[The Collector's Room]

First up - Button Button.

"Button, Button": A couple receives a box with a button -- and an unusual offer.

I chose this episode first as I was round a friend’s house on Sunday night and I noticed he had a copy of "The Box" on DVD. Now, I knew this was based on a TZ episode but had never seen it - I've never seen the film either.

Having not read Matheson's original story (published in Playboy in 1970), I am wondering whether or not it had a slightly comedic angle to it or whether that was added in by director Peter Medak. The whole concept and story is very unnerving and a wonderful tale of morality and the worth of human life. However the episode has these horrific caricatures of a "down on their luck" trashy couple. The husband has this over-exaggerated lisp and even more bizarrely snores incredibly loudly when he sleeps. It adds nothing to his character and becomes a major distraction.

According to Wikipedia, Matheson didn't like the ending of this episode as it was changed from his original story - despite the fact he wrote the episode under a pseudonym. However, I would argue that it's actually the strongest part of the whole episode.

It's incredibly chilling and the script has a beautiful way of spelling out their doom without explicitly saying it. Its a wonderful ending to what was up until then a rather average affair. The original story however ended with the husband being killed as a twist to the tale that neither truly knew each other. In my view, the episode ending is much better than the short story’s.

Perhaps it was Peter Medak who is at fault here with the decisions made on set. Perhaps if these decisions hadn't been made, the episode would have been a lot better. If he'd have played the suspense card all the way through the episode, it may have stood up as one of the better TZ episodes of the 80s revival.

I will now have to watch Richard Kelly's film version of it. The trailer gives off the sense of fear/suspense throughout the movie which is what the episode was missing - so perhaps that will have what I'm looking for.