One Of The Scariest Episodes Of The Twilight Zone Had Almost No Dialogue

As for the invaders themselves, they didn’t just look small on-screen. They were made “life size” on the set, and were performed by the episode’s director using two fingers for the arms, and two fingers for the legs. “By having them that size, she was able to grab them physically and hurl them across the room, which made it far more interesting than if you were using process and she couldn’t really touch them,” Douglas Heyes explained in “The Twilight Zone Companion.”

Heyes claims the inspiration for the design came from the Michelin Tire Man, and served two purposes: The invaders looked like they weren’t human, but after the revelation that they are actually human, it made sense in retrospect: “Ah hah! Then therefore, they were in inflated spacesuits, right?”

Apparently not content to play his invaders with his own hands, he also provided the voice of the aliens as well. At the end of the episode, when the humans inside the UFO make a radio announcement to Earth, warning them of this planet of terrifying and violent giants, “that was my voice,” Heyes said, “because I was those little guys.”

Heyes’s enthusiasm for the episode’s depiction of the invaders wasn’t shared by the episode’s author, Richard Matheson, who, in addition to claiming the episode was paced too slowly, said: “I thought those little roly-poly dolls were ridiculous looking. The way I had written it, you would only catch very quick views of them and never anything clear. To see these little things waddling across the floor was about as frightening as Peter Rabbit coming at you.”