Original subtitles

You're traveling through another dimension. A dimension not only of sight

and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination.

Next stop, the Twilight Zone.

Had not.

Huh?

What about gas and electric?

What?

The gas and electric bill. How many months is that?

Four months.

That's one you better pay.

That's one I can't pay.

How are you, Mrs. Gumley?

Oh, just fine, Mr. Castle.

How have you been?

Oh, can't complain.

Been having a lot of rain, haven't we?

Oh, quite a bit of rain for this time of the year.

Really?

It's good for the flowers.

How's that?

An heirloom today, Mr. Castle.

An heirloom, Mrs. Gumley?

Oh, yes, Mr. Castle.

Been in my family for years and years.

It's supposed to be very valuable.

Hand-blown glass is what it is.

Really?

Mrs.

Gumley, it's just a plain old wine bottle.

Do you know what it's worth?

Nothing.

If you could find the store where it came from, that's what they would give

you for it, Mrs. Gumley.

Nothing.

I could let it go for a dollar.

Mrs. Gumley, if I could spare a dollar, I'd give it to you. Believe me, I would.

But things have been rough here.

I'm so in debt myself.

I wish I could make it more.

I really do.

Thank you, Mr. Castle.

You're a wonderful man. God bless you.

Mr. Castle, it's not an heirloom, you know.

I found it in an ash can.

Please, Mr. Castle, forgive me for lying.

Ah, that's all right, Mrs. Count.

Who knows?

Maybe it'll turn out to be an L.

Thank you.

Gorgeous.

She has to eat, doesn't she? You don't.

Arthur, we're just around the corner from bankruptcy.

You promised me no more handouts.

Look right now.

Maybe all I've got left is to try to find some poor cloud who I could feel

sorry for.

Maybe a man can be a failure for only so long and then... then... and then it

catches up with him.

Look at it, Edna. Look at it.

The legacy of a hundred years.

My grandfather owned it and it's broke his heart.

Then my father killed him too.

Look at it. Look at it. The meanness of it. The shabbiness of it. The hand to

mouth of it.

It isn't just an antique shop where you pick up the pitiful remnants of other

people's failures.

It's a shrine to failure itself.

That's what it is.

It's a mausoleum, a burial ground for people's hopes.

Edna, what happens to us anyway? What happens to us? We're not old people, and

yet this place is making us old.

There must be years ahead of us that come without scrimping and counting and

picking over checkbooks and budgets and final notices and old bills.

Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Castle, gentle and infinitely patient people whose lives

have been a hope chest with a rusty lock and a lost set of keys.

But in just a moment, that hope chest will be opened, and an improbable

phantom will try to bedeck the drabness of these two people's failure-laden

lives with the gold and precious stones of fulfillment.

Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Castle, standing on the outskirts and about to enter, the

twilight zone.

Rather than go into any lengthy, generic explanation of my existence, suffice it

to say that I am a genie.

Well, that's quite correct.

A genie.

I can offer you four wishes with a guaranteed performance.

Well, Mr. Castle?

Mrs. Castle?

What have you in mind?

Arthur, what's happening to us?

He's a hypnotist or something.

Nothing of the sort.

I grant four wishes to the owner... then go back inside the bottle for a century

and a year... until a summons comes from the next owner.

Now, I think the business at hand is for you and Mrs.

Castle... to decide upon the nature of your four wishes.

Keeping in mind, of course...

Thank you.

That each wish is irrevocable.

Once made, it is fulfilled, and once fulfilled, it is a matter of record.

It can only be altered by yet another wish.

Clear, Mr. Castle?

I think we'd better call the police.

Wish for them.

I can bring you Scotland Yard, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or

every bobby in the City of London.

Is it the police you want?

No.

That is not what we would wish for.

Arthur! You're out of your mind. You believe him.

Well, please go on, Mr. Castle. You were saying.

Well, if I had a wish, just for the sake of argument,

I'd say I wanted that broken glass in that case to be fixed.

Would you like to make it official, Mr. Castle?

Well, Mr. Castle, is that your wish?

Yes, that is my wish.

I want that glass in that display case to be repaired.

Well, Mr. Castle, you have three wishes left.

Three wishes?

Three wishes. Three wishes.

Anything we want.

Think, think. What do we want?

Nothing, Arthur. I want nothing.

A new shop.

An expensive shop on Fifth Avenue. We could have that just for the asking.

Or money, Edna.

Money. A hundred thousand dollars.

Two hundred thousand dollars.

A million.

Edna. Edna, we wouldn't have to grub anymore. We wouldn't have to sit here

and waste our lives away.

Arthur, no. There's something unholy about this.

Clothes, Edna.

Expensive clothes.

Jewels. A beautiful house. Anything we want, Edna. No more worries for the rest

of our lives.

Money.

Money?

The simplest, Mr. Castle.

How much and in what denominations?

How much do we want?

I don't know. I don't know.

A million dollars.

Right here on the floor on five and ten dollar bills.

That's what we want.

A million dollars.

Ask and you shall receive, Mr. Castle.

Wait, so he says, money, so much money for me. I thought maybe she's a go-out

-of-style.

Here you are, my friend. Here you are. You buy that to pay off that mortgage

and have yourself not live it again. That's it. Here you are, my dear. You

take yourself that vacation and bring back a boyfriend.

Don't forget Mrs.

Gumley. Oh, my dear. Here, here.

More, more.

Mrs. Gumley.

God bless you. God bless you, Doc. Here you are, my dear.

No, no, no, no, no.

You take that home with you. Here you are, Reverend. Don't you worry. This is

honest money. You take it and get that church plane painted. Yes, sir. Yes,

sir. And thank you. Yes, darling. Here you are. Come here. You tell Angelo to

get himself a new truck with red wheels. Remember?

Here you are, my... Oh, Neil.

My card, Mr. Castle.

Office of Internal Revenue.

Yes, that's correct.

There's a matter of an income tax, Mr. Castle.

Just send us the bill and we'll pay it. But send us the bill in a hurry, would

you please?

My wife and I will be taking off for Europe very shortly.

Dependent? The whole neighborhood.

Oh, no, they don't count.

What does that figure there mean?

A million dollars, Mr. Castle, taxed on the basis of husband and wife using the

standard deductions. You owe the government approximately $907,000.

What? Yes, that's correct.

Then, in addition, there's a state income tax involved, which, using thumb

rule, the whole thing comes to a total of, roughly, mind you, $942,640.

Arthur, we've already given away a lot of money.

Well, if you'll just fill out this form and send it to us with your check.

Oh, uh, if you want to use the installment plan, we'll send you a

statement after the form has been analyzed.

Uh, Mr. Castle?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just send us a bill.

Well, we'll be seeing you, Mr. Castle.

Good evening, Mr. Cadwell.

$10,530, $910,535, $910,540. We

gave away almost $60,000.

And this goes to taxes.

And this... And this...

$5? Yeah.

Quite a wish, Arthur.

Quite a wish.

And we haven't even paid those bills yet.

Mr. Castle.

It was my suggestion that you reflect very carefully, Mr. Castle.

Very, very carefully.

Now, had you made a wish that took into account the taxes involved, you... Look,

you.

Plenty of sweet talk and promises and the whole thing, and all the time you're

nothing but a con artist.

This time I want the million dollars, but I want it after... Arthur!

No more money.

You've got to wish for something else.

Something else.

About ten more wishes.

Or twenty.

Don't be in such a hurry, Arthur.

Then you think of something!

I'm afraid wishing for more wishes isn't permitted, Mr. Castle.

Frankly, I'd be afraid to have you try for fear of the consequences.

What consequences?

Why do you keep losing your temper?

Well, you're no help to me, that's for sure.

Here we stand in this crummy little shop with the whole world out in front of us

with anything to wish for that we want. You just stay on my back and I...

Arthur!

Edna.

What's happening to us?

What's going on?

Oddly enough, Mr. Castle, this is the normal pattern that seems to be

generally followed.

Great excitement, great emotionalism.

Strangely enough, hard to believe though it may be, only a modicum of happiness.

Well, you got a couple of cheap customers here, mister.

People that have known much happiness.

What? What? What do we wish for?

I wish I knew, Arthur. I don't know.

What about it, Jeannie?

What can we wish for now? What can come to us without tricks?

Without tricks? I question the semantics here, Mr. Castle.

There are no tricks involved.

There are simply normal and understandable outgrowths and conditions

that go with any windfall.

No matter what you wish for, you must be prepared for the consequences.

Something dead sure.

Something anchored.

Something air-ored.

Edna.

I think I got it.

I think I know what it is.

What are they?

Power.

Power, Edna. To be in charge of something.

The boss.

To be a leader.

We could wish for that.

Possible. Very possible.

President of a corporation, that sort of thing.

He could go bankrupt.

Mayor of a city.

He could get voted out of office. Then what? Wait a minute, wait a minute.

I know what.

Head of a country.

Ruler of a whole country.

What about it, Genie?

I want to be the head of a country who can't be voted out of office.

Do you want to be more specific than that?

Wait a minute.

Let me give it to you this way.

I want to be the head of a foreign country who can't be voted out of

office, but it must be a contemporary country.

Contemporary? Within this century.

No problems.

What about consequences?

Consequences, Mr. Castle?

I've already told you.

You run the risk of consequences no matter what you wish for.

All right, then.

Go ahead, Arthur.

You wish for that.

I want to be the ruler of a foreign country just as I've described it.

Go ahead, Genie.

Take over.

As you wish, Mr. Castle.

Oh, don't you know?

From now on, it's just a mass suicide.

Well, what about it?

Head of a country.

Can't be voted out of office.

I'm Hitler.

I'm in a bunker.

It's the end of the war.

Mein Führer.

What do you ask for?

Very quick.

And very painless, mein Führer.

When we have the gasoline outside.

For you and Miss Brown.

When you finish.

I wish... I wish I were back where it all started.

I wish I were off that castle again.

What's the matter, Arthur? You look so funny.

What happened?

I had a wish fulfilled.

Number four.

All the wishes ended the same way.

In fragments.

In little pieces.

Funny thing, though.

This place... This place doesn't look half bad.

You all right?

Oh, I'm fine.

Well, maybe we'll stop wishing for a while.

And since we obviously can't afford a brand-new life...

Suppose we give the old one a paint job or something.

I think that's a very good idea.

What are you laughing?

We came out of it ahead anyway.

Shouldn't be a total laugh.

A word to the wise now, to the garbage collectors of the world, the curio

seekers, to the antique buffs, to everyone who would try to coax out a

miracle from unlikely places.

Check that bottle you're taking back for a two-cent deposit.

The genie you save might be your own.

Case in point, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Castle, fresh from the briefest of trips

into the Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling, the creator of Twilight Zone, will tell you about next week's

story after this word from our alternate sponsor.

And now, Mr. Serling.

Next week, we take you into this 8x8 hotel room and we watch a penny-ante

crook make a decision.

You'd better ask the room clerk the number of this room and then come on up.

Mr. Joe Mantell is the nervous man in a $4 room.

That's the Twilight Zone.

Next week, and we'll be waiting for you.

Thank you, and good night.

Be sure and see the Colgate-Palmolive Company's new comedy show, My Sister

Eileen, Wednesday night on many of these same stations.