Welcome to the Mystery Zone.

After a brief hiatus, I'm back and hopefully able to update daily, but the Real world has begun to suck me dry. (After Saturday, I can let you in on my mysterious absence, in the interim, keep your fingers crossed for me.)

Who doesn't like a bit of Mystery, anyway. The Japanese certainly do, for they renamed "The Twilight Zone" as ミステリーゾーン (Mystery Zone) and started a 3-episode collected series collecting the first season, 3 episodes at a time. (For some reason, they skipped the pilot, Where Is Everybody?) Instead, it started with One for the Angels where a pitchman makes a deal with Death to continue living until he makes one great sale. Ed Wynn is a joy as the salesman and keep an eye out for the Robby the Robot toy!

The next feature is Mr. Denton on Doomsday, where a washed-up gunslinger (Dan Duryea) is given another chance by a mystery man. Martin Landau is particularly nasty and a very young Troy Doug McClure appears. The final episode in the premiere DVD set is The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine, a Sunset Blvd. clone with a still-striking Ida Lupino as an aging film star who lives a life of seclusion in her private screening room.

You also get a 22 page booklet with it, with several photos and features, including トワイライト・セレブリティ (Twilight Celebrity),　ミステリー・ゾン (Mystery Zone's history & other media) and　for some reason, ロスウェル (Roswell)! Here are a whole whack of photos from the mag:

What follows are some of the YouTubes I could find featuring the opening in Japanese, still sounds pretty cool, even with out Serling's dulcet/raspy tone.


Oops, that was the Twilight Zonettes.

Doh, that was Jack Benny. Let's try again. (The ending is a killer!)

Nope, that was the トワイライトゾーン・タワー・オブ・テラー (Twilight Zone, Tower of Terror).



That's better.
I truly wish that I could afford further dvds in the series, but the first one cost me 790￥ and future ones jump to 1790￥!