He's Alive (1963)
Fascism is alive in America. The Twilight Zone warned about this moment in the startling and important episode that aired in 1963 as part of the 4th season.
Rod Serling wrote He’s Alive as part of the fourth season of The Twilight Zone in 1963. The episode takes us through the grueling story of Peter Vollmer (Dennis Hopper), a neo-nazi in America trying to get followers and recognition by spewing hate on street corners. One night, when he’s visited by a shadowy figure (I’ll give you three guesses), Vollmer learns the tricks necessary to become a fascist dictator overnight. The episode is timely in this moment in American history, and I think if Rod Serling were still alive, he’d urge you to watch this very episode as a warning.
Rod Serling himself was very political. He wrote about racial and class issues facing America, but wasn’t able to get much produced in the 1950’s because the networks either disagreed with his views, or more likely, they didn’t want to upset their audience. Serling found that if he crouched his messages in a genre like science fiction or fantasy, networks were less likely to notice, allowing him to freely express his ideas. During the third and fourth seasons of The Twilight Zone, the show took a more direct approach in dealing with political themes. In the third season episode Deaths Hand Revisited, Serling’s script tells the story of a former SS officer revisiting the concentration camp he presided over. While there, he is haunted by the ghosts of his victims. By doing this, Serling has still technically placed this in “the twilight zone” by adding the haunted element, but it is more upfront in its criticism. There isn’t as much of an allegory.
He’s Alive is similar in that way. It’s an alternate history (or one that will happen). Serling knew this in his core, and it’s why he felt this script was necessary to produce. He believed that it was the best script he had ever written for the series, so when he found out that scenes from the show were being cut due to length constraints, he had an idea to produce it as a feature film. Unfortunately the feature film never came to fruition, but He’s Alive still feels like a complete work in The Twilight Zone’s hour long format.
Portrait of a bush-league Führer named Peter Vollmer, a sparse little man who feeds off his self-delusions and finds himself perpetually hungry for want of greatness in his diet. And like some goose-stepping predecessors he searches for something to explain his hunger, and to rationalize why a world passes him by without saluting. That something he looks for and finds is in a sewer. In his own twisted and distorted lexicon he calls it faith, strength, truth. But in just a moment Peter Vollmer will ply his trade on another kind of corner, a strange intersection in a shadowland called the Twilight Zone. - Rod Serling’s Opening Narration to Season 4 Episode 4.
In He’s Alive, Peter Vollmer, the protagonist in the episode (reminder that ‘protagonist’ is not always the good guy!) is very angsty about not being taken seriously for his hateful views. On an extremely hot night in the city, Vollmer spouts his hateful rhetoric in a sweaty rage. His audience isn’t receptive though, and it gets to him. The night ends with a fight breaking out. Peter wants the police to do something about it, but they laugh at him and his cronies. After the incident, Peter and his men meet in an alleyway. Peter cries about how he wants people to take him seriously.
Dennis Hopper gives an unhinged and emotionally charged performance as Peter Vollmer. Serling was apparently unhappy with the performance. Here’s what he said about it in a talk he gave at UCLA in 1971:
I thought it was one of the best-written scripts, completely pissed away by the performance of Dennis Hopper. I must tell you this in utter frankness, and I'll say it to Mr. Hopper as well. It was a most uncontrolled, undisciplined performance, which took considerably more thespic talent than the young man had at the time. It needed a very restrained performance, and Dennis started to cry in Reel 1. There was, simply, emotionally, no place to go ... It was a corker of a script. It was one of those scripts where, unlike usually where the critic says, 'It was a lousy script, but Gary Cooper saved it,' this, I think, was a very good script literally damaged badly by a performance. - Rod Serling
I can agree with Serling on some level about this. He has a point that Hopper crying in the first scene doesn’t give him much room to go for the rest of the episode. But I do think it’s an effective performance nonetheless. There’s something about Hopper’s commitment to the role that reveals a certain sadness underneath Vollmer’s hate, but as the episode goes on, we see him pushing that sadness deep down until there’s just anger. I don’t think it’s a perfect performance by any means, and sometimes contrasts too greatly with the performance of his surrogate uncle, Ernst (Ludwig Donath).
To me, Ernst is what grounds this episode. At the start of this story, Peter is still sympathetic to Ernst, even though Ernst represents what Peter claims to hate publicly. However, when Vollmer is approached by his “guide” (I’m still giving you three guesses!) to becoming a fascist dictator, it’s when that wedge between himself and Ernst starts manifesting.
While hearing a speech of Vollmer’s from across the street in a diner, Ernst has this conversation with the proprietor:
Ernst Ganz: I've seen it before. I've seen it all before.
Proprietor: That was another time, Mr. Ganz. Another place, another kind of people. That doesn't go here.
Ernst Ganz: That's what we said, too. They were brown scum. Temporary insanity, part of the passing scene, too monstrous to be real. So, we ignored them or laughed at them. Because we couldn't believe that there were enough insane people to walk alongside of them. And then one morning, the country woke up from an uneasy sleep, and there was no more laughter. The Peter Vollmers had taken over. The wild animals had changed places with us in the cage. But not again. It mustn't happen again. We can't let it. We simply can't let it happen again. All, all that nightmare. Oh, no. No, not this time.
There’s something about this quote that feels prescient today. Donald Trump is often mocked because many people did not believe that the majority of our country would elect him to be president again. We have normalized him and now our freedoms as Americans are being attacked. Folks are being illegally deported (or let’s call it what it is; kidnapped). Freedom of speech is being eviscerated (Trump only allows the press that he likes during press conferences and suing other networks who dare speak ill of him), and he continues to name-call and rile up his base in order to fuel the fire of the already divided America that we live in today. I know I may have readers of different beliefs here, and I welcome that, but I do believe that Donald Trump is one of the Peter Vollmers of the world. And I think Rod Serling would be of that same mind. Here’s his message to the American people following this episode…
Where will he go next? This phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare. Chicago? Los Angeles? Miami, Florida? Vincennes, Indiana? Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there's hate, where there's prejudice, where there's bigotry. He's alive. He's alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He's alive because, through these things, we keep him alive. - Rod Serling’s Closing Narration in He’s Alive (1963)
The Twilight Zone is currently streaming on Paramount + or you can buy it on Blu-Ray or DVD (I have the Blu-ray set and it is amazing!) And if you just want to watch this episode, you can purchase it separately on any VOD platform.
Next week, I’ll be teaming up with
to talk about the film influences on the original play that I wrote called Scab for Hire which will be making its world premiere this summer at The Hive Collaborative in St. Paul, then shortly after having a run at Chicago Dramatists! (Click on the Budding Heads page linked above for more information).See you next Tuesday, and until then, make sure that you subscribe for a new post every Tuesday! If you’re already subscribed to the free tier, you're more than welcome to stay there, but if you want to support my writing even further and have access to all the archives, consider upgrading your membership. You can either pay $5/month or $50/year. Thank you!