The Outer Limits

[ChristineBCW]

So, this is an early craps game? "Come 7, come 11!!"  Except here, the 1-thru-6 rolls get you body parts?  Hmmm... I wonder if this is how Andy Warhol started thinking about joining Paul Morrisey? "It'll be just like a game of Cooties, Andy!  Colorful, plastic - exciting and educational, too!"

Poor Andy... I always suspected he never got over having his name on those two films.

"And I used to love playing Cooties!"

Well, all of life's a crapshoot, as someone once said. 

My only question about this game - did you win or lose by getting all the body parts? 

(I mean, what if the cooties spring to life and attack the owner, or escape from the castle into the countryside, playing water games with small children who couldn't swim?  Or were these more Zantian, after all?  "Take me to yer leader...")

[Scatter]

So, this is an early craps game? "Come 7, come 11!!"  Except here, the 1-thru-6 rolls get you body parts?  Hmmm... I wonder if this is how Andy Warhol started thinking about joining Paul Morrisey? "It'll be just like a game of Cooties, Andy!  Colorful, plastic - exciting and educational, too!"

Poor Andy... I always suspected he never got over having his name on those two films.

"And I used to love playing Cooties!"

Well, all of life's a crapshoot, as someone once said. 

My only question about this game - did you win or lose by getting all the body parts? 

(I mean, what if the cooties spring to life and attack the owner, or escape from the castle into the countryside, playing water games with small children who couldn't swim?  Or were these more Zantian, after all?  "Take me to yer leader...")

You have a particularly ghoulish turn of mind. I like that.

[Mord]

 Seriously, "The Outer Limits" is the only show that could make you fear tumbleweeds (remember that episode?). Every time my family went to the desert on a windy day, I almost peed my pants.

[horrorhunter]

When I was a kid the Zanti Misfits scared the heck out of me.



It's one of my favorite eps. 

...and Bruce Dern played a scumbag.. again. Whodathunkit? 

[Scatter]

Like TZ.....but OL kicks its ass.

[jimm]

Bruce Dern... Type cast to its finest

[horrorhunter]

Bruce Dern... Type cast to its finest

Dude, I can't count the number of times Bruce turned up as a dirty outlaw on shows like Gunsmoke. But, he was great in the role.. he had that weasely, smarmy, SOB character down pat. 



Of course, it could be that it came natural to him. My dad had a small part in Wild River (1960) as the sheriff and Bruce Dern kept hitting on my mom on the set. I was a baby at the time and my parents told me when I was old enough how I kept grabbing Lee Remick's breasts.



She thought it was cute, but my mom was not amused by Horndog Bruce's antics. 

[ChristineBCW]

Bruce also turned up in an old-woman's-murderer role in the ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS series.  I need to find that episode. 

But in the world of Bad Guys, his Younger Self was certainly perfect.  George Zucco, Lionel Atwill, Michael Gough, Robert J. Wilke, Jack Palance, Gene Evans - Hollywood and American TV were littered with great character-actor villains.  Write a concept of "Need a Villain" and ring up that hotline.  Those guys were so wonderful.

Then there were quite a few Two-Way'ers - Basil Rathbone was as sinister and vile as a bad guy as he could be heroic.  John Dehner, John Hoyt, Charles McGraw, Raymond Burr, William Talman (I'll never understand why these last two passed the bar exam in Calif and were allowed to practice TV law after being such psycho killers in their earlier film lives.  But put 'em in a suit and a Ford Fairlane or Lincoln convertible, and there ya go).

[Hepcat]

I was a baby at the time and my parents told me when I was old enough how I kept grabbing Lee Remick's breasts.

She thought it was cute....

Well she couldn't blame you for being hungry, now could she?

[horrorhunter]

Well she couldn't blame you for being hungry, now could she?

Too bad it wasn't Jayne Mansfield. Then I coulda gotten full (or had fun tryin'!). 

[Sean]

Too bad it wasn't Jayne Mansfield. Then I coulda gotten full (or had fun tryin'!). 

You would have needed King Kong to burp you.

[Anthony Caranci]

The first episode: The Galaxy Being is still one of my favorite episodes, along with The Hundred Days of the Dragon. So many memorable episodes:

The Sixth Finger, Controlled Experiment (hilarious), ZZZZZ (I loved this one), The Zanti Misfits, The Children of Spider County, The Mutant, A Feasibility Study, Soldier, Cold Hands, Warm Heart ( so cool), Expanding Human (like Jekyll & Hyde), Demon With A Glass Hand, I, Robot, The Inheritors Parts 1 & 2 (I tear up every time I watch these episodes), The Forms of Things Unknown, Keeper of the Purple Twilight and The Duplicate Man.

Just to name a few that struck a chord with me. And like any show - there were some turkeys in there as well. It seemed as though the story/vision exceeded the budget on some episodes. Or perhaps the Special Effects Dept. of the show wasn't able to produce exactly what was needed as in Tourist Attraction, Counterweight, The Probe. Episodes like that didn't help the show at all.

There were other notables: Nightmare, The Architects of Fear, etc. And episodes that have already been mentioned by others. Still, I have to say that I watch Serling's Twilight Zone a lot more than The Outer Limits. I'm a big fan of the 1995 Outer Limits.   

[ChristineBCW]

Outer Limits was something of a tough-sell to our kids (at ages 8 and 6) because, while they'd watch them, they wouldn't 'volunteer' to load them onto the watch-queue.  It was the hour-long "sitting still" issue.  They would watch an hour or 90 minutes but that would include perhaps two 30-min episodes plus shorts and cartoons. 

In the last four years, and certainly this last one, they've grown more tolerant of 'hour longs' and GALAXY BEING is the show they continually use to intro their classmates to OUTER LIMITS.  This past Christmas, I think there were a half-a-dozen boxsets received as gifts among neighbors and classmates.  Everyone's "into it" it seems - ages 10-12-14 have glommed onto it.  I think the threat/promise of TWILIGHT ZONE marathons has actually helped the purchase decision of OL - "TZ will come back on, but OL hardly ever is shown, so let's spend bucks on that one."

I just wish SyFy would return to SciFi like OUTER LIMITS instead of their current options.

[horrorhunter]

I dearly love The Outer Limits entire series, and it just might be my favorite TV series of all time. Most of the eps were great, some were merely good, but for me The Architects Of Fear takes the crown.

[Robert W]

I think what really made the OT stand out lack of storytelling fear. Take the ending of The Man Who Was Never Born for instance. You really don't get much bleaker than that.