Customer Reviews

The Outer Limits: Chameleon [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The race of Man is known for its mutability. We can change our moods, our faces, our lives to suit whatever situation confront us. Adapt and survive. Even among the most changeable of living things, Man is quicksilver-more chameleon-like than the chameleon, determined to survive, no matter what the cost to others... or to himself." A C.I.A. agent uses an alien-like mercenary in order to penetrate a mysterious flying saucer and obtain informations with a hidden audio camera. Pre-"Vera Cruz" Henry Brandon is stubborn and skeptical General Crawford who dislikes unconventional C.I.A. manners. Howard Caine is C.I.A. agent Leon Chambers who tries to convince his military colleage ("Only an insane scheme has any chance of working, right now !"). Pre-"The Wild Wild West" Douglas Henderson, from "The architects of fear", is sensitive Dr. Tillyard who turns Mace into an alien due to a sample of skin. Pre-"The inheritors" Robert Duvall is undercover agent Louis Mace who is a quiet, lonely ("Between missions, I cease to exist...") and resigned drunk misfit living in Mexico. And the most important scene remains the killing at the Mexican bar which shows two paramount sides of Mace. He is a stone-cold killer ("But being ugly is better than being nothing...") and a warm-hearted man towards a poor musician whose guitar has been destroyed. The fixing of the guitar becomes Mace's last obsession. The scene I like the most is when General Crawford says to Chambers about Mace : "You, Intelligents people operate in a strange and devious ways. You find a derelict for this job !" Then you see Mace's face with a blind lighting effect. The last important detail is Mace's crazy laugh which indicates the change of his mind. As in most episodes, the main character undergoes a temporary state of schizophrenia. Finally, the transformation chamber and UFO surroundings are eery-enough. An episode directed by Gerd Oswald, written by Robert Towne with peace-loving monsters, that I'm very fond of, and I always thought it was a two-parter show (due to Mace's character). "A man's survival can take many shapes, and the shape in which a man finds his humanity is not always a human one."

The Chameleon is usually dismissed as a well written tale brought down by low budget and poor effects. I must say i found the effects (mainly an alien makeup) completely satisfactory, the apparently low budget didn't make it any less convincing for me. But then again, i'm a Doctor Who fan. Who watches 60's scifi tv for effects anyway?
Of all the mature, psychologically convincing Outer Limits episodes i find this one of the very best. The story is tight and very original, Robert Duvall's Mace is unforgettable. In fact he is a very modern character: a guy who despises himself and finds meaning in life only by throwing himself into any extreme job. Unlike Robert Culp's character in The Architects of Fear, who goes through a similar ordeal suffering for a greater good, Mace gets KICKS out of his sacrifice.
The only trouble i see in this episode-if you accept the effects-is that the acting job rests almost completely on Duvall. The rest of the cast seems a bit clumsy. And oh yeah, the version i saw had NO BARFIGHT IN THE BEGINNING. Thank's a lot, Scifi-Channel!

A small cast and a smaller budget convincingly pull off this clever story.

A flying saucer has landed near an Air Force base. It doesn't answer our hails, and one expeditionary team sent to investigate it has been vaporized by the saucer's alien occupants. The base colonel wants to blow it up, but his Intelligence advisor tells him their measurements indicate the saucer has enough combustible elements aboard "to make Hiroshima look like a bonfire, if it's hit." They have a longshot idea to figure out the means and motives of the elusive aliens: send in an undercover agent.

Enter Robert Duvall as agent Louis Mace, a former assassin compromised from further work in the Intelligence game, but whose life is an empty shell without his work. Through a recombinant DNA trick, Mace is temporarily turned into one of the aliens, and given a cover story to gain entrance to the saucer.

But once aboard, the Intelligence team have a little problem on their hands: Mace seems to want to go native with the aliens; they can't be sure that the process they used to transform him hasn't really contributed one more to the aliens' number.

Good script, passable effects, great cast. Wonderfully produced on a shoestring budget.

An alein spacecraft lands in a forest. The peoplehave one question, are they friend or foe?

By the story the way it's written I COULD WRITE SCI-FI ... in fact all you need to do is know how to WRITE period. I like Robert Duvall in this, not as good as TZ's "Miniture" starring Duvall but with the way this material is written ... what can you expect?

First, before watching this fastforward the video (or laser disc, like I have) for 15 minutes. Why? Because the first 15 minutes are just general FLUFF used to stretch this out to an HOUR!

Second, the story. The scientists will make Mr. Duvall into an alien (EXACTLY like the ones that landed) and chase him into the alien ship in hopes the real aliens will embrace him? And Duvall is supposed to say to the aliens, I do not know my origin, but I've been on earth for a while? Plain ridiculous on every count. Even SCI-Fi needs boundaries and limits ... even in the Outer Limits.

Thirdly, the masks used would have looked good in 1950 ... I don't care what kind of a budget they had ... the look of those creatures is too hammy.