Corpus Earthling

A bunch of talking rocks. I just can't get past it. Unfortunately, the creatures look a bit like lumps of tar flavored Jello. They are apparently set on taking over the world, one person at a time. They can transform themselves into silly looking spider like creatures. They have the ability to control minds which would lead one to believe that they could be more efficient. Robert Culp is the one that can make out their verbal offerings and starts to go bananas, running off with his wife to Tijuana. Unfortunately, they are able to follow him there. He must deal with paranoia and the deaths of a friend. The good part of this has to do with the atmosphere developed, particularly in the latter portion of the show. One thing that I couldn't put aside is that there is a sort of narration remindful of "The Attack of the Crab Monsters." For those of you who remember that classic film.

At first, when two rubbery rocks on a shelf start talking to each other like Pinky and The Brain, I thought this was going to be the wooden spoon episode of the season. But once the alien possession plot begins in earnest, this episode quickly improves. In fact the last act is quite frighteningly intense and comes to a bravely downbeat conclusion.

Salome Jens gives a terrific performance. The alien creatures true form may be an obvious puppet but thanks to its scuttling quick movement, its appearances are good shock moments. The film noir look is perfectly achieved and helps make this low budget TV series look a lot more cinematic and scary. Far from the weakest, this has become one of my favourites of the first season.

Robert Culp stars as Dr. Paul Cameron, who inadvertently learns of an alien invasion being planned by two sentient rocks(really polymorphic alien parasites with the ability to control minds and assault, then take over human bodies as hosts) when a lab explosion gives him a concussion. After leaving the hospital, Paul takes his wife(and lab assistant) Laurie to Mexico, where a colleague of theirs(played by Barry Atwater) has been possessed by one of the alien rocks, and wants to get them both, before taking on the world... Good acting and atmosphere just about mask the vague plot and silly premise, though this is still quite grim and serious.

Talking rocks in 1963? Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea did talking rock monsters in 1967 with the episode: The Fossil Men. Which series did the idea the best?

Limits used a better voice artist for the talking rock but Voyage did the whole thing in a more easy going/childish way. Voyage wins to me but both shows are cool..however I think most others would like the Limits take on the theme the best.

We are now nine episodes into this series and all nine episodes have had something of interest. The series in nearly always good with only about six stinkers in the whole 49 episode run.

The "OL" episode that I reacquainted myself with over the weekend is my personal favorite of the entire series, and one that producer Joseph Stefano once said he thought was so frightening that, after he initially watched it, he wished he could refuse to show it on TV. And it really IS the scariest "OL" of the bunch, for my money. The episode is "Corpus Earthling," in which Mr. Outer Limits himself, Robert Culp, stars in his second of three appearances. (Culp had already appeared in the Season 1 masterpiece "The Architects of Fear" and would go on to appear in what is perhaps the finest hour of Season 2, "Demon With a Glass Hand.") Here, he plays a doctor who has a metal plate in his head, the result of a war injury, which enables him to hear the sinister conversation that is taking place between two rock samples in his wife's geology workplace. These rocks soon take over geology lab worker Barry Atwater, who follows Culp and his wife (statuesque blonde Salome Jens) to Mexico, to which the couple has fled. In one of the scariest sequences in TV history, and one that is highly reminiscent of a similar scene in 1956's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," Culp discovers that his wife has been zombified by the rock creatures herself, and is now looking decidedly ghoulish. This episode features an amazingly high degree of paranoia and a downbeat ending that is fairly devastating. Culp is simply tremendous in the lead role, and the FX in the episode are of a fairly impressive order. Television surely has rarely been more chilling than this. I just love this episode to bits....