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For a science fiction series, "The Twilight Zone" had an incredibly broad range of genres that it pulled from. War stories, space adventures, horror tales, post-apocalyptic sagas, and tons of other settings popped up in all five seasons of Rod Serling's acclaimed anthology masterpiece. The series also featured several prominent Western-themed episodes, each with a distinct "Twilight Zone" twist.

Serling seemed to have a soft spot for the cowboy genre. After "The Twilight Zone" came to an end in 1964, he quickly followed it up with a full-blown Western series called "The Loner," which premiered on CBS the next year. "The Loner" was short-lived, but it made clear the affinity Serling had for Westerns, and "The Twilight Zone" has plenty of stories to choose from set in the old American West.

While everyone has their favorite "Twilight Zone" episodes, these particular Western episodes have stood the test of time and...

Though The Twilight Zone is best known for its eerie horror and science fiction stories, some of the finest episodes occupy the Western genre. One of the most unusual of these frontier tales is "Dust," a powerful drama where all the action takes place within the human heart. Unusually mundane but deeply moving, the story concerns a con artist whose cruel scam triggers an unexpected epiphany in the citizens of a dying town.

In "Dust," a conniving merchant capitalizes on the impending execution of a Mexican man whose deadly misadventure was caused by poverty. Rod Serling often took aim at social ills like racism and fascism, but in this unusual Western episode of The Twilight Zone, the focus is on apathy, and a possible cure for this disease of the human heart.

Season 2, Episode 12 Trades Paranormal Thrills for Powerful Drama Image via CBS.

The striking first image of "Dust" is of a deformed horse,...