"Deaths-Head Revisited" is episode 74 of the
American television
Television is one of the major mass media outlets in the United States. , household ownership of television sets in the country is 96.7%, with approximately 114,200,000 American households owning at least one television set as of August 2013. ...
anthology series ''
The Twilight Zone
''The Twilight Zone'' is an American media franchise based on the anthology television series created by Rod Serling. The episodes are in various genres, including fantasy, science fiction, absurdism, dystopian fiction, suspense, horror, su ...
''. The story is about a former
SS officer revisiting the
Dachau concentration camp
,
, commandant = List of commandants
, known for =
, location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany
, built by = Germany
, operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS)
, original use = Political prison
, construction ...
a decade and a half after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. The title is a play on the
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires ''Decli ...
novel ''
Brideshead Revisited
''Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder'' is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. It follows, from the 1920s to the early 1940s, the life and romances of the protagonist Charles ...
''. In Germany this episode was never brought to TV.
Opening narration
Plot
Gunther Lutze, a former
SS captain, checks into a hotel in
Dachau
,
, commandant = List of commandants
, known for =
, location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany
, built by = Germany
, operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS)
, original use = Political prison
, construction ...
, Bavaria, under the name "Schmidt". The receptionist seems to recognize him, but he deflects suspicion by claiming to have served in the
panzer
This article deals with the tanks (german: panzer) serving in the German Army (''Deutsches Heer'') throughout history, such as the World War I tanks of the Imperial German Army, the interwar and World War II tanks of the Nazi German Wehrmacht, ...
division on the
Eastern Front during World War II. He asks if a nearby camp is a prison. When the receptionist says that it was used as a kind of prison, he presses her for a further explanation, even though it soon becomes clear that he knows the exact purpose of the camp.
He ventures to the site, the now-abandoned
Dachau concentration camp
,
, commandant = List of commandants
, known for =
, location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany
, built by = Germany
, operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS)
, original use = Political prison
, construction ...
, to recall his time as its commandant during the war. As he strolls around the camp, he sadistically recalls the torment he inflicted on the inmates. He is surprised to see Alfred Becker, one of the camp's former inmates and a particular victim of Lutze's cruelty, and equally surprised that Becker seems unchanged in the intervening 17 years.
Lutze supposes that Becker is now the caretaker of the camp, which Becker confirms "in a manner of speaking." As they talk, Becker relentlessly confronts Lutze with the reality of his grossly inhumane actions, while Lutze insists that he was
only following orders. Lutze tries to dismiss Becker's description of cruelty by saying that the war is over, and that he has moved on.
Lutze tries to leave, but finds the gate locked. Becker asks why he wants to leave, given that he changed his name and
fled to South America. Lutze argues that he had hoped that with the passage of enough time, the world would have moved on and people would be willing to forget his "little mistakes of the past". Becker retorts that Lutze's actions were not mistakes, but
crimes against humanity
Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
.
Becker and a dozen other ghostly inmates put Lutze on trial for his actions, which include ordering the deaths of over 1,700 innocent people without trial or
due process
Due process of law is application by state of all legal rules and principles pertaining to the case so all legal rights that are owed to the person are respected. Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual pers ...
, maiming and torturing thousands of human beings without provocation, the criminal
experimentation
An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when ...
on women and children, the murder of at least 14 people by his own hand, and calling and signing into effect orders calling for the gassing and cremating of one million human beings. Lutze screams and passes out.
Upon awaking, Lutze tells Becker he imagined the trial. Becker contradicts this, and informs Lutze of the guilty verdict. When Becker is about to pronounce the sentence to the court, Lutze mocks him as mad until he suddenly remembers that on the night American troops came close to Dachau 17 years before, he had personally killed Becker and several other inmates and attempted to burn down the camp.
As punishment, Lutze is made to undergo the same horrors he had imposed on the inmates in the form of
tactile illusion A tactile illusion is an illusion that affects the sense of touch. Some tactile illusions require active touch (e.g., movement of the fingers or hands), whereas others can be evoked passively (e.g., with external stimuli that press against the skin ...
s, including being shot by machine guns at the gate, hanging by the gallows, and torture at the detention building. He screams in agony from the illusions and collapses. Before departing, Becker's ghost informs him, "This is not hatred. This is retribution. This is not revenge. This is justice. But this is only the beginning, Captain. Only the beginning. Your final judgment will come from
God
In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...
."
Lutze is found by local authorities, sedated by a doctor, and taken to a
mental institution
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals, behavioral health hospitals, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociative ...
, since he continues to experience and react to his illusory sufferings. His finders wonder how a man who was perfectly calm two hours before could have gone insane so soon. The doctor looks around and says,
"Dachau. Why does it still stand? Why do we keep it standing?"
Closing narration
Episode and cast notes
* Hungarian-born actor
Oscar Beregi Jr
Oscar Beregi Jr. (May 12, 1918 – November 1, 1976) was a Hungarian-born film and television actor. He was the son of actor Oscar Beregi Sr. and often was billed simply as Oscar Beregi. Beregi was most famous for his roles in ''The Twilight ...
(SS Captain Lutze), whose father was Jewish, had many screen roles as villains and 'heavies', and would have been familiar to American TV audiences of the time for his work in the popular TV detective series ''
The Untouchables
Untouchables or The Untouchables may refer to:
American history
* Untouchables (law enforcement), a 1930s American law enforcement unit led by Eliot Ness
* ''The Untouchables'' (book), an autobiography by Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley
* ''The U ...
'', where he had a recurring role as thuggish mobster Joe Kulak. This episode also marked Beregi's second appearance in ''The Twilight Zone'' - his first was as the leader of the criminal gang in the Season 2 episode "
The Rip Van Winkle Caper
"The Rip Van Winkle Caper" is episode 60 of the American television anthology series ''The Twilight Zone'' , and is the 24th episode of the second season. It originally aired on April 21, 1961 on CBS, and was written by series creator and showrunn ...
".
* Alfred Becker, Lutze's supernatural adversary and judge, was played by distinguished Austrian-born character actor
Joseph Schildkraut
Joseph Schildkraut (22 March 1896 – 21 January 1964) was an Austrian-American actor. He won an Oscar for his performance as Captain Alfred Dreyfus in the film ''The Life of Emile Zola'' (1937); later, he was nominated for a Golden Globe for h ...
. He won the
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
The Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given in honor of an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance in a supporting role while worki ...
for his performance as Captain
Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus ( , also , ; 9 October 1859 – 12 July 1935) was a French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most polarizing political dramas in modern French history. ...
in ''
The Life of Emile Zola
''The Life of Emile Zola'' is a 1937 American biographical film about the 19th-century French author Émile Zola starring Paul Muni and directed by William Dieterle. It premiered at the Los Angeles Carthay Circle Theatre to great critical and f ...
'' (1937), although he would have been best known to contemporary audiences for his role as the father Otto Frank in both the Broadway stage version and the
1959 film version of ''The Diary of Anne Frank''.
*
Kaaren Verne
Kaaren Verne (6 April 1918 – 23 December 1967) was a German-born actress, long based in the United States. Sometimes billed as Karen Verne, she was originally a stage actress and member of the Berlin State Theatre.
Life and career
Verne was b ...
, who makes a brief appearance as the hotel receptionist in the episode's opening scene (credited as "Karen Verne"), had enjoyed a flourishing career in the Berlin State Theatre before she and her first husband were forced to flee Germany in 1938. She eventually settled in the US, where she soon became an outspoken opponent of the Nazi regime. In the mid-1940s, she was married for several years to renowned expatriate Hungarian-born Jewish actor
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre (; born László Löwenstein, ; June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964) was a Hungarian and American actor, first in Europe and later in the United States. He began his stage career in Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before movin ...
.
* Veteran British-born character actor
Ben Wright (The Doctor) trained at
RADA
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA; ) is a drama school in London, England, that provides vocational conservatoire training for theatre, film, television, and radio. It is based in the Bloomsbury area of Central London, close to the Senat ...
with
Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino (4 February 1918Recorded in ''Births Mar 1918'' Camberwell Vol. 1d, p. 1019 (Free BMD). Transcribed as "Lupine" in the official births index – 3 August 1995) was an English-American actress, singer, director, writer, and producer. T ...
and worked on stage and screen in the UK before emigrating to the US in 1946. After becoming established in Hollywood, Wright's much-admired facility with accents and dialects saw him play a wide range of character parts in radio and on screen, portraying English, German, French, Australian, and even Chinese characters. He was also in "
Judgment Night". Additionally, he played the Gauleiter of Austria Herr Zeller in ''
The Sound of Music
''The Sound of Music'' is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the 1949 memoir of Maria von Trapp, '' The Story of the Trapp Family Singers''. Se ...
''. He was also a noted voice actor, and performed featured voice parts in Disney's ''
101 Dalmatians'' and ''
The Little Mermaid
"The Little Mermaid" ( da, Den lille havfrue) is a literary fairy tale written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. The story follows the journey of a young mermaid who is willing to give up her life in the sea as a mermaid to gain a h ...
'', which was his final screen credit before his death.
* In an archival audio interview, attached as a special feature to the episode in the ''Twilight Zone'' DVD boxed set, series producer
Buck Houghton
Archible Ernest "Buck" Houghton (May 4, 1915 – May 14, 1999) was an American television producer and writer best known for producing the first three seasons of ''The Twilight Zone'', as well as many other television programs and independen ...
recalled that for this episode, the production was able to shoot the episode's exterior scenes in a large frontier fort set that had recently been built for the pilot for an unnamed Western TV series. Because that series had not been picked up by any of the networks, this very expensive set - which, according to Houghton, had cost US$200,000 (around US$1.6 million in 2016) - was then sitting abandoned on the
MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
backlot, and only required minimal redressing to serve as the episode's setting, the
Dachau concentration camp
,
, commandant = List of commandants
, known for =
, location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany
, built by = Germany
, operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS)
, original use = Political prison
, construction ...
.
* Houghton recalled that episode director
Don Medford
Donald Muller (November 26, 1917 – December 12, 2012), known professionally as Don Medford, was an American television director who directed over 75 TV series between 1951 and 1989, and who also directed three movies.
Medford directed the fina ...
was mainly known as an "action" director, but that he was chosen both for his ability to create effective "shock" moments, and for his willingness to allow emotional scenes to play out as long as he felt necessary. According to Houghton, Medford was also known for his meticulous preparation, although Houghton also recalled that Medford could become flustered if events during production (such as the unexpected unavailability of an actor) forced him to deviate from his production plans.
* Houghton also heaped praise on the work of British-born actor
Ben Wright (who appears briefly as The Doctor at the end of the episode), noting that Wright had the ability to master any kind of accent or dialect convincingly, and this allowed him to play a wide range of nationalities during his long screen career.
* The story was later adapted for ''
The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas'' starring
H.M. Wynant
H. M. Wynant (born Chaim Winant; February 12, 1927) is an American film and television actor.
Biography
Wynant was born in Detroit, Michigan. He made his feature film debut as an Indian in Samuel Fuller's ''Run of the Arrow'' (1957). In the 1 ...
in the Oscar Beregi role.
Critical response
Gordon F. Sander, excerpt from ''Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man'':
:Serling meted out nightmarish justice of a worse kind in "Deaths-Head Revisited" (directed by Don Medford), Serling's statement on the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
, written in reaction to the then-ongoing
Eichmann trial, in which a former
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
, played by
Oscar Beregi, on a nostalgic visit to Dachau, is haunted and ultimately driven insane by the ghosts of inmates he had killed there during the war.
In popular culture
The introduction to the instrumental song "Intro to Reality" from the 1990 album ''
Persistence of Time
''Persistence of Time'' is the fifth studio album by the American heavy metal band Anthrax. It was released on August 21, 1990 through Megaforce Worldwide/Island Records and was nominated in 1991 for a Grammy Award in the Best Metal Performance ...
'' by the Heavy Metal band
Anthrax
Anthrax is an infection caused by the bacterium ''Bacillus anthracis''. It can occur in four forms: skin, lungs, intestinal, and injection. Symptom onset occurs between one day and more than two months after the infection is contracted. The sk ...
featured dialogue from this episode.
References
*
Zicree, Marc Scott: ''The Twilight Zone Companion''. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
* DeVoe, Bill. (2008). ''Trivia from The Twilight Zone''. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media.
* Grams, Martin. (2008). ''The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic''. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing.
* Zicree, Marc Scott (undated), audio interview with Twilight Zone producer Buck Houghton. Episode Special Feature, 'The Twilight Zone' DVD boxed set, Season 3, Volume 1, Disc 2 (CBS Broadcasting Inc., 2007)
External links
*
{{The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) episodes
1961 American television episodes
The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series season 3) episodes
Television episodes about Nazi fugitives
Television episodes written by Rod Serling
Television episodes about ghosts