The Rip Van Winkle Caper

"**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 appearances
	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;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim"	Next →; "The Silence"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series, season 2)
	List of episodes

"The Rip Van Winkle Caper" is episode 60 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, and is the 24th episode of the second season. It originally aired on April 21, 1961 on CBS, and was written by series creator and showrunner Rod Serling, and was directed by Justus Addiss.

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

Four men are fleeing from the law in a truck after stealing $1 million worth of gold bars from a train bound from Fort Knox to Los Angeles. The thieves, consisting of scientist/mastermind Farwell, demolitions expert De Cruz, firearms expert Brooks, and mechanical engineer Erbie, hide in a secret cave in Death Valley, where Farwell has hidden a set of suspended animation chambers for the group to sleep for approximately 100 years. After that time, he expects that they will be able to sell the gold without raising suspicion. De Cruz has reservations about the plan, but all four men enter the chambers.

When they wake up, they find that Erbie has died, his chamber broken open by a falling rock. De Cruz offers to guard the gold and their truck while Brooks drives to civilization, but Brooks does not trust De Cruz and insists that he drive. De Cruz kills Brooks with the truck, but when the brakes fail, he bails out and leaves the truck to crash into a ravine. As a result, Farwell and De Cruz are forced to walk through the desert in the summer heat, carrying as much gold as they can on their backs.

Along the road, Farwell discovers he has lost his canteen and begins trading gold bars to De Cruz in exchange for some of his water. When De Cruz increases the price, Farwell strikes him with a bar and kills him. Farwell gathers up as much gold as he can carry and continues on, but is forced to discard it gradually as the weight becomes increasingly burdensome. Finally, weak and dehydrated, he collapses.

Farwell regains consciousness and finds a man standing over him. He feebly offers his last gold bar in exchange for water and a ride to the nearest town, but dies before the man can respond. Upon returning to his car, the man tells his wife that Farwell is dead and remarks that the latter offered him a gold bar as if it were valuable. She reminds him that people once used gold for money, but he points out that that was a long time ago, before mankind 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.

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.^{[citation needed]}

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

"The Rip Van Winkle Caper" at IMDb

v t e 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"

v t e 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" Rip Van Winkle (statue)