Mirror Image

It's literally always something like this ;)

This is a really great one.

Mirror Image is the kind of creepy, nightmarish episode that delves deep into your subconscious and stays there for years, ready to leap out into your conscious mind and scare you when reminded of its terrifying premise. The idea that a "double" can steal your identity and replace you is inherently unsettling. Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers - a movie with a similar premise. And as in Body Snatcher, the idea that no one believes what you know is true and that you are viewed as "going insane" adds to the horror of the protagonist and the empathy of the audience.

I particularly liked the ending because, although disconcerting, it represents the expanded possibility of an alternate reality over the smug, narrow-mindedness of conventional wisdom and leads to the question, who's crazy now?

My favorite TWILIGHT ZONE episode and possibly one of the most perfect entries in the series. The luminous Vera Miles delivers one of TZ's outstanding female lead performances as a young secretary who while waiting for a bus on a rainy November night has a series of disorienting experiences that cause her to doubt her sanity - experiences which culminate in her glimpsing her doppelganger (her "mirror image"). The late Martin Milner gives a fine low-key performance as the good-natured fellow passenger who tries to help her (or is he secretly the "mirror image" from the other world trying to "move her out"?) And who can ever forget Joe Hamilton as the crotchety ticket taker, everyone's nightmare of a rude service employee?

The episode looks fantastic, with creamy black and white photography and film noir style from director John Brahm. The script shows Rod Serling at his best - no pretentiousness or preaching, just terse, simple and effective writing.

"Mirror Image" is one of those TZ episodes that lend themselves to symbolic and psychological interpretations. Loss of Identity and The Individual Versus Society were key themes of TZ, and what happens to Vera Miles here could be interpreted as an allegory of persecution of the individual by a repressive state. The bus depot certainly has a bleak, totalitarian atmosphere to it. The ticket taker clearly wants to "get rid of" Miles because she questions the goings-on in the depot, and her carting off to the hospital could be read as society's stigmatization of independent thought as mental disease.

But apart from such heavy-duty analysis, "Mirror Image" functions simply as a captivating half-hour thriller, subtly and artistically done.

That last point - the artistry - brings me to the final thing I'd like to say about "Mirror Image." What a time-capsule this piece is, aesthetically speaking. It was first aired in February 1960. Less than a decade later, and Miles and Milner with their trench coats and hats would have seemed like visitors from another planet. Old-fashioned too would have seemed the film noir photography and the Stravinsky-ish musical score (stock music mostly composed by Bernard Herrmann). By the 1970s television shows would be in color and all about "social issues" and "relevance." "Mirror Image" is one of the last artifacts of a bygone era, and that's part of its appeal for us today.

Impressive what can be done with just a few actors and a small set. This episode was clever and subtly supernatural.

So many very good actresses appeared in TZ and Vera Miles must be one of the best. From the same year as her second classic Hitchcock film 'Psycho' she plays Millicent Barnes, a soundly sensible pretty young secretary at a bus depot about to have a fearful experience. She's losing control of her 'own' actions as another 'self' appears in a mirror. Excellent atmospheric stuff as Millicent's logical mind is pitted against weird events in a plain ordinary setting on a stormy night. Good support comes from Martin Milner as a kind fellow traveller and the plot develops rapidly with the two characters.

The story is not the strongest, but hats off to the lady in the hat, the splendid Vera Miles. You might want to see Hitchcock's 'The Wrong Man' where she gave a truly great performance.