While The Twilight Zone was never billed as a straight-up horror show, the series was at its best when it was trying to be scary. Rod Serling and the other writers would often include monsters in their episodes as an easy and effective way to frighten viewers. The best of these monsters would stick around long after Serling gave his closing monologue and nest in the viewer’s subconscious, forcing them to look under their beds and check their closets before settling in for the night. The fact that the original series could present such effective creatures on a budget with the limited special effects available in the early ’60s is a testament to the cast and crew’s creativity.
Of course, not all of the monsters in The Twilight Zone were supernatural in origin. Sometimes the show would present viewers with the kind of evil they passed on the way to work every morning, tucked in every night before bed, or saw reflected back at them in the bathroom mirror several times a day. Before we go any further, we should mention that there are no aliens on this list — we’re saving them for another ranking — so don’t expect to see any Kanamits or Martians. With that out of the way, let’s get into it. This is our ranking of the 10 best monsters from The Twilight Zone.
10) Mannequins – “The After Hours”
The Twilight Zone episode “The After Hours” features a mannequin-turned-woman with amnesia being ganged up on by her fellow dummies and forced to revert back into what Rod Serling calls “a wooden lady with a painted face.” Mannequins on their own aren’t particularly scary, but sentient Mannequins that can walk around and turn humans into giant dolls? Pure nightmare fuel. Thankfully, due to the technological limits of the time, we never actually see the Mannequins walking around, in their wooden form. Otherwise, this list might look a lot different.
9) Doppleganger – “Mirror, Mirror”
With “Mirror, Mirror,” Rod Serling asks the chilling question: What would you do if your exact double suddenly appeared and tried to take over your life? That’s the question Millicent Barnes is forced to answer when her doppelganger crosses over into the real world from the Twilight Zone and attempts to replace her. The Doppelganger takes humankind’s deepest fear — being replaced — and gives it a physical form. In a day and age when identity theft is rampant, the horrors of the doppleganger are even more relevant now than they were in 1960 when the episode first aired.
8) Willy – “The Dummy”
Is there anything creepier than a ventriloquist dummy? Unfortunately, the answer is yes: a ventriloquist dummy that can talk and move on its own. Living Dummies have been a staple of scary stories since the dawn of puppetry. Goosebumps, Tales From the Crypt, and plenty of other anthologies have done the killer Dummy trope, but none quite as effectively as The Twilight Zone. “The Dummy” is a tense half-hour that flip-flops between Willy being alive and his performer Jerry hallucinating the whole thing. Not until the very end does “The Dummy” reveal that Willy isn’t only alive, he’s actually switched places with Jerry, turning the ventriloquist into a wooden dummy and cementing his place as one of The Twilight Zone‘s best monsters.
7) The Hitchhiker – “The Hitchhiker”
What makes the Hitchhiker such a good monster is his perseverance. No matter where driver Nan Adams stops her car, the mysterious Hitchhiker is there waiting for her. Across countless miles, he effortlessly follows her, always a few feet behind, silently waiting. Eventually, Nan comes to the chilling conclusion that she’s dead and the Hitchhiker is some Final Destination-style personification of Death who’s stalking her.
And like Death, he’s content to follow slowly, knowing that no matter how long Nan manages to outrun him, eventually, he will catch up to her. With the Hitchhiker, it’s never a matter of if but when.
6) The Devil – “The Howling Man”
Whether you call him Satan, Beelzebub, or Lucifer, the Devil’s presence means you’re going to have a bad time. Old Scratch appeared four times over the course of The Twilight Zone‘s run, usually whenever a lopsided deal was waiting to be made.
While not his first appearance, Season 2’s “The Howling Man” is the only episode of The Twilight Zone to present Mephistopheles in his traditional horn-and-goatee’d look. Despite looking like a regular Joe more often than not, the Devil is still one of The Twilight Zone‘s most formidable antagonists; after all, he is the Devil.
5) Pig-face People – “Eye of the Beholder”
The Twilight Zone made a habit of focusing on the Monsters within, but every now and then, it would startle viewers with a creature feature like “Eye of the Beholder,” starring what we’re going to call the “pig-face people” for simplicity’s sake.
We feel bad calling the pig-face people from “Eye of the Beholder” monsters, considering the episode’s main lesson is not judging people based on their looks. The simple yet grotesque design of the pig-faces, with their oversized noses and exaggerated upper lips, is so good that it still gives us chills today.
4) Talky Tina – “Living Doll”
Mannequins and Dummies are one thing, but killer dolls are on a whole other level. While modern homicidal toys like M3GAN and Chucky prove that “killer doll” is practically a genre unto itself, they pale in comparison to the original, Talky Tina. The smallest monster on this list, Tina, is also the most sinister. The diabolical doll doesn’t beat around the bush. She tells her victims straight out: “I’m Talky Tina and I don’t think I like you.” If whoever is on the receiving end of that warning doesn’t change their ways, Tina will deliver the more direct line, “I’m Talky Tina and I’m going to kill you.”
As poor Telly Savalas finds out firsthand in the episode “Living Doll,” Tina is a doll of her word, and God help anyone who gets in her way.
3) Gremlin – “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”
Anybody with even a passing knowledge of The Twilight Zone should recognize the above creature giving William Shatner the stink eye. While the gremlin design from “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” hasn’t held up as well as the pig-face people, the concept is just as scary as it’s ever been. An inhuman creature that creeps along the outside of airplanes, the Gremlin claws at the wings of unsuspecting flights, hoping to cause a fatal crash.
For many people, flying is a terrifying, white knuckle experience, and the Gremlin is the horrifying embodiment of that terror. Imagine if every fear and anxiety you had about soaring 20,000 feet above the ground was concentrated in a single fur-covered beast whose only goal was to kill you in one of the most horrible ways possible. Now that’s a monster.
2) Anthony – “It’s a Good Life”
For many people, kids are already a scary proposition. Throw in the powers of a god, and you’ve got the makings of one of the most terrifying monsters in Twilight Zone history. Anthony is a spoiled six-year-old boy with unlimited power and no one to tell him no. He can kill with a thought and regularly makes creatures like a three-headed gopher that he then kills for his own amusement. If that sounds horrifying, just wait until you find out what he does to humans.
In one of the sickest scenes in any episode, Anthony gets mad at a man and transforms him into a human jack-in-the-box. The other adults are so disgusted by Anthony’s “creation” that they beg him to wish it away. While Twilight Zone: The Movie would remake “It’s a Good Life” with a version of Anthony who is somewhat sympathetic and willing to change his ways, the original series presented Anthony as a cold-hearted monster with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, who just happens to be child-shaped.
1) Humans – Various Episodes
Surprise, the real monster was us all along. From “The Monster’s are Due on Maple Street,” to the many episodes dealing with nuclear holocaust, The Twilight Zone has never been shy about presenting people as the scariest monsters of all. Even in an episode like “Talking Doll,” with a literal killer toy, the evil Stepfather is the real villain.
One of Rod Serling’s greatest talents as a writer was his ability to strip away humankind’s self-importance and expose the base urges underneath. Greed, lust, revenge, people will do anything to satisfy their barbaric appetites, even if it means turning on each other like a pack of wild animals.
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