Customer Reviews

Outer Limits: Cry of Silence [VHS]

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

 

 

Eddie Arnold plays an urbane, well-dressed city man with a hankering to get away from it all by moving out to the country. But his platinum blonde wife isn't too keen on the idea and has to be more or less dragged along under protest. When they get out there, he finds himself surrounded by Utter Weirdness. No, we're not talking about "Green Acres", but rather its science fictional predecessor "Cry of Silence". This is a very enjoyable, zero special-effects classic of the original Outer Limits' budgetarily-challenged second season. I've often wondered whether the creators of "Green Acres" didn't get the idea for that sitcom from watching this show (the chronology would be about right)! This episode targets the viewer's imagination and fear of the unknown with great skill and enjoyable results. As in some earlier OL episodes which cast such mundane items as rocks and dust-bunnies in a paranoid light, so with this one; and after viewing it, one can never view tumbleweeds quite the same again. Frogs and rocks also become objects of fear (the former possibly foreshadowing the Ray Milland film "Frogs"). The plot revolves around an incorporeal alien intelligence that occupies and animates ordinary things in a remote, desolate canyon, in a determined effort to discover and make contact with earthly life. This episode is strong on mood and story (like most classic OL), and one of the most hair-raising moments of all is when the alien possesses a human corpse. The alien force is so different from earthly life in form and substance that it doesn't recognize it as such, just as our earthly protagonists can't easily comprehend what is happening to them. The dramatic theme is the need of separate beings to overcome the differences that divide and separate them, to relate or make contact and thus transcend alienation, or exhaust themselves trying. "This is the only flag we can plant". A great nostalgia trip back to a time when science fiction had dignity and appealed not only to the mind (both intellect and imagination) but also to the heart, instead of just trying to play up to the immaturity and conceits of a spoiled, tasteless mass audience via empty special effects and vacuous psychodrama.

June Havoc is fantastic as she and her husband (Eddie Albert) fend off animated tumbleweeds, a frog attack and malevolent boulders in a creepy farm inhabited by an equally creepy farmer (Arthur Hunnicut). The crisp dialogue and uncomfortable sense of confused tension make this a memorable episode

Though I have not seen this episode since the early sixties when I was only a 6 or 7 year-old girl, it always stuck out in my mind as the quintessential episode. Of course, after all these years, I did not recall the title, but never, ever forgot those tumbleweeds. Thanks to a previous reviewer for mentioning them so that I will soon have it in my collection. Can't wait to see it after soooooooooooooo many years!

No doubt largely the inspiration for Dean Koontz's sometimes effective Winter Moon, this episode isn't as good as it's cracked up to be, but is an effective, atmospheric little chiller. It was written by Louis Charbonneau, who appears to have a love affair with animating the inanimate - in "Corpus Earthling" he gave us talking rocks, and in "Cry of Silence" he gives us a plethora of lifeless menaces come miraculously to life.

Well - not so miraculously. The bizarre movements among usually unmoving objects has an identifiable source. An alien intelligence, vainly attempting to communicate with our world, is behind the animation of tumbleweeds, rocks, lesser animals, and finally man...but only one dead man, which is part of the creepy fun. Edward Albert and June Havoc enter into this little Twilight Zone arena, hooking up with an old desert rat who has been shacking himself away from it all for a few weeks, now. The terrified trio ultimately figure out what is going on, and Albert becomes the anticlimactic mediumistic voice for the frustrated alien intruder spirit - who can't hear Havoc's responses to its appeal for contact.

This one is worth it for the overall atmosphere and good performances.

With minimum special effects, a cast of only three (excellent) performers, and a fine script, this episode can rank with the best science fiction in movies or television from the '50s-'60s era. We move from mystery to horror to wonder and a final, plausible (in scifi terms), mind stretching explanation for all we have seen. It's as tightly-woven as film noir, suspends disbelief from the beginning, and completely involves the viewer with the characters, with the premise, and with every event that happens. The best episode from this classic series.

This episode of "The Outer Limits" is one of the best if not the best. Dealing with extraterrestrial life coming to Earth in a completely different form and trying to communicate with the inhabitants is a real thought provoking aspect of science fiction. The use of harsh, contrasty scenes adds impact to the "silence" aspect of the failed communication. Arthur Hunnicutt is outstanding as the farmer at odds with the alien life forms assimilating the tumbleweeds.

Some epsiodes of the OL provided the viewers with daring social commentary. Others stirred profound and touching emotions. "Cry of Silence" gave us killer tumbleweeds.

The premise of the episode is a misunderstood alien visitor, a theme which had already been done (1,000 times better) in "The Galaxy Being." Eddie Albert stars as an intellectual prone to making huge leaps of logic because they are in the script. June Havoc plays his histrionic wife. They wander out to an isolated spot in the desert (all the better to save money by the producer) and are attacked by animate tumbleweeds and irate frogs. June screams a lot, which is odd because they don't seem to be in any real danger at all.

They meet Arthur Hunnicut who appears to be a simple old hick (as he does in all his roles). June finds his journal and discovers he is actually an educated man. So why does he pretend to be a dumb hick? Why doesn't he try to work with the obviously astute Albert to escape? And if he is hiding his education, why does he leave the journal out to be found? Hey, don't ask questions, look at the killer tumbleweeds.

This continues until Albert opens himself up as a vessel for the entity. It posseses him and goes into a soliloquy about how Earthlings can't be communicated with. Apparently aliens of this sort talk to themselves in overly dramatic fashion a lot. Then it leaves, leaving the audience to feel, sniff, so ashamed because, sniff, we humans just don't understand.

Frankly, it is hard to find an OL episode that isn't better than "Cry of Silence," for intellectual stimulation or even pure escapism. After the second viewing the fun of jeering at its absurdities wears thin. Look for it in re-runs, but save your money on the video.

"Cry of Silence", along with the one in the above title, has to rank as one of the worst episodes in the two-year history of the landmark series.
Maybe star Eddie Albert was getting prepared for the "absurdities" that he would encounter on his television series "Green Acres".
Only the inhabitants of the fictitious town of Hooterville would believe menacing tumbleweeds.