"The Twilight Zone" Living Doll (1963)

Director:

Richard C. Sarafian

Writers:

Charles Beaumont (written by)
Rod Serling (creator)

TV Series:

"The Twilight Zone" (1959)

Original Air Date:

1 November 1963 (Season 5, Episode 6)

Genre:

Drama | Fantasy | Horror | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Plot:

A frustrated father does battle with his stepdaughter's talking doll, whose vocabulary includes such phrases as "I hate you" and "I'm going to kill you". |

Plot Keywords:

Doll | Talking Doll | Broken Neck | Stepfather Stepdaughter Relationship | Winking

US TV Schedule:

Fri. Jan. 1

5:01 PM

SYFY

Living Doll

#5.6

Cast

Telly Savalas	...	Erich Streator
Mary LaRoche	...	Annabelle Streator
Tracy Stratford	...	Christie Streator

Runtime:

26 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Filming Locations:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios - 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA

Company:

Cayuga Productions

Trivia:

Tina and Christie are both nicknames for Christina. The doll and the child share a name, so among many other interpretations it could be argued that the doll is a proxy through which Christie expresses hostility toward her stepfather and protects her shy, frightened mother.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Eric pulls Tina from the trash can after he agrees to return her to Christie, he unwraps the cord from around her neck twice.

Quotes:

Talky Tina: My Name is Talky Tina and I am going to kill you.

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in "The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror III (#4.5)" (1992)

Twilight Zone, Sci-fi and the Dark Side of Dolls

There was also another malevolent doll To-to from the X Minus 1 tale "Perigi's (sp?) Wonderful Dolls" in the mid '50's. This diminutive daemon had a much bigger agenda than our Little Miss Wonderful.

I believe that Bob Cummings also had a "Living Doll" that was nowhere near malevolent: Rhoda the Robot was an android trying to make it as a person in this sitcom from the middle 1960's

Along these lines was another "doll", an episode of Twilight Zone, the title of which I forget features a man who is sentenced to live a solitary life on some habitable planetoid. As an act of kindness, the fellow who brought him supplies brought him a kit to build a robot girl, with unsettling results...

So it seems that there were quite a few dolls before Chucky came to torment up. In fact, it seems that Chucky was a Johnny-Come-Lately.

As recently as 2007, I heard June Foray, being interviewed on WBZ 1030-AM being interviewed, do a but of Talky Tina

I also found interesting in the reference to the names Christie and Tina, the idea that the doll was acting out the little girl's thoughts, I thought I was the only one who got that notion

I wonder what became of the doll that was Talky Tina

For those of you wondering what became of Talky Tina: she turned up in the Thirtieth Century

HTTP://spacepatrol.us/wantedtina.html

where she is still cause persons a good deal of consternation.Or, maybe she came from then.

Enjoy