***SPOILERS*** Base on Richard Matheson's 1961 short story "Alone by Night" the "Twiight Zone" episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is about a recently released man from a mental institution Bob Wilson, William Shatner, who was committed there after he suffered a nervous breakdown six months earlier while on a passenger plane flight.
Feeling that he's overcome his fear of flying Wilson soon is confronted with a horror that may well have him re-committed or even, if in fact that horror is true, have him and every one on the plane killed! Seeing on the left wing of the plane a what looks like a Gremlin, Nick Cravat, Wilson starts to freak out! Not knowing if it's, the Gremlin, real or just his overworked imagination Wilson pleads with his wife Julia,Christine White, to tell the pilot and flight examiner,Ed Kemmer, to check out the window and see if what in fact what he's seeing is real!
With Julia and the flight examiner Seeing nothing but a rain storm hitting the left wing Wilson clams down a bit but later when he sees the Gremlin start to tamper with one of the planes engines he really goes off the deep end! Getting more and more paranoid by the minute Wilson in trying to prevent the Gremlin from causing the plane to crash takes matters, and a cop on boards gun, into his own hands! Breaking open the planes emergency window Wilson blast the little bugger, Germlin, away before he can do any more damage!
***SPOILERS*** With the plane safely on the ground and Wilson,in a straight-jacket, on the way to the nearest medical facility for mental observation we see that he may well have been right, and normal,in acting the way he did. As the camera pans away from the scene and focuses on the left wing of the plane that Wilson was a passenger on we see in fact he was right! Right in acting the hysterical way he did while on that fateful flight! But it's only Wilson and us in the audience who know that for sure!Or do we?
Feeling that he's overcome his fear of flying Wilson soon is confronted with a horror that may well have him re-committed or even, if in fact that horror is true, have him and every one on the plane killed! Seeing on the left wing of the plane a what looks like a Gremlin, Nick Cravat, Wilson starts to freak out! Not knowing if it's, the Gremlin, real or just his overworked imagination Wilson pleads with his wife Julia,Christine White, to tell the pilot and flight examiner,Ed Kemmer, to check out the window and see if what in fact what he's seeing is real!
With Julia and the flight examiner Seeing nothing but a rain storm hitting the left wing Wilson clams down a bit but later when he sees the Gremlin start to tamper with one of the planes engines he really goes off the deep end! Getting more and more paranoid by the minute Wilson in trying to prevent the Gremlin from causing the plane to crash takes matters, and a cop on boards gun, into his own hands! Breaking open the planes emergency window Wilson blast the little bugger, Germlin, away before he can do any more damage!
***SPOILERS*** With the plane safely on the ground and Wilson,in a straight-jacket, on the way to the nearest medical facility for mental observation we see that he may well have been right, and normal,in acting the way he did. As the camera pans away from the scene and focuses on the left wing of the plane that Wilson was a passenger on we see in fact he was right! Right in acting the hysterical way he did while on that fateful flight! But it's only Wilson and us in the audience who know that for sure!Or do we?