One of the most profoundly influential television series of all time, The Twilight Zone has managed to live on far past its original air date and remain a source of terror, imagination, and social commentary in the decades since its release.

With the July 4th holiday weekend next week bringing with it yet another Twilight Zone marathon on SyFy, we thought the time was right to look back on Rod Serling’s television masterpiece and count down ten of its most memorable episodes.

10 Nick of Time

One of the many amazing Twilight Zone episodes written by Richard Matheson, “Nick of Time” finds a married couple stuck in a small town in Ohio while their car gets fixed. The husband, played by William Shatner, is attracted to a fortune telling booth – a “Seer” – that will answer yes or no questions for a penny each.Soon, Shatner realizes that everything the Seer is telling him is coming true. He quickly becomes obsessed with the machine, diving down a rabbit hole of yes or no questions as his wife becomes concerned. It’s a great performance laced with obsession that ultimately builds the tension effectively.Eventually, Shatner breaks free thanks to his wife, giving the machine over to a different couple who is apparently less fortunate - as the episode suggests they will be trapped under the Seer’s gaze forever.

9 The Masks

One of the most macabre episodes of the show, “The Masks” tells the tale of a dying millionaire named Jason who summons his unappreciative, greedy, cruel family to his death bed in New Orleans. He forces them to wear grotesque masks under the stipulation that they must keep them on until after midnight or they won’t receive anything from his estate. The masks all correspond to what the millionaire thinks of that person – a miser, a coward, a buffoon, etc.; Jason takes the death mask for himself.The family continues to be truly awful to the man until he finally passes. Once he’s dead, they remove the masks only to find that their faces have been twisted into the disgusting shapes they wore, forever reminded of the terrible people they are on the inside.

8 It's a Good Life

Everybody loves creepy kids -- including Rod Serling, it seems. “It’s a Good Life” is about 6 year-old Anthony Fremont, a little boy with the ability to create and destroy things using his mind. If someone or something displeases him, he can mutate it into a horrific beast or banish them to a “cornfield” they can never return from. He’s isolated a small town in Ohio from the rest of the world, and everyone around him is forced to think good thoughts or suffer the consequences.Over the course of the episode we see the depths of his powers and his spite. What’s terrifying about it is that we all know children like this; bratty kids that want to get their way. In the real world, parents have the power to discipline. But what if that power was taken away through fear of your own life? What would the world look like if it could be shaped by a spoiled 6 year-old boy? That’s the question this episode tackles, to great success.

7 Five Characters in Search of an Exit

This episode is less notable for its twist ending than it is for the circumstances that it provides for the characters. It pits together five random characters from different walks of life – a hobo, a ballet dancer, a bag pipe player, a clown, and an Army major. All trapped together in an indecipherable cylinder where they have no need for food or water, the characters try to determine where they are and why. All of them come up with different theories ranging from Purgatory to Hell to dreams to an alien spaceship.It’s an interesting evaluation of human psychology, despite the reveal that these characters aren’t technically human at all. It’s a play on psychological stereotypes as well, considering that the most philosophical suggestion comes from the hobo, a character we might expect to be lacking any real insight. This episode is also one of the most oft-referenced in popular culture – who can forget the version done on Felicity, from that show’s second season?

6 The Hitch-Hiker

Before The Sixth Sense revealed that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time, “The Hitch-Hiker” pulled off the same twist in ¼ of the time. Here, Inger Stevens plays a woman whose cross-country trip is halted by a car accident caused by a flat tire. As she continues on her trip after getting her car fixed, she begins to see an odd-looking man hitch-hiking on the side of the road. The problem is, she keeps seeing him over and over again the further she goes. Soon she becomes paranoid, convinced the man means her harm.The episode builds this way until she’s so frightened that she finally calls her mother. Unfortunately, she finds out that her mother wound up in the hospital after finding out her daughter was killed in a horrible car accident days earlier. It’s then that we realize that Inger Stevens has been dead all along, and the man on the side of the road is none other than Death.One of the most memorable lines in the history of the show comes when she returns to her car after learning the truth and finds the hitch-hiker in the back seat asking, “I believe you’re going my way?”