Movies - TV
One ‘Grotesque’ Twilight Zone Episode Never Made It Onto TV
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
"Twilight Zone" writer/producer William Froug once pitched an idea for an episode that featured people with mutated faces, but it was rejected for being too weird and gross.
According to the book, "The Twilight Zone Companion," Froug’s episode was a metaphorical tale about prejudice and symbolic blindness, but his visuals were too odd to bring to life.
The episode "Many, Many Monkeys" alluded to the Three Wise Monkeys maxim that originated in 8th-century China, which symbolized the eradication of evil from the mind and deed.
Of the three monkeys, one covered its eyes, one its ears, and one its mouth. In the modern world, the maxim implies a deliberate ignoring of evil, a quest to remain ignorant.
The episode would have seen a nuclear disaster trigger a bizarre facial condition in the world's population where flesh melts down from people's foreheads and renders them blind.
There were several lines of dialogue about how humans' physical blindness was meant to symbolize their inner hate, their inability to "see" others.
Although Froug sold his script to the company, it was shelved for being "too grotesque." The episode was rewritten when "Twilight Zone" was revived in 1989.