takes a Thief, Mission: Impossible, Perry Mason, The Addams Family, The Monkees, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and he voiced various aliens in The Outer Limits. He voiced as songwriter Roger Radcliffe in Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), Mowgli’s wolf father Rama in The Jungle Book (1967), and Eric’s loyal steward Grimsby in The Little Mermaid (1989), which was his final role.
  • Patrick Macnee…..First Officer
    • Patrick Macnee (1922-2015) was a British-American actor best known for his breakout role as secret agent John Steed in the television series The Avengers. He was the eldest son of socialite Dorothea Macnee, and served in the British Royal Navy during the Second World War before starting his career as an actor in Canadian television. He appeared in television shows like The Twilight Zone, Columbo, Magnum, P.I., Hart to Hart, Murder, She Wrote, The Love Boat, and Frasier. He also appeared in Oasis’s music video for “Don’t Look Back in Anger” (1996), and he and Avengers co-star Honor Blackman (who played “Pussy Galore” in the third James Bond film Goldfinger) had a UK Top 10 hit in 1990 when their 1964 song “Kinky Boots” received renewed interest after being replayed on BBC Radio One. Macnee’s notable film roles include performing as a young Jacob Marley in Scrooge (1951), as Sir Denis Eton-Hogg in This Is Spinal Tap (1984), and Sir Godfrey Tibbett, a racehorse trainer and MI6 agent, in the James Bond film A View to a Kill (1985).
  • James Franciscus…..Lt. Mueller
    • James Franciscus (1934-1991) was an American actor, known for his roles in feature films and in six television series: Mr. Novak, Naked City, The Investigators, Longstreet, Doc Elliot, and Hunter. He was a Yale alumnus. In the summer of 1956, while working as the stage manager at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts, Franciscus dated apprentice, Jane Fonda. In her 2005 autobiography, Fonda described Franciscus as the boy to whom she lost her virginity. Franciscus married Kathleen “Kitty” Wellman, daughter of film director William A. Wellman (who directed the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, Wings in 1927). They had four children together and later divorced and Franciscus remarried. He died of emphysema in 1991.
  • Hugh Sanders…..Mr. Potter of the War Production Board
    • Hugh Sanders (1911-1966) was best known for playing the role of Dr. Reynolds in the movie To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). He appeared in various television shows like Rawhide, The Lone Ranger, Playhouse 90, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Perry Mason, and Bonanza.
  • Leslie Bradley…..Major Devereaux
    • Leslie Bradley (1907-1974) was an English actor. This was his only appearance in The Twilight Zone.
  • Deirdre Owens…..Miss Barbara Stanley
    • Deirdre Owens (1928-2010) was known for appearances in Hallmark Hall of Fame (1951), The Twilight Zone (1959), and One Step Beyond (1959).
  • Kendrick Huxham…..Bartender
    • Kendrick Huxham (1898-1967) made appearances in The Twilight Zone (1959), One Step Beyond (1959), and Thriller (1960).
  • Barry Bernard…..Engineer
    • Barry Bernard (1899-1978) was known for appearances in The Rocks of Valpre (1919), Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940), and Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944), in addition to this episode of The Twilight Zone.
  • Richard Peel…..1st Steward
    • Richard Peel (1920-1988) appeared in Daniel Boone, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible, Batman and other shows.
  • Donald Journeaux…..2nd Steward
    • Donald Journeaux (1910-1997) was known for The Twilight Zone (1959), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) and At Long Last Love (1975).
  • Debbie Joyce…..little girl
    • Debbie Joyce (?) is known for A Private’s Affair (1959), The Eleventh Hour (1962) and Cain’s Hundred (1961).
  • Bob McCord…..crewman
    • Robert “Bob” McCord III (1915-1980) appeared in a variety of Westerns in addition to The Twilight Zone. He set a record for appearing on The Twilight Zone 75 times (mostly uncredited). He was known as “Bud McCord.”

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The Twilight Zone Trivia:

• This was the first episode (of the first eighteen episodes) which ran into issues with the censors. Rod Serling had originally written that the British sailors called for tea, but one of the show sponsors was Sanka Coffee (under General Foods), so the language was changed to simply refer vaguely to a “tray.” Other references to coffee, rather than tea, were inserted into this episode.
• In the 1960 issue of Broadcasting, Serling complained: “You can’t ‘ford’ a river if it’s sponsored by Chevy; you can’t offer someone a ‘match’ if it’s sponsored by Ronson lighters.” Marc Scott Zicree joked in The Twilight Zone Companion that it was a good thing the sponsor did not realize that people could drink water, or else the episode would have happened on dry land.
• Numerous sets from the Gary Cooper and Charlton Heston film The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959) were used for this episode. The footage of a frog-enshrouded ship used in this episode was also borrowed from the same film. Even though it was shot in color, The Twilight Zone kept the clips in black and white. The stock footage cost about $500 but the scenes filmed on the deck of the ship cost about $150.
• Rod Serling developed the idea for this story after listening to a sermon about hell and purgatory and, thinking they could use a modern reimagining from Dante’s vision, he drafted this script.
• The antique clock Lanser views while awaiting 1:15 was intended to have a pendulum in the original script.
• In later years, Rod Serling expressed a degree of dismay over this episode. He initially wanted either Ralph Nelson or Franklin Shaffner to direct this episode but Buck Houghton selected John Brahm instead. Shaffner never got to direct a Twilight Zone episode but Nelson directed “A World of his Own.”
• Nehemiah Persoff was paid $2,000 for his role in this episode.
• “Leutnant” is the correct spelling of lieutenant in German.
• The one phrase Nehemiah Persoff had to say in German was “Fuer Frei” (or “fire at will”). He had a minor conflict with his stand-in Freddie, who was German and had survived the concentration camps, over the correct German pronunciation for a high-class, cultured naval officer. Freddie insisted that Nehemiah get the pronounce the German phrase correctly –even calling “cut” on the set, overstepping director John Brahms, when he felt Nehemiah didn’t get it right. However, John Brahms, who was also a German refugee, explained to Freddie that Carl Lanser was more of a gruff, working-class German who worked his way up to his captainship rather than inherited it. Freddie profusely apologized. He died a few months later as he was in poor health. I was unable to track down more details on Freddie and his life.

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