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: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301968913
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #425,461 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Performances, Clever Story, March 26, 2002

By 

Bruce Rux (Aurora, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Outer Limits: Human Factor [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Not OL's best by a long chalk, though the reviewer who commented on some critics being unduly harsh to it is well-stated. It's a good mid-level episode, with a lot to recommend it.

Gary Merrill, Harry Guardino, and especially Sally Kellerman are worth the price of admission alone, but this entry has other attributes, as well. It's thick with claustrophobic atmosphere, has a good share of wit (the military base, TABU - "Total Abandonment of Better Understanding" - being just the beginning of it), and excellent suspense, with a genuinely clever ending. Unsettling implications of invasion of privacy, national security, and nuclear diplomacy are brought up.

Merrill and Guardino do a really good job of alternately playing the nut-trying-to-pass-for-normal, and Kellerman was never more adorable in her life.

Don't expect a masterpiece. Just a good, solid suspenser. Well worth a look-see.

4.0 out of 5 stars Episode 8: The Human Factor, July 26, 2005

By 

Raj "raj_thatsme" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Outer Limits: Human Factor [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The eighth episode in the series, "The Human Factor" is basically an exchange of identities, one good and one bad, and how the bad takes advantage of it. This is not one of the best episodes, but it is better than a few.

In the frozen areas of Northern Greenland stands a Military Base, in which Dr. Hamilton (played by Gary Merrill), an army psychiatrist invents a device where he can connect his mind with another person and look into their thoughts. He tries his experiment with Maj. Roger Brothers (played by Harry Guardino), a delusional man who thinks they are being attached by a snow monster. However, due to an unexpected earthquake, something goes wrong with the experiment, and Dr. Hamilton finds himself in Brothers' body and Brothers in Hamilton's. Roger Brothers takes advantage of the opportunity, and pretending to be Hamilton, orders him to be confined, so that he can carry out his own mission to kill the `monster'. There is only one person who can save him: Dr. Hamilton's assistant, Ingrid Larkin (played by Sally Kellerman), who must set everything straight because of her personal feelings for Hamilton. But will she succeed?

This episode starts off slowly but picks itself up once the minds of the Dr. and the Maj. are switched. The main reason I was a little disappointed with this episode was because of the way it was directed. They creators wasted too much time in the beginning, and towards the end, everything seems to be happening really quickly. Otherwise, the concept of the story is very intriguing, and the cast, especially the three leads, Gary Merrill, Harry Guardino and Sally Kellerman did a wonderful job for their characters.

To quote Vic Perrin (The Control Voice): "A weapon, now only an instrument, neither good nor evil until men put it to use, and then like so many of man's inventions, it can be used either to save lives or destroy them; to make men sane or to drive them mad; to increase human understanding or to betrayal. But it will be men who make the choice. By itself, the instrument is nothing, until you add...The Human Factor!"

1.0 out of 5 stars The Human Factor = 1 star out of 5, December 29, 2002

By 

Morris's Codex (Phil-a-dump-ia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Outer Limits: Human Factor [VHS] (VHS Tape)

God, this episode was awful. Considering it had some nice plot twists (and some of the best in the series) and that it still stunk out the joint tells volumes on how bad The Human Factor was to watch. The episode invloves: a scientist, his love?, a pyscho soldier, a bunch of inept officers, awful/silly dialogue, a head-scratching plot, a nuclear bomb, officiers that arm nuclear bombs to show another person how it works(?), etc etc etc. This is one of the worse Outer Limits episodes.

thank you for your time, David