Product Details

• Actors: Vic Perrin, Bob Johnson, Ben Wright, Robert Culp, Robert Duvall
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• VHS Release Date: September 1, 1998
• Run Time: 51 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301967518
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #432,329 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Killing is fun, June 3, 1999

By 

Thomas Rucki (Paris, France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Outer Limits: Controlled Experiment [VHS] (VHS Tape)

"Who has not seen the dark corners of great cities, whose small and shabby creatures wander without purpose in the secret corners of the night ? Without purpose ? There are those whose purpose reaches far beyond our wildest dreams..." Two human-like aliens study the very nature of a crime passionnel with the help of a time machine in order to save human kind from final destruction. Barry Morse ("The Fugitive/Space 1999") is naive Inspector Phobos One who analyzes human behaviour patterns and discovers Earthman way of life (coffee & cigarettes). Pre-"Point Blank" Carroll O'Connor plays Diemos : retired person-like Earth Caretaker. Pre-"Star Trek" Grace Lee Whitney plays killing beauty Carla Duveen (a kind of angry Marilyn Monroe) who guns down with grace ("two-faced, no good, black-hearted two-timer") her husband. Pre-"Incubus" Robert Fortier, from "Production and decay of strange particles" and "Demon with a glass hand", plays skirt-chasing Burt Hamil. It's tongue-in-cheek all the way but it's still amusing. An old fashion actors episode with effective and low-budget special effects. This one looks like an average Twilight Zone episode. "Who knows ? Perhaps the alteration of one small event may someday bring the end of the world. But that someday is a long way off, and until then there is a good life to be lived in the here and now."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Outer Limits in a funny vein., May 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Outer Limits: Controlled Experiment [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is one of my all time favorite episodes, produced almost entirely in the cutting room through such editing tricks as reverse action, slow motion, and polarity reversal. The Outer Limits only comedic episode works quite well, as alien agents "Phobos" and "Diemos" disect the age-old earth crime of passion: murder. Caroll O'Connor gives a particularly fine performance as Diemos, the earth-based agent who is constantly explaining the subtleties of Earth culture to visiting supervisory agent Phobos, played by Barry Morse. (Diemos: "They're known as 'innocent bystanders', each of them tells a different version of what happened"). Grace Lee Whitney co-stars.

1.0 out of 5 stars Strong candidate for the most boring hour of television that I have ever seen, August 2, 2009

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Outer Limits: Controlled Experiment [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This episode is a strong candidate for the most boring hour of television that I have ever seen. Carroll O'Connor is an agent from Mars that is posing as a clerk in a pawnshop and Barry Morse is another agent of higher rank that arrives to study the human act of murder. Using a device that allows for events to be replayed at various speeds, they witness, re-witness and analyze a murder. Grace Lee Whitney plays a jilted woman that shoots a man in the lobby of a hotel.
Therefore, the episode consists of several replays of the shooting with the Morse character constantly trying to delve deeper into the reasons for the event. This becomes dull very quickly. Furthermore, the gadgets emit a lot of noises, whines and white pulses of light that are annoying. At the end, the events are altered so that the bullet is not fatal and the man and woman kiss and make up, where the man even asks her to marry him. Which is an odd reaction to having just missed being kissed by a bullet.
The only high point is Carroll O'Connor as the agent/shopkeeper. With a bowtie, sweater and soft demeanor, he played the part perfectly. Unfortunately, other than this, there is nothing to recommend this clunker.