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 26, 1995
• Run Time: 51 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 630197686X
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #427,807 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 Not That Good, Not That Bad, March 27, 2002

By 

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

This review is from: Outer Limits: Specimen Unknown [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This episode is neither as bad nor as good as other reviewers hype it up to be. It's a decent middle-of-the-road OL. Highly padded (by virtue of the overlong teaser, which is repeated verbatim in the episode), suffering from really cheap effects, but a decent enough story competently enough presented.

It's the Andromeda Strain, with space barnacles in place of a killer virus. The barnacles grow anywhere, reproduce like kudzu, and exhale a highly toxic gas in the process. The astronauts who discover them don't realize until too late that they are bringing a deadly organism back with them, and the government has one helluva problem on its hands.

The performances are good, and so is the suspense. The effects are pretty cheesy. The production team was badly strapped when this one was shot, but they did a creditable job of making-do in spite of it.

Not a front-runner episode in anyone's book, but enjoyable enough if you like this kind of thing.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars poisonous poinsettias, October 24, 2000

By 

Peter Shelley "petershelley" (Sydney, New South Wales Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Outer Limits: Specimen Unknown [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The Official Companion reports that this episode ran undertime so was padded out painstakingly. This padding is noticable in the prologue and the set-up of a spaceship invaded by hitherto dormant space spores who grow into plants which emit lethal vapour. While we aren't shown how the spores managed to get inside the spaceship (one isn't likely to leave the ship door open) the naivety in which they are treated is the real surprise, probably influenced by how pretty they are and what attractive decor they make pre-vapour emittance. The spores resemble mushroom-shaped muffins, and the plants have cobra-like stems and large white petals. When a young Dabney Coleman as a botanist moves his face in for a closer inspection, we know what to expect. This episode was broadcast just after the release of the The Day of the Triffids film and the similarity (and solution to the problem) is evident, though these plants are passive-aggressive. Director Gerd Oswald provides enough suspense however to make this engaging viewing. Once the Earth base has to decide whether to allow the infected-shuttle to land or to be destroyed, the tension begins, aided by composer Dominic Frontiere's use of twittery strings to suggest both alien life and the rapid maturing of the spores into flowers with deadly stigma. This moment of decision is performed like a silent movie. Although the repair of a servomechanism of the shuttle was filmed in slow-mo to add time, the acrobatics are remarkeable, and the image of a bound corpse (the first victim of the vapour) buried in space evocatively gothic. Gail Kobe, who would later be in Keeper of the Purple Twilight, appears as the wife of one of the shuttle crew, and the only female in the cast. I suppose Oswald thought that her being in peril is more potent for the audience than the space shuttle rabbit. I rate this episode highly cos this time around, the "bear" is so feminine.

4.0 out of 5 stars One of the better episodes in an overrated series, May 31, 2010

By 

Douglas Millhoff (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Outer Limits: Specimen Unknown [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Similarities to Day of the triffid aside, the inventiveness of a "bad guy" taking the form of a flowering bulb from outer space hooked me when I first saw this as a kid.

Looking back at it nearly half a century after it was produced, one can take amusement at the sheer recklessness in absence of quarantine measures while taking these things on board a space station and then transporting them back to earth. But as a cautionary tale of invasive species and ecological mayhem, it was ahead of its time and may even have contributed to adoption of quarantine procedures in exploration and research.

While others have commented on cheesy production values, The Outer Limits ALWAYS worked on a shoestring budget. This episode was above par, topped off with decent direction and a truly disturbing musical score.