“Wherever there was sin, wherever there was strife, wherever there was corruption, persecution, there he was.”
Title: “The Howling Man”
Original transmission date: November 4 1960
Written by: Charles Beaumont
Directed by: Douglas Heyes
Starring: H.M. Wynant as David Ellington
John Carradine as Brother Jerome
Robin Hughes as The Howling Man
Frederic Ledebur as Brother Christopherus
Ezelle Poule as Housekeeper
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: 1925
Theme(s): Paranoia, despair, evil, faith, trust, hubris.
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A++
Serling's opening monologue
The prostrate form of Mr. David Ellington, scholar, seeker of truth and, regrettably, finder of truth. A man who will shortly arise from his exhaustion to confront a problem that has tormented mankind since the beginning of time. A man who knocked on a door seeking sanctuary and found, instead, the outer edges of The Twilight Zone.
It’s a dark and stormy night (what do you want from me? It is!) and a haggard man addresses the camera, telling the story of how, one, well, dark and stormy night, he was on a walking trip when he got lost in a storm and found his way to an old house. As the scene changes we see the man staggering up to the door in the howling wind and driving rain; the house turns out to be a hermitage, and though the man who opens the door does not initially want to let him in, he does relent and allows him inside. He hears an unearthly howling, but the hermit insists it was just the wind. He asks for shelter - and maybe some food - but the head hermit will not have it, and decrees he must leave. As he tries to, though, he falls unconscious to the ground.
When he awakes he is in a room, and discovers another man who appears to be in a cell. This man tells Ellington the head hermit, Father Jerome, is mad - they’re
all mad. Jerome attacked him and had him taken to this place for being in love with the woman who spurned his, Father Jerome’s, advances. Speaking to him later, Jerome tries to convince his unwelcome visitor there is no man in a cell, and says he does not understand. Ellington threatens to go to the police, and worried that their hermitage will be investigated, Jerome tells him the truth.
It turns out, of course, that there is a perfectly simple explanation for why Jerome told him there was no man in the cell. It’s not a man he spoke to, it’s the devil. Oh, well that’s all right then. I’ll just be on my - wait. What now? Yup. The devil. Satan. Prince of Darkness. The Big Horny himself. Jerome tells him that as long as the devil is imprisoned, the great horrors that could befall the world will be held at bay. He uses the fact that there has been five years of peace - following the end of World War I - to illustrate and prove this point. When Ellington asks how he could possibly imprison the devil, he holds up his staff (ooer) and tells him it is the power that keeps the dark one where he is, the Staff of Truth, the one barrier he cannot cross.
Ellington makes a very poor job of pretending he believes Jerome, promising to keep his secret, but we all know where this is headed. And sure enough, he lets the devil out of his cage and off he pops to set up the next world war. Realising he’s been duped, and that Father Jerome was not after all off his trolley - was in fact, so firmly anchored to it that not even the steepest hills in San Francisco would have dislodged him, had he been riding over them - he spends the rest of his life trying to track the devil down and re-imprison him.
And he does. Glory be to baby Jesus, he does the impossible and somehow not only finds Old Nick but cages him too, behind the maximum security of, um, a hall door. Ah, but fastened with the Staff of Truth, which he’s got somehow, presumably from Jerome. But then, history repeats itself and his maid lets the devil out - despite being told not to, I mean, who would do such a… oh. Right. Anyway, on the whole merry show goes, because as the old saying goes, you can take the devil to water but you can’t keep him in a cage. Or something.
Serling's closing monologue
Ancient folk saying: "You can catch the Devil, but you can't hold him long." Ask Brother Jerome. Ask David Ellington. They know, and they'll go on knowing to the end of their days and beyond — in the Twilight Zone.
Oh yeah, that’s the one. Minus the Twilight Zone reference.
The Resolution
Very good, though it’s telegraphed about halfway through. When someone says don’t push the button, you know we want to push it, and who really believes the devil is real anyway? To quote Al Pacino in
The Devil’s Advocate, his greatest work was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
The Moral
There are more things in Heaven, Hell and Earth...
Themes
Paranoia is something that is very often dealt with in the Twilight Zone, and let’s be totally honest, when you come across a houseful of hermits (I thought hermits by definition lived alone? Is there like a guild of Hermits or something?) and their boss says he has trapped the devil, you’re not exactly going to nod and say pass the mead, now are you? So paranoia grows as Ellington believes that these guys are up to no good, have taken a guy prisoner for no good reason (and without any authority to do so) and wonders if he’ll be next. Faith of course is a driving force in this episode. If you truly believe in the devil, and the holiness of the hermits (whose religious affiliation, it must be pointed out, is never explained - they’re not priests or monks. Just because you live alone(ish) doesn’t make you some sort of holy warrior) then maybe you can take at face value what they say. But it’s going to stretch your faith to accept that the devil himself (pleased to meet you, hope you guessed his name) is stuck in a cage in a dark lonely house in Europe.
Trust I guess is another. Faith aside, if Ellington trusted Jerome was telling the truth maybe he would have been easier able to believe his story. Despair then, as he realises he has been used and tricked into setting the devil free, and despair too, from the hermits, as well as determination, on his part anyway, to recapture the devil. And of course, the devil and his first-letter-removed descriptor also figure heavily. Let’s throw in hubris too, as that too has a part to play here.
And isn't that...?
H.M.Wynant (1927 - )
Really I’m only mentioning him as he appears to be the first star or guest we’ve come across who is still living. He does have TV credits, but nothing more than the usual shows and films, however he did star in a movie called
Dark and Stormy Night, which, considering how this episode opens… yeah, I’ll move on. Who else we got?
John Carradine (1906 - 1988)
Ooh! John Carradine! One of the Carradine dynasty of acting talent which includes David of
Kung-Fu fame and also Robert and Keith. It would take more space than I’m willing to devote to list all John Carradine’s roles, but suffice to say he worked with both the greats John Ford and Cecil B. De Mille, and starred in a ton of movies, so numerous that Wiki has to break them up by decade! A lot of
Dracula/vampire movies, a lot of horror, and he also guested on his son’s show
Kung-Fu a few times. He even had a role in one called - wait for it -
The Howling.
Questions, and sometimes, Answers
If the devil wants people to believe he’s not who he is, why does he howl like a loon? It’s not exactly subtle, is it?
I thought the so-called Staff of Truth was the one Father Jerome held (evidenced by his brandishing it, Gandalf-like, and saying “the Staff of Truth!” Thought that was clear enough)? If so, and if it was the relic holding Satan prisoner, how was Ellington able to let him go so easily? Yes, it might seem the bolt was made from this Staff of Truth too, but that wasn’t stated.
And I have to say it again: how can you be a hermit and live with other people? Isn’t the whole idea of being a hermit to live alone?
Those clever little touches
The hermitage is apparently in a town called Schwarzhof, which loosely translates to “black court” or “dark court”. Oooh!
Sussed?
No, not at all. When I heard the howling and Father Jerome told Ellington it was no man he had spoken to, I assumed we were talking werewolves.
The WTF Factor
Very high, must be a 9 easily.
Useless factoid
This is the fifth episode (over two seasons) written by Charles Beaumont, tying with Richard Matheson as the most prolific author of episodes after Serling. It’s also the first episode of season two which is not written by Serling.
Personal Notes
Written in 1960, there’s a certain tragedy about the narrative here, where Beaumont through Ellington notes the wars that have succeeded World War I - the Second World War, the Korean War - unaware, at that time, that the war which would rob America both of its international reputation and the trust of its youth, and the flower of its young men, was only around the corner. Sadly, this planet doesn't seem to go too long without at least one war breaking out. And I doubt it has much to do with the devil either.
There’s a note in the writeup on this which says the door was supposed to have been secured by a cross, but that the network feared a backlash from religious groups, so it was changed to the Staff of Truth. I don’t understand why. A cross, the powerful symbol of Jesus, used to hold back the devil? Surely that’s acceptable to Christians? Would it be the fact that the cross didn’t hold him back, that it was removed? Or were the studio just getting spooked too easily? It’s not like this was the first episode with the devil in it, although admittedly it is the first one in which the devil is treated seriously, not as a trickster or joker. Meh. Christians.