The Forms of Things Unknown

This episode of "The Outer Limits" seems like a variation on the classic French film "Les Diaboliques"--mixed with the ancient Greek character, Lachesis. It pretty much starts off like "Les Diaboliques". Two women hate a blackmailer, so they kill him. However, soon it becomes obvious that one of them (Barbara Rush) does not have the stomach for murder--and she spends MUCH of the show screaming and acting scared--so much so that it was a bit of a hindrance to the viewer's enjoyment. The two ladies shove the dead guy in their car trunk and drive off--and soon are stuck in a rain storm. It's so bad, they get stuck and are forced to take refuge at a blind man's (Cederic Hardwicke) home. There they meet a weirdo inventor (David McCallum) whose experiment causes great havoc--bringing the dead guy back to life by manipulating the strings of time! When McCallum meets the once-dead man, however, he regrets bringing him back to life. What's next? See the show if you dare (or not).

While doing a variation on "Les Diaboliques" might have worked, the acting sink this one. Not only does Rush's character overact, but so does McCallum. He behaves like a weirdo--and isn't particularly believable...just weird. Had these folks acted at least halfway believably, it would have worked. As it is, it just looks like a show that was too hastily assembled and should have had a few scenes re-shot. And, perhaps, re-written.

By the way, this is one of the distinguished British actor Cederic Hardwicke's last roles. He was just fine in the show and, as always, added an air of sophistication and grace.

Two women stumble into the house of a quirky inventor, who claims to have a time machine, added complication is that they have a dead body in the boot of their car.

I purposely watched this episode twice, as after the first viewing, I couldn't really form much if an opinion, the second viewing definitely helped. I e now come to the opinion that it's a great episode.

I'd go so far as to say this is perhaps one of the best five episodes from the first series, it's very imaginative, it's well realised, and it features some of the most beautiful and creative cinematography that I've seen in any show from the 1960's.

I really liked the story, it's clever, it's pretty dark at its core, but it's delivered with true authenticity, the cast do a fine job.

Wonderful to see Vera Miles, she's very good here, and adds some real star quality to proceedings, they clearly went for a star to end the series on a high.

David McCallum steals the show for me, his previous episode is perhaps my favourite of the lot, he gets to appear in another classic.

Series one ended on a high note, on to series two.

9/10.

A time machine in an oddball house (with a man-from-uncle inside) create terror.

There is more than a bit of Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) here! Weirdo in out of the way old house with a female criminal knocking on the door. It is raining in both productions...enough said.

This is one of my top five episodes of the whole series. It was a pilot for a never made series, and as we all know pilots are made with twice the money and twice the filming time of a regular TV episode...it shows here!

The care and attention that went into filming this hour will blow your mind. The direction, camera angles, lighting, photography, acting and musical score are of motion picture standard all the way.

There is a lot of style over substance going on here, I can't really say the basic story is the best you will see in the whole Outer Limits series, but you just get sucked into the general look of it and the sound of it. I return to this episode every couple of years with repeat viewings.

At least there were no hokey monsters or silly-looking aliens stumbling around in this episode.

But the poor acting of Scott Marlowe and David McCallum, the overacting of a hysterical Barbara Rush, and a confusing script make this episode frustrating to watch.

The story is told in a sort of backwards chronology, as you find out important details later in the episode. But the opening scenes are a jumbled mess and the actions and reactions of Scott Marlowe's character make absolutely no sense.

The gothic, noir feel of the episode coupled with Sir Cedric Hardwicke's grave performance are almost enough to redeem it. Almost.

And so, once again, I reach the end of the 1st season. I first saw this story when it was first-run --or perhaps on a rerun, if it was... either way, it was almost definitely during that 1st season when the show was on early Monday nights, just as the Tara King AVENGERS were years later. (Funny thing, my favorite "Tara" episode was THEY KEEP KILLING STEED, which blatantly swiped from THE HUNDRED DAYS OF THE DRAGON, which had aired in the same time slot on the same network years earlier.)

I never saw this again until I rented it in the early 90's. I've played the entire 1st season back twice now, so I've seen it 4 times now. I was completely shocked, surprised and blown away when I saw it the 2nd time, after so many years. WHAT THE F***??? Looking at the credits, I see this was the work of Joe Stefano and Gerd Oswald. But they'd done so many episode of OL, and none of them were quite like this!!

The story seems almost relatively simple... but not the way it's told. You feel like you're watching some kind of avant-garde European "art" film. All the weird camera-angles, the bizarre edits, the strange language, the intense expressions of people's faces. It's like some twisted, otherworldly version of Shakespeare... perhaps that's what they were after?

Barbara Rush is so beautiful, yet so tragic. Who'd believe she would later wind up in my vote for the absolute WORST episode of the Adam West BATMAN a few years later?? I found out she was a regular on PEYTON PLACE (as was Tippy Walker, who I fell for watching her early film). Made me wonder how things would have been if she'd been on DARK SHADOWS instead. Vera Miles, meanwhile, is reunited with Stefano (after PSYCHO, heh).

David McCallum is genuinely other-worldly in this. Perhaps, like Lugosi in Dracula, he really is "undead". His facial expressions make him seem something not quite human.

The house and its corridors reminds me of the 2 other "haunted house" stories OL had that year-- Stefano's own DON'T OPEN UNTIL DOOMSDAY and the very similar THE GUESTS (which, in the long run, I came to like much more). But this time out may be Stefano's unsung masterpiece.

Crime melodrama? Science-fiction? Art film? Poetry? All of the above? What a hell of a way for Stefano to depart the show. One can only wonder what might have been if he had stayed... if he hadn't pulled his own vanishing act, just as "Tone" did in the last scene.