THE TWILIGHT ZONE'S "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet" Gets The SNL Parody Treatment

SNL became the latest entry to parody the famous 1963 episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE'S "Nightmare At 20,00 Feet" episode last night. This time the gremlin on the wing of the plane was supposedly locked out of the cabin, and was standing on the wing smoking, barbecuing and standing with around the legendary Seattle grunge band, Pearl Jam, waiting to get inside.

Actor Jude Law played the legendary role of William Shatner's character who is terrorized by a gremlin on the wing of the passenger airliner that only he could see. THE SIMPSONS also once lampooned the famous TWILIGHT ZONE episode with their Treehouse Of Terror episode, "Terror At 5 1/2 Feet", where Bart is terrorized by a gremlin on the side of the school bus. In one scene, others on the bus could only see a AMC Gremlin driving along the side of the school bus.

In the original TWILIGHT ZONE episode, William Shatner plays a nervous salesman, Bob Wilson, recovering from a nervous mental breakdown, and on his first trip on a airliner since he was hospitalized. When he cannot convince his wife or any of the airliner crew that a gremlin is on the wing of the plane tampering with the engine, he takes matters into his own own hands and steals a handgun owned by a sleeping policeman and opens an axillary exit and shoots the gremlin rescuing the plane. But, it is not known until after the plane has landed and Wilson is whisked away in a straitjacket that the plane's engine has been clawed by a creature which mechanics will soon find out about, verifying his very strange story.

Actor John Lithgow reprised the role, but renamed John Valentine, in a remake of the famous story for TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE.

But, the funny parody I would have loved to see made would have been William Shatner to reprise his famous role, but to have the Scotty character from old STAR TREK series on the wing of the plane complaining about engine problems just like all the engine problems on the old Star Trek's warp drive. "Aye, Captain. There's a bit of a problem with the warp drive. But I'm giving it all it's got". No one believes Shatner, when he complains that, "There's a Scotsman on the wing of the plane". When the plane lands and Shatner is whisked away to the sanitarium, there's kilt left hanging from the plane's engine, verifying his story.

Meanwhile, next time you fly, you might look to see if "there's something on the wing of the plane.....".