The Rip Van Winkle Caper

"The Rip Van Winkle Caper"
	The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 2; Episode 24
Directed by	Justus Addiss
Written by	Rod Serling
Production code	173-3655
Original air date	April 21, 1961
Guest appearance(s)
	Simon Oakland; Oscar Beregi, Jr.; Lew Gallo; John Mitchum;

"The Rip Van Winkle Caper" is episode 60 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on April 21, 1961 on CBS.

Opening narration

Introducing, four experts in the questionable art of crime: Mr. Farwell, expert on noxious gases, former professor, with a doctorate in both chemistry and physics; Mr. Erbie, expert in mechanical engineering; Mr. Brooks, expert in the use of firearms and other weaponry; and Mr. De Cruz, expert in demolition and various forms of destruction. The time is now, and the place is a mountain cave in Death Valley, U.S.A. In just a moment, these four men will utilize the services of a truck placed in cosmoline, loaded with a hot heist cooled off by a century of sleep, and then take a drive into The Twilight Zone.

Plot

To escape the law after stealing $1 million worth of gold bricks (equal to $8.6 million today) from a train on its way from Fort Knox to Los Angeles, a band of four thieves, led by scientist-mastermind Farwell, hide in a secret cave in Death Valley, California. Farwell explains to his three assistants that he has designed suspended animation chambers in which they will sleep for approximately 100 years, figuring that by 2061 the gold will no longer be "hot" and they can sell it without arousing suspicion. DeCruz has reservations about going along with the plan, but all four undergo the procedure simultaneously.

When they wake up, all that remains of the mechanical engineer Erbie is his skeleton, his suspended animation chamber having been cracked by a falling rock. The demolitions expert, De Cruz, offers to guard the gold in the back of their truck while the firearms expert, Brooks, drives to civilization, but Brooks does not trust De Cruz and insists that he drive. De Cruz kills Brooks by running into him with the truck, but when the brakes fail, he bails out and the truck crashes into a ravine. Farwell and De Cruz now must walk through the desert in the summer heat, carrying as much gold as they can on their backs.

Farwell loses his canteen, and De Cruz sells him a sip of water from his canteen, for the price of one gold bar. When the water is nearly gone and the fee goes up to two bars, Farwell strikes De Cruz with a gold brick, killing him. Farwell continues, gradually discarding gold bars as their weight becomes increasingly burdensome. Finally, weak and dehydrated, he collapses.

Farwell regains consciousness and finds a man standing over him. Farwell feebly offers him his last gold bar in exchange for water and a ride to the nearest town, but dies before the man can respond. The man returns to his futuristic car and tells his wife the man is dead. He remarks about the oddity of Farwell offering him a gold bar as if it were valuable. She reminds him that people once used it for money, but he points out that was a long time ago, before they found a way to manufacture it.

Closing narration

The last of four Rip Van Winkles, who all died precisely the way they lived, chasing an idol across the sand to wind up bleached dry in the hot sun as so much desert flotsam, worthless as the gold bullion they built a shrine to. Tonight's lesson - in The Twilight Zone.

Cast

Simon Oakland as DeCruz
Oscar Beregi, Jr. as Farwell
Lew Gallo as Brooks
John Mitchum as Erbie
Wallace Rooney as George
Shirley O'Hara as George's wife

Production notes

The futuristic car carrying the couple who find the dying Farwell is a leftover prop, somewhat modified, from MGM's 1956 film Forbidden Planet.

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

External links

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The 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" "Judgment 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" "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"

Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" (1819)
Film	Rip Van Winkle (1903) Rip's Dream (1905) Rip Van Winkle (1910) Rip Van Winkle (1912) Rip Van Winkle (1921)
Other	Rip Van Winkle (operetta) "The Rip Van Winkle Caper"