Magazine reporter Justin Sanderson was on a 13-hour transatlantic flight, but when he boarded the plane, he found an mp3 podcast in his seat that was broadcasting a flight accident.
What's even more shocking is that it is the flight 1015 he is on. It will disappear an hour later at 10:15 a.m. in a large thunderstorm over the Atlantic Ocean and will never be found again.
"30,000 Feet of Nightmare", the second episode of the resurrected "New Yin-Yang Demon World" from the name to the plot is a tribute to the classic "20,000 Feet Nightmare" of the old version. In the old version, a man in a plane saw a monster outside a plane window 20,000 feet above, but everyone thought he was crazy.
©️ The New Yin-Yang Demon Realm Episode 2 "30,000 Feet of Nightmare"
©️ The "Nightmare of 20,000 Feet" in the old version
You travel through another dimension, not only the dimension of sight, sound, and thought, between light and shadow, between science and superstition, between the depths of human fear, and between the pinnacle of learning. We call it --
"The twilight zone" (the twilight zone).
©️ "Yin and Yang Demon World"
In American pop culture, "Yin Yang Demon World" is synonymous with high-concept TELEVISION dramas, especially the earliest originals broadcast between 1959 and 1964, although simple to produce, but the impact on later science fiction works is almost like the source, inspiring countless late adopters.
From Lost to The X-Files, from Black Mirror to The Wonderful Story of the World, from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Star Trek, from horror novelist Stephen King to photography artist Cindy Sherman, almost all science fiction works of the 20th century can be found in The Yin and Yang Demon World.
Among the "101 Best-Written British and American Dramas" selected by the American Editors Association, "Yin and Yang Demon World" ranked third.
Stephen King wrote in 1981:
"Yin Yang Demon World" is almost immortal, the first time something appears is completely refreshing, for me and my generation, "Yin Yang Demon World" is like a thunderbolt like a dream awakening, opening up a thousand fascinating possibilities.
So, what kind of fascinating drama is the highly regarded "Yin Yang Demon World"?
It comes to its screenwriter, Rod Serling.
Born in New York in the 1920s, Rod Serling had a beautiful and happy childhood, but with the advent of World War II, happiness was gone. He went to war as a paratrooper and was lucky enough to survive, losing his innocence, like his generation. He never really came out of his heartache, but he took those hurts into inspiration and wrote them into the script.
©️ Screenwriter Rod Serling
In the post-war United States in the 1950s and 1960s, the Cold War, the nuclear threat, the social atmosphere of distrust by everyone, consumerism, anti-war culture, and youth culture flourished, and new and old ideological trends collided with each other, which was both outdated and conservative and vigorous.
Rod Thurlin has always been interested in social issues and universal values, but at the time, "there was only one Martian who could say what a Republican or a Democrat could say or can't do." So he wrote science fantasy stories, wrote magical stories, and used metaphors and fables to introduce his liberal values.
Each episode of Yin and Yang Is a 25-minute episode, and each episode is a separate fantasy story, as its opening title says: between light and darkness, between science and superstition, between the valley of fear and the peak of intellect.
But it is not just the general strange talk, each episode of its insight into modern human affairs, the flow of life and the perception of human nature, make "Yin Yang Demon World" far beyond ordinary strange story series.
©️ Episode 1 "Empty City Plan"
In episode 1, "Empty City", a man with amnesia suddenly breaks into a secluded and independent town, everything in the town is quiet and orderly, the church bells ring as usual, the beautiful coffee shop record player is still there, and it seems that the ordinary routine of the day has just begun, but except for a strange place: there is no one in the town.
Obviously, the traces of human beings are still there: half a cigarette smoked, boiled coffee, the open door of the shop, but no one exists.
As an opening chapter, "Yin and Yang Demon World" establishes a super weird style that is both realistic and surreal, beautiful and weird from the beginning.
The suspenseful horror it brings is often not about gods and ghosts, but from those subtle situations, those strange developments, and those dilemmas about memory and spirit.
©️ Episode 5 "Near at Hand"
In episode 5, "Close at Hand", a middle-aged man with a successful career jumps into a car from the urban life of "being strangled to the point of wanting to jump off a building" and driving all the way to his childhood hometown.
He never came back as an adult, just to see what the beautiful home he remembered had changed, but here he met his childhood self on the carousel, where the big cup of ice cream soda still costs only 10 cents, the shop landlord who worked was not dead, and the familiar carousel's organ music, marshmallows, ice cream and vanilla flavors in the summer.
©️ Episode 11 "Lost in the Sky"
In episode 11, "Lost in the Sky", a spaceship crashes into the desert, two pilots survive, but there is a third person, who is erased.
As if he had never appeared in the world, he disappeared out of thin air, and everything about him, his identity information, the things he used, the memories of those around him, and then the other person who survived, just disappeared, one, two, including the surviving spaceship.
Almost like the earliest version of "Death is coming", mysteriously erasing them one by one who should have died.
©️ Episode 16 "Strangers"
Episode 16, "Stranger's Tale", a lady who drives a car intends to travel around the United States, but wherever she drives, she encounters a strange-looking, dirty-dressed "hitchhiker" who just stands there and looks at her, never bothering her, waiting for her response.
The beautiful trip becomes a "game" of driving away from the mysterious man, who frantically escapes, but still sees him waiting for her at every intersection.
It wasn't until she called her mother back and learned that she had suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized, that she realized that she had already died in a car accident, and she finally understood who the person who was waiting for her at every intersection was.
In "Yin and Yang Demon World", most of them are such small stories full of depression and horror, although short, but they are all exquisite, the atmosphere is subtle and mysterious and tense and mysterious, and many designs still seem to be amazing.
There are also some stories that are familiar to you now, but if you remember that it was a 1959 drama, and it was borrowed from various subsequent episodes without knowing how many times it was remade, you must understand its greatness.
[This Man is from Earth], [Isle of Horror], [The Matrix], [Horror Cruises]... Many high-concept science fiction films of later generations can find similar archetypal stories in Yin And Yang Demon Realm.
Even in a film history classic like [2001: A Space Odyssey], you can find similar styling designs, from the "autonomy" of the robot hal to the baroque spaceship in the penultimate act of the movie, which has been a similar concept in Yin and Yang Demon World even earlier.
©️ Yin And Yang Demon Realm and [2001: A Space Odyssey]
After the first season aired, it was also because of its great success, and later filmed a total of 5 seasons and 156 episodes, which were remade by CBS in the 1980s, as well as Spielberg, George Miller, John Miller. The '83 film version of [Yin Yang Demon World] directed by Landis and others.
The CBS reboot version of "New Yin Yang Demon World" can be regarded as the third remake after the 80s and 02 years, and only two episodes have been produced so far, but the quality is as high as ever, which is enough to show the long-term influence and popularity of the original version.
At the intersection of metaphysics and science, the passage of time will only make its impact unabated, and perhaps all fans of science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres today should be grateful to Rod Seling and his Dark Kingdom.
Because it ignited the spark of imagination and the passion of fantasy in the great works of those who came after it.