Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

Plot

While traveling by airliner, Bob Wilson thinks he sees a gremlin on the wing. Bob tries to alert his wife and the flight crew to the gremlin's presence, but every time someone else looks out of the window, the gremlin leaps out of view, so Bob's claim seems outlandish. Bob himself admits the oddity of the gremlin avoiding everyone else's sight but not his. His credibility is further marred because this is his first flight since his nervous breakdown six months earlier, which also occurred on an aircraft. Bob realizes that his wife is starting to think he needs to go back to the sanitarium, but his bigger concern is that the gremlin is tinkering with the wiring under one of the engine cowlings, with the likely end being the aircraft crashing.

The crew gives Bob a sedative to keep him from being a disturbance. Bob obediently downs it with water but does not swallow, and secretly spits it out. He then steals a sleeping police officer's revolver, straps himself in to avoid being blown out of the aircraft, and opens the emergency exit door to shoot the gremlin. Once the airliner has landed, everyone believes that he has gone insane. As Bob is whisked away in a straitjacket, he tells his wife that he is alone in his knowledge of what happened during the flight. However, the final shot reveals conspicuous damage to the aircraft's wing, caused by the gremlin.

Cast

Remake

The episode was remade in 1983 by director George Miller as a segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Unlike Bob Wilson, whose credibility was compromised by a recent nervous breakdown in the 1963 version, John Valentine, played by John Lithgow, suffers from severe aviatophobia, again giving the flight crew added reason to disbelieve his wild claims.

The story begins with flight attendants attempting to coax Mr. Valentine from the lavatory as he tries to recover from what seems to be a panic attack. He is repeatedly assured by the flight attendants that everything is going to be all right, but his nerves and antics disturb the surrounding passengers.

As Mr. Valentine takes his seat, he notices a hideous gremlin (played by Larry Cedar) on the wing of the aircraft and begins to spiral into severe panic. First he sees the gremlin tampering with No. 1 Engine, as well as a subsequent lightning strike that causes a flameout on the engine. After some words of comfort with one of the flight crew about No. 1 Engine, he watches as the creature wreaks more havoc on the wing, tampering with the spoilers and ailerons and destroying No. 2 Engine, losing more control each time he sees it do something new. When he sees the gremlin begin tearing off pieces of the engine cowling and putting them into the engine intake (and creating massive showers of white hot sparks that shoot out the front of the engine), Valentine finally snaps, grabs a handgun from a security guard on board, breaks the window with a fire extinguisher (causing a breach in the pressurized cabin), and begins firing at the creature. This only serves to catch the attention of the gremlin, who rushes up to Valentine and promptly destroys the gun. After a tense moment in which they notice that the aircraft is landing, the gremlin grabs Valentine's face, then simply scolds him by wagging its finger in a "no, no" manner. The creature leaps into the sky as the aircraft begins to make an emergency landing. On the ground as a straitjacketed Valentine is carried off in an ambulance, the police, crew and passengers begin to discuss the incident, writing off Valentine as insane. The aircraft maintenance crew soon arrives however, and everyone gathers to examine the massive amounts of unexplained damage to Engine No. 2, including claw marks, a gaping hole in the engine cowling, and the heavily mangled and chewed up compressor blades.

In popular culture

The episode is considered one of the most popular of the series and parts of the plot have been repeated and parodied several times in popular culture, including television shows, films, radio and music.

In The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror IV" (1993) is a segment called "Terror at 5½ Feet". It takes place on a school bus rather than an aircraft, and puts Bart Simpson in the role of Bob Wilson. An AMC Gremlin driven by Hans Moleman drives alongside the bus.

In the 3rd Rock from the Sun episode "Dick's Big Giant Headache: Part 1" (1999), William Shatner makes his first appearance on the series. John Lithgow's character meets Shatner's character as he gets off an aircraft. When Shatner describes something horrifying on the wing, Lithgow replies, "The same thing happened to me!" This references not only Lithgow's portrayal of the nervous passenger in the 1983 Twilight Zone remake, but also an earlier 3rd Rock episode "Frozen Dick" (Season 1, Ep 12, 1996) when he and Jane Curtin's characters were due to fly to Chicago to pick up awards before Dick panicked about something on the wing while the plane was still on the tarmac and gets them both kicked off the plane.

Keith McDuffee of TV Squad listed the gremlin as the ninth scariest television character, in 2008.

On the March 16, 2010 episode of Saturday Night Live, guest host Jude Law plays William Shatner's original role, while cast regular Bobby Moynihan is the gremlin on the wing of the jet. One scene features the musical guest Pearl Jam talking with the gremlin.

William Shatner had a cameo on the Whoopi Goldberg episode of Muppets Tonight on 7 July 1996 and was bothered by a monster Muppet while riding in a jet and he refers to this episode.

In the Robot Chicken episode "Tapping a Hero", the episode is parodied in a sketch.

In Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Jim Carrey parodies William Shatner and his character in this episode.

In the horror film Flight 7500, a character watches the episode as part of the in-flight services, paralleling their own dire situation.

In Johnny Bravo, there is an episode where this story is parodied but with a clown on the side of the plane instead.

In "The Angry Beavers" episode Dag's List, Barry the bear is repeatedly launched into the air, landing on the wing of a plane owned by Dairy Airlines. "Wally Wingert"'s secondary character, credited as "Passenger 57" (possibly a reference to the "Wesley Snipes" movie), exclaims in a halted, Shatner-style voice: "There's a bear... on... the wing!"

In the movie Sharknado 2: the 2nd one, Fin Shephard checks the wing of the plane, and sees a shark on the wing of the plane. The flight attendant tells him to calm down.

The Lego Batman Movie features gremlins from the film Gremlins attacking a plane, a subtle reference to this episode.