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No idea how the title connects with the story (and no clue is given), but its poetic turn sure makes it easy to remember. "Demon with a Glass Hand", "Purple Twilight", "O.B.I.T." are standout examples of what came from the short lived Outer Limits series. Like many of the episodes, "Purple" was shot on a limited budget, but manages to give an engaging story - plot line, imagination and effort getting the job done, with a measure of philosophizing dialogue, an OT trademark.

Just plain, simple fun. An alien scientist, with a sinister agenda, arrives on earth, but has an unexpected change of heart after being exposed to a dose of human emotions. Poker face actors Robert Webber, the alien ("I don't live to be liked or disliked."), and Warren Stevens, an obsessed, stressed-out earth scientist ("You serve no purpose, Janet. I have no use for you."), make interesting foils. The girlfriend's role is a bit overemotional (a fate that many of the Outer Limits female leads had to endure), but it's her nature that melts the emotionless, extraterrestrial heart. A nice touch is the three duty-bound, alien policemen who show up to retrieve the now renegade scientist.

I stumbled across this rarely seen film years ago on A&E or Bravo (when they were first class networks and advertisement free) and have never forgotten it. The details are sketchy now. But the film clearly recorded that, in an effort to cope with unrelenting mental agony, these ex-Vietnam soldiers drove themselves into deep, reclusive wilderness life styles after leaving the military.

What stands out was horror and trauma these men felt from the monster that fighting and killing in the Vietnam War brought out in each of them. I was reminded of someone I knew who, also, fought in Vietnam and there was no comparison between the person who went over and the person who came back.

It's a wonder the film makers were able to locate and connect with these men, so desperate were they to be lost to civilization.

It's a shame 'Soldiers in Hiding' is not televised anymore. Like films such as 'Winter Soldiers' it's a needed, sobering, in your face reminder of the final joke that war (any war) is and the great sadness that this lesson is always, always, lost on the human race in general.