"Ring-a-Ding Girl"

"Ring-a-Ding Girl"

An actress sees images of loved ones in a ring.

Stars Maggie McNamara, Mary Munday.
Original air date: December 27, 1963.

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This one had one creepy, confusing ending. Absolutely loved the twist as I totally didn't see it coming. Also very touching to me when she says "bye" like that. Left lots of questions unanswered that you had to think about too which I really loved.

An excellent episode. I love it. Maggie McNamara was beautiful. It was funny, touching and sad all at once.

I didn't get this one at first, but grew to like it.
Not bad, not that great either.

A cop is played by Vic Perrin, "The Outer Limits" narrator,
also a Martian in "People Are Alike All Over."
The pilot is played by Bill Hickman, stunt driver and actor
in "Bullitt," "The French Connection" and "The Seven-Ups."

thanx for the info, Kanamit. i have to look for the cop, in his other TZ ep.

well i always loved this ep, as a kid it creeped me out a bit how they were calling her from the ring, but in a good way. and as a kid i never totally understood the ending till mummy explained it to me , but good ep overall. i gave it an 8. plus this is one i never tire of watching.

How did mummy explain it? I'd like to know the answer myself!

"5" A little too supernatural even for the Zone. Like explaining the disappearance in Mr. Garrity.

Leen

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well mum explained to me how Barb was there to save everyone from going to that picnic. hence her asking them all to see her perform live instead of going to the Founder's Day Picnic, granted it made her look sorta like a spoiled celeb, but in hindsight, many ppl would have died had they not chosen to see her instead. so basically she was dead herself, or would be soon, but she was also able to visit her old home town and save a lot of ppl, yet also be on the plane when it crashed as well. it's quite sad at the end to me, how she fades away and everything, and th e rain and all that.

I agrre with what TZer has said. Let me add some more of my own interpretation. Basically--***SPOILER***




(on Leen's advice, I'm going down 5 lines for a spoiler now, instead of my usual 3. This, by the way, is so that people don't come to the spoiler accidentally, in case anyone was wondering why people do that. Upon further input from members, I'm willing to make the space even bigger.)
--1) Bunny was in two places at the same time, her hometown and the plane. From what I see in the ep, the two Bunnies must have had two different consciousnesses as well as two different "bodies" (for lack of a better word). The question might arise: "If they had separate consciousnesses as well as separate bodies, what makes them both Bunny?" I think there's more than one possible answer for that. You can probably think of one that you like.
2) The way I see it, Bunny's hometown "body" had some material properties and some ghost-like properties. She was material enough to undergo a medical exam without her "ghostliness" being detected, but she was "ghostly" enough to appear and disappear at will, and turn off vacuum cleaners while doing so. Maybe she was just ghost-like while she was appearing and disappearing, but could "solidify" into a material form and "evaporate" out of it.

I gave it a 6 because it is not one that I enjoy watching all that often, but the twist at the end was so unexpected, imo, that it makes it above average for me. I find it difficult to believe that she could undergo and examination if she was only a ghost. Again, this is the Twilight Zone and anything can happen, but it seems a little far fetched, which knocks it down a notch. Also, the overall tone of the episode wasn't as exciting to me as others, but the ending was a good one, especially for Season 5.

I like the acting in this one, and the writing good, but I'm not a huge fan of the ending. I think it's kind of weak and too confusing. Still, a good episode.

8/10

liked the episode more than i remembered.

my thoughts on the ending..
**possible spoilers**






i think bunny did not know right away what was going on, only that she needed to go home. as she got the 'visions' from the ring she slowly realised what she needed to do. her first vision of her sister made bunny think something was up with her sister.. bunny asks hildy if she is alright when she arrives home. bunny's fainting was just a symptom of her realising that something bad would happen to her and/or her hometown.
-ag

Starting here there's some discussion of Maggie McNamara's death.

Thanks Beev, I'll read it when I have more time.

Love this one. I gave it a solid 8. A lot of folks think it's confusing but, we're dealing with the unknown! You always have to give the supernatural a little leeway.

There may be another explanation for how Bunny could be in two places at once - a possibility that Bevis doesn't mention. Here is my possible theory. It could very well be a time paradox. Perhaps at the time the plane crashed, Bunny was sent back in time. Maybe in the original version of things, the picnic was going on when the plane crashed and hundreds of people died. So, she was sent back to make things right. She couldn't change HER fate, because eventually "real time" would catch up with her. But she really wasn't aware of her fate until almost the end anyway, because it may have prevented her from doing "the right thing". As far as how she disappeared, at the time the plane crashed, the 2 timelines joined up and negated her existence in town because she really died on the plane. Think of Marty McFly's siblings gradually disappearing in Back to the Future!

That's just another possibility. I think the fact that it leaves room for interpretation is what makes it so interesting. (You may also remember that AWTSWO is another of my favorites, which leaves many questions unanswered.) Regardless, Bunny walking out into the rain is one of my favorite moments in the Zone. That's just such a beautiful, eerie shot.

Works for me, Becky! Thanks for providing another angle on that. I never thought of that possibility.

This is not one of my favorite episodes, but I also like the moment when Bunny says goodbye and then walks out into the rain. Very haunting (no pun intended).

I agree whole-heartedly! If an episode can appear confusing, or have no concrete answer, then it has succeeded in being very effective and entertaining. I love episodes/shows/movies like that. My first voting I apparently gave this a '6', but I've seen it a couple of times since then and I'd up it to a '7'.

I like this episode, and didn't see the twist coming the first time I saw it. Let's call it a 7.

Iron wrote.......

I like this episode, and didn't see the twist coming the first time I saw it.
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This is one I saw only one time in syndication only about 3 years ago.
I won't be seeing it again until somewhere around the first of the year when the Definitive Edition S5 comes out.

I had been playing poker for probably about 8 hours and came home to crash but watched this first instead.
( TZ was scheduled to come on SCI-FI but I didn't know which one)

I was a little drowsy but I DO remember saying (WTF?) at the end of the episode.
Took me a little bit to figure it out but I was indeed thrown and was very pleasantly intrigued.
I am really looking forward to this one again.

Thank you and good night.
TZ DZ Fan

I agree that the ending to this one is a great Zone moment. Eerie and touching at the same time.

Hank

Getting the history on Maggie McNamara makes the ending even more haunting. Hard to believe someone as attactive and talented as here was never able to contribute again due to mental illness and other problems.


Olly

I gave it a 7

I love how the twist ending is kind of ironic. Throughout the episode, I thought Bunny was a selfish, spoiled actress and only cared about herself, but in the end she actually saved all those people.

Is anyone here familiar with the 1965 movie Bunny Lake Is Missing, starring Laurence Olivier and Carol Lynley? Although I see no TZ alumni in the cast, IMDb's plot outline has a definite TZ ring to it:

"A woman reports that her young daughter is missing, but there seems to be no evidence that she ever existed."

Anyway, I wonder whether the title character's name was inspired by that of Bunny Blake?

Isn't that what Jodie Foster's "Flight Plan" was supposed to be about? I haven't seen either one.

that sounds more like the plot to that horrible movie 'the forgotten'..

i think i like this episode its the facese the woman was make in this episode its so cute

Isn't that what Jodie Foster's "Flight Plan" was supposed to be about? I haven't seen either one.

Yes, that's kind of true. I saw it recently. It was very predictable really. There's a gaping plot hole that really gives it all away.

*Spoilers*
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If you'd lost both Husband and daughter, wouldn't you be flying BOTH back to the US for burial? Not just the hubby?

Just got a chance to sit and watch this one again after several years, and I saw it in its full glory not the butchered syndication version.

I remembered this one and I never really did quite "get" the ending before.
This ep is definately a good bit underrated IMO as there were several good performances in this one.

The whole "was she there or was she not" ending and the way she disappeared out into the rain was one of the better moments of the Season and one I will definately remember from the whole series.

I'm a tad stumped as to why this one doesn't get much attention here, but I can see where it might not appeal to everyone.
Perhaps this is one that doesn't air too many times in syndication.

8 From me and I'm not ashamed to say this one choked me up just a little bit, the other night towards the end.

Thank you and good night.
TZ DZ Fan

I agree. I really like this episode. Maybe its because I haven't watched the syndicated version, only the full DVD version. I got it straight away and give it a firm 9.

I have never seen the DVD version. What parts have been cut out TZ DZ fan?


Olly

OLLY POPE wrote........

I have never seen the DVD version. What parts have been cut out TZ DZ fan?
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If you want the truth, I was just referring to the tendency that Sci-Fi has towards cutting a moment or 2 out of the eps as they often seem to do.
I must admit that I now don't have Sci-Fi, but the few I had seen on that particular channel definately sometimes had a moment or 2 cut from them.

One I remember specifically in "The Lonely" was the part where Alicia and Corey? (I forgot his name now) were together in the darkness looking at the stars.
That was one of the more beautiful parts of the ep and definately took a little bit away from it IMO.

I know this doesn't really answer your question, but the first time I watched it, I had been playing a marathon session of poker and had been up for many hours and was a little "punch drunk".
I can't really say for sure what part they trimmed up, but I am sure Dan Hollis here or J. Bevis or maybe someone else would know .
I don't remember anything standing out but the ending was one of the more weird ones for me to figure out, as pointed out earlier in this thread.

Regardless I really like this one.

Thank you and good night.
TZ DZ Fan
P.S. Sorry about not answering this any sooner but I have had a few "marathon sessions" as of late as well.

ALL TZ episodes have portions cut out if they air on Sci-fi! The only two that don't have syndie cuts are "An Occurance At Owl Creek Bridge" and "The Encounter" and that's because they've never been syndicated

Thanks TZFAN and TZ DZ Fan

Here's some oddball trivia: A scene from this episode was used as the cover of the 1984 LP "Zontar Must Die" by the garage punk band The Wombats.

I reviewed this LP for my college paper and hadn't thought of it in years. I finally saw "Ring-a-Ding-Girl" for the first time last week and nearly jumped out of my chair when the album cover suddenly appeared on the screen! Talk about a "Twilight Zone" moment. The cover is taken from the scene where Bunny looks into her watch and gets a warning about the future.

Here is a link to a GIF of the album cover: http://www.bomp.com/Images/200017.gif.

It's actually a pretty good LP too, if anyone wants to tracks it down. It's a deliberarely-retro sounding Stones-like take on 1960s-era "Louie Louie"-styled punk. A single that preceded the LP, "What Can I Do?" was actually voted one of the year's best underground singles by the old Trouser Press new wave magazine.

Welcome, DOBA! Glad you found us. Thanks for the info and link!



Hope you like it here.

Welcome Days of Broken Arrows! I can only imagine you are a Warn Red Carpet or Idle Race fan.

Thanks -- I've been reading the site for months, but had to chime in with that!

Welcome aboard, DBA. It's actually possible to post pictures like that directly without making it necessary to click on the link. Us the IMG button above the message area. Here's the album cover:

Yes, Dr. Moreau, I'm a big Idle Race fan. I'm very surprised someone picked up on that!

With the name: Days of Broken Arrows, I figured you were taking it from the song. My daughter listens to Idle Race and played it for me because she remembered the song from my old vinyl collection - Warn Red Carpet.
Nice song by the way. I also remember the Wombats as well