The reviews were surprisingly uniform in declaring “Twilight Zone: The Movie” a mixed bag. Most agreed that Miller’s adaptation of Richard Matheson’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” starring John Lithgow as a nervous airline passenger who’s convinced a gremlin is tearing up the wing of his plane, was by far the best in show.
The Chicago Sun-Times’ Roger Ebert praised Miller’s short as “some kind of manic classic.” The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael was also dazzled, writing:
“[W]ith the Australian George Miller (the director of ‘The Road Warrior’) in charge and John Lithgow as star, the result is a classic shocker of the short form — something that ranks with the Alberto Cavalcanti segment of ‘Dead of Night,’ the one with Michael Redgrave as the ventriloquist.”
If you’ve never seen “Dead of Night,” trust me when I say this is very high praise.
They were also impressed to varying degrees with Dante’s darkly comedic take on “It’s a Good Life,” though some felt it didn’t fully deliver on its unnerving promise. Ebert dug it, but according to The New York Times’ Vincent Canby, “Joe Dante, the director, never finds a style for the piece, which should somehow combine the comic, the scary and the satirical.”
As for Landis’ “Time Out” (the only original story of the group) and Spielberg’s “Kick the Can,” the consensus was that they pretty much stunk.