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The famous Hitchcock twist endings sometimes fall flat in 1985. But when they ) work, they leave the viewer with a unique frisson: a grin accompanied by a sinking feeling in the stomach. In the best of the season's segments to date, Season Hubley played a convicted murderer who attempts a prison escape by hiding in a coffin about to be buried. Director Thomas Carter toyed masterfully with the audience's emotions, turning the protagonist from tearful victim to scheming bitch and back again in seconds. The half-hour story moved like a rifle shot (the inferior original was a full hour), and the grisly ending packed a wallop.
The world view is considerably sunnier on Amazing Stories. Creator Spielberg sees the supernatural as an object of wonderment and a source of fun: in one clever installment, an actor portraying a mummy wanders off a movie set and encounters a real mummy. Too many episodes have strained for comic-book laughs revolving around TV in-jokes (some teenagers contact an outer-space civilization that is reproducing old TV sitcoms). Yet even the worst shows have had moments of wit and a let's-try-anything charm.
An entire season of duds, however, would have been offset by The Mission. The hour-long tale, directed by Spielberg himself, followed a World War II bomber crew on its "bad luck" 23rd mission. The plane's landing gear is knocked out in a dogfight, and a young gunner finds himself trapped inside a turret in the plane's belly. The scenes inside the aircraft had the claustrophobic intensity of Das Boot; the crew members were credibly scared and human; and the suspense built as relentlessly as in Jaws. Despite a fanciful and unsatisfying climax, the show was a small masterpiece. It may not happen again all season. But were it not for the anthology revival, it might not have happened at all.