Customer Reviews

Outer Limits: Invisibles [VHS]

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

 

 

While producer Joseph Stefano's script fails to make things as clear as they might be, "The Invisibles" has incredible style and atmosphere, mostly courtesy of director Gerd Oswald. Don Gordon ("Bullitt," "Papillion") is perfect as "GIA" agent Luis Spain, and future "Batman" regular Neil Hamilton and a pre-"Hogan's Heroes" Richard Dawson head a fascinating supporting cast. The plot concerns alien parasites from somewhere in space who are intent on using humans as hosts for--what else?--planetary takeover. Extremely effective and greatly enhanced by the cinema-level photography of Conrad Hall.

One of Stefano's best scripts, and one of the scariest OL entries. This one could almost be considered a logical sequel to "Corpus Earthling," in which alien parasites commandeer human hosts.

The Invisibles are "sick, nameless nuclei" spawned in space and fallen to Earth, looking like mutant horseshoe crabs, that attach to human hosts' spinal columns and seize control of them. The GIA (the CIA actually refused to let their name be used for the government agency in the story) have gotten wind of the Secret Society of the Invisibles, consisting of some very powerful political names, and infiltrate it with undercover agent Luis B. Spain. The audience accompanies Spain on his adventure of discovery into alien invasion, and gets quite a few chills along the way.

The tension and suspense in this episode are superior. It's a nail-biter. The possession scenes are uncomfortable, suggestive of homosexual rape. The cast is stellar, especially Neil Hamilton as a possessed general and the ever-arch George Macready as the head of the alien Society.

If this one doesn't make your skin crawl, well, then...you're probably one of Them.

It's difficult to view old scifi movies nowadays without comparing their production design to what's available now. If you aren't in at least the 50-something age range, you probably never had a chance to see The Outer Limits in it's native context, and the makeup and props and models can seem fatally cheesey. But if you were lucky enough to grow up with The Outer Limits,there were episodes that pushed you into mental and emotional regions, both fascinating and horrifying,that you never visited before in your young life!

For me, "The Invisibles" was just such an episode. I wouldn't again feel that level of horror at the hands of a scifi tale until "Alien" came along 20+ years later. (In fact, I'll bet "Invisibles" set the stage for my reaction to "Alien")Maybe it's the idea of a parasite that you can't just pick off of you with tweezers that gets to me.

As others on this page have said, the performances are convincing, casting was excellent, and Stefano's prose sets the usual vague, dreamy backdrop. The unlucky "possessed" ones walking around like torture-survivors with attached-parasite hunchbacks under their shirts was mighty powerful TV, and the scene where agent Spain is being sworn into the cult, while an unsuccessful conscript, with his new hunchback, watches from the sidelines with darkened, baggy eyes and whispers the words "I just wanted to see if they gave you uniforms . . ." took me to the 'Outer Limits' of what I could process. Apparently, these things didn't turn you into a blank-stare, anesthetized zombie. You were still you, free to live the horror of each moment of this godawful thing attached to you, until your new master had something for you to do. Gut-wrenching. After watching this episode, I felt as if it had planted parasitic thoughts in my mind - scenes and feelings and considerations that I couldn't shut off or get over for days. It wasn't the sight of it, it was the thought of it.

And therein lies the greatness of The Outer Limits television series. I don't remember OL for it's special effects. Whatever they lacked, my practiced sci-fi watching brain would provide. What I do remember is the great writing and the human drama.

"The Invisibles" has both - and beware!

"You do not know these men. You may have looked at them, but you did not see them. They are newspapers blowing down a gutter on a windy night. For reasons both sociological and psychological these three have never joined or been invited to join society. They have never experienced love and friendship or formed any lasting or constructive relationship. But today, at last, they will become a part of something. They will belong. They will come a little bit closer to their unrealistic dreams of power and glory. Today, finally, they will join the hu. I almost said the human race. And that would have been a half-truth. For the race they are joining... is only half-human..." A C.I.A.-like agent infiltrates into a secret organization that is lead by alien parasites-possessed high officials. A tale of suffocating paranoia with hidden spies and the "invasion of the body snatchers" concept of conspiracy. Don Gordon's undercover spy part is just fine with his tough "heroes die alone" attitude. George Mc Ready is frightening as the charismatic leader of the Invisibles, and of course, Neil Hamilton is terrific as the fanatic general with his "friend or foe" behaviour. Once again, the Expressionist trio (Stefano-Oswald-Hall) makes this one very engrossing and shocking. "You do not know these men. You may have looked at them, but you did not see them. They are the wind that blows newspapers down a gutter on a windy night... and sweeps the gutter clean."

Joseph Stefano's prose can either fall flat or wonderfully enhance the action on the screen. It's definitely the latter here, whether delivered by George MacReady in his breathless anticipation of power or by Neil Hamilton in what turns out to be a grotesque soliloquy that's somewhere between Mein Kampf and a prolonged mental orgasm. And matching the mental horror generated by the speeches of the alien-possessed is the physical horror of the actual attachment of the symbiots and the contortions created by failed attachments. Effective editing, great use of sound and lighting, and Don Gordon's stoic performance all help the episode.

Having just seeing this episode recently, I must admit that it was better than I remembered.So, what are the "Invisibles?"We were concieved in the nothingness of space..formed by the coming together of sick, nameless nuclei. Then waited a billion, billion years for that precise ungodly moment. We fell to Earth, and the velocity of that fall quickened the seed of intellect, at the same time, it stunted the evolution of our primative form."Wow! That's the same way my mother described the "Birds and Bees" to me when I was thirteen!This episode has much the same plot as "the Hundred Days of the Dragon" (take over the world by deception) but this version is more suspensful!But it is slightly flawed with the annoying "growl?" the creatures constantly make, and Gerd Oswald's extreme close-ups, so it loses one star.

This is one of the poorer episodes in the series. The claim that it is one of the most unsettling is probably due to the "attachment" procedure that the title creatures use to enter the bodies of their human hosts. It reminded me of the way John Hurt was "hosted" in the film Alien. However having this procedure didn't seem to change the behaviour of Don Gordon who behaves the same way before and after. Perhaps the way it effected George MacReady and Neil Hamilton (later to appear in TV's Batman) was to make them act over-the-top. This is particularly unsettling for MacReady, who's voice is in opposition to this kind of performance. (Who can forget him in Gilda with Rita Hayworth). His teeth are also noticeably odd here. Was he wearing dentures? There is also a surprising homoerotic subtext to this episode which I'm sure is unintentional.