The Outer Limits: The Forms of Things Unknown

This is the most unconventional and fantastical episode of the series owing to its dreamlike nature, which looks like a film, and I must confess THE masterpiece not only in terms of story but the film-making makes this highly dramatic segment a work of art. This is also an expected pilot for a new gothic series: "The Unknown". The best scene remain: the freeze frame of André and his women while driving along a tight country road at full speed, and the murder of André via a Thanatos leaf libation (or liberation) which is depicted as a trance-like state and even a pagan ritual—one thing wrong, the regrettable slow and clumsy zoom out when André is watched by his mistresses while having a fatal drink. Strangely, the name André means "manly" in Ancient Greek which explains his behavior pattern towards women (he wears a pair of pre-"Incubus" sandals, by the way); and Kassia's last name is Paine but can be interpreted as "pain": a masochist overtone. The name of the town "Aix-les-Bains" suggests the idea of swimming ("Bains" means baths in French, by the way). The black and white killing-ladies and the small gun details remind "The Bellero Shield" and, above, they are wet twice: first during the assassination and then, in the woods while running away. The first "Outer Limits" lady to be wet by the rain is seen in "Specimen: Unknown": blonde Gail Kobe. With "Controlled Experiment", this is the second episode where a blonde harmful female, Kassia Paine, walks on high-heels. A new score composed by Dominic Frontiere (whose tense cues, heard in the assassination scene, automatically are afiliated to the shrill violins from Bernard Herrmann's "Psycho"), re-used in "The Invaders", five outstanding actors, the refinement of the art direction (watch the clocks room that you may even picture in a modern art museum; you can notice the same stairway as in "Fun and Games") and the most sophisticated cinematography (the use of coated filter, the varieties of angle shots, the sense of movement and the scale of shots) but in the line of "The Man Who Was Never Born" (see the trousers shot of David McCallum while Vera Miles stares at him at the level of the ground!) because of this sense of the Nature, thanks to Conrad Hall and William Fraker, ever seen for the last episode of the first season. The clown is the inner connection of this episode which expresses the mood of madness (Caliban-like greed and morbid utopia): the fantasy clock in the living room and the reference to André's dead body ("a crushed clown", said Leonora Edmond or "a murdered clown", "an evil clown", said Tone Hobbart). A clown music cue (a merry-go-around tune) is played during the clown clock scene and Leonora's hypnotic reverie. As in "The Sixth Finger", notice the detail of the rural funeral. This episode also makes reference to Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" (see the dead body in the trunk detail; actress Vera Miles; the old dark house), Henri-Georges Clouzot's "Les diaboliques" (the black and white ladies; the drowning of a man, the disappearing body), Val Lewton's horror films (fear bred by shadows and therefore the suggestion) and William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", recited by David McCallum who wears elegant cufflinks: "Such tricks hath strong imagination, That, if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear!" Theseus, Act V., Sc. I. Notes: In the unaired version, The Unknown, two uncredited personel are mentioned: operator William A. Fraker and title designer Wayne Fitzgerald whose rip-through title design is recycled for the Quinn Martin series: "The Invaders".