Thursday, January 20, 2011

Flat Zanti on Television

Christine sends along a few shots of the Flat Zanti's memorable guest appearances on The Twilight Zone and Thriller...

"To Serve Zanti"

"Zanti at 20,000 Feet"

"Zantis from Hell"

3 comments:

  1. Au contraire, mon frere. The first shot is not actually from "To Serve Zanti." That episode was written, but never filmed, because FZ refused to participate in any project that might encourage consumption of Zantis (Chocolate Covered Zantis were a reported delicacy in some regions at the time, with some claiming they had aphrodisiacal powers).

    For those playing along at home (I suspect it's just you and me, John), your challenge is to correctly identify the Twilight Zone episode above before John does. I will reveal the name of the episode by the time The Zanti Misfits comes up on the WACT schedule on January 25th (cue Jeopardy music).

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  2. Damn! I went with the episode that I knew stole the ship from Forbidden Planet. I didn't realize there were so many.

    From our friends at Wikipedia: The C-57D props were later used in several episodes of the 1959 Twilight Zone TV series, sometimes altered, and never using the original C-57D designation.

    * 1960 "Third from the Sun" — Here the original navigation center is seen, as well as the ship.
    * 1960 "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" — Here the movie model was shown flying upside down.
    * 1961 "The Invaders" — A facsimile of an original movie model, used for USAF Space Probe No 1, was crushed by a giant woman.
    * 1962 "To Serve Man"
    * 1962 "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby"
    * 1963 "Death Ship" — This episode makes the greatest use of stock and new footage of the saucer; herein, it is identified as the Space Cruiser E-89, patrolling the 51st star system in the year 1997. Here the ship is shown using downward-directed rocket thrust propulsion. The crashed ship on the ground is a separate prop.
    * 1963 "On Thursday We Leave for Home"

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  3. Impressive! I was thinking there must be a lot of saucer craft episodes to choose from, but I had no idea it was all the same ship. Thanks for the information. I'm going to have to check those out again. Some of my favorite episodes are on that list. I must really like that ship.

    Of course, you still did not identify which episode the shot above originated from. I'll give you a hint: it's on the list. Okay, I'll give you a better hint: think small scale.

    I confess I've been seeing Flat Zanti in the Twilight Zone lately because I've been recreating a little 1960s TV for fun, and watching some of the TZ episodes that aired the same week as OL episodes. Here's the match-ups for next week's viewing for your perusal:

    TZ: Uncle Simon 11/15/63
    OL: Corpus Earthling 11/18/63

    TZ: Ring a Ding Girl 12/27/63
    OL: Zanti Misfits 12/30/63

    TZ: The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms 12/6/63
    OL: It Crawled Out of the Woodwork 12/9/63

    TZ: You Drive 1/3/64
    OL: The Mice 1/6/64

    TZ: Black Leather Jackets 1/31/64
    OL: Invisibles 2/3/64

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