oldhollywood:

Marius Constant - Twilight Zone Theme (via The Twilight Zone: Original Television Scores)

THE YEAR WAS 1959 or 1958 or so. Rod Serling was a dude who was totally sick of trying to get his pinko politics on TV in the form of serious dramas (if it were up to him, all television in the 60’s would have been basically Requiem for a Heavyweight all the time, instead of Gilligan’s Island and Mad Men). So he decided he was gonna do sci-fi/fantasy stuff, and sneak his politics into THAT, and nobody would be the wiser.

Anyway: he needs someone to do his theme song, so he gets Bernard Herrmann, famous for composing every awesome score ever, especially Hitchock’s ones (REMEMBER THIS FOR A MINUTE). Herrmann drops this tune on him (this is not the original video, alas):

This is a pretty decent song, no doubt. But it also sounds a little interstitial, like it should play while a dude is trying to get a stewardess’s attention.

In its second season, along moseys Marius Constant, with a little ditty he whipped up. Serling considers both, and drops Herrmann (!) for this:

Twilight Zone Intro

Obviously this is the only choice. It’s creepy and substantial. You have a simple back and forth between two notes, which is an easy way to make something impossibly to forget. In the background, we alternate between horns and bongos, a fairly incongruous pairing. It’s all so jarring it’s completely unforgettable.

Meanwhile, by the by, Bernard Herrmann went on to do this:

This bears, in my opinion, a kind of surprising resemblance to Constant’s Twilight Zone theme. And I’d actually suggest they’re about equally famous. So all’s well, etc.

Rod Serling’s voiceover here is an essential component, especially because it’s so unnecessary. We get it, Rod, everything’s weird around here. But I think his soothing baritone is meant to lull us into a sort of sleepy, dreamlike state. It helps us accept the logical leaps we’re asked to make. We’re in outer space, here are some items that have nothing to do with each other.

The Twilight Zone’s excellent, but Futurama’s parody of it is dead on:

And, of course, the best one: