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The Outer Limits - The Original Series, Season 1

The Outer Limits - The Original Series, Season 1

List Price: $79.96
Your Price: $63.97
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's About Time
Review: I can't tell you how many times I've been looking over inferior Sci-Fi shows in the DVD section of the local movie store like Space 1999 and Stargate and wondered "Why the h*** hasn't someone in marketing realized The Outer Limits should be on DVD? Finally!
I haven't reviewed this set yet, but it sounds like it only contains Season 1 of the show. Although this would leave out several great episodes like "Soldier" and "Demon With a Glass Hand," it will contain about 10 gems. My personal favorites are "Nightmare," about war games taken to the extreme; "Fun and Games," a nice take on F. Brown's Arena short story; "The Man Who Was Never Born," the true source of inspiration for the Terminator series; and "The Architects of Fear," an attempt by scientists to create a common menace to unite mankind with tragic results.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Limits, dude. About time!
Review: The genius of this show was that it used the works of authors that are now universally recognized as the pillars of the Golden Age of science fiction. I'm sure I'm one of legions of tail-end Boomers that got their first introduction to SF from this show; I'm also sure it was the first step on the path to being an engineer working in aerospace and robotics. While other kids were out partying and getting in trouble weekend nights I was parked in front of the tube with a snack geeking out to the Limits. Props to Twilight Zone, of course, but the Limits? Fugeddaboutit... It's on the SF channel on a weekend night where I am; the other night the 9-year-old son of a friend stared raptly while I recited the entire spiel beginning with the white oscilloscope dot and the solemnly intoned "There is nothing wrong with your televison set...". Black and white, dim lighting, plywood sets with old cast-off instrumentation, rheostats, gauges with needles - incredibly camp now but man, it got the job done. Were I a professor at a film school I would use this DVD to demonstrate minimalist theory: the idea that a little goes a long way if you do not underestimate the imagination of your audience.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: No Outer Limits Here!
Review: This collection is the ultimate in "sci fi" viewing, 34 of the absolute best episodes in crystal clear black and white! Although the producers lost most of their gray hair trying to overcome tightwad budget constraints, this series is the perfect companion and compliment to the less deadly and dreadful Twilight Zone. Not quite the classic Rod Serling touch, but much more relevant to today's doomsday world. Have fun, it may be you last chance to enjoy it as science fiction!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Finally the Outer Limits comes to DVD!
Review: Although they didn't have the greatest special effects the stories presented in this show still have an impact today. My personal favorite is "The Hundred Days of the Dragon" I've been waiting FOREVER for this show to come to DVD. I just hope that the quality is good and that it has some actual bonus Material. I'd like to see the original TV spots for this show. The new series produced by showtime [is very bad]. This is the only outer limits worth viewing. But all in all I'm glad it's coming on DVD. Now if only they would release the DVD's of the original Star Wars trilogy...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best television show in history!
Review: While I can't say I've seen this DVD of The Outer Limits (obviously, since it's not released yet!) I can still take the time to write a review of the series, as I collected the entire 49 episodes (both seasons) on Beta many years ago. For anyone who mistakes this groundbreaking 60's series for the abysmal dreck presented in the new, updated version that started on Showtime and currently resides on Sci-Fi, well, do yourself a favor and check this DVD set out. While many have compared the show to the Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits was ultimately a much darker, scarier and deadly serious version of that show, and at an hour per episode, was like a series of mini-movies. The fact that the great cinematographer Conrad Hall (he of "American Beauty" fame) shot most of this series, in weird, darkened lighting and odd camera angles, using the inherent black-and-white to its greatest effect, itself raises this show to the level of motion picture-style entertainment; a show that Stephen King himself called 'the greatest show of its kind ever of television'. Like the T-Zone, the Limits also featured many of the best up-and-coming TV and movie stars of the time, including Robert Duvall, James Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Cliff Robertson, Donald Pleasance and many more. 40 years after its debut, and these episodes show more imagination than any horror or sci-fi anthology I've seen since. I mean, really! A teacher from another planet who comes to Earth in lightning bolts, to instruct the highest-achieving students how to use a weather-changing machine to help destroy the world....Shatner, as an astronaut whose encounter with an alien while in space causes him to be unable to stay warm....aliens who transport an entire neighborhood up to their planet to experiment with the possibility of colonizing Earth.....a soldier from the future who comes back in time in search of his enemy (The Terminator, anyone??) - the shows were not just brilliant science-fiction, but just plain WEIRD, and certainly far ahead of their time. Sure, some episodes come up short (like some of those hokey Twilight Zones), and anyone expecting anything more than rudimentary special effects might be disappointed, but most of the shows remain a standard of the genre to which few, if any, have since met.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the Best Sci Fi Series Ever
Review: Ah, remember the good old days when you had to stay up until 2am to see repeats of your favorite TV series? The advent of the VCR made insomnia unnecessary. However, aren't those copies a bit fuzzy? Finally, the ultimate version has arrived. OUTER LIMITS is one of those series that gets better with age. As children, we could not appreciate the marvelous score, lighting, moody atmosphere and intelligent scripts. We just wanted to see the monster. Watching these episodes now, the monster is not as important, and of course, technically is not as impressive.

But let's forgive this 1963-1965 anthology series its shortcomings. The low budgets and tight schedules made the creators use their imagination and bring us a world truly magical. We have a man traveling through time, another trying to scare earth into behaving by impersonating an alien, alien forces inhabiting inanimate objects, and many other stories that don't depend entirely on effects, they are simply fascinating stories.

Creator Joe Stephano admits the network wanted a monster each week, to attract a core audience of youngsters. How clever of him to inject some class into a series that lasted only 49 episodes due to network ignorance, but has been shown over 40
years due to the genius of Stephano and producer Leslie Stevens.

The younger generation may be surprised to see how sophisticated science fiction could be in the early 60's!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Purists Beware
Review: Outer Limits was the best looking of the B&W shows, and this DVD transfer is the most gloriously beautiful thing I've ever seen, but THE SOUND IS WACKED! I can't imagine how or why, but somehow the sounds elements are shot. It just sounds like crap, the details aren't important. Now this is suspicious because the sound was perfect on the video releases. It makes me think that they're setting us up for a future re-purchase, a la the Twilight Zone Definitive Edition DVDs. Anyway, if you're into Outer Limits, these DVDs are gonna break your heart, 'cos it's an ultimate case of so close but so far away, leading you to water and not letting you drink, etc. If only I ran the world.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Old But Still Cutting Edge!
Review: Yes the old Outer Limits shows are more than a bit dated and the special effects are laughable by todays standards but it really wasn't about how impressive the rubber monsters were. The overall themes of the episodes, namely THE MAN WHO WAS NEVER BORN,NIGHTMARE, THE XANDI MISFITS, and THE MAN WITH THE POWER just to name a few still have applications and valid warnings for today. The later episodes on disc 4 were kind of bizaare but for the most part I wasn't disappointed. Though I would say that the dvd compliation of SEASON 1 is a bit pricey.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I was sadly disappointed.
Review: I received this series set from a friend who thought my love of The Twilight Zone would make it a good gift. I had never seen Outer Limits before, but was anxious to experience this show I continually heard referred to as groundbreaking and highly imaginative. I know this is heresy, but I found it neither.

Here are my three major reasons why:

1. Each episode starts with a teaser-type prologue that immediately shows some of the most shocking or interesting scenes. This destroys the mystery of the show to follow as we've already seen the hideous monster or know the twist. I just wound up fast-forwarding through them.

2. The episodes are padded. Almost all of them would be much more powerful if they were 30 minutes instead of hour-long episodes. Many feature scenes of the most mundane `action' repeated over and over again (scientists at control panels, cars driving down roads, etc.). Others feature characters endlessly talking about ramifications when what we really want to see is what's happening to the hapless victim. If these extraneous scenes were cut out, I could see myself enjoying them much more.

3. The show is too moralistic. Too many episodes revolve around man's cruelty and our needing to learn to live in peace with one another. It's a great theme to explore, but when most of the 32-episode season deals with it, it gets tiring and worse, preachy. I realize The Twilight Zone fell into this trap too, but I find it telling that some of TWZ most memorable episodes are ones about supernatural circumstances and our reactions to them.

The series is best at creating an uneasy mood - a feeling that anything can happen. The lighting was something I marveled at in almost every episode. My gazing was made all the easier by the crisp and clear transfer which delivers a black and white that rarely devolves into the dreaded gray and washed out look of some older films. My only qualm with the DVD presentation would be the decision to not include any bonus material at all. Series sets demand at least a documentary on the shows creation. Although I wouldn't recommend this series to the uninitiated, it's sure to please long-time fans.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: THE DVD IS VERY GOOD, BUT...
Review: For those who love THE OUTER LIMITS like I do, it's amazing to have the first season's episodes all in a handy 4-disc package with season two's in another. The episodes look and sound great. My only disappointment in the DVD set is that there isn't anything else on the discs except the episodes! It would have been much better if they included some sort of commentary or outtakes or photos/home movies from the cast/crew. I would have loved to see the actors applying their monster makeup and perhaps even muffing a few lines. These things must exist! But apart from that, the DVD set is as good as it gets!


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