Fun and Games

The police carry out a raid on an apartment that is used as a clandestine gambling den among criminals. During the raid one of those involved escapes and hides in the apartment of a young lady, incomprehensibly both cross a door that takes them to a strange world where an alien tells them that they have been selected to compete in a survival game and must face Two other opponents of a wild planet in an environment full of geysers, volcanic rivers and a hostile atmosphere. The story is nothing more than the typical one about the pursuit of hunters and prey but it has a quite creepy development, good rhythm and amazing elements. As a color note, this is the only episode of the entire series in which an alien creature is repeated since the jury is personified by the same alien from the Nightmare episode.

This episode stars Nick Adams and Nancy Malone, as two combatants forced to defend the Earth in a battle to the death with two creatures from another world. Not as much fun as it sounds, and things do not end in predictable fashion. Nancy Malone starred on the series NAKED CITY, and had starred in a forgotten thriller in 1956, "Fright" (not to be confused with the 1971 babysitter played by Susan George). This was the first brush with sci-fi for Nick Adams, former friend of the late James Dean, and star of the fine Western teleseries THE REBEL. Following an appearance on "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea," he would journey to England to co-star with the great Boris Karloff in "Die, Monster, Die!" (1965). From the star of the 1931 "Frankenstein," he then rushed off to Japan to headline "Frankenstein Conquers the World," "Monster Zero" (a Godzilla epic released in the US two years after his untimely death), and "The Killing Bottle," a very obscure spy thriller never released in the US. He even fell in love with his beautiful Japanese co-star, Kumi Mizuno, a much-loved, long-time veteran of numerous Toho features, who unfortunately was already engaged to someone else. Back in the US, Adams completed one more sci-fi adventure, "Mission Mars" (1967), joining Darren McGavin in Miami for a quick shoot, and made his last film in Mexico, "Los Asesinos," shortly before he was found dead in his apartment by his manager, victim of an accidental overdose of prescribed medications. He was the first American actor to actually travel to Japan to shoot his scenes, followed by Russ Tamblyn, Rhodes Reason, Joseph Cotten, Cesar Romero, Robert Horton, and Richard Jaeckel, not to mention Luciana Paluzzi, all of whom lent international credibility to the increasingly silly Japanese monsters.

An Alien thrill seeker pitches two aliens against two humans, Mike and Laurs in a battle of life and death, the prize, to save their planet from annihilation.

Not a favourite episode of mine, but I get why people may like it. The idea of a powerful alien puppet master is a good one, I loved the scenario and the alien world. It has some tension, some good build up, but a pretty ambiguous, slightly weak ending.

What I struggled with a little bit, the rubber masks, it's not something I've been too aware of in the past, but the alien aggressors just look too DIY on a small budget. I won't criticise the production team for ambition though.

I have to give huge credit to both Nick Adams and Nancy Malone, the pair really do elevate the episode with some top notch acting, I can't in all good conscience say I think it's one of the best scripts of all, I think it has some quite sizeable flaws, but these two really do pull it off.

Maybe this one's a bit of a grower, but after my first viewing I'd class it as an above average episode.

6/10.

Nick plays an ex-boxer teamed up with Nancy Malone to do battle on a distant planet with two aliens. Good scarring make up on close ups of Adams who plays a Terry Malloy type from "On the Waterfront." Adams did his obligatory usual "freak out" scene, and there were few better in Hollywood at the time that could lose it as good as "Johnny Yuma" could. Adams was an authentically tough and athletic man whose passions included playing semi-professional baseball and he was also an avid practitioner of the martial arts. This fine actor left us far too soon and catch this if you are a fan of his as it is a great period curio of a time long gone.

A guy and girl fight for life, when playing a game on another planet.

1966 Star Trek stole a lot from this hour, in fact after spending time on these IMDb reviews of The Outer Limits it would seem Trek took one hell of a lot from The Outer Limits.

I wonder how many of those "Trekkers" know that Trek was often going Where The Outer Limits Had Gone Before???

Fun And Games is a good looking hour but I would say Trek did it best. It would seem nearly all Outer Limits aliens have the same voice??? Thankfully he sounds cool to me but it would have helped if Lost In Space's Ron Gans helped with the voice-over work sometimes.