Even if you're one of the rare people who doesn't care about The Twilight Zone, you've probably seen or heard of this at least once. This legendary episode (in my view) best summarizes what TZ is all about, since it has dark, shadowy visuals, a general feeling of malaise, an important moral which can be applied to real life, and one hell of a twist. Everyone who's seen this knows the way it ends is what makes it so classic, but lets get familiar with the plot itself first. The episode starts off by showing us an unlucky woman laying in a hospital bed. Her face, unable to be seen and covered with bandages, is the reason she is there. A doctor comes over to comfort her, saying how even with her hideous abnormality which has made her a monster all her life, she can still live among "her own kind" if this one last cosmetic procedure fails. The hospital is apparently located in a dictatorship where ugly people are either euthanized, shunned by society, or sent to live in special enclaves just for them. The woman, Miss Tyler (Maxine Stuart), is apparently so unattractive that she has been admitted to the hospital to reconstruct her face no less than 10 times. This 11th visit is the last permitted by the state. The head doctor confers with one of his nurses, confessing how nervous he is about the procedure and how he risks losing everything he's strived to achieve for Miss Tyler. He also makes a comment about how it shouldn't be a crime to be different from everyone else, but the nurse tells him to watch his mouth. Saying you want to be a non-conformist in this society is dangerous. Finally, the day comes when Miss Tyler's bandages are to be removed, and the medical staff will get to see if all their hard work meant anything. As the last of Miss Tyler's bandages are snipped away, her face is at last shown, and she's gorgeous. The doctors on the other hand recoil in shock, stating how their work has failed and she's just as ugly as before. Everyone around Miss Tyler is shown to be a grotesque, humanoid creature with an upturned lip, prominent wrinkles and what appears to be a pig's snout. Miss Tyler runs frantically throughout the hospital corridors, as doctors and nurses try to restrain her. Before long, she comes to a room where she is greeted by another misshapen freak: a handsome guy in a jacket named Walter (Edson Stroll). Walter promises Miss Tyler that even though they both look disgusting, at least they can go live in a settlement that understands. The hospital staff then allow both of them to leave, sad at how they failed to make Miss Tyler look normal. What a classic episode this is. I really don't know why I haven't gotten around to writing about it until today, but better late than never I suppose. What the episode does best is use its storyline to tell a much bigger lesson. The plot, while very simple, is a very effective vehicle for saying how nightmarish certain societies are, along with their citizens. In a country like the one depicted in the episode, all the people look like something from a nightmare, but that is the normal appearance of someone from there. Because of this, they view beautiful (to us) individuals as monstrosities. The episode, like many 60s tv programs (even having nothing to do with the Cold War), has a strong West vs East overtone to it. We see the leader of the dictatorship on a screen, ranting about how everyone needs to be the same, look the same, act the same, and how wonderful it is to be identical. It's not difficult to see this as a jab at communism. Aside from the classic twist at the end, my other favorite aspect of this installment has got to be the lighting. Up until a certain point, the camera operators never show the faces of any of the hospital staff, but it's done in such a magical and intelligent way. Sometimes the camera isn't positioned high enough to capture what's above their necks, but other times, we see the doctor moving from one shadowy corner of a room to another. Other times something just so happens to get in front of his face when it would have otherwise been visible. It's really creative and something I've never really seen in many other shows. The episode also makes very inventive use of a fish bowl during the part where Miss Tyler is having the gauze cut off her face, and you're seeing the doctors unbandage her from her perspective. You have no idea that's what they used of course, because the episode is so well filmed. Overall, The Eye of the Beholder is considered one of (if not the most) iconic episodes of The Twilight Zone for a reason, and because the Twilight Zone is already such a well crafted show, I can't give this anything but a perfect score. Not to mention the lighting, dialogue, powerful message, makeup, and relevancy it has even to this day.
Review of Eye of the Beholder
