Even if you didn't grow up watching "The Twilight Zone," you've almost certainly been influenced or seen something that's been influenced by Rod Serling's seminal sci-fi horror series. Aside from becoming hugely popular during its original five-season run from 1959-64 on CBS, the show galvanized its standing in syndication before being reimagined with three separate TV revivals in 1985, 2002, and 2019. There was also the cursed "Twilight Zone" movie from 1982, and the fact that individual episodes
have been referenced, parodied, and used for inspiration in everything from "Child's Play" to "The Simpsons."
In the latter case, you might remember a segment from 1993's "Treehouse of Horror IV" entitled "Terror at 5+1⁄2 Feet," in which Bart is menaced by a gremlin that only he can see while on the school bus. This was just one of many reimaginings of "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," a classic "Twilight Zone" episode which has officially been remade twice (though neither tops the original). The "Simpsons" episode comes closest to doing the original justice, but that's mostly because it's a successful parody made during the height of the show's golden era. The original episode, however, wasn't supposed to make anybody laugh — though it seems star William Shatner was worried that it would.
"Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" was directed by the great Richard Donner and aired on October 11, 1963, during the fifth and final season of "The Twilight Zone." Based on Richard Matheson's short story of the same name, the episode (also written by Matheson) follows Shatner's Robert Wilson, a plane passenger who is recovering from a nervous breakdown. Wilson peers out of his window only to see a gremlin (actor/stunt performer Nick Cravat) damaging the wing, but when he tries to alert his family and plane crew, nobody can see it. Naturally, everybody assumes Wilson is having another nervous breakdown, but he manages to steal a pistol and pry open an Exit door, taking out the gremlin before being carted away on a stretcher once the plane lands. A final shot reveals damage to one of the plane's engines, suggesting Wilson wasn't hallucinating the gremlin. While that might not sound all that humorous, it seems Shatner was concerned that people wouldn't take his unsettling vignette all that seriously.
Read more: The 15 Best TV Shows Of The 1960s
William Shatner Thought People Would Laugh At The Gremlin In His Twilight Zone Episode
During a 2024 interview with the Television Academy, William Shatner was asked about his experience working with Richard Donner on "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," and revealed that he already had a good relationship with the director when he came to shoot the episode. "I had come from live television out of New York, and Donner was a very prolific director," he said. "I had worked with him several times prior in live television. So we were more or less friends, pretty good acquaintances. So when he called, it was like an old buddy saying, 'Let's do this thing.'"
As Shatner remembered it, he felt conflicted after first reading the script. "I was of two minds," he said. "I mean, it could be laughed at. And then when I saw the suit that the Czechoslovakian acrobat was dressed in, I thought, 'Well, I hope this isn't laughed at.' This is good for laughs, at least." It seems that by "Czechoslovakian acrobat," Shatner was referring to actor Nick Cravat, who donned a suit in order to portray the gremlin in the segment. In a 2016 interview with The Aquarian, Shatner elaborated on his worries about the gremlin specifically. "This guy on the airplane was actually a Czechoslovakian acrobat in a furry suit," he said, "like, you would buy for your child to go to a Halloween party, but nobody talks about that. Nobody talks about how stupid it is that at 500 miles an hour, the guy is not aerodynamic. They just accept what this little suit means, which is, I guess, fear of flying."
Clearly, then, the design of the gremlin suit itself was Shatner's main concern in terms of how the horror tone of the episode might be undermined. But that wasn't the end of the actor's worries.
William Shatner Thought His Nightmare At 20,000 Feet Character Was A Joke
During his Television Academy interview, William Shatner went on to reveal that he was worried about how "Nightmare at 20,000" would be received right up to shooting his final scene. He recalled filming the last shot of the episode, wherein his character is carried away on a stretcher, and thinking "I hope that everybody takes this thing the way it was meant to be [taken] and not laugh at it." It seems the "Star Trek" star was concerned that Robert Wilson's apparent hallucinations would make him the butt of a joke rather than conveying the terror that writer Richard Matheson intended.
Of course, things worked out the way Shatner had hoped, with the actor himself even acknowledging that "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" has since become legendary for being one of the scariest episodes of "The Twilight Zone." As he put it, "Since we're talking about it more than 60 years later, my hope seems to have come true."
Indeed, the episode and its dramatization of the fear of flying have even transcended the show on which it first appeared, becoming part of the culture in its own right. It was remade for the final segment of "Twilight Zone: The Movie" in 1983 with John Lithgow in the lead role, and again for the 2019 "Twilight Zone" reboot on CBS All Access, this time with Adam Scott starring. But even without these remakes, the original episode would still enjoy the same notoriety. In the same way"The Twilight Zone" remains as relevant today as it was back in the 1960s, so too does "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" endure as an important cultural moment. The twist ending here is that the original vision for the episode was actually a lot more lighthearted.
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