Customer Reviews

Outer Limits: Mutant [VHS]

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

 

 

Here is a neat little Outer Limits episode concerning a colony of Earth scientists on another planet where things have gone terribly wrong. Warren Oates plays botanist Reese Fowler who is accidentally caught in a rain of radioactive isotopes which turns him into a bug-eyed mutant who never sleeps, reads minds and can kill with only his thoughts. His condition drives him insane and he torments his crewmen into remaining on the planet to keep him company. This is an example of how sometimes The Outer Limits could make an exciting episode on a shoestring budget by just concentrating on the mood of the piece. The Mutant induces a real feeling of paranoia and claustrophobia and has a wonderfully disturbing effect upon the viewer. Recommended!

This is the only episode of The Outer Limits that I have seen. This episode was entertaining and interesting. Despite me being 18, I still like watching black and white episodes and movies. I don't know if this is one of the weaker episodes of The Outer Limits like another reviewer said, but I enjoyed this episode very much.

I first saw this episode in syndication (on a future UPN-50 station) before "The Avengers", in the early-'70s, as a little boy. It scared me. It was a perfect example of "Can't Bear to Look, but Can't Look Away"-kind of thing. This is the inspiration of my future episode-issue of "Dementia-12" comic-book, "Life Sentence, Without Parole".

Perfect paranoia/intense-fear-instilled episode where a space expedition scientist gets caught in a radioactive downpour and becomes MUTATED --having no hair and huge, "Jack Kirby-esque" bug-eyes-- blames the other expedition scientists for his misfortune & threatens them with his ability to mind-read & "kill with a touch" of his bare hands --of which they become scattered atoms. I appreciate this episode more now, but I'm still too "chicken" to own it. Oh, by the way, you other folks out there may recognize Warren Oates as "Sgt. Hulka --the Big Toe" from "Stripes".

Like a lot of OL's weaker episodes, this one starts out great and then muddles. The script and the characters aren't too well developed, and a lot of potentially interesting story angles aren't sufficiently gone into once they've begun.

Warren Oates is fine in the title role of Reese Fowler, a man who has suffered an accident at a distant planetary outpost that makes his physical proximity to others a lethal threat and also enables him to read minds. Fowler can't bear loneliness, but his fellow crewmembers can't take him back to Earth with them in the close confines of their ship, once they realize the planet they are working to make habitable for colonists is too hostile to support human life for any appreciable length of time. Fowler snaps, holding them all prisoner with him until they can find some cure for his condition - but there isn't one. And his colleagues can't escape him, because he knows their every thought and can kill with a touch.

Fowler is a great, tragically doomed character, and the tension of his colleagues is well-acted. Their ultimate plan to escape him - equally tragically doomed to failure - is quite clever, and manages to create some viable suspense. The finale is believable enough, but too sudden to be dramatically satisfying. The mutant makeup is unquestionably "eye-catching," so to speak, but frankly ludicrous, and too much exposure of it on camera undercuts the drama of the piece.

This is overall a flawed episode, but worth a look for the performances.

Did you ever see the episode of Star Trek called "Where no man has gone before" starring Gary Lockwood and Sally Kellerman? The one where the Enterprise runs into something that causes one of the crew members to gain god-like powers, and his EYES begin to glitter? I wonder where I've seen that story before? Unfortunately, Star Treks version of this story is better, due to the fact that the effects were better, and Sally Kellerman co-starred. This version is still pretty good, but the effects are anything but special.