A Thing About Machines

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The Twilight Zone: A Thing About Machines

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Plot

Magazine critic Bartlett Finchley (Richard Haydn) despises all things mechanical, from electric typewriters to refrigerators. Such is his invective against machinery that, inevitably, all the machines in his household band together and turn against him. This was one of those "you can see the end coming a mile away" episodes that tended to weaken Twilight Zone's second season. First telecast October 28, 1960, "A Thing About Machines" was written by Rod Serling. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A Thing About Machines

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"A Thing About Machines"

The Twilight Zone episode

Richard Haydn as Bartlett Finchley

Episode no.

Season 2
Episode 40

Directed by

David Orrick McDearmon

Written by

Rod Serling

Production code

173-3645

Original air date

October 28, 1960

Guest actors

Richard Haydn: Bartlett Finchley
Barbara Stuart: Edith Rogers
Barney Phillips: TV repairman
Jay Overholts: Intern
Henry Beckman: Policeman
Lew Brown: Telephone repairman
Margarita Cordova: Girl

Episode chronology

← Previous
"Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room"

Next →
"The Howling Man"

List of Twilight Zone episodes

"A Thing About Machines" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Contents

1 Plot
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

Plot

Bartlett Finchley is an ill-tempered gourmet magazine critic who reviles humanity, though he seems to be lonely at the same time. He's as inept with machines as he is with people. Frustrated, he constantly abuses machines and starts to think machines are conspiring against him. The people he tells about this write him off as paranoid, but eventually every machine in his house (including his car) turns on him. His typewriter types the message, "GET OUT OF HERE FINCHLEY." The TV shows the same message on the screen, and a voice on the phone speaks the same words when he tries to make a call. His electric razor rises into the air to attack him, and slithers down the stairs in pursuit of him. Finchley runs from the house and is chased by his driverless car. The car chases him to his pool and pushes him in. He sinks to the bottom and drowns. When the police pull him out of the water, they cannot explain how he could sink to the bottom when he was not weighted down (normally, a body would float), nor could they explain the car nearby the pool. They theorize he may have had a heart attack.

References

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0 Michigan Progressive metal band named "A Thing About Machines"

External links

v t e Twilight Zone (1959) episodes

Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgement Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"

Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "The Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble With Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"

Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"

Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"

Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander With Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"

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