User Reviews

Crafty small-time con man Arch Hammer (a nicely shifty portrayal by Harry Townes) has the ability to change his face and assume the personalities of other people. Hammer takes on the identity of recently deceased jazz trumpeter Johnny Foster (well played by Ross Martin) so he can seduce Foster's lounge singer lover Maggie (an excellent and affecting performance by Beverly Garland). But things don't go as smoothly as planned.

Director John Brahm keeps the enjoyable story moving along at a snappy pace, makes nifty use of subtle slight of hand visual effects, and ably crafts a snazzy noir atmosphere. Rod Serling's clever script has a ball with the shape shifter premise and culminates in a satisfying harsh comeuppance for Hammer at the end. Moreover, there are sturdy acting contributions from Phillip Pine as fearsome mobster Virge Sterig, Don Gordon as disgraced boxer Andy Marshak, Peter Brocco as Marshak's bitter father, and Bernard Fein as wormy hoodlum Penell. The sharp black and white cinematography George T. Clemens boasts lots of lively camera-work complete with inspired askew angles. Jerry Goldsmith's groovy jazz score further enhances the fun pulpy mood. An on the money show.

An interesting topic, a man who can change his face into the face he is looking at in a photograph. That makes for great advantage when being chased by a couple of gangsters or wanting to be loved by a beautiful woman who isn't attracted to "you" but is in love with a guy in a photo that you can morph into by looking at it. And the morphing only works if the picture is of someone who just died. Arch Hammer is the guy who has the mysterious morphing ability. First, Arch changes himself into a just deceased trumpet musician Johnny. When Arch sees Johnny's pianist singer girlfriend Beverly Garland at the cocktail lounge that Johnny played at, he gets a bit of a yen for her and studies Johnny's picture in the paper and transforms into him, knowing he can now spend a few minutes getting comfy with Beverly, and letting her know that "he didn't really die". Then one of Johnny's fellow trumpet players surprisingly sees "Johnny" and follows him out the door, holds out a light to him and is then told when revealing he's not Johnny "I'll take the light but you've got the wrong guy". Arch then morphs into a recently murdered gangster Virge Sterig and goes to the rival gangster who shot him and dumped him in a river. In the rival's apartment,"Virge" let's him have it and steals all his money. Virge looked like Ray Liotta and his outburst was quite similar to Ray's menacing styled outbursts in his 1980s/1990s films. Then when being chased by his rival's goons, Virge/Arch now morphs into a recently deceased boxer Andy Marshak who's bitter dad has it in for him for abandoning the family.

SPOILER BELOW

Andy/Arch gets shot by his dad and we see his face change into each character, well almost each character seen throughout the episode as he's laying on the ground dying. That particular part was not played out as well as it could've and it seems like they showed two of the guys twice and never showed one of them at all in the face changing while lying on the ground dying scene. Also, at the beginning of the episode, we see a guy Arch changes into while he's looking into a mirror, shaving. That guy is not seen again, plus it would make it five different guys all together and there's supposed to be four due to the name of this episode. The four guys are trumpet player Johnny, gangster Virge, boxer Andy, and Arch himself. Then I thought for a minute does Arch count as one of the four since he's the original, then I realized yes he does because Arch dies too at the end of the episode and the episode is called "The four of us are dying". So I don't know who that fifth guy was they showed, that was sort of a flaw. But the rest of the episode played out pretty well, and this ep was a new and interesting idea not shown before in the TZ series, and that is good.

First of all, this is the Twilight Zone. You don't have to connect it to the real world or fictional world for explanation & back story. It's just quick & episodic, and there's no time to fit a lot in. So suspend all your disbeliefs & try to enjoy. That being said, this is one of the best episodes of The Twilight Zone, with an unique concept. Not everything can be about aliens or apocalypse, time travel or shocking plot twists.

Now for the person making claims that the given story doesn't make any sense, why did he have to mess up with the woman, & all the silly questions. Let me tell you if you couldn't figure it out. This man had probably studied about the dead people he was impersonating, or might've known them somehow indirectly, or even killed them himself & made it look like an accident so he could take advantage of them; honestly it doesn't matter. Sure he could've done something easy, but that wouldn't have been a compelling drama for an episode. So deal with it.

What he wanted was some money that could sustain him for life or a really long time, and a woman that loved him with her life. That's why he seduced the woman by impersonating her lover, and then he impersonated a gangster who was owed a lot of money, & collected his amount. If it wasn't for the turn of events, he was planning to run away with her to Chicago or somewhere else with the acquired money. That's why he was packing his suitcase, as he was planning to meet her at the station like he said. He would've had the money, & the woman who truly loved him.

He was a twisted crook & just wanted to have some fun. Given his age, this could be one of his many little missions, just the most dangerous one yet; and he could always just abandon her later & move on to another mission for fun. He could be doing it for the thrills.

A lot of people misuse their gifts, this is prevalent among a lot classic comic books villains or heroes who turn villains in an alternate universe, there's nothing surprising about it. For all we know, he could be a mutant living on Earth 616 or something & people are not aware of them yet, just like it was in X-Men in the beginning. Nobody mentioned that this was set on our Earth. What would you do if you had the power of invisibility, would completely depend on your nature & personality.

Most of this was pretty much clear from the dialogues, & you certainly didn't pay any attention & missed it. Nothing was meaningless here, it was far too obvious & a lot of potential conclusions can be drawn from it. This simple episode is truly misunderstood if I go by other reviews, but I don't know why. This sort of imaginative piece deserves better, especially when you know about the time it actually came out. Don't give in to the Seinfeld effect, if that's the reason you didn't like this episode instead, because that's just unfortunate & not the episode's fault.

Once you've bought into the premise, you will find this a pretty intriguing episode. It's about a man who can change himself by concentrating hard. He can see a poster and make a chameleon like transfer to that person. Unfortunately, he is a really bad guy whose motives are always questionable. He enjoys his transformations, but always uses them for evil, or at worst a disrespectful self promotion. Unfortunately for him, one of his incarnations confronts the father who hates him because he has brought shame and degradation to his family. This man has only one thing in mind. To see justice done. When you live by the sword, you die by the selfsame sword and this man is no different. It's well done, thought the cheesy transformation scene at the end isn't very well done. It's a theme that Serling employed a couple of other times in his canon of works.

"The Four of Us Are Dying" (1960) uses a unique plot technique from a story by George Clayton Johnson. Small town nobody Harry Townes can change his face to suit his purpose. He transforms himself into a recently deceased musician named Johnny Foster (played by Ross Martin), just so he can have an affair with Johnny's old flame (a very attractive Beverly Garland). His role-playing comes to an abrupt end, however, when he becomes someone who has made a lot of enemies. As the other reviewer correctly noted, there are some holes in the basic premise here, but it doesn't detract from the overall quality of the episode.

The acting is solid in this entry with all the players giving fine performances; Don Gordon is especially good as a disreputable boxer. Creator/narrator Serling wrote the teleplay. This is one of the more interesting and unusual "Zone" episodes. The plot device of interchanging personalities was also used to good effect in a later episode titled "Dead Man's Shoes" with Warren Stevens in 1962.

Arch Hammer (Harry Townes) has a peculiar ability to change his face when concentrating on the photograph or picture of someone, assuming their roles, often startling those who knew the men whose identities he chooses. The three men he decides to imitate are a beloved musician, Johnny Foster (Ross Martin) who was killed by a train, a gangster who was double-crossed by an associate, shot, and dumped in the river, Virgil Sterig (Phillip Pine), and a former boxer who betrayed his family and fiancé, Andy Marshak (Don Gordon). While Foster is adorned with love by his startled blues club singing beauty, Maggie (Beverly Garland, stunningly lovely), Hammer's decision to "become" Virgil and Marshak will come back to haunt him.

"The Four of Us Are Dying" is a decent, if underwhelming episode of Twilight Zone highly regarded by some of the series' fans, but I found it suffered from flaws. Why wouldn't Hammer return to his own face after the two gangsters chased him into an alley, instead of morphing into the boxer, found on a ripped poster nailed to a wall? How would Marshak's father know where Hammer lived? Hammer as Virgil muscling a former partner might seem logical from the perspective of securing some quick cash, but there would certainly be safer methods than confronting a dangerous mobster who is certain to have goons nearby. After the heated meeting with the father who blamed his son for breaking his mother and fiancé's heart, why would Hammer dare ever return to the identity of Marshak (even if Marshak is a face on Hammer's mind, why would he keep it after eluding a policeman who found out where the he was hiding?)?

The most visible flaw is how Hammer knows specific details of those he replaced that he shouldn't? Newspaper articles don't elaborate the kind of details about the mobster that betrayed Virgil or the girl of Foster's life, yet it is as if Hammer completely assimilates himself into their lives as if he had literally been imbued with their personalities. Three distinct characters who act completely different from Hammer; I'm just not sold on the fact that Hammer has such chameleon-like abilities. That said, director John Brahm does a swell job of using the camera to pan perfectly before each transition without much editing, often in one take which is quite an impressive feat. While I think each actor performs their specific characters well, you are supposed to be believe that another man is "behind the mask" for which I think doesn't work quite that well.

This is one of the more complicated episodes that I've seen in my first season marathon of "The Twilight Zone". That doesn't make it any less interesting or memorable, just one that I would recommend for its unique plot and the many twists it has. Four similar but not exact look-alike actors play one character, a con man with the ability to alter his face to look like somebody else. This constantly gets him out of jams but can also get him into trouble for his face all of a sudden changing back. Harry Townes plays the real identity, with Philip Pine, Ross Martin and Don Gordon as the three men whom he is able to successfully impersonate, all though successful wouldn't necessarily mean luck. In the first segment, he impersonates the long missing boyfriend of Beverly Garland, a piano player and Lounge singer whom he promises to reconcile with. The next impersonation is of a murdered crook who confronts the boss who betrayed him, and the third impersonation is of a boxer who abandon his family and old girlfriend and has a sudden confrontation with his embittered father. But the last two impersonations intertwine, forcing him to change his look all of a sudden which leads to a brutal confrontation. it is a reminder that it is simply best to just be yourself because when you take on the identity of someone else, you never know what pasts they we're hiding and what fates would intervene if you are actually confused for being that person.

This is more about the script and the sudden camera changes than any real performance because the four actors playing various characters come on and disappear at relative quick speeds. Peter Brocco is particularly memorable as the father of the character that Gordon impersonates, seething with bitterness and heartbroken as to having to relive a past with his son's supposed reappearance. Garland, as lovely as ever, guess to sing here ("Make It One For My Baby"), and I felt truly sad that she had to be one of the victims here. This is one episode that is certainly worthy of discussion and one I wouldn't mind seeing expanded into feature-length. It has all of the great traits of various genres, mixing a bit of spiritual drama into science fiction and just a dab of film noir.

This is the first episode of TZ where the title is a bit of a spoiler. But, as usual, from the mind of Rod Serling, nothing is ever quite what it seems.

We meet Arch Hammer (prolific and eventual forty year dramatic TV actor, Harry Townes) as he checks into a seedy hotel in New York City. He's another small time crook similar to Fred Renard, the threatening thug played by Steve Cochran in the previous episode, titled "What You Need."

Here though, this guy already has what he needs: Hammer can manipulate his features to alter his appearance and he has a very specific agenda.

First, he visits a nightclub after an orchestra member (Ross Martin) was killed in a traffic accident and romances the band's songstress, his mourning girlfriend (Beverly Garland), wearing her late beau's face.

Then, he boldly marches into the lair of a big bad criminal named Penell (Bernard Fein), wearing the face of the partner (Phillip Fine) the kingpin killed so he wouldn't have to split the loot and took the whole stash! And when Penell sent his henchmen to kill him "again," Hamner changes his face to a boxer he sees on a poster (Don Gordon) and throws them off the scent.

The problem for Hammer is that boxer is a local guy, and when he stops at a kiosk, still wearing the pugilist's puss, he comes face to face with the fighter's father (Another eventual four decade television actor, Peter Brocco). There was some trouble at home because the boxer ran away, breaking his mother's heart and dad holds that grudge. Rather than explain who he really is, Hammer flicks the man aside and heads back to his hotel.

There, as he hastily packs bags for the romantic rendezvous with his nightclub singer, a detective enters. He got Hammer on charges and as he was about to escort his quarry on a trip to Central Booking, Hammer changed his face back to the boxer in a revolving door and the detective goes off looking inside the lobby again.

Just when Hammer thought he got away with it all, that boxer's dad, who stalked him to that locale, pointed a gun at who he thought was his son and fired.

As Hammer died, his face contorted through the four faces we saw him use.

Of course, if Hammer reverted to the face of the Jazz musician instead of the boxer, he would have escaped. And you would have thought he was about to do that anyway, as he was headed to run away with his ill gotten lucre and the club chanteuse. It's the smallest mistakes that can change everything in The Twilight Zone.

I give "The Four of Us Are Dying" a 7 out of 10.

I am a fan of "The Twilight Zone", but I have noticed that many of the reviews are so positive you'd get the impression that every episode was golden. No anthology series is THAT good that there aren't a few bland or sub-par episodes. "The Four of Us Are Dying" is indeed one of these bland episodes. It's not bad, really--it just isn't particularly good or memorable.

The show begins with some guy showing himself in the mirror that can change his face at will just by concentrating. It's an interesting idea, though how and why he does what he does in the episode is awfully vague. In one case it's obvious he's doing this to cheat someone out of money--but why mess with the lady whose boyfriend died?! It was as if they had an interesting idea but didn't know where to go with it. And, not unexpectedly, by the end the guy with the chameleon face gets his comeuppance--no big surprise when you are in the Twilight Zone.

No great twist, no memorable moments...this one is worth seeing if you have nothing better to do.

Arch Hammer (Harry Townes) can change his face at a moment's notice. That he never became a Congressman is mystifying to me, although the passage of half a century since this story first aired has made me that much more of a cynic. The face changing, shape shifting routine is an intriguing idea, but also comes with some plot flaws evident in the story. When Arch turns into gangster Virgil Sterig (Phillip Pine), he confronts his former boss Penell (Bernard Fein) with details of a heist that went down badly. His recollections are too intimate to have been known by anyone else, so how could Hammer use that information to shake down the mobster? He would have to have morphed not only the physical features of his target, but his memories as well. That doesn't work for me.

But I like the overall idea. Here's a lowlife who could have used his ability in a positive way, but instead chooses a life of deceit and corruption. Sorry, but I keep going back to our reps in Washington. It's interesting in hindsight that Arch Hammer only turned himself into a replica of an already dead person. It makes for an easy out at the finale, in that he wouldn't take anyone else out with himself that wasn't already a goner. That might have made for an even better episode - Hammer dies as one of his reproductions, and the real guy shows up later! Now there's an idea.

Just about midway through "The Twilight Zone's" first season, this episode has some good moments but is not without it's flaws. Like the previous story ('What You Need'), the punishment for one of the main characters seems a bit far out-sized to the crime considering the small time hood at the center of the story. But you have to consider the era, and one could get away with a lot less then than you can now. Considering what appears in the news today on almost a daily basis, I'd have to say that we're all living now in a region of the Twilight Zone.

I enjoyed the episode and found it pretty interesting and we follow a mediocre man who change his faces for his needs: love, money, avoid problems but this can cause some problems to him: the morality, in my opinion, its to not envy or desire the life of others because we dont really know what they get into despite the apparence of celebrity or rumors because it can lead to dramatic events I found it good anyway and interesting to follow.

Impersonation, double crossing, deception and desperation all occur in this episode of "The Four Of Us Are Dying"

Arch Hammer is a con man, a drifter, a guy who walks the street looking for his next big score; That score is the ability to look like other men.

He finds it when he walks into a flashy nightclub and impersonates the deceased trumpet player, then switches to a murdered gangster who extorts money from his former boss before settling on a famed boxer whose father resents him and eventually traps him in an alleyway and kills him point blank.

As Hammer lies dying, his face changes multiple times, filtering through the many impersonations before finally settling on his own one.

A clever and well thought out idea told against a noir backdrop of crime and redemption. The use of unique camera angles, characters and overall atmosphere make this another weird and strange episode of the "Twilight Zone"

The Four of Us Are Dying has an intriguing premise and use of that premise, it's decent. The goons chasing our man into a corner just give up and leave, highly unlikely. I'm sure there are easier ways to get money with any identity, than to take it off the person who just killed the person whose identity you are using. Unless you're doing it for the thrill. Our man dies by someone totally unrelated to what he was initially doing, because of a poster on the wall. Kind of a butterfly effect sort of deal.

"The Four Of Us Are Dying" (episode 13) was first aired on television January 1, 1960.

Anyway - As the story goes - Gifted with the ability to change his face, Arch Hammer devises a plan to elevate himself. The plan works perfectly until he's caught with the wrong face at the wrong time.