Drunken ex-gunfighter Al Denton, after being harassed by local thugs, is approached by a mysterious peddler, who gives him a potion that allows 10 seconds of deadly shooting accuracy.
While the Twilight Zone is best remembered for twist endings, it's best episodes almost always featured richly developed characters and/or sharply delivered plots that set enormously high stakes for those characters. "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" delivers on both in spades. Dan Duryea made his career as a villain throughout the 40s and 50s -- a character with a charming smile and a deadly sneer to match the personality. In this episode, he creates a character wallowing in alcoholic desperation arising from the loss of what he perceives is his greatest gift (his abilities as a gunman), ready to grab at anything that will revive this gift; the real twist in this episode is what his character learns from reviving that gift, a moral lesson delivered by Serling without unnecessary syrup (something many later Serling-written episode would be all too full of).
The performance that Duryea creates hits all of these notes brilliantly, and he is richly supported by the entire cast -- Jeanne Cooper and Ken Lynch as the sympathetic saloon owner and bartender, Malcolm Atterbury as the inscrutable peddler, and Martin Landau as a sadistic thug who terrorizes the Duryea character. Further, Allen Reisner's direction keeps the look as a standard Western, giving the audience a familiar surrounding in which to allow the story to unfold.
This episode is not the one most think of when they think of classic Twilight Zone episodes, but it should be.
While the Twilight Zone is best remembered for twist endings, it's best episodes almost always featured richly developed characters and/or sharply delivered plots that set enormously high stakes for those characters. "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" delivers on both in spades. Dan Duryea made his career as a villain throughout the 40s and 50s -- a character with a charming smile and a deadly sneer to match the personality. In this episode, he creates a character wallowing in alcoholic desperation arising from the loss of what he perceives is his greatest gift (his abilities as a gunman), ready to grab at anything that will revive this gift; the real twist in this episode is what his character learns from reviving that gift, a moral lesson delivered by Serling without unnecessary syrup (something many later Serling-written episode would be all too full of).
The performance that Duryea creates hits all of these notes brilliantly, and he is richly supported by the entire cast -- Jeanne Cooper and Ken Lynch as the sympathetic saloon owner and bartender, Malcolm Atterbury as the inscrutable peddler, and Martin Landau as a sadistic thug who terrorizes the Duryea character. Further, Allen Reisner's direction keeps the look as a standard Western, giving the audience a familiar surrounding in which to allow the story to unfold.
This episode is not the one most think of when they think of classic Twilight Zone episodes, but it should be.