Dust
- Episode aired Jan 6, 1961
- TV-PG
- 25m
A sympathetic sheriff and a callous con man are among the many who gather in a desert town on a hot day to see a man hanged for killing a child while drunk.A sympathetic sheriff and a callous con man are among the many who gather in a desert town on a hot day to see a man hanged for killing a child while drunk.A sympathetic sheriff and a callous con man are among the many who gather in a desert town on a hot day to see a man hanged for killing a child while drunk.
- Luís Gallegos
- (as John Alonso)
- Man
- (as John Lormer)
- Estrelita Gallegos
- (as Andrea Margolis)
- Farmer Boy
- (as Douglas Heyes)
- Townsman
- (uncredited)
- Townsman
- (uncredited)
- Townsman
- (uncredited)
- Lawman
- (uncredited)
- Townsman
- (uncredited)
- Townsman
- (uncredited)
- Narrator
- (uncredited)
- …
- Townswoman
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe hollow-backed horse in the foreground beside the jail had a condition of a malformed vertebrae and weakness in the soft tissues than allowed the spine to sag called Lordosis.
- GoofsWhen the little boy first walks up to the jail window to talk to Luis, his mouth is below the opening of the window. In the next shot, he is considerably taller.
- Quotes
[closing narration]
Narrator: It was a very small, misery-laden village on the day of a hanging, and of little historical consequence. And if there's any moral to it at all, let's say that in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human heart, for inside this deep place is a wizardry that costs far more than a few pieces of gold. Tonight's case in point - in the Twilight Zone.
- ConnectionsEdited into Twilight-Tober-Zone: Dust (2021)
A sleazy self-labeled businessman (also a drunk, interestingly enough), shows up at the jail and taunts the condemned man, berating him for his crime and taunting him about his impending death. The convicted man sits silently, clearly suffering desperate grief for what he has done.
What I love the most about the episode is that it shows all sides of the case, but still never really calls any of them right or wrong. We see the desperate fear and grief of the condemned, the unbearable suffering of the parents who have lost their child, the anger of the townspeople, represented mostly by the sleazy businessman but also by a local father who has brought the whole family to watch the execution in order to teach the children something about the real world, the horrified father of the condemned, begging for his son's life, and even the disillusioned sheriff, disappointed that all he can to do prevent crime is to inflict more violence for a killing that he couldn't stop.
The father of the condemned man gives the only real performance in the episode as he begs for his son's life in front of the crowd just before the hanging is about to take place, but the most important scene in the show is at the very end, in which we witness an unexpected bit of character change.
The strangeness of the ordinary subject matter of the twilight zone is replaced by what it seems to suggest as the human heart's wonderful capacity for forgiveness. The man committed a crime, but in this case it seems that something other than death is the best punishment. The show suggests, correctly, that someone who has inadvertently taken a life by drunken driving will suffer for the rest of their life, imprisoned or not, and they don't need further punishment, at least in the form of execution.
This is one of the more serious episodes of the twilight zone that I've seen and one that deals not with anything paranormal, but briefly (and possibly not at all) only with something as little as superstition. A case of what we now would call double jeopardy leads to the possibility that there is magic in the air or, more likely, a just punishment is inflicted, despite it not being the one intended. Excellent show.
- Anonymous_Maxine
- Jul 1, 2008
Details
- Runtime25 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1