One Of The Twilight Zone’s Best Episodes Perfected The Horror Western Genre 64 Years Ago

adminMarch 18, 2025

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Even decades after it originally aired, The Twilight Zone’s “The Grave” is still an eerie example of the horror Western genre. It feels like Bone Tomahawk has become the horror Western to beat in the last decade, with that 2015 film being a relatively straightforward “Oater” until the horrific, blood-soaked final act. Horror Westerns are a particularly underserved subgenre, as there aren’t many movies that earn that label. Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter has a supernatural edge, while Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark or John Carpenter’s Vampires earned the badge too.

The Twilight Zone tried out several Western-themed episodes, but “The Grave” is undoubtedly the best. The setup is simple; gunfighter Conny (Lee Marvin, The Dirty Dozen) is branded a coward for failing to kill an outlaw he was chasing, and tasked with sticking a knife in the man’s grave. Adding to the tension is that this outlaw vowed on his deathbed to kill Conny if he came near his resting place. Closing with one of The Twilight Zone’s trademark twists, “The Grave” is an atmospheric slow-burn that will have audiences questioning if the curse was real or not.

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“The Grave” Is A Great Twilight Zone Episode & Shows How To Do Horror Westerns

“The Grave” fuses the two genres perfectly

Lee Marvin stabs a grave in The Twilight Zone

A typical Twilight Zone episode belongs to the sci-fi or horror genres, so a Western offering is a nice surprise – especially when creator Rod Serling emerges from the set to introduce the story. “The Grave” has all the trappings of a TV Western from this era like Gunsmoke, but the ghost story at its core gives it an edge. The townspeople who hired Conny were scared of Pinto Sykes while he was alive, but his dying words have made some of them even more afraid.

The graveyard Conny pushes himself to visit looks like a Gothic nightmare out of Universal horror, and while there are no ghosts or other tangible threats to speak throughout this Twilight Zone tale, there’s something sinister about the atmosphere it conjures. Conny has no logical reason to believe Pinto’s curse is real, but he is nevertheless terrified while visiting the outlaw’s grave. “The Grave’s” horror Western bona fides come from taking the tropes of the latter and mixing them with a good old-fashioned ghost story.

Whether Conny’s death in “The Grave” was supernatural is left up to audiences to decide…

“The Grave’s” ending is sure to stick with viewers too. Conny completes his task of sticking a blade into Pinto’s grave – only to get pulled offscreen. The townsfolk later find Conny’s body and discover he accidentally stabbed the knife into his coat, and believe the tug he received scared him to death. However, Pinto’s sister points out that the wind should have blown his coat away from the grave. Whether Conny’s death was supernatural is left up to audiences to decide, but “The Grave’s” creepy undertones and Ione being stylized as a grim reaper suggest Pinto’s curse was real.

The Twilight Zone Had Several Great Western Episodes

“A Hundred Yards Over the Rim” is another top Twilight Zone Western

The Twilight Zone episode "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim"

“The Grave” is the most unnerving of The Twilight Zone’s trips to the Old West, but the show revisited the genre many times. Serling himself was a fan of the genre, and once the show ended, he created his own short-lived Western The Loner in the aftermath. Within The Twilight Zone itself, Serling penned most of the Western offerings, including “Execution,” “Mr Denton on Doomsday” and “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim.”

One of the townsfolk making bets about Conny’s bravery is played by Western icon Lee Van Cleef (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).

Just like “The Grave,” every Western episode of The Twilight Zone takes the genre’s motifs and twists them in unique ways. “Mr Denton on Doomsday” approaches the classic Western showdown from a very different angle, while “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim” sees a man from an 1847 wagon train suddenly finding himself in the present day. Westerns were still popular during this period, allowing Serling and his crew to offer some inventive takes on the genre.