Rip Van Winkle (1910 film) Catskill Mountains hundreds of years before, and had never been heard of since. The gnomes give Rip some magic schnapps to drink, and under its influence he goes to sleep for 20 years. When he awakes, he is an old man and in ragged clothes. His dog is dead, and his rifle has rusted away. He makes his way as best he can back to the village, and his own home. But there no one knows him. He finds his wife married to another man, his daughter grown to womanhood, and most of his old friends dead and gone. Rip,
The Rip Van Winkle Caper The futuristic car carrying the couple who find the dying Farwell is a leftover prop, somewhat modified, from MGM's 1956 film "Forbidden Planet". The Rip Van Winkle Caper "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" is episode 60 of the American television anthology series "The Twilight Zone". It originally aired on April 21, 1961 on CBS. To escape the law after stealing $1 million worth of gold bricks (equal to $ million today) from a train on its way from Fort Knox to Los Angeles, a band of four thieves, led by scientist-mastermind Farwell, hide in a secret cave in Death Valley,