Copyright and the Twilight Zone

With Halloween season officially upon us and the opening of my home/charity haunted house drawing ever closer, I like to take a look at the myriad of ways that issues over copyright and plagiarism have impacted the holiday.

Over the years, this has included posts about Frankenstein’s monster, Nosferatu and even how copyright shaped the modern interpretation of zombies. However, we’ve also discussed the mundane, including copyright and the Rocky Horror Picture Show (though published in May), intellectual property issues with Halloween costumes and general copyright issues that pertain to Halloween.

This year, I want to take a look at a show whose copyright history, quite appropriately, is both mundane and unusual. Both ordinary and extraordinary. Both fascinating and uninteresting.

That’s to say, we’re taking a look into The Twilight Zone.

The Twilight Zone, or just Twilight Zone, is an anthology series created and hosted by Rod Serling. The original run had five seasons and ran between 1959 and 1964. 

Though a rotating series of directors, writers and producers worked on the series, it was produced for CBS, who is owned by Paramount, still hold the rights to the series today. 

But, while most of the series copyright history can be summarized that easily, there are two episodes that stand when it comes to copyright, including one that was considered lost for several decades and another that narrowly escaped that same fate.

Season 4, Episode 8: The Miniature

Season 4 of the series is a divisive one among fans. It represented a major departure from the first three seasons in two key ways. First, Rod Serling, though continuing his on-camera role, stepped back from much of the day to day running of the show. Second, the show moved from thirty-minute to one-hour episodes, drastically changing the format.

One episode from that series, The Miniature, features the tale of an awkward man, played by Robert Duvall, who visits a nearby museum and becomes enamored with a miniature display in it, claiming that the people inside it are alive and showing fondness for a woman that he claims lives in the display.

The episode aired in February 1963 but was only aired once. Despite critical acclaim and significant star power, the episode was not included in the original syndication package and did not reappear until 1984, when it was re-aired as part of The Twilight Zone Silver Anniversary Special. 

The reason was because of a lawsuit filed by author Clyde Ware, who claimed that the episode was an infringement of a story they had previously sent in to the show. However, as current commentators have noted, the stories didn’t have a great deal in common and the lawsuit was quickly dismissed.

It wasn’t the first episode of The Twilight Zone to be hit with such a lawsuit. The season one episode The After Hours was similarly targeted and also similarly dismissed. 

However, The After Hours was never removed from syndication or pulled from distribution. In fact, the episode was remade in 1986 as part of a revival of the series.

It’s unclear why the lawsuit prompted CBS and others to pull Miniature for so long.  However, much of it likely had to do with the fact that season four in its entirety was rarely distributed due to the change in episode length and divisiveness among fans.

Season 5, Episode 22: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

This is an episode where almost nothing about it is typical. Where nearly every episode of the series was written and produced by the show itself, this episode was actually licensed from a French short film of the same name. 

The silent film featured the story of a Confederate soldier due to be hanged by Union troops. However, he seemingly gets a reprieve when the rope breaks and begins to make his escape back home. 

According to multiple sources, Serling saw the film at a French Film festival and immediately sought the producers to obtain the rights to turn it into an episode for the show. Serling paid $20,000 for the license, saving the show approximately $40,000 on the episode alone.

However, the episode had already aired in the United States. In December 1959, more than three years before the Twilight Zone airing, the film had been cut into an episode for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.   

The Twilight Zone, however, had only acquired the rights to air it twice. This meant that any further distribution of the episode had to be negotiated. 

Fortunately, it seems that those negotiations went well, as the episode appeared regularly in home video releases and is currently available via Paramount+ on streaming.

In fact, both versions of this episode are currently available on streaming, with Hitchcock’s available on Peacock.

Though it was not the final episode of The Twilight Zone to air, it was the final one to complete production, marking an end to the series.

Bottom Line

For the most part, The Twilight Zone was a lot like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, an unusual creation with a very ordinary production and copyright history. This was mostly a project by Rod Serling and people he entrusted, so it makes sense that there wouldn’t be a great deal of copyright confusion.

That said, pulling together over 150 episodes of a TV series is a mammoth task. It was inevitable that issues were going to arise. The fact that only two episodes, both later in the run, seemed to face any serious copyright issues is remarkable.

But even those copyright issues are minor. Yes, Miniature disappeared for a quarter of a century, but it’s unclear why, as the lawsuit was trivially defeated. It was likely a combination of the legal case and broader issues with that season.

Likewise, licensing An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge was a risky move for a show that hadn’t done that before. But it ended up being a favorite episode and, despite the risk that it could have become a lost episode, it’s remained broadly available.

All in all, The Twilight Zone is a relatively easy series to watch in its entirety, whether you catch it via streaming or physical media. That legal access is important because the show won’t start entering the public domain for over 30 years, with the first episodes expected to lapse in 2055. 

Still, if you want to enjoy some episode of The Twilight Zone this Halloween season, you should not be left wanting for easy and legal ways to do it.