The Outer Limits is turning 50.... (2 Viewers)

[Sadsack]

I'm partial to William Windom's mustache.
My father had a black mustache...

 

[Blimpoy06]

I'm partial to William Windom's mustache.
My father had a black mustache...

 

[Camper]

Some have said the clown was the most important part in that episode but I always thought Windom was the major role.

 

[Craig Beam]

Some have said the clown was the most important part in that episode but I always thought Windom was the major role.

Because he was the... Major?

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

11. My two cents, continued: (spoilers)

"It Crawled Out of the Woodwork"

The reality of death. Neurosis. Atomic energy as the Pandora's box of ultimate destruction that, once opened, can never be put back.

Heavy topics.

Is an obsession or fascination with The Outer Limits an obsession with death? It's really staring you in the face with many of these episodes. I'm starting to worry about my former childhood. Sure, I loved me some Edgar Allan Poe, but the death themes in this series played again and again make him look like Dr. Seuss.

Ed Asner sells the horror in the pit beautifully (beautifully?). When she finally frees him, he's out of breath panting with fear and you are THERE with him. It's fun to read DJS' comments about how he enjoyed "The Sixth Finger" and was chomping at the bit when he got the call to do the show. He delivered.

Barbara Luna. 'Nuff said. (Married to Doug McClure of Trampas fame on The Virginian at this moment in time)

Herr Dr. Block keeps a photo of a nuclear bomb behind his desk like a beloved family photo. Is his character a nod to the former Nazis who helped America further develop (perfect?) the bomb? Probably. I hope so instead of Kent Smith auditioning for another Dracula remake. There's also speculation that the villain in this episode was named after horror writer, Robert Bloch, whose Psycho novel was adapted for the screen by Stefano, the author or this episode. Bad blood?

The sfx here are still pretty effective. Did any other show exhibit this type of ingenuity week after week?

I suppose at this time, we also need to address the dustball in the vacuum cleaner, or the elephant in the room; namely that it is no secret Stefano was undergoing psychotherapy with LSD at this time in his life. Which might explain some of these crazy shit ideas he was coming up with (and that I happen to love), such as the premise for this episode.

LSD in the late fifties and early sixties was a completely legal and increasingly useful therapeutic tool being effectively used by well-respected psychotherapists to treat many conditions, including addictions, neuroses, etc. Actor Cary Grant went through 83 LSD sessions with his Beverly Hills psychotherapist, after which, he promptly quit acting in movies and became a ridiculously wealthy behind-the-scenes executive for the Max Factor company. Sounds like a perfectly sane retirement plan to me.

The drug only became outlawed and vilified when it's use mushroomed into the general population of restless youth disinfected from the restrictive career and life paths of their (usually) affluent parents, and championed by former Harvard professor Timothy Leary and his "Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out," philosophy.

Only now, decades after the uproar is over, has LSD finally been making its way back into legitimate uses in the therapeutic world, under more official sanctioning and conditions. It's being used to help with end-of-life anxiety in terminal patients, and, is being used again to treat addictions for alcohol and opiods, for which it is reportedly as high as 90% effective.

So Joe was on to something. And he was ON something. And whether he was using the series to work on his own issues related to death, neurosis, big brothers, or anxiety over the apocalyptic repercussions of the nuclear age, we all got to enjoy the benefits from his speculative questions and imaginative leaps that emerged from 'the pit.'

 

[Harry-N]

 

[Camper]

I'm not sure I'd work for a dude with an A-Bomb photo over his head behind his desk. Couldn't he find one of a Guillotine?

 

[Sadsack]

A dude? I thought he was a nuclear scientist, so why would he have a guillotine on the wall? He wants to split atoms, not Adam.

 

[TravisR]

If it's good enough for David Lynch...

 

[JohnHopper]

11. My two cents, continued: (spoilers)

"It Crawled Out of the Woodwork"

The reality of death. Neurosis. Atomic energy as the Pandora's box of ultimate destruction that, once opened, can never be put back.

Heavy topics.

The real star of this tale is actor Kent Smith.


Review

“You must get over this repugnance for death, Stephanie. For you to hate death is as foolish as for a live person to hate life.(...) You should be grateful to me, Stephanie. Because of me, you have faced the most terrifying experience of all and gotten it over with. Now you must rise above bitterness and try to enjoy the life I’ve given you. (...) I... with the help of science, of course.”
—Dr. Block (Kent Smith)


Don’t miss the fantastic opening scene with the cleaning woman. Pre-The Invaders Kent Smith, as Germanic, megalomaniac and nihilistic Dr. Block, is really terrifying (“Some people are long time dying.”) and especially his devious relationship (“Show him about a bit, Stephanie. Tell him the rules. Strict rules don’t sound so strict when they come from the lips of a beautiful woman, hmm?”) with his scared female assistant: Stefanie—he displays a libidinous and slimy behavior towards her. Dr. Block completes and subverts the speech of Dr. Keenan (Cf. “The Man With The Power”) concerning the wild and monstrous energy source when he asserts complacently: “It is pure energy, Sergeant. Pure, unadulterated, un-minimized power”. There is a famous shot of Kent Smith, with the close-up of his distorted turning hand, explaining how he enslaves his staff, and ponctuated with the “Dementia #2” cue (from “The Man Who Was Never Born”): “Simple heart surgery brought them to reason. One by one I terrified them to death, and one by one I gave them back their lives. Lives they own only so long as I do not... cut off the power that makes their heart beat. You see, I have almost total control of that energy force in there. It would eagerly suck the power out of that pacemaker if I allowed it”. To justify his scientifical curiosity, Dr. Block simply asserts with a self-assured voice: “Not insane... at the vorst, obsessed.” And finally, his pro-atomic bomb statement: “The wonderful questions are always answered at the cost of human life. Remember how we wondered about the atom bomb.” The look of the long corridor that leads to the pit is scary. The extreme close-up with a wide-angle of Ed Asner’s sinister face, watching the energy monster, is totally weird.

This is the perfect example of a typical episode made with Joseph Stefano’s taut writing, Gerd Oswald’s Caligari-like direction and Conrad Hall’s somber photography. This is the first episode that violently denounces the abuse of the atomic energy—a constant subtheme during this season (see the driving forces of many scientists in “The Architects of Fear” and “The Sixth Finger”)—and please watch “Production and Decay of Strange Particles” with this one to complete the cycle. This episode makes reference to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les diaboliques, as in “The Forms of Things Unknown”, during the electrocution-drowning of Stuart Peters in the bathtub. The one shot of Stuart Peters in the pit which is composed of a vast depth of field is already present in Conrad Hall’s first assignement: “The Human Factor”, when Sally Kellerman locks the medic up in the closet. And one power plant prop is recycled in “Production and Decay of Strange Particles”.

Notes: Actor Frank Kent Smith is best-remembered as Oliver Reed from Jacques Tourneur’s horror classic Cat People (1942). Robert Johnson is the NORCO Intercom voice. Scott Marlowe returns in “The Forms of Things Unknown”, Kent Smith in “The Children of the Spider County” and Ted de Corsia in “The Inheritors”. Stoney Burke-wise, actor Scott Marlowe guests in “Point of Honor” and Ted de Corsia in “The King of the Hill” and “Web of Fear” and Tom Palmer in “Color Him Lucky”.

 

[Nelson Au]

I watched It Crawled Out of the Woodwork too. I’d seen this episode a few times already and I was familiar with it, but it never made sense to me. I didn’t find a moral or a point to the story. It had the mad scientist who discovered the energy being that the cleaning lady accidentally creates by vacuuming in the dust bunny. So what was his plan for it. He only seemed to want to use it to kill and to protect his secret discovery. Maybe the only point was the use the energy being as his tool and also to find ways to understand it and to preserve it. But via such an evil way?

Ahhh! In reading Craig’s blog about this episode, where Craig wonders why Jory has that bunny toy, it dawned on me why he’s was playing with the energizer bunny, it was maybe an on screen joke about the dust bunny. I don’t think the Energizer Bunny was a trademark yet, but maybe it owes its creation to this episode.

Visually, this episode is a another stand-out and the opening shot of the cleaning lady makes an impression. As do the shots of terror on the victims faces when faced with the Energizer Bunny. I agree with Craig, the way the energy being is created as a visual effect is very effective. And the lighting of the lab is terrific.

Not only is the episode filled with great guest stars, some of which appear in Star Trek, a surprisingly young Luna and Forest, but the Ford Thunderbird Sport Coupe is pretty cool!

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

12. My two cents, continued: (Spoilers)

"The Borderland"

The Boredomland.

Some nice special effects for 1963 television, but wow does this one drop the ball on any further developing story beyond the premise. I like the idea of an investor being competitively lobbied by both a medium and a group of scientists for his money while he is just looking to contact his dead son. The medium uses a floating luminescent hanky and the scientist have some snazzy-looking tubes, coils, flasks, twist knobs and gizmos. I love the moment when the medium is envious of the better 'show' they put on. But that's about it. The entire last act is just a tedious extended sfx display trying to extract the trapped scientist from the 'borderland.'

Mark Richmond may have two right hands, but somewhere along his credit life he lost his 'Peter.'

Nina Foch and Gladys Cooper, two great dames of acting. Nina Foch taught a prestigious acting class in Beverly Hills forever. But here she is reduced to spewing dialogue like, "Primary stroke, 1, 2, 3, reverse polarity!" And Gladys Cooper and Alfred Ryder spend most of the episode in the balcony like the old geezer puppets on Sesame Street, commenting on the action below in the laboratory. How did they get there? Cooper's comment about the scientists putting on a better show was worth the ridiculousness of the moment, though.

Those massive generators and turbines look like stock shots from Hoover Dam, if I'm not mistaken. I took a tour of that facility at six years old when I was on a family vacation and still remember being impressed by it.

I appreciate Leslie Stevens love of science and trying to root his speculative concepts based on existing principles or laws of physics and nature, but he really drops the ball on a telling a full story here. And just tacking on that control voice tag at the end talking about the 'power of love' is completely unearned if you haven't fully developed the characters that are re-united at the end beyond yelling 'reverse polarity' back and forth at each other for 20 minutes.

Big missed opportunity on this concept. I can only imagine what Joseph Stefano would have done with it. I guarantee you we would have explored that 'borderland' a bit more intimately and probably found Dean, or whatever his name, in there somewhere. And it would have been because of the true magnetic power of attraction that an unconditional love for a son might provide to reunite two souls beyond space and time.

 

[Nelson Au]

I watched The Borderland a few weeks ago in my attempt to watch in production order. I agree it didn’t lead to anything. Except maybe the willingness to loose everything in ones lost attempt at finding something you want so bad, you’ll do anything. I’d remembered seeing this episode over a decade ago for the first time and it’s really iconic image was the reversed hand.

Last night I carried on with Tourist Attraction. Again an episode that I saw decades ago and it didn’t really fully work. I was much more in tune with the main character Dexter and his arrogance and lack of respect for others and desire for control in this viewing. Not a very nice guy. Like Craig, I did see the Creature from the Black Lagoon connection. It had some fine underwater photography and action with the monster. The Creature was impressively done. I also felt the design of the eyes had a lot in common with the Thetan. I was impressed with the limits of finances and technology, they pulled off 5 of those creature suits. Nice to see Dexter knocked down at the end. And I liked how the creatures came to the aid of their companion. In the end, they were so powerful with their abilities with sonics and they showed humans they were not to be messed with.

It never occurred to me before, but it would have been interesting if Wah Chang and colleagues had been able to pull off as many Gorns for Star Trek in Arena.

 

[Sadsack]

I imagine this will get removed from the youtube, but I noticed that this 2nd Season episode might have another Batman connection (maybe just an uninspired copy) besides starring Adam West:

 

[Doug Wallen]

I am working on disc 3 at present.

It Crawled Out Of The Woodwork -Kent Smith, Michael Forest, Barbara Luna, Ed Asner. Great monster still. Such an atmospheric and creepy episode.

The Borderland - Peter Mark Richman. A scientific (?) medium. Episode looks good, but is another miss for me.

Tourist Attraction - Ralph Meeker, Henry Silva, Janet Blair. TV version of Creature From The Black Lagoon even down to the pretty lady on the boat. I mostly like this one, gets a bit tedious in the final act. Nice underwater photography, just a tremendous reuse of various shots.

 

[JohnHopper]

It Crawled Out Of The Woodwork
An excellent German Expressionist episode. Pure troika! I call it the Dr. Block Special.
The Borderland
A terrific energetic episode but with no satisfying outcome.
Tourist Attraction
Amongst the worst episode and an expensive one to produce that fails to ruin the show. Only the original score can be salvaged.

 

[JohnHopper]

Review for Tourist Attraction

“John Dexter only keeps the cream of the crop.”
—Former-columnist and secretary Lynn Arthur (Janet Blair)


Picture yourself in an unusually smart season one Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode due to the amount of underwater shots (the probe device, the monsters and the divers). Listen closely to writer Dean Riesner’s anti-US capitalism: “... The Americans, with the power of their money and bulldozers, with their summer houseboat, (...) with their gadgets, and machines, and devices...” As an introduction, first watch Richard Brooks’ Crisis (1950) with it to grasp the state of the South American regimes. Witness the various stock footages of the countryside and the rural population in the course of their labours and traditional parties. Megalomaniac and Batista-like General Mercurio plans to build a futuristic city (see the painting of the World’s Fair) to obtain foreign money (tourists, if you like); Mercurio and Dexter are in fact the same type of ruthless ambitious men (“We’re very much alike in many ways”, asserts Mercurio). The sudden entrance of Mercurio and his personal armed guards in the lab reminds the Chinese army in “The Hundred Days of the Dragon”. Notice the lab’s set (Cf. “The Architects of Fear”) and the cadavres’ cold chamber (Cf. “The Invisibles”) that are recycled all along the season. The monster uses sonic waves to break free (the sound pattern, once again!). Professor Arrivelo explains the title of the episode: “Well, I would not disagree with THE General. However, I must add that you think this marvelous discovery as a tourist attraction is to degrade (...) the world of science...”

An episode which deals with the redemption of the main character that is saved by the love of a woman. This is the most expensive episode and is considered as the weakest one because of its bad writing (watch out the two additional narrations—one during Act I and another in Act IV—to erase the weakness of this anti-dictatorship story), silly-looking fish monsters (with a mythological overtone a la Creature of the Black Lagoon), boring characters (too bad, Ralph Meeker’s bitter business man performance is so un-inspired and even Henry Silva is commonplace) and its pre-season 2 grey rendering texture. Another disappointing episode with a first-rate score and, this time, by Robert Van Eps (credited for Music Score by) and Dominic Frontiere; you can recognize music portions in “The Sixth Finger”, “Corpus Earthling”, “The Children of Spider County”, “Fun and Games”, “Second Chance”, “The Mutant”, “The Chameleon”. One bit of Mexican guitar recital is from a Stoney Burke episode: “Point of Entry”, and that is heard during Act I, in the hacienda, when John Dexter talks to the manservant about the almighty General Mercurio.

Notes: On March 29, 1965, actor Henry Silva also plays an authoritarian figure as Red Chinese General Tau in an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea entitled: “The Enemies” (supervised by OL writer Allan Balter as an associate producer). This is the first appearance of Bill Hart—a semi regular one from Stoney Burke—but in a monster suit: the Ichthyosaurus Mercurius. Both Assistant Director Robert H. Justman and actor Ralph Meeker used to participate in Robert Aldrich’s arch-Film Noir: Kiss Me Deadly.
Stoney Burke-wise, actor Henry Silva guests in “The Weapons Man”.

Crisis (1950) Trailer


The Creature of the Black Lagoon (1950) Trailer

 

[Doug Wallen]

Finished up the 3rd disc with;

The Zanti Misfits - Bruce Dern, Michael Tolan, Robert F. Simon, the Vasquez Rocks and movable "cooties". What a great episode. Definitely a favorite. This one just nails what it was going for, especially the indictment of humanity at the end of the episode.

The Mice - Henry Silva (so soon after Tourist Attaction?), Dabney Coleman. Benevolent (?) aliens learn our language and ask to visit by a teleporter (which we build after receiving their plans). What could possibly go wrong, oh yeah, the Earth representative is a convicted killer with no chance for parole. Great setup and very entertaining hour. The criminal fully understands his motivations and makes surprising decisions, the doctor is accepted for who she is (wonderful forward thinking attitude) and the scientist begins to trust the criminal. This disc ends on a high note.

Still am utterly impressed with the look of each episode on this disc set.

 

[JohnHopper]

Actually, both “The Zanti Misfits” and “The Mice” share the same theme of aliens sending a criminal on Earth.
I have a soft spot for “The Mice" because of its emphasis on convict through Chino Rivera and its alien counterpart from Chromo.
Moreover, Conrad Hall's photo is superb.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

13. My two cents, continued: (Spoilers?)

"Tourist Attraction"

Not much to chew on here. This is a pretty undeveloped and fragmented script that just seems to be built around how to exploit the fish man suits. Somehow those suits looked a lot more intimidating when you were eight years old watching them on a 19-inch television, where you couldn't fully see the design to accommodate a scuba diver inside, or the air bubbles continually escaping from the creature's mouth.

Henry Silva doesn't really have much to do here except strut around in his uniform with a tight little perm and then end up face down in the mud. You'd think a third world dictator would have a better contingency escape plan for when the dam failed.

Ralph Meeker doesn't so much strut as shuffle his way in expressionless boredom through this. But at least it somewhat fits the character, and that's a pretty sophisticated if completely dysfunctional relationship he has going on with Janet Blair. So she had a career as a magazine writer and he bought out the magazine and basically forced her into indentured servitude, but she goes along with it because she's in love with the lunk.

The funniest shot in the episode is when Meeker's machine gun runs out of ammo and he just staggers back trying to look terrified as the fish men crawl after him. Like he couldn't just strut away in his boat shoes. But I guess he has to share the marine biologist's moment of humiliation so he can have his instant character arc before zipping off to Rome with the woman who sticks by him.

Speaking of the marine biologist, the most animated part of the dialogue is him talking excitedly about communicating with the fish men, as he talks about recent developments communicating with dolphins. I have to believe this was added to the script by our 'expanded consciousness' friend and showrunner Stefano.

And, since there's nothing else to talk about this episode, I can tell my brief little John Lilly story.

John Lilly was, no doubt, the famous scientist and researcher Stefano (or maybe Reisner) might have been thinking of by adding this informational plot point. He was a key pioneer in dolphin communication research right around this time in the early 1960s (he also invented the sensory deprivation tank, but that's another story). His book Man and Dolphin talks about this research.

I was a big fan of Lilly and his exploits, so I was very excited to see him give a lecture at a community church in Santa Monica in the early 1980s. I brought a concealed voice-activated micro-cassette recorder to capture all the brilliant observations I was expecting.

So imagine my surprise when the first thing he says is a warning that anyone who records him talking will have their devices self destruct on them. I actually got a little worried at that moment because I was wearing the recorder close to my heart inside my sports jacket, and if Lilly did indeed have some special powers, I was toast. But if I reached for it, he would know. I bravely left it running.

Next, he goes on a ten minute rant vilifying his wife. Looking back, this was probably his main concern about the recording; it could be used in evidence against him in possible divorce proceedings.

This rant was followed by the revelation that his latest endeavor in the further exploration of consciousness was the drug Vitamin K, and that he was currently on it as he was speaking to us this very evening. Vitamin K sounded like something you find in a breakfast cereal, but as I looked it up later, it actually referred to ketamine, which is an extremely strong tranquilizer used to sedate and control large rambunctious animals like rhinos and elephants.

Apparently, it became a popular drug of choice in the 'expanded consciousness community' around this time, which was about 20 years after Stefano's early 1960s LSD treatments. It's used today for injections into the spine to numb out nerves causing debilitating sciatica. But Lilly was just taking it to see where it took his mind.

To top everything else, after this Vitamin K revelation, he announced that he would be delivering the rest of his lecture via psi. For the psi-uninitiated, this meant that he was going to be delivering his talk telepathically instead of verbally. And, if we weren't sensitive or hip enough to pick up on that, or maybe because we hadn't had our Vitamin K, well, too bad.

So, for the next 20 minutes on my micro-cassette recorder... nothing.

That's what I get for trying to capture lightning brain in a bottle.

I guess by then the man was completely nuts.

But then again, we still have him to thank for teaching us to talk to dolphins, and for giving us the sensory deprivation tank, without which we'd never have the film Altered States. He apparently knew then all.