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How This Classic Twilight Zone Episode Sparked a Devilish Disagreement Between Writer & Director
Sometimes, the devil is literally in the details.
Sometimes, the devil is literally in the details, as the makers of the original Twilight Zone (regularly airing on SYFY) found out during production on Season 2 episode "The Howling Man."
Written by Charles Beaumont, who adapted his own short story of the same name, the classic episode centers around American traveler David Ellington (H.M. Wyant), who stumbles upon the remote hermitage of a strange religious order of staff-wielding monks while on a walking tour of post-World War I Europe. Despite his fever and delirium, Ellington can't ignore the constant wolf-like howl emanating from a shabby cell containing what appears to be an ordinary man with an overgrown beard and tattered rags (Robin Hughes).
According to hermitage leader Brother Jerome (John Carradine), however, the prisoner is not a mortal human being, but "the devil himself!" Naturally skeptical of such a wild pronouncement, Ellington frees the detainee and learns at his peril that Jerome was, indeed, telling the truth.
The Twilight Zone's "Howling Man" episode caused a rift between writer Charles Beaumont and director Douglas Heyes
Once Ellington removes the "Staff of Truth" keeping Satan contained, the walking personification of evil incapacitates his savior and, through a trick of clever editing, transforms into the stereotypical devil form — complete with cape and horns — before vanishing in a puff of smoke. This somewhat cheesy visual caused quite the creative rift between Beaumont, who wanted to leave much to the viewer's imagination by only showing a cloven hoof, and director Douglas Heyes, who preferred the "literal" approach.
"[Beaumont] liked better the way he had written it and that was what he wanted to see," Heyes states in Marc Scott Zicree's The Twilight Zone Companion. "But I have a funny feeling as a director, I started as an artist and I like to see things. If I promise the audience something, if I say there are three thousand Indians on the other side of that hill, I don't want to see one feather poke up behind a rock — I want to see three thousand Indians!"
Another disagreement arose over what the robed monks should carry throughout the episode. The original script called for giant crosses, but Heyes feared it might cause a religious controversy by overtly associating the hermitage with Christianity. "[I said], 'The minute you do that, you're in danger from all the kinds of religious groups who resent the fact that you're using a Christian symbol,'" Heyes recalled. "So I said, 'Let's find something else,' and I substituted the staff for the cross, which [Beaumont] didn't like, either."
Classic episodes of The Twilight Zone air regularly on SYFY. Click here for complete scheduling info!
