The Twilight Zone: The Hunt

It's been awhile since I did one of these TZTs. I hope to get a few more of them up over the course of 2019. 

A couple of folks have asked when I'm going to do something with the new Twilight Zone currently airing on CBS Access. I definitely look forward to seeing it, and when I do I'll be happy to set a place for it with the others. Whenever they announce a release date for Star Trek: Picard I'll take the All Access plunge. (Last time I did so - for the NFL playoffs - I thought great I'll finally watch Discovery - and ended up watching like 25 episodes of The Price Is Right instead. Go figure.)

For tonight, thought, let's have a look at an episode I've loved for many years:

Aired January 26th, 1962

"An old man and a hound dog named Rip off for an evening's pleasure in quest of raccoon. Usually, these evenings end with one tired old man, one battle-scarred hound dog and one or more extremely dead raccoons, but as you may suspect, that will not be the case tonight. These hunters won't be coming home from the hill. They're headed for the backwoods... of the Twilight Zone."

Hyder and Rachel Simpson are living out their twilight years in an unnamed mountain community where they've lived their whole lives. Over supper, Rachel asks Hyder not to go hunting that night as she has been seeing signs of ill portent all week: blood on the moon, weird birds, etc. He tells her not to worry; he'll be fine.

Whoops.

A raccoon that might've given Old Dan and Little Ann a run for their money leads Hyder and Rip out onto a log over a river with a fast undercurrent. First Rip then Hyder fall into the water and don't resurface.

Hyder and Rip wake up on the side of the river. Worried about what Rachel's going to say about all this, Hyder walks home. As he nears his house, he sees his neighbors digging a hole. They resolutely ignore him when he asks what they think they're doing digging a hole on his property, so he responds in the traditional manner:

He softens, though, once he learns they're digging a grave, and one of them is a little careless with the smaller of the two coffins.

"Have a little care!"
"It's just a dog."

"Not to some folks."

Hyder starts to realize he and Rip didn't survive the hunt once he gets inside and sees his wife in her funeral outfit and when the pastor and pallbearers don't answer his questions.

He follows the throng outside but is puzzled by a fence he does not remember running alongside the road. ("I don't memorize ever seeing this fence" he tells Rip. Rip inwardly rolls his eyes.) They walk along until they come to a gate. A man steps out from behind it and asks Hyder a bunch of questions, before confirming Hyder's suspicions that he has indeed reached the clearing at the end of the path.

"Then I take you would aim at being St. Peter?"
"I keep the gate; that's a fact."

Hyder's about to enter the gates of heaven when he's told he can't bring Rip. No Rip? What kind of heaven is this? This is folks heaven, the man replies; dog heaven's up the road a ways. Without hesitation, Hyder says no thank you. ("Any place that's too highfalutin for Rip is too fancy for me.") The man tries to persuade him otherwise, to no avail. Failing to entice him inside, he gives what sounds like good advice: don't be rash, neighbor, the stakes are eternity; why don't you just sit down and think it over for awhile?

Which he does.

As he waits, another man appears, and this one knows his and Rip's names before Hyder has to tell him. When he tells them he's there to bring them to heaven, Hyder repeats what he told that fella up the road: he has no intention of going anywhere that Rip's not welcome to walk in beside him. The man grows quite concerned - you didn't get messed up with nobody in there, did you? When Hyder says it would be one hell of a place to settle down for eternity with no dogs and no raccoon hunting, the man tells him he isn't far wrong; that place was hell.  

Good thing Rip was there or Hyder might have been tricked. "A man?

Well, he'll walk right into Hell with both eyes open... but even the devil can't fool a dog."

"Travelers to unknown regions would be well advised to take along the family dog. He could just save you from entering the wrong gate. At least, it happened that way once in a mountainous area... of the Twilight Zone."

And off they go to heaven. The End.

The Twilight Zone Vortex speaks for both sides of the fanbase on this one in its review: "Good intentions but the finished product is an incredibly flawed episode. The pacing is slow, the direction tiresome, and the premise derivative. (However) many fans have warm memories of this episode. One such admirer was fellow Twilight Zone writer George Clayton Johnson who regards it as one of his favorite episodes. "With this story, Earl brings a southern country sensibility to The Twilight Zone that is American to the core," Johnson said in an interview, "which assures us that being simple is not being stupid…the story has such a classic feeling that one is tempted to believe that Hamner may not have made the story up but instead borrowed it from some ancient book of folk tales…It has stuck in my mind like fishhooks."

Mine, too. I first saw this when I was 15 or so, with my own dog (good ol' Bandit, R.I.{P. buddy) by my side. Did we used to watch The Twilight Zone together? It'd make a good story, but I don't think we ever had a serious ritual of it. He used to just come in and lay down near me when I was watching anything. Anyway: the regional or afterlife musings of this story aside, it's mainly a story about loving dogs.

"And another thing- don't talk about him like that when he can hear you. Rip's got feelings. I don't want them hurt."

Rachel's response amuses me:
"I'll feed him, but I'll be switched if I'm going to start sweet-talking him."

So yeah just as something to express a simple truth (dogs are awesome and we probably never live up to their intense loyalty and affection for us) in an uncomplicated manner, I like it. Everything else is secondary to that.

Other things I like: Rachel and Hyder, the tenderness shown to one another, primarily through Hyder's dialogue with others (particularly at the end when he makes sure Rachel won't have any trouble with that fella up the road before he follows the angel into heaven) or just through some of the acting.  

Like the looks on his face, not when he discovers the truth of his condition, but when he sees firsthand how it's impacting Rachel and that he can't do anything to comfort her.

Hamner says that "Hyder and Rachel were actually early versions of Grandma and Grandpa Walton. Around the time that he wrote the episode he was also writing a series of short stories called “The Old Man and the Old Woman” and he decided to use the two main characters, who were fully-developed already, as the main characters of "The Hunt." He continued to write stories featuring the elderly couple and they eventually ended up in The Waltons." There's plenty more on Hamner's career at the link up there - have at it, it's all interesting. I've got some Waltons on tap for one of these days/years.  

Also, I like that the devil is all just-the-facts (name, number, how's-you-die) and this subtly creepy shot of the road into Hell beyond the gate. ("That pasture up there they call the Elysian field. Cross that and you reach the golden street that takes you directly to the Old Master's headquarters.") 

And now, some leftover screencaps.

 ~

Considering the nature of the episode, maybe naming the dog "RIP" was too much? Or is it just the right touch? I've been asking myself that for 30 years ago, someone out there (probably not reading this blog here but hey) even longer.