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Rating:  -
The irony of the first words "there is nothing wrong with your DVD player" is apparent minutes into the third episode on disc 3 where we get freeze, stutter, freeze, stutter so on and so on until the original enthusiasm for the series completely leaves you. Then your annoyance grows bigger and bigger when this happens to almost all the following episodes until you want to throw your DVD player across the room. "Now there is plenty wrong with your DVD player". These studios blow loud about piracy but don't give a damn about giving customers quality products. This is my second time around as I had the same problem with this set already and lost my money because I didn't get around to the third and fourth discs until months later. Once is bad enough, twice is..... I don't care about this series any more.
Rating:  -
During the late 1970's, I used to watch The Outer Limits re-runs on a local independent TV station when I was growing up.
In fact, I used to wrongly think that some of these episodes were "movies", until I discovered that they were episodes of The Outer Limits. (Particularly the ones about the plants from outer space that spewed deadly spores...and the one about an entire city block being kidnapped by aliens...)
I am always wary when I see that DVD sets are double-sided discs. I have had so many of these types of sets of other TV shows that contained pixilation errors. But this particular set played perfectly. What a relief.
There are no bonus materials of any kind in this DVD set. But I guess that's okay, considering the huge number of episodes that this season set contains.
I highly recommend this DVD set.
Rating:  -
I loved "Outer Limits" when it was first on TV in the early 60's. I've watched repeatedly any reruns whenever possible, so I decided I should just get my own DVDs. These old B/W series are inoffensive (there's no blood and gore) and nostalgic. 32 episodes of intrigue; simple, great ideas and stories. After all the special effects of today's films, the simplicity of the makeup and scenery is refreshing. If you ever liked stories from Outer Limits, One Step Beyond and Twilight Zone, you'll love these DVDs. Finally some simple story lines I can follow!
Rating: -
My friend Oronzo, who has magnificent taste in just about everything, has revived my interest in bad science fiction TV of late. Most of these are things I knew about from my childhood, but never thought of watching as an adult. Watching them now, I realize that these things are actually insanely great. It isn't that I'm just waxing nostalgic about my youth. Much of it I had only seen a couple of episodes of. And many things I used to watch and enjoy are now only watchable for nostalgic purposes.
Example of the latter category: Space 1999. Boy, I really loved that show. Golly, but it is intensely dumb. Evil nuclear waste blows up and sends the moon, with moonbase, through the cosmos to have space adventures. Featuring Martin Landau as .... Disco Space Jew! Quick, Alan; shoot the alien with the Bagel Ray gun, and get that schwartze Kano to go fix my neurotic computer! Oy Vey! Oy guvalt! The first season can be watched. Sort of. While drinking heavily. The second season, with the super space chick with the braided eyebrows is so bad, it makes me weep to think about it. I have them all on video, of course. I use them to torture attractive females who displease me. I still admit to a mighty fondness for the bombastic first bar or two of the Space 1999 theme song before it gets all disco on ya. I also am pretty sure Barbara Bain's high cheekbones and plentiful shebrew curvature ruined me for life on shiksas. Who says TV doesn't influence children?
But some of the other bad science fiction shows are different. Best of all of them is The Outer Limits. Better than Star Trek. Better than the Twilight Zone, which it was originally sort of based on. Considering how short a time it lasted (a mere two seasons; though really only the first one counts), it is probably even better than the mighty Dr. Who.
There is actually nothing bad about any of these shows, other than the dumb bug eyed monsters they had to jazz up with some bubble wrap and masking tape. If you can't get past that, you're a boorish idiot anyway; CGI effects look just as bad. The stories are just magnificent. Unlike anything else I've seen on television, they have character development, plot, a moral point, an insanely great idea or two, humanity and atmosphere. Of course, the atmosphere is all deep cold war pitch black dark. Even the black and white cinematography is amazingly great. It gives the early transistor era jet age of technology feel like nothing else, except maybe working in an antiquated jet age synchrotron. The programs also generally show a greater appreciation for the tragic nature of humanity and life in general than most things that aren't the ancient Greeks or Shakespeare. Which is to my mind a sign of great art, rather than the standard pie-faced americano optimism that gets into most teevee and makes it dumb.
The team who put this together were real artists. They were also deep thinkers. They understood the human condition, and they understood the politics and current events at a level beyond anything we see today on television, in movies, in newspapers; pretty much anywhere. They had really talented actors; I daresay, they actually found a lot of really talented actors who later went on to do good work elsewhere. Martin Sheen, William Shatner, Martin Landau, Ed Asner, Robert Culp, Shirley Knight, Bruce Dern, David McCallum, Barry Morse, Donald Pleasance, Robert Duvall, Cliff Robertson...
And, really, the entire series was pretty much written by two guys. Two insanely talented guys. One of them, Joseph Stefano, co-wrote Psycho with Hitchcock. The other one, Leslie Stevens, went on to make a cool B-movie in Esperanto called "Incubus" starring William Shatner, and one of my heroes, Anton LaVey. Some day in the distant future, when there are as many television shows as there are novels, and when the television program is as dead an art form as sculpture is today, they will need some kind of serious intellectual thinking person (as opposed to the type of nitwit who today goes into the field of television criticism, because they are too dumb to do anything else) to sort out all the magnificent things these guys did in the Outer Limits, and give it some serious grounding in the historical and sociopolitical background of the day. In all seriousness; it's deep enough to go over the way people analyze literature. It's certainly more worthy of study than rubbish like Star Wars or the Matrix movies. But meanwhile, we can all look on with awe.
Rating: -
I don't know how old you are or if you have any nostalgic values placed on the Outer Limits as I do, but considering the era & the technology available at the time, these are incredible shows. I Love Lucy had only ended about 1958 or so, Twilight Zone ran from 1958 to about 1964, so then we have the Outer Limits in the early sixties also. These were so different than Ozzie and Harriet, Leave It To Beaver, Hazel, The Patty Duke Show, etc., shows some consider "corny" & predictable family shows. Sure, some of the monsters are a bit tacky ("The Mice" episode for example), but these weaknesses are outweighed by the sincere acting, groundbreaking special effects of the time, & the twists, surprises, and moral lessons the plots of these shows provide. Turn off the lights, get some popcorn & the kids & have a great time enjoying these "clean" horror movies!
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