The Twilight Zone (TV Series) King Nine Will Not Return (1960) User Reviews

Makes you think after you see it,

[darrenpearce111 · 7/10 · 1 January 2014]

I was initially disappointed at the end of this episode. Things did not add up very well it seemed. Not a cracking yarn with a neat ending. Then I thought about it some more. Perhaps this tale of war is better told this way? Rod Serling's stories about war in TZ tend to be a little nebulous and all the more meaningful for it. Viewers tend to want answers to neatly wrap things up but instead Serling seems to show us a different 'world' with war where 'guilt' doesn't mean evil or criminality and 'reality' and 'being' do not seem so certain.

Robert Cummings plays the WW2 pilot desperate to understand why he is alone with his crashed B-25 in the Tunisian desert. The viewer suffers with him as he seeks an answer to his psychological torture.

Zones about lonely characters tend to be strong stuff. Mix that with psychological scars of war and you have to guess Serling's writing from the heart.

"Everything looks tilt, but there's..., there's logic behind it".

[classicsoncall · 8/10 · 3 April 2010]

Robert Cummings did an exceptionally good job here in a serious piece; as a kid I recall only seeing him in his 'Love That Bob' role where he always had an eye for the ladies. That's why I got a kick out of one of his lines wandering around in the desert where he wishes he could just see a pretty girl.

This episode shows you that The Twilight Zone could take the same basic idea and rework it any number of ways to come up with a different story. In the first season, you had "The Last Flight", where a British World War II fighter pilot lands in 1960 France via a mysterious cloud to learn he has some unfinished business back in the past. That one relied on a bit of the supernatural to make it work, whereas 'King Nine' winds up like an event that could actually happen. Even though it looks like it's starting out as a 1943 war story, the finale brings it home realistically as the nightmarish reaction to a front page news story that Captain James Embry (Cummings) happens to come across.

This was a tough episode to pull off with a single character on screen for most of the story. I don't find it as unrealistic as some other reviewers do that the protagonist winds up talking out loud with no one else around. Given the circumstances, I think I would do the same, as verbalizing one's thoughts help give form and substance to a situation, making it helpful to stay coherent and on track. Cummings provides a wide range of emotion here, as he tries to stay sane in an insane situation.

This was a good start for the series second season. Rod Serling began his on screen introductions to the stories with this episode, bringing his show and name into the lexicon as household words.

King Nine Will Not Return

[Scarecrow-88 · 8/10 · 21 August 2011]

"Oh God, what's happening? Won't you let me in on it?"

Captain James Embry (Bob Cummings, the hero in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur) finds himself all alone in the African desert, stranded, his only company a wrecked B-25 Bomber absent her crew. Embry cries out for his men, slowly driven mad by the isolation and the missing crew who seem to have vanished off the face of the earth. One peculiar incident involving jets flying overhead confuses an already bewildered Embry who sees a "phantom" of a member of his crew sitting in the cockpit with a smile on his face before disappearing when the captain approaches the plane. Is Embry alive or dead? Is this whole ordeal a dream or illusion? In the Twilight Zone there are often no easy answers and the real and unreal can perhaps converge (the ending makes sure of that) as evident when sand spills from a shoe as the episode concludes. Cummings acts his heart out in this episode, all alone, his character tormented by something that has brought him to the crash site where his crew was possible casualties. The conclusion addresses why Embry is haunted by the crash, specifying why he found himself in the desert to begin with. Like in times past, a newspaper article is used to supreme effect to add an extra chill to the proceedings. Serling based his screenplay on a real incident regarding a vanished crew, this episode really benefiting from the idea of "where is everybody?" Other episodes have explored similar themes, regarding a character searching for people, anybody, usually resulting in a slow descent into madness. There is a really cool scene where Cummings searches throughout the B-25 plane for any sign of his crew, only finding abandoned posts and silence. The plane is named King Nine, explaining the title of the episode, as well as, defining its tragic fate. I must admit that there is a feeling of "been there, done that" familiarity to the plot, but Cummings' performance makes "King Nine Will Not Return",(along with the desert setting and ghost plane's presence which also add dramatic weight to episode)a winner.

It's Back

[AaronCapenBanner · 7/10 · 26 October 2014]

Robert Cummings plays Air Force Bomber Pilot James Embry, who awakens in the African desert during World War II next to his downed B25 Mitchell plane, which is strangely deserted of its crew, leaving Embry alone and desperately trying to make sense of his predicament, as the harsh heat and lack of supplies will soon kill him, not to mention he has the unsettling feeling that things are not right, nor as they seem... Cummings is good here, practically the whole show, and as a start to the second season, quite similar to the series opener 'Where Is Everybody', though the final twist does separate it, even if end result isn't quite as good.

Maybe They Went to Disney World

[dougdoepke · 27 December 2006]

There's some good suspense in this lead-off entry for the second season. Where the heck has the crew of King-9 gone. Cummings, the pilot, wakes up belly-down in the sand next to a crashed B-29. He's alive, but pretty groggy. However, where's the rest of his crew. He stumbles around the rotting hulk and shouts out names, but the only response is a deadening silence. Then too, what are those strange things flying overhead?

Naturally, the producers of a series try to hook viewers into another season with a better-than-average lead episode. Here they took something of a chance, because Cummings has to carry the plot with superior acting-- being a lone survivor in the middle of the desert. At the time, however, Cummings was not considered anything more than a light comedian, slightly on the inane side. Still and all, he comes through here well enough. Also, if memory serves, remains of a downed WWII bomber were discovered in North Africa in the spring of 1959. So the episode may well have been inspired by fact.

Frankly, the twist seems a little too facile for my liking. Nonetheless, the show remains a well-produced half-hour of suspense and a worthy entry into a new season.

The Twilight Zone's take on war...

[Anonymous_Maxine · 7/10 · 25 June 2008]

Kind Nine Will Not Return is one of the Twilight episodes of the genuinely paranormal variety, where something happens which seems that it can't possibly have a rational explanation. Bob Cummings plays Cpt. James Embry, a World War II pilot who awakens in the desert next to the crashed remains of his plane, and his entire crew mysteriously disappeared into the vast desert. Sadly, the show commits that distinctly "twilight-zone" sin of having the lone character constantly calling into emptiness, looking for his lost crew members, in this case.

You may remember this from the show's pilot episode, "Where is Everybody?" where a Mike Ferris walked around a town basically having a conversation at the top of his voice with no one. In this episode, Embry is also calling repeatedly into the emptiness of the desert for his lost crew, at one point even squeezed into the back of the plane, still calling their names as though they had somehow managed to squeeze themselves into the cracks in the instrument panels. Isn't the back compartment of an airplane small enough so that you can pretty much see right away whether or not anyone else is in there with you? I don't know, maybe I'm wrong and those planes are bigger than I think.

At any rate, this episode actually deals with much heavier material than many other twilight episodes, as it ultimately turns out to be a very real depiction of some of the effects that many soldiers and military personnel suffer after being involved in conflicts.

As it turns out, Embry (played by Cummings, who has very real military experience himself, as does Serling) has a very real reasons for experiencing what he experiences in the show, and a very real and very revealing reason is given for what happens to him in the show. Much more moving than your typical twilight episode...

Who knows?

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 10 November 2018]

The opener for the second season of The Twilight Zone features Robert Cummings usually in light comedy in a most serious role. Cummings a World War II flyer finds himself on the African desert in 1943 with the remains of his crashed B-25 and no one else. Briefly he spots one of the other crew, but that's only part of what is looking like a hallucination or one very vivid dream.

You be the judge of whether in 1960 Cummings who is alone on screen for most of the episode actually did return to World War II or not. I guarantee you will be scratching your head.

As for Cummings he does a fine job to carry this episode.

What do our dreams tell us?

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 19 April 2019]

Veteran actor Robert Cummings plays a veteran fighter pilot who wakes up on African desert sands to find his plane crashed and his crew missing. He spends the next 20 minutes screaming to the sky, beggingto know what happened to his crew, screaming out all their names and only finding various clues as to what may have happened to them. All of a sudden, the setting changes and we see where Cummings really is, and only get a glimpse into what has been going on in his mind.

For the second season's opener, "The Twilight Zone" doesn't start off strongly, but takes the viewer to a world that perhaps they have wondered about themselves: their dream world. Where do we go when we dream of something so vivid that much of the detail is still remembered by us when we wake up in are supposed reality? Does guilt or fear or worry guide us in those dreams? A newspaper headline is the only clue that we see of the reality of what Cummings was recalling, and others in the scene indicate a few details that the audience was unaware of. This is an episode that has more questions than answers, but isn't that always the case in the Twilight Zone?

"King Nine Will Not Return" involves viewers in the fog of war

[chuck-reilly · 9/10 · 15 April 2008]

Bob Cummings was a fine actor (e.g. "King's Row) despite being typecast too often in light comedies. In this 1960 Twilight Zone entry about a lost crew of Army Air Corps personnel in North Africa, he gets a chance to show his well-honed skills. Cummings, as Captain James Embry, wakes up in the desert sands and spots his old plane (King Nine) broken down and deserted. Most of the rest of the half hour, he tries to piece together what happened to the members of the crew as he slowly realizes that he's merely in some kind of dream (or nightmare). The key moment is when he observes jet airplanes streaking across the sky and surmises that it can't possibly be 1943. At that point, he slowly begins to awaken and finds himself in a hospital bed in the present. But was it all truly a dream?

"King Nine Will Not Return" is familiar ground for both writer Rod Serling and his star, Bob Cummings. Both men had extensive combat experience in World War II, and Cummings himself was a decorated pilot. The effects of combat, post-traumatic stress and the casualties of war all come into play in this entry. Cummings' Captain Embry is also suffering from guilt since he wasn't on the fatal mission when his men were lost forever. In his mind, he's been searching for them ever since. It's pretty heady stuff and a lot to absorb in a mere 22 minutes of airtime. Cummings and Serling, along with director Buzz Kulik, are able to accomplish their mission.

Derivative episode with an ingenious climax

[Coventry · 6/10 · 29 August 2017]

In more ways than just one, the first episode of the second season of "The Twilight Zone" is very similar to the pilot episode of the first season entitled "Where is Everybody?" Both tales are centered on men that find themselves isolated from the rest of the world. In the middle of World War II, James Embry, the captain of the military aircraft King Nine, crash-lands on the Northern African coast, yet when he regains consciousness he finds his entire crew missing from the nearly intact aircraft. Embry is responsible for his people and desperately keeps waiting and searching in and around the plane. Director Buzz Kulik, a master professional ("Warning Shot", "Villa Rides") marvelously generates an atmosphere of mystery around the situation and the main character Embry. The plot, ambiance and build-up feel somewhat derivative and familiar, but eventually the denouement is fairly unique. And, moreover, the episode is ideally paranormal and clever to kick off the second season of "The Twilight zone". In the first episode of season two, writer/creator Rod Serling physically appears on- screen to narrate the intro to the story. This was never the case in the first season and I wonder if this will become a running trademark from now on.

Not the best way to kick off the season

[gregorycanfield · 4/10 · 3 September 2021]

You get the point of this story within the first two minutes. Unfortunately, the story never moves on. Bob Cummings was not the greatest actor, and certainly not an actor who should have been given an entire episode to carry on his own. I got the point. His plane crashed in the desert and his crew is nowhere to be found. How many times does this idiot have to yell out their names before he realizes they're not there? I agree with some other reviewers here. This episode is alternately boring and irritating, with a lone actor who is nothing but boring and irritating. I'm realizing that most of the single-actor episodes were not very good. This episode gets my vote for the worst.

An Oldie but a Goodie !

[rltmlt · 8/10 · 11 June 2006]

Robert (Bob) Cummings was a popular actor in the 40s and 50s. He made the transition to TV in it's early days with the "Bob Cummings Show". Unlike much of the entertainment of that era, this show was very funny and creative and a welcomed relief from the recycled Vaudeville entertainment that permeated most TV shows in the early 50s.

It's interesting to note that the actress that played the housekeeper on the long running "Brady Bunch" (American TV) also played Bob's secretary on the earlier "Bob Cumming Show". They made a perfect comedy team. By today's standard, it was funny to watch Bob puff on cigarettes while appearing in the cigarette commercials for his early 50s show as Bob was an avid physical fitness fanatic.

Bob was a decorated World War II bomber commander in real life. This episode of "The Twilight Zone" was written by Rod Serling with Bob's war record in mind and was one of his dramatic roles that he carried very well. This show was one of the few shows of that era that was filmed on location, an expensive proposition for producers of that time. The location used had a vintage WWII bomber aircraft that was the center piece of the story. Media magazines of that period said that the leather bomber jacket worn by Bob was actually his from his military experience in WWII.

There Seemed to Be a Lot of Plots Like This.

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 10 November 2008]

This opening of the second season is reasonably good, mostly because of the acting of Robert Cummings. It involves another one of those military men who doesn't know where he is. He finds himself next to his disabled plane, wondering where his crew is. He does everything he can to try to understand. He sees a grave marker. He goes through the plane screaming. He finally realized he is alone. Eventually he wakes up and is in a hospital bed. Has this been an hallucination or did it actually happen; or was he reliving a painful memory? Of course, we aren't going tyo be given the information that easily.

There is kind of a precious ending which, I'm sure, Serling needed to mess with our minds. It works pretty well, but haven't we seen this plot in some incarnation on other occasions.

End please!!!

[bombersflyup · 1/10 · 20 August 2019]

King Nine Will Not Return is a horrible episode and hopefully the worst. Embry talks to himself and has conversations with no one, it's so uninteresting it would be sleep inducing if it wasn't so bloody annoying.

The name of Bob Cummings' character may be an in-joke.

[gordon-125 · 13 February 2007]

Dear All,

"King Nine Will Not Return" is one of the very best episodes of "The Twilight Zone." The lead is "Captain James Embry," played by Bob Cummings. Captain Embry is a U.S.A.A.F. aircraft commander who wakes up in his B-25, "King Nine," which has crashed somewhere in a desert. He cannot remember how he came to be there; neither, despite searching for them frantically, can he find his crew.

When this episode was filmed, one of the best flight academies in the country was the "Embry-Riddle School of Aviation."

For its commander, King Nine's post-crash status is certainly an "Embry riddle"!

Sincerely,

Gordon F. Corbett

While far from the very best, a well-acted and effective episode.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 23 May 2010]

This was the first episode of the second season of "The Twilight Zone" and while its plot isn't among the most memorable, it was very well-acted and was a decent show. The only down-side is that the plot is very, very simple--with perhaps a bit of stretching to get it into the half-hour time slot.

The show begins with a WWII pilot (Bob Cummings) awakening in the desert with his crashed B-25. However, the scene just doesn't add up--how did he get outside the plane on the ground unhurt, where were the other crewmen and why were their parachutes still there in the plane? They obviously went somewhere but there were no footprints---so what really happened?! For almost the entire show, Cummings did a lengthy monologue--something that is difficult to do and still keep the audience interested. One reviewer said that Cummings had never done drama before this--but films like "Kings Row" would contradict this--though I would agree that in general he wasn't known for serious drama though he did make a few earlier in his career. Overall, he did a more than competent job and the payoff at the end was pretty good. Well worth seeing.

One final comment--I noticed that there were a lot of goofs listed on IMDb, but considering what really happened, I am not sure how much this can be considered a goof and how much might just be because the incident might just be in Cummings' imagination (or is it?!). So, perhaps he just imagined it poorly and it isn't full of these mistakes!

The Farewell Visit

[claudio_carvalho · 6/10 · 19 April 2018]

In 1943, the B-25 bomber King Nine is crashed in the African desert. The pilot Captain James Embry awakes with amnesia on the desert and seeks out his crew that has disappeared. Now and then, Embry has visions of his men. When he sees jets in the sky, he questions how it could be possible in 1943. What happened to Captain James Embry?

"King Nine Will Not Return" is an intriguing episode of "The Twilight Zone". The storyline is based on a WWII bomber found in the desert entwined with the mystery of Captain James Embry. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Rei Nove Não Irá Voltar" ("King Nine Will Not Return")

Down In The Desert.

[rmax304823 · 7/10 · 4 February 2013]

It opens with a shot of a B-25 that has crash landed in the African desert in 1943. Its canopies are open and flapping in the slight breeze. It's props are bent backwards. And the only figure is Robert Cummings, the pilot, who wakes up groggy nearby. All Cummings can remember is making a wheels-up landing. Now his crew is missing, five men for whom he feels responsible. Sometimes he glimpses them but they're some sort of illusion. At the end, Cummings wakes up in a hospital. It's 1960 and he fainted when he saw a newspaper report that the long-forgotten airplane had been discovered in the desert, its crew gone and presumably dead. Cummings, who was ordinarily the pilot, has missed that routine flight and has been blaming himself and suffering from guilt for all these years.

It's a slender story and Cummings is not a bravura tragic actor. For twenty minutes, he stumbles around the wreck, growing incrementally bat crazy, muttering to himself and shouting orders into the vast wasteland. "Alright, you guys! Enough is enough. Come on back here and let's get on the ball!" Things like that.

It doesn't make any sense but what are you going to do with a guy reeling around a ruined airplane in the middle of nowhere for twenty minutes? Serling, who wrote it, couldn't just have Cummings SIT there on the sand, staring into space. Buzz Kulik does what he can to explore the interesting airplane, a medium bomber. Kulik is a genius. I say that because he was my director in the neglected art house classic, "Too Young The Hero," in which I had the privilege of playing a starring role as a drunken hobo asleep on a hotel staircase. My imitation of waking up was nonpareil.

The year before this was shot, a B-24 ("Lady Be Good") was found in the Libyan desert, undiscovered for all those years, and that may have inspired this story. I've always kind of liked World War II airplanes anyway. Their insides are generally intricate and neat. There is a mock up of a B-25 interior at the Smithsonian and I thrilled in a childlike way as I crawled through the tiny passages leading into the nose and the aft compartment. If you enjoy old airplanes, you'll like this episode all the more, despite that strained feeling you get while watching Cummings and his conundrum. Neat twist at the end. Should have had one like it in the pilot episode.

One man show

[Calicodreamin · 6/10 · 3 June 2021]

Great acting for a one man rant, but overall the episode was quite repetitive with a predictable ending.

Lost in the desert

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 18 July 2017]

1943. Captain James Embry (a fine and credible performance by Robert Cummings) finds himself stranded in the African desert all by himself after his bomber plane gets shot down. Embry tries to find the other missing crew members to no avail.

Director Buzz Kulik relates the compelling story at a steady pace, makes good use of the desolate desert location, and ably crafts an intriguing enigmatic atmosphere. Rod Serling's thoughtful script makes a poignant central point about the severe psychological damage wrought by service during a war. Cummings does a commendable job of capturing his character's deep-seated feelings of guilt and anguish. A solid show.

Sands of Time

[sol-kay · 6/10 · 21 June 2011]

***SPOILERS**** Finding himself alone with his B-25, "The King Nine", crew gone USAAF Capt James Embry, played by TV's "Love That Bob" series star Bob Commings, has no idea how he and his plane ended up in the middle of the Tunisian Desert. What also puzzles Embry is him in being in civvies, civilian clothes, instead of his Army Air Force flight fatigues.

Checking out his crashed B-25 bomber Embry sees that it was hit and brought down by German ack-ack fire but his crew seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth! In the heat of the broiling desert sun Embry starts to hallucinate and sees a member of his flight crew behind the wheel of his downed bomber only to disappear as soon as he got close enough to talk to him! It's later that Embry finds a number of markers indicating where his flight crew were buried that he realizes that he in fact was the only survivor and completely goes stark raving mad! What in fact added to Embry's madness is the sight of a squadron of USAF fighter jets flying in formation above him in 1943! That's years before jet-planes were even put into service!

***SPOILERS*** As it turned out Embry was hospitalized after suffering a mental breakdown in 1960 when he saw a newspaper headline that the long lost B-25 "The King Nine" was found in the Tunisian Desert after being lost for some 17 years. It was the "King Nine" that Embry was to pilot when he came down with a tropical fever and was replaced by another skipper who together with the planes eight man crew ended up getting shot down and killed by German anti-aircraft fire. This had Embry feel guilty all these years in deserting his men in their hour of need in not being able to save their lives but in joining them in their unmarked graves in the desert. It's only when Embry's clothes are examined by the hospital staff that they found that his shoes are filled with desert sand! Sand he somehow picked up while in was suffering delirium when he saw the starting headline of the finding of the "King Nine"! Sand that's traced back to the Tunisian Desert where the crashed B-25 bomber "The King Nine" was found!

Dead or crazy?

[BA_Harrison · 3/10 · 20 February 2022]

After WWII bomber King Nine crashes in the African desert, pilot Captain James Embry (Robert Cummings) wakes up to find himself all alone, all other members of his crew having disappeared.

He's dead or he's imagining it all. I won't tell you which, suffice to say that the end of this episode won't come as much of a surprise. King Nine Will Not Return is not a particularly strong way to kick off Season 2 of The Twilight Zone, a derivative tale remarkably similar to the first episode of Season 1.

The episode is pretty much a one-man show, which is a tough trick to pull off, and I don't think it works for two reasons: Cummings isn't a good enough actor to make his character's descent into madness convincing. And director Buzz Kulik fails to convey the passage of time, making it look like Embry loses his marbles in approximately 20 minutes.

The predictable conclusion confirmed what I had guessed all along, although there is a second twist that makes very little sense at all. I know... it's The Twilight Zone... it doesn't have to make sense.

Good

[darbski · 10/10 · 15 November 2017]

**SPOILERS** I liked this one a lot. I think Cummings' acting is very good, and it may be that's because it's one of the Zones I was able to watch for some reason. Normally, I would be collecting my paper route at the time these episodes were on. Now, I was in 6th grade at this time, and all us guys just loved unexplained stuff, like UFO's, Ghosts, etc. ... I also remember the finding of the B-24 Li8berator "Lady Be Good" in the Libyan desert a couple of years before, yeah..... spooky, indeed. We were all fascinated by the military, and this story was just so cool. They finally found most of the guys, it was a tough way to go; very tragic and lonely, due to a miscalculation in distance. It's easy to see how a Captain of such a ship would break down if he had missed that mission. Bob Cummings did a good job of living in that scary moment. a 10.

Good production, acting not so good

[biotenor · 6/10 · 25 February 2012]

Please don't get me wrong. I am a real Twilight Zone fan, but this episode was a disappointment. It is maybe too straight-forward to say, but the acting is really lousy... it was uncomfortable to watch acting-wise. It could be related to problems with the script or the decisions taken concerning the way the story is told. There is over-narration and the actor just follows what it is being said often with acting clichés or over doing. The narration could have been avoided and substituted many times with clarity in the actions. However, the production did a really great job with all the setting and cinematography. It is a good story, but it needed more acting and less words.

ANNOYING, IRRITATING,FRUSTRATING!

[Summerskye68 · 1/10 · 12 June 2022]

Yelling for his crew throughout the whole episode with maniacal laughing sprinkled here and there.

"BLAKE! BLAKE! BLAKE?

HA HA HA!

(While rolling in the sand) The worst TZ episode.