The Twonky

This film scared me to death when I was a kid. I remember watching it on some Saturday morning scary feature show, on our old black and white TV, you know the ones... big rounded-corner screen, two knobs below. If you see the movie, that's what the alien/future thing looks like. And of course, I started seeing the "face" that was formed from that particular configuration of knobs and screen. To see it reviewed as a comedy is so far removed from my memories of this film, that it makes me want to see it again. I've always believed that my brother and I are the only two people who ever saw this film, or at least remembered it.

Hans Conreid is one of my favorite character actors of all time, and here he is put to the test as a man whose wife has bought him a television to entertain him while she is away So many people don't get the point of this movie, and it really is quite simple considering the history of the time. This is in the infancy of television and the motion picture industry was suffering at the time because people found it was cheaper to stay at home for their entertainment. So what does the industry do? They hire Arch Oboler of radio fame to write a screenplay about an almost despotic TV set. It's pretty basic, and makes for a surreal and entertaining time. Think of "The Twilight Zone" with a sense of humor and you get "The Twonky Zone" basically. Just sit back and enjoy, and if smoke 'em if you got 'em. The Twonky will light it for you.

A television set takes on an intelligence and a will of its own and terrorizes its owner. It is an interesting and amusing story but is slow moving and has a very limited plot. There is not enough explanation of what the Twonky is, how it came to possess the man's tv and what its purpose is-besides driving its owner crazy.

The Twonky is stranger than strange. A comedy-science fiction movie written by novelist Henry Kuttner and directed by one-time radio tyro Arch Oboler, it features Hans Conried as a college professor whose life is turned upside down by a television set that has developed a personality of its own, and seems determined to take over Conried's as well. Part of the fun is watching the star grapple (this may not be quite the right word) with his material in what may well be his only starring film role. I loved Hans Conried when I was growing up. He was a one of a kind performer who never got really well cast in movies or on television, though he had a successful stage and radio career. Conried was at once child-like and supercilious, and he had a vaguely European demeanor and sensibility, though he was in fact American-born. There was a refined, aristocratic quality to him, and he had impeccable timing. He was hammy and ironic at the same time, and he had a way of letting you knew that he knew that you got it. As an actor he was like a cross between Vincent Price and Joseph Schildkraut. Style was everything with him. What the hell he was doing in this bizarre-sub B movie is anyone's guess. He is well-cast in this film, but the movie is like a Saturday Night Live send-up of Ed Wood. As such it is enjoyable. Seldom has so much talent screwed up so regally as in The Twonky. I'm surprised it's not a cult classic.

What an odd, odd little film. It's about a professor whose wife goes out of town and his TV set becomes possessed by a spirit of the future! I didn't understand much about the entire thing, but catch it if you can when it's on your local station.