Film Reviews: Christmas Edition 18: Twilight Zone: Night of the Meek

In memory of

Rod Serling

December 25^th, 1924 – June 28^th, 1975

(That’s right, born on Christmas)

Today’s Christmas film review is on a fantastic story from Rod Serling: The Twilight Zone: Night of the Meek. This is episode 11 of season 2, I also watched the remake of it from the 1985 reboot of the show which is season 1, episode 30.

Night of the Meek is about a depressed and drunk man, named Corwin, who is right above the poverty line and is a Santa Claus at the local department store. He gets depressed when he sees the world and all its problems and wishes there was a real Santa Claus so that the poor children of the world would get gifts on Christmas. The wealthy, or for that matter, the well of children really don’t need a Santa Claus, their parents typically get them most of what they want—this is Corwin’s philosophy. All he wants to do is give the poor of the world a great Christmas.

After being fired from his Santa job, he stumbles upon a back full of trash one second and the next full of gifts—the bag will give whatever is asked for in the hands of Corwin. Corwin, overcome with joy, begins to hand out presents to everyone in the slums. The police are called in because it is assumed Corwin has stolen all of the gifts from somewhere, perhaps the very department store he worked for. The bag quickly goes back to being full of trash and in the end, Corwin pulls out the gift that the manager of the store who accused Corwin of stealing, asked for.

When the night is almost over and Corwin has handed out presents to everyone, he asked if there was anything left for him. However, he got the greatest gift of all, to be the world’s biggest gift giver, he only wishes he could do it every year—and sure enough he gets his wish.

I love the original version of this—in fact, the first time I saw it, it made me cry. The ending when Rod Serling gives a little speech is beautiful. The remake is great too but I recommend watching the original first. I give the original a 5 out of 5 and the remake 4.5 out of 5.