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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
One of my favorites,
By
This review is from: The Outer Limits: The Man Who Was Never Born [VHS] (VHS Tape)
This episode is a sterling example of how the Outer Limits TV series took sci-fi television to heights that have yet to be surpassed four decades later. Typical of this series, "The Man Who Was Never Born" manages to be frightening while at the same time literate, thoughtful and futuristic -- and yet humane in how the story portrays its characters.Martin Landau is terrific as "Andro," the mutant human from the future who can influence present day people with hypnotic suggestion. Landau is such a class act; truly one of the best actors of these past forty years. His voice transmits his earnest and gentle character's conflict and confusion in dealing with his own emotions (e.g., love, duty to humanity) and the awesome choices that his situation presents. I'd like to acknowledge the well-written comments from previous reviewers that spurred my interest in this episode. I must echo their praise and highly recommend this episode.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beauty and the Mutant,
By
This review is from: The Outer Limits: The Man Who Was Never Born [VHS] (VHS Tape)
"Here, in the bright, clustered loneliness of the billion, billion stars, loneliness can be an exciting, voluntary thing, unlike the loneliness Man suffers on Earth. Here, deep in the starry nowhere, a man can be as one with space and time; preoccupied, yet not indifferent; anxious and yet at peace. His name is Joseph Reardon. He is, in this present year, thirty years old. This is the first time he has made this journey alone..." A microbe destroys humanity. Librarian Andro tries to change the past with the help of an astronaut. First-rate actor Martin Landau plays the nostalgic mutant Andro ("It's good to cherish old things... Beauty is always on the edge of being lost."). I like the scene in the library when astronaut Joseph Reardon says : "Melville. Hope proves a man deathless." And when he goes back to the time-portal, turns negative and says : "Find Cabot ! Kill him if you have to ! Kill Cabot !". Baby face Shirley Knight plays innocent Noel who is as gracious as a fairy. I like the whole cinematic aspect of this peculiar episode. Conrad Hall and his uncredited assistant William Fraker makes their most romantic cameraworks. They capture the magic sense of nature : the chase scene, in the wood, shot with a hand-held camera through leafs and trees. There are many reflection shots, for instance : the camera's reflection in the beginning of the wedding. The close-ups of Landau's snake eyes are magnificient when he is paying the landlady with imaginary money. And when he tells his past memories to Noel : the stylish montage (a chiarusco on the face, fade overlaped to fast-moving shiny clouds and the futuristic barren landscape) that cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca uses in "Clash by night". This is also a sensitive tribute to Beauty and the Beast with a sci-fi treatment. "It is said that if you move a single pebble on the beach, you set up a different pattern, and everything in the world is changed. It can also be said that love can change the future, if it is deep enough, true enough, and selfless enough. It can prevent a war, prohibit a plague, keep the whole world... whole."
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
can love change the future?,
By
This review is from: The Outer Limits: The Man Who Was Never Born [VHS] (VHS Tape)
This Outer Limits episode written by Anthony Lawrence and directed by Leonard Horn, is probably as seminal as The Zanti Misfits, but while this one too features a hideous monster, it also uses Conrad Hall's soft-focus lighting to create a romantic fable. As an inhabitant of the wasteland earth of the future, a vision which predates Planet of the Apes, Martin Landau has the opportunity to travel back in time and change destiny. Landau's English accent and Shakespearean intensity is right for his futureworld character, and when he meets Shirley Knight, together they deliver what are arguably the greatest and most delicate performances ever given in the series. Landau's appearance as one suffering from the side effects of a corrupted biological microbe, with The Elephant Man type cauliflower pistules on his skin, calls to mind the mythic parallels of Beauty and the Beast, The Frog Prince, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Horn provides a smoky forest location. At one point Horn superimposes a belltower with Landau crushing a flower that Knight had held. Knight's wardrobe recalls the heroines of the mentioned tales, and also Alice in Wonderland. Horn gets comic mileage out of Landau's ability to conceal his true appearance with hypnotic suggestion, with the screen dissolving so the onlooker sees Landau without disfigurement, although a continuity error spoils the shock effect of someone opening a door we see being locked. Horn also has Landau smashing a mirror, walking into the camera in his monster guise (pre Cape Fear) for lumbering emphasis, and uses an effective hand-held camera for a chase scene. Even if the spaceship is rather clunky, Knight's wedding veil is used for some kind of ... metaphor, and the last image isn't held long enough for it's full gothic resonance, Dominic Frontiere gives us a redemptive love theme for the doomed couple. The Official Companion tells us that Lawrence final scene was cut because it made the show run overtime. This is a pity since the scene as described offers an ending still downbeat but less cruel as the existing one.
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