The best Murray Matheson’s movies

1959. Friday nights. We time-travelled. Witnessed surprising twists. Entertained aliens. Experienced fear. And first journeyed to the "Twilight Zone" of Rod Serling's memorable TV series. And guided by four imaginative moviemakers, we travelled there again in 1983. Directors John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller fashion stories based on or inspired by classic episodes. Landis weaves the tale of a bigot who gets a walloping dose of his own hatred. Spielberg takes over with a fable of senior citizens offered a magical rejuvenation. Dante serves up a terror trip with a child who uses his cartoon-inspired powers to enslave his family. Then fright goes aloft with Miller's finale about a neurotic passenger who sees a monster on the jetliner's wing. Or does he?

Life on a British bomber base, and the surrounding towns, from the opening days of the Battle of Britain, to the arrival of the Americans, who join in the bomber offensive. The film centres around Pilot Officer Peter Penrose, fresh out of a training unit, who joins the squadron, and quickly discovers about life during war time. He falls for Iris, a young girl who lives at the local hotel, but he becomes disillusioned about marriage, when the squadron commander dies in a raid, and leaves his wife, the hotel manageress, with a young son to bring up. As the war progresses, Penross comes to terms that he has survived, while others have been killed.

A group of adventurers refloat a WWII German submarine and prepare to use it to pull a very large heist; The Queen Mary which they plan to rob on the high seas.

Based on the story of Australia's colonization, this atmospheric drama stars Alan Ladd as Hugh Tallant, an American medical student falsely convicted of robbery and sent on a torturous voyage with other prisoners to the penal colony at Botany Bay. Because of his attempt to escape, evil Captain Gilbert decides to return him to England on charges of mutiny.

A widowed doctor of both Chinese and European descent falls in love with a married American correspondent in Hong Kong during China's Communist revolution.

Freshly arrived Sandhurst-trained Captain Alan King, better versed in Pashtun then any of the veterans and born locally as army brat, survives an attack on his escort to his Northwest Frontier province garrison near the Khyber pass because of Ahmed, a native Afridi deserter from the Muslim fanatic rebel Karram Khan's forces. As soon as his fellow officers learn his mother was a native Muslim which got his parents disowned even by their own families, he falls prey to stubborn prejudiced discrimination, Lieutenant Geoffrey Heath even moves out of their quarters, except from half-Irish Lt. Ben Baird.

A young but bright former window cleaner rises to the top of his company by following the advice of a book about ruthless advancement in business.

Promoter William Montague wants to buy the estate owned by the Daceys, Mrs. Dacey and her daughter Ena and son Todd, in order to build a resort hotel. When they turn him down, he produces a couple of distant relatives, Janice and Robert Clayton, and sets about to prove that the estate rightfully belongs to them. The identity of the rightful heirs is thought to be buried in a sunken ship off of the Jamaican shore and the search begins, led by a schooner skipper, Patrick Fairlie, who is in love with Ena.

South Sea freebooters fight for hidden treasure and the love of the beautiful Luana.

A communist POW sides with his North Korean guards against his fellow prisoners.

During the height of the Vietnam war, a hippie and a draft dodger get together and hatch a plan to flee to Canada. They steal a car and head towards Vancouver, but the trip doesn't go as smoothly as they planned, and before long they're being chased by the police, accused of murdering several police officers.

An escaped mental patient, reported to be homicidal, hides out in a woman's rural home.

The lives and loves behind the scenes at the racetrack are detailed in this thoroughbred soap opera. An ambitious young trainer, Joel Tarrant (Ty Hardin), enters into an illicit affair with the stable owner's wealthy wife, hot-to-trot Laura Rubio (Suzanne Pleshette), in the hope that someday he'll have enough dough to buy his own horses and stable.