Rod Serling's Night Gallery: "The Different Ones"

The Night Gallery episode “The Different Ones” serves as an adequate -- if not inspired -- companion piece to the famous The Twilight Zone episode “Eye of the Beholder.”  

You may recall that “Eye of the Beholder” concerns a desperate woman -- with her face in bandages -- who believes that she is ugly.  She has had a few operations already, to make herself more attractive, but they’ve all failed miserably.

When the bandages come off, however, the viewers see that the woman is absolutely beautiful by our standards.  The rest of the world -- the doctors and the nurses -- are hideous by comparison.  

And yet because the staff represents the “norm” in this society, they are considered the pinnacle of aesthetic perfection.

In Night Gallery’s “The Different Ones” -- a story set a few decades in the future -- a boy named Victor is physically repugnant by normal or typical human standards. He sits in his room all day with his head under a black bag, while the neighborhood children shout at him from the front yard.  They call him a “freak” and “ugly.”

Victor’s father, Paul Koch (Dana Andrews), is desperate to help his derided son live some semblance of a normal life, and contacts the government for help  

Although nothing can be done for Victor in terms of surgery, he can -- pursuant to the “Federal Conformity Act of 1993” -- be relocated to another place…another planet.  

In this case, a planet called “Borean” is extremely anxious for visitors from Earth.  So Paul says goodbye to his son, and Victor finds, on the distant world, that he is no longer considered ugly…but beautiful instead

The similarities between “The Different Ones” and “Eye of the Beholder are worth noting.  

In both stories, the main character spends significant running time with his/her face shrouded from the audience, in bandages or under a bag. 

Likewise, both characters hail from a society in which conformity is enforced, apparently by law.  

And finally, the solution for both characters in terms of living a happy life is relocation to a place where there are with kindred individuals. In “Eye of the Beholder” that place is a colony to the North (think a leper colony…). In “The Different Ones,” it’s a distant world.

But the two stories differ in some significant ways too, as well as in terms of final impact.  

The first time you watch it, “Eye of the Beholder” generates surprise, shock and terror.  The cinematic techniques trick us, essentially, into believing that the world of the narrative is the same as our world.  We don’t learn about that mistaken assumption until the bandages come off the hospital patient.  The impact is forceful, and astounding.  

“The Different Ones” has no such comparable cinematic technique, and so the punch-line, that Victor goes to visit a world where everyone looks like him feels like simply a whimsical one.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with whimsy.  

Indeed, there’s a certain charm to the conclusion here, which suggests that there’s a place for everyone in this universe.  But I would argue that whimsy is ultimately inferior, as a tone, to stark horror.  That’s especially true if an artist is attempting to make a point about conformity, and the way that society enforces norms.  A sledge-hammer, in this case, is more effective than a feather.

In addition, “Eye of the Beholder” does a powerful job of depicting how the establishment of the alternate world is one of strict, ruthless conformity.  We see the leader of the society on a view-screen, for example, and he gesticulates like Adolf Hitler, and imposes his edict of genetic conformity on his culture.  

Watching this leader, we can’t help but think of the Nazis, and the eugenics program they enforced through genocide.  

In “The Different Ones,” Mr. Koch, by contrast, must deal with a huge futuristic bureaucracy to help his son…but help is acquired.  So here we might get the idea of an over-developed nanny state, in other words, but never the notion that the State is actively evil.  

Sure, one option is for Victor to submit to a suicide regimen, but the State only suggests that avenue and doesn’t enforce it.  In other words, death panels are optional.

One idea that doesn’t age so well, in either case, is that a “happy” ending for those who are different is, essentially, consignment to a ghetto for the rest of their natural lives.  

Frankly, this was as happy an ending as we were going to get in the dark, melancholy “Eye of the Beholder.”  

But “The Different Ones” doesn’t really address the fact that the exchange program between planets is all about getting rid of “undesirables” and those who are different.  Instead, the program seems like a win-win.  On Borean, normal humans are considered ugly, and go to Earth.  And on Earth, ugly folks like Victor look just like the inhabitants of Borean.

It’s all a little pat and contrived.

In short, “The Different Ones” isn’t truly in the same class as “Eye of the Beholder,” despite thematic corollaries.  Instead, the Night Gallery story is a watered-down version of the same tale, but its critique of conformity has largely been rendered toothless.  

Instead, we get the final joke that everybody is beautiful to someone. 

You just have to be in the right room, with the right people.

Rod Serling's Night Gallery: "Silent Snow, Secret Snow"

In 1934, writer Conrad Aiken penned a short story of a most unusual variety: one concerning a seemingly normal pre-adolescent boy named Paul who succumbs to a voice "inside" his head; the voice of immaculate, glittering, and unending...snow. The boy uses his mental "snow" as a barrier "between himself and the world."

Paul's concerned, frightened parents attempt desperately to reach their son, to pull the boy back to their reality, but the ubiquitous snow -- an all-consuming yet strangely intimate mental blizzard -- buries Paul's mind inside itself. This progression towards isolation continues until Paul is simply...unreachable.

"Silent Snow, Secret Snow" was dramatized on radio in the 1950s and also very memorably on Rod Serling's Night Gallery in 1971. It's one of my all-time favorite installments of Night Gallery, actually. It's very, very disturbing, but also beautiful. 

One of the things I admire most about Night Gallery is that it dealt with horrors of all varieties, whether monstrous (like vampires and ghouls) or very real. On the latter front, it mused seriously about the horror of loneliness and regret ("They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar"). 

Or, as is the case here, the horror of mental illness.

Whether you view this Night Gallery tale and young Paul's plight as a metaphor for autism or for schizophrenia, it's a terrifying journey.  "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" taps into a universal parental fear of losing your grip on your child; of losing him (or her) to something insidious that you can't control.

Orson Welles narrates this distinctive segment of Night Gallery, and his mellifluous voice captures some strange, artistic quality about this story. As scary as Paul's turn "inward" remains, the narration reads like fine, lyrical poetry; and the visuals are dynamic, glorious and well-chosen. 

In a certain sense, this is simply the darkest story of winter ever created because it concerns an interior winter; a metaphorical season of death that arrives like a storm and heralds the cessation of innocent youth.

As the story commences, Welles' recounts for us how Paul's unusual journey into mental illness originated; how his descent into the the never ending snow started simply as "nothing...just an idea. 

But then Paul's fantasy methodically grew worse and worse, becoming an obsession he couldn't turn away from. The notion is that Paul's real world is somehow dirty, muddled or confusing, and so his mind seeks out "the counterpoint of snow," that immaculate, perfect cleanliness of snow fall. 

His mind finds the purity it desires, and can't let go of it once it is located.

In keeping with this visual theme of "whiteness" symbolizing purity, there are moments in the episode in which the audience sees Paul drinking milk (notably also white), or glaring at a glass chandelier, which promptly transforms into ice-laden tree branches. Everything Paul sees is soon affected by the unique filter (his filter) of snow.

When Paul's disassociation from reality grows more pronounced, "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" begins to depict outsiders (a school teacher, parents, and a prying doctor) in the point-of-view subjective shot. They appear more than a little distorted this way; almost like aliens. The effect is that we -- like Paul -- find ourselves distanced from them and their hysterical concerns.

In a despairing, unhappy denouement, Paul finally turns away from the "inquisition" of the outside world for another place, an interior dwelling that "no one will ever again be able to enter."

In this white blizzard, the snow beckons more strongly than before, promising to tell Paul a beautiful story. It is a tale that gets "smaller and smaller," like a "flower that blooms into a seed." 

Again, that's a perfect metaphor for Paul's unexpected turn inward; for his shrinking world. In pre-adolescence, we expect the youthful seed to bloom; for a child to "mature" and become something more than the sum of his or her parts. 

Imagine the terror a parent must feel when a child's journey is the opposite: a doubling down, a turn away from the wonders of the outside world. Welles' narration is especially good in this latter part of the episode, whipped-up into a strange, almost sensual frenzy.

Mental illness can blot out life's colors. It can blot out life's vibrancy and nuance, creating a kind of obsessive blindness, and .here it is visualized as a snow blindness.

 I don't want to say something corny or cheap about an elegant, scary show like this, but "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" is truly and inescapably...chilling. The pristine, cold beauty of this most singular Night Gallery episode will make your blood run cold. Especially if you happen to be a Mom or Dad....

Rod Serling's Night Gallery: "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar"

For many years, critics have openly dismissed Rod Serling's second TV series, the genre anthology Night Gallery (1970-1973) as nothing but an inferior rip-off of The Twilight Zone. 

Because Serling (1921-1975) often voiced very public disappointment with some elements of the horror series, it seems like a Pandora's Box was opened up on the program and hasn't ever been closed, even to this very day.

And yet, Night Gallery features so much of Rod Serling's original -- and brilliant -- creative voice. Serling penned some thirty segments for the series, and that number symbolizes a sizable chunk of work. It represents a whole new opportunity to examine Serling the artist as a writer, a storyteller and social moralist. To ignore or downgrade Night Gallery because it wasn't as consistently brilliant as The Twilight Zone is to basically close ourselves off to an entire work by one of TV's few undeniable geniuses.

No less an authority than Stephen King called Night Gallery a "watered down Thriller with Serling doing the Boris Karloff hosting job..."(Danse Macabre, page 243). 

Christopher Wicking and Tise Vahigimi noted in their book, The American Vein: Directors and Directions in Television that the series "was a sad departure from series activity for Serling," but also commented that the show did "contain moments of true horror and mood-drenched atmosphere."(E.P. Dutton, 1979, page 252). 

On the plus said, TV Zone magazine has called the series "occasionally inspired" (November 1992), and Bob Wisehard in The Best of Science Fiction Television opined that the series "was like the dark side of Rod Serling...a real change for television..."(Harmony Books, 1987, page 126).

The dark side of Rod Serling? It's on full display in the stirring and emotionally-wrenching installment titled "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar."

In this deeply-moving work of "paint, pigment and desperation," a man named Randolph Lane (played by William Windom) copes with the inevitable march of time. Although he was a heroic paratrooper in World War II (as was Serling himself...) Lane has spent the 25 years since his service selling plastics. 

His company doesn't value him, he has to fight every young upstart on the way up, ("with assistants like that, who needs assassins," he quips), and also there's the guilt. The terrible, haunting guilt. His beloved wife Katie died years ago of pneumonia. He wasn't there to help her, to take her to the hospital. Nope, he was "working," making a name for himself. 

And now, twenty-five years to the day that he began employment with Pritkin's Plastic Products, he gets fired without so much as a gold watch for compensation. 

Worse, a demolition company is getting ready to destroy his favorite drinking spot, Tim Riley's Bar. This is the very place where Randy's homecoming from Europe was celebrated in 1945. The very place where his Dad sang "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" to him. Where Katie and he used to go together and gaze into each other's eyes. Where Lane experienced what he now considers "the best years of his life."

Randy just can't let go of Tim Riley's bar. 

It's part of his very existence, and the past beckons to him there in a way that the empty present simply never can. He peers in at the bar's interior through dusty window panes and sees his dead father, his dead wife...his past inside. He sees 1945 laid out before him. Ghosts. 

But that wrecking ball is still coming, threatening to destroy the very past that he loves, all in the name of "progress." Soon a 20-floor banking establishment (replete with underground parking garage) will occupy the space where his memories live...

"They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar" is not your typical Night Gallery episode. It isn't overtly horrific. There aren't big "scares" in it anywhere. 

There's almost no touch at all of the supernatural. 

The only horror here is, indeed, the melancholy passage of time and the inevitable sense of aging too quickly. 

The episode concerns, as Serling states so eloquently in his opening narration, "the quiet desperation of men over 40 who keep hearing heavy footsteps behind them and are torn between a fear and compulsion to look over their shoulders."

Randolph Lane is not just a man facing hallucinations from 1945, but a man who realizes with acute accuracy and insight that the best days of his life are far behind him. That he's had his shot, his one chance, and it will all soon be over. Done. 

In many ways, this episode is autobiographical, I'm sure, and it is important to note that Serling died just five years after writing it. In the episode, Windom's character makes note that he is 48 years old, and that his father passed away when he was just six years older (at 52). In a weird and sad twist of fate, that was just about the very age at which Mr. Serling himself passed away. It's as if Serling knew -- like his protagonist, Randolph Lane -- that he was fast running out of time.

"They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar" serves as a perfect companion piece to the episode of The Twilight Zone called "Walking Distance," in which a harried businessman walks over a hill one day and finds himself back in a favorite summer from his long-gone youth. He encounters himself as a child at a merry-go-round and desperately urges the boy to cherish this time, because it will soon be gone. He is chastened, however, by his father, who tells him -- a bit sadly -- that we all get allotted just "one summer." Just one. And that this one belongs to the boy with a future, not the man living in the past. So the man must go home; must go back to the unhappy present.

"They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar" is the logical and very sad continuation, after a fashion, of "Walking Distance," proving again the adage "you can't go home again."  Time stops for no man, and for no reason.  It just marches on.

Yet Rod Serling has discovered, in some sense, immortality.  He died too young, but his stories live on, all because he was able to express so well -- and so distinctively -- the universal dreads of human nature.  He boasted a special and singular perspective on life and on humanity, and this world we all share. 

Barry Eysman eulogized Mr. Serling in this fashion, in Writers' Digest (in November of 1975):

"Rod Serling saw dignity in people like this. He showed us the shadow people, the ones who dwell on the periphery, who dwell in the dark out-of-the-way bars, reliving, subsisting on past times. He showed us people we'd rather not think about. 

But with that keen perception and sparse dialogue, he grabbed you...and told you in no uncertain terms that these people deserved at least a little victory, breathing space, someone to care for, someone to care about."

Ultimately Rod Serling's "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar," is about one man hoping to be treated with dignity after a life of service and of sacrifices. 

It's about a man taking stock at the mid-point of his life and deciding where, ultimately, to dwell -- the past or the present. 

I suppose I find it a little shocking that Rod Serling could ever have, even for a second, doubted that his legacy would stretch decades far into the future, and that he would be remembered and honored as one of the greats of the medium. 

But perhaps it was that gnawing self-doubt, that deep-seated insecurity that drew him again and again to the typewriter; that pushed him to create art in the first place; that forced him to top himself over and over again. 

In the end, Serling need not have feared his own death as any kind of ending, because his writing -- episodes of Twilight Zone such as "Walking Distance or Night Gallery's "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar" -- has granted him the eternal life we all seek.

Rod Serling's Night Gallery: Introductory Montage

For three seasons in the early seventies, Rod Serling's Night Gallery brought horror stories of all varieties into American living rooms.  

The series was hosted by its creator, who was seeking to repeat the success of his previous anthology, The Twilight Zone (1959 - 1964).  But unlike its celebrated predecessor, Night Gallery was filmed in color, and that technological advance opened up a whole new world of horror, a world splendidly taken advantage of in stories such as "Camera Obscura," which featured a sickly-green tint in some footage.

The premise of Night Gallery is that Rod Serling is our "curator" in a dreadful art museum or gallery, one where the paintings lead viewers into gruesome, twisted, and macabre stories. 

As the series introductory montage for the first two seasons opens, these illustrations literally come towards the camera to the strains of Gil Melle's creepy theme song. The underlying feeling here is of a barrage of sorts, of unending waves hitting the shore, coming at us. And since the images are explicitly of terror or evil, we are overcome by that barrage.  They just keep coming, each image more hideous or weird than the last.

In the first shot below, an image within an image grows large, and comes at us.

As the images fill the frame, we see different examples of art (meaning different styles of paintings) and different people too, but all of a monstrous variety.

In terms of the art-work, we first see an M.D. Escher-like work which seems to bend or alter our sense of reality. 

In the constantly moving box-within-a-box frame or format, we also detect a human face, particularly its dark eyes. And inside the interior box is yet another painting, one of an abstract or modern type.

The images keep hitting us like a tidal-wave in the shots below, suggesting a sense of enveloping horror that we cannot escape. The idea of bringing up each image in its own box is an original one, and means that we don't get a traditionally edited montage, one in which we follow a chronological sequence, or move from location to location.  Instead, it feels like this montage is happening to us.

Notice that many of the faces we detect in this montage -- above and below -- are lit so as to be immensely creepy (from below), distorted through a mirror or other device.  This imagery also features people who are aged, old men, old crones and the like. 

In the next shot, the object in front of the camera seems to be observing us, even as we look at him (and the other) images.  This visual seems to suggest that the terror is going to actually touch us, or affect us.

Next, our title cards, over more memorable and creepy art.

We finally resolve to a painting of a human eyeball, and in that lens meet our guest cast.

Here is the intro in live-action:

The House Between: "devoured" (Season 3, Episode 1)

Saturday Morning Flashback: Land of the Lost: "Repairman"

“Repairman,” the fourth episode of Land of the Lost’s third season, shows many signs of creative growing pains, though perhaps not as many as the previous two (dreadful) entries, “Survival Kit” and “The Orb.”

In “Repairman,” the Sleestak once again hatch a strategy to eradicate the Marshalls, and once again seize upon the notion of tampering with the Sun.  Using another heretofore unknown pylon -- a black one at that -- the Sleestak remove a vital “sun crystal” from the matrix table. As a consequence, solar flares erupt, threatening to burn-up and destroy all life in the Altrusian valley.

Of course, there are a couple of problems with this plan.  

The Sleestak have tampered with the sun and daylight before. In fact they did so in the previous episode, “The Orb,” so you’d think they might have learned their lesson. Apparently not.

And secondly, it makes no sense that the Sleestak in the third season have become veritably obsessed with killing the Marshalls…to the exclusion of all other concerns.  On more than one occasion in the previous two seasons, the Marshalls came to the Sleestaks’ aid, and yet this fact is never acknowledged.  Suddenly the Sleestak are out-and-out bad guys, with little moral depth, and all they want to do is to kill the Marshalls.  The important subtext of the series – of cooperating with your neighbor – for the good of the environment or planet, is utterly lost.

After the solar flares erupt, a fastidious, unflappable “dandy” type named Blandings materializes in the Land of the Lost.  He reports that he is a “repairman” of sorts, and has a few short hours in which to stop the solar flares.  “Duty is duty,” he notes cheerily. After Blandings returns the sun crystal back to the black pylon matrix disappears, he disappears…but not before revealing to Holly that the Marshalls will, one day, find a way home.

Again, if you’ve watched Land of the Lost, or even just kept up with my retrospectives here on the blog, you’ll realize the central problem with “Repairman.”  Basically, the Land of the Lost’s environmental control mechanisms have malfunctioned many times before (in “One of Our Pylons is Missing,” “The Longest Day,” and “Blackout” to name three occasions), but never before has a repairman appeared to fix them.  

Instead, The Marshalls have had to act decisively, often cooperating with Sleestak or Pakuni, to repair the damage themselves.  I submit that this is a superior story paradigm, as it makes the Marshalls co-stewards of their environment.  

Having a repairman show up to fix things in a jiffy isn’t nearly so dramatic a resolution, and the characters don’t seem to learn much from his presence, either. In “Repairman,” the Marshalls must rescue Blandings from Sleestaks in the Lost City’s pit (as Will had to rescue Enik and Chaka in last week’s “The Orb”), but they are bystanders to the repair process, and thus cut out of the action.

Also, Blanding’s revelation that the Marshalls will find a way home seems misplaced, given series lore. We already know that a future version of Holly has warned her that she will one day be left alone in the Land of the Lost, without her family’s companionship. We have already seen Rick Marshall leave, albeit unintentionally, thus fulfilling a part of that destiny. It seems odd that given the future we already know about, that Blandings would state something directly to the contrary.

And, finally, I must note once more that Holly (Kathy Coleman) is given virtually nothing to do in this installment.  She disappears for long stretches of the tale, and is not given the opportunity to join Jack (Ron Harper) and Will (Wesley Eure) on their rescue attempt. 

The Outer Limits: "The Invisible Enemy"

As I've written here before, I'm a big fan for the "doomed space expedition"-style story featured in horror/sci-fi films like Alien (1979), and Europa Report (2013) or depicted on TV series such as Space:1999 ("Dragon's Domain,") Dr. Who ("Planet of Evil") and The Twilight Zone ("Death Ship").

I harbor endless fascination with these tales about courageous astronauts who brave dangers alien and eerie in remote corners of the universe; cut off from Earth; cut off from help.

It's just a thing with me, I suppose...a frontier spirit maybe; or perhaps just a deeply-held belief that the next hill is always worth climbing, whatever the danger lurking on the other side. That danger doesn't have to be a monster in these macabre stories, just something unknown...and perhaps inexplicable. Like the planet in Solaris (1972), for instance.

And that brings us to one of my favorite TV examples of the form; one that does feature a (very memorable) monster: an Outer Limits episode (from the second season) titled "The Invisible Enemy." 

Appropriately enough, the episode (written by Jerry Sohl and directed by Byron Haskin) first aired on Halloween in 1964, and it's guaranteed -- even today -- to give you a little shiver.

The Control Voice (our series narrator) describes this tale as a "painful step from the crib of destiny" and "part of the saga of the space pioneers." More specifically, the episode involves a rocket, called M2 that lands on the chalky surface of Mars to investigate the disappearance, three years earlier, of the first mission to the Red Planet by the M1.

Commanding this rescue/exploratory mission is Major Merritt, played by a pre-Batman Adam West. His first mate is the scoundrel Buckley (Rudy Solari), who describes himself -- pre Dr. McCoy -- as just an old "country astronaut." The entire crew of the M2 has been ordered by Earth Control (and a computer named Telly...) to remain constantly in eye sight of one another while on the surface. The M1 crew separated. And disappeared. In the blink of an eye...

Even with this edict in place, a subordinate, Mr. Lazzari suddenly disappears on the crumbly planet surface. Lazzari's fate may also prove amusing to Star Trek fans since he is played by Peter Marko -- doomed Mr. Gaetano in the Trek episode "The Galileo 7." Then another astronaut, Frank Johnson, also disappears...also in an impossibly fast fashion.

In short order, Merritt and Buckley discover that the sand on Mars is actually a living ocean of sorts. And that swimming beneath the surface of this glittering sea is a race of monstrous, carnivorous sand sharks. The astronauts Lazzari and Johnson were pulled down below...and eaten. The monsters, in fact, can smell human blood...

Merritt discovers the subterranean sharks while trapped atop a rock in the middle of the "ocean" even as a sand storm blows the tide higher and higher. It is at this moment -- with man and beast in the same shot -- that the audience realizes for the first time how colossal the sand shark is. One step into the sand, and Merritt will meet the same grim fate as his crew members.

In the end, the surviving Earth men escape the hungry sand sharks and return safely to Earth. The episode makes a big point of the fact that the astronauts both survive, in large part, because they willfully ignored Ground Control (and Telly...) and made "human" decisions in the heat of the moment instead. Again...it's a kind of pioneer spirit. Free from bureaucracy and committee; with life or death on the line.

One reason I enjoy "The Invisible Enemy" so much (besides my fetish with 1960s future-tech...) is the exquisite, black-and-white visualization of the Martian landscape. 

Though scientifically inaccurate -- there's air on Mars!? --- the terrain is nonetheless foreboding, barren...and gorgeous. Rocky outcroppings dot the horizon, and the endless sand ocean glimmers and brims with mystery. In one evocative shot (from Buckley's perspective), the sandy sea actually transforms into an Earth-style, watery sea, and that's how the astronaut begins to suspect the existence of, well, sea life.

But the image I've always remembered most from this episode involves the monster itself: the roaring, hungry sea shark. We first see an ugly dorsal spine cut above the sand, like a shark fin cutting over a watery-surface. 

And then, over time, more of the beast is revealed until we understand it to be some sort of huge, malevolent, gliding, under-sand dragon. One of the episode's final shots is a humdinger too: a whole school of the beasts -- six or seven, perhaps -- breaking the surface after their brethren is killed...with vulnerable man just outside reach, on the rocky shore beyond. 

"The Invisible Enemy" also reminds me of a (buried) fear of mine from childhood (no doubt brought on by my exposure to Blood Beach [1980]): the idea of disappearing beneath the sand on the beach, grabbed and eaten by something invisible and avaricious.

When we do get to Mars, there likely won't be giant sand sharks waiting for us in dusty seas, but there will, no doubt, be other Invisible Enemies. 

Perhaps just the elements themselves. 

Hopefully we'll meet those challenges with the same insight and resourcefulness demonstrated by Merritt and Buckley in this classic Outer Limits episode.

The Outer Limits: "The Guests"

In the Outer Limits episode called “The Guests,” a drifter in a leather jacket named Wade (Geoffrey Horne) is inexplicably trapped in the past -- metaphorically and literally -- when he happens inside an alien “brain” that has assumed the shape of a Victorian mansion atop a hill summit.            

This imposing edifice -- which occupies a space entirely outside the Laws of Physics -- serves as home to several strangers including a faded silent screen star, Florinda Patten (Gloria Graham), a Wall Street investment banker of questionable morality, Randall Latimer (Vaughn Taylor), and his gleefully cruel wife, Ethel (Nellie Burt).  All these souls have been denizens of the alien house since 1928 and evidence little interest in leaving it.

The hidden master inside this dark old house is an inquisitive monstrosity: a quivering, gelatinous thing from another dimension who seeks the “missing vector” that will enable him to better comprehend the human race.  

The emotionless, questing creature probes Wade’s mind several times and discovers at last the missing “one note in the symphony.”  

It is, simply, “love.” 

Specifically, Wade’s romantic, selfless attachment to another captive in the house, the lovely Tess (Luana Anders), ultimately proves the factor that resolves the alien’s incomplete equation. When Tess leaves the safe temporal “bubble” of the house, super-ages and dies in a matter of seconds to preserve Wade’s freedom, the house begins to shift back to the alien’s dimension.  

After escaping the strange trap, Wade watches the alien brain fade into nothingness, and continues down the road on his journey…

Strange, unsettling and dominated by extreme camera angles that suggest the cinema of German Expressionism, “The Guests” is a gloom-laden, visually-dazzling, and often surreal entry in The Outer Limits canon.  

Specifically, the Donald Sanford (Thriller) entry is a deliberate and artful blending of literary movements, old and new.  The episode has widely and appropriately been described as “Gothic" for its familiar horror and romantic flourishes, settings, and characters.  At the same time, however, this episode of The Outer Limits also mirrors the perspective of the post-war, Beat Generation, especially the movement’s dedicated opposition to modern warfare, military technology, and such middle class balms as leisure and material affluence.

Regarding its Gothic influences, “The Guests” highlights a common setting in the genre: a house that appears to be haunted both by an external, self-organizing “supernatural” force and by the personal, individual secrets and sins of the human dwellers within.  Unlike Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847), however, there’s no mad woman hiding in the attic, but rather a monster holding court in an upstairs bedroom.  

Furthermore, the character of Tess -- who harbors a grotesque secret about her age and true physical appearance until “The Guest’s” last act -- also recalls the attractive/repulsive romantic duality one might expect to find in such Gothic standards as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter (1844).  

In both stories, scientific advancement transforms a young woman of pure innocence and beauty into something inhuman and grotesque.  In the case of “The Guests,” however, it is alien custodianship and the instantaneous passage of decades that is responsible for Tess’s final crone-like appearance, not the interference of her flawed, human, scientist father.

Most significantly, however, “The Guests” veritably obsesses upon the familiar Gothic trope of ancestral, historical sins cursing future generations.  Here affluent American society is represented by the triumvirate of Randall, Ethel and Florinda.  Each one of these characters from the early 20^th century is presented as being corrupt in some essential fashion.  

Randall was on his way to face legal charges for unethical behavior on Wall Street (shortly before the Great Depression…) when he was captured and waylaid by the brain.  

Ethel, Randall’s wife, makes verbal cruelty a sport and favorite pastime.  This is a commentary, perhaps, on the fact that, as an aristocrat’s wife, she has no other productive activity to contribute to the culture.  Idle hands make for the devil’s work. And for a forked tongue too.

And finally, Florinda is the living embodiment of vanity or self-love, hoping to retain her Hollywood celebrity and youthful appearance for eternity.  She is concerned only with herself, not the planet, and certainly not her fellow man. She is all about narcissism.

Importantly, only Wade -- the Jack Kerouac-styled, Beat Generation drifter -- can reveal to the alien being something positive and valuable about human nature; something not tethered to the institutions and established “ancestral” sins of the species and the culture. 

Specifically, Wade is willing to remain in the house out of love for a woman from a different time period, Tess. He is willing to put his freedom on the line, and even his mind itself.  

The Guests” aired in 1964, a scant few years after the publication of such Beat Generation literary landmarks as William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (1959) and Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem, Howl (1960), so perhaps it is no surprise that this new school of American philosophy would find prominence in at least one outing of this literary-minded science fiction TV series.

By the time of The Outer Limits, the Beats were already morphing into “Beatniks” (and well on their way to becoming hippies by the end of the decade…), but still, this episode adeptly homes in on such then-contemporary Beat Generation conventions as evil capitalists (the unscrupulous Latimer), the futility of war, and the heroic depiction of the protagonist Wade as one of the so-called “angel-headed hipsters” of Ginsberg.

Gazing closely at “The Guests,” one can discern how many Beat Generation obsessions dominate the narrative. When Wade is confronted with the Monster Upstairs, it dispassionately tallies for him the positives and negatives of the human condition.  Amongst the negative factors are fear and hatred, hopelessness and, importantly, war.  

One of the positive conditions is art. “Art could be mankind’s destiny,” the alien determines.  

This is very much a Beat-styled assessment: that the individuality encompassed in art can lead man out of the dark, materialistic and militaristic mindset of American in the mid-1950s and early 1960s, the epoch when President Dwight Eisenhower warned citizens about the increasing and dangerous influence of the military-industrial complex. 

Twice in “The Guests,” images of nuclear detonations – mushroom clouds -- are highlighted, and in one conversation with Tess, Wade expressly describes the atom bomb's horrible power.   This imagery is reflective of Beat Generation anti-war sympathies and also an embodiment of Gothic sin; a sin grown from the American past that Wade has opted out of by becoming a drifter and taking his life “on the road.”

Examined in this light,  “The Guests” is very much a pitched battle between historical literary traditions, with the Gothic aspects representing a secretive, corrupt, even “monstrous” past, and the Beat movement representing a new hope of sorts; a new paradigm or outline for human happiness in the age of technology unchained.  

For example, the people inside the scary old house attempt to forestall inevitable fate and live forever.  They knowingly defy “the forlorn rags of growing old,” a human eventuality which Kerouac considered the only certainty in life…and in the end they pay the price for their hubris, and for cheating Nature herself.   

By contrast, the drifter, Wade, and his lover, Tess, embody the opposite impulse.  They each broach personal sacrifice, imprisonment, and death for the possibility of the other’s happiness. This idea is very much the beginning of a Beat-styled “second religiousness” for Wade.  He recognizes that a better future can be forged on love and personal sacrifice than on material wealth and warfare.

“The Guests” connection to Beat Generation writers actually extends beyond even a straight-forward interpretation of the episode’s theme or “message.”  The form of the episode -- the visuals -- reflect the content to a powerful degree.  The works of Beat Generation authors such as Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs are frequently described with adjectives such as “surreal,” “Dadaist” or simply “dream-like,” in part because these notorious authors were not shy in their use of illegal drugs to spur their sense of creativity.  

Accordingly, dream imagery and discussions of dream states permeate the “The Guests.”  At one point, Wade discusses how he feels as though he is “having a bad dream.”   He is also told that the alien will “control” his “dreams now” and that the alien has even “undreamed” the house’s windows and front door. 

Finally, there’s a discussion of “dreaming a life” or “living a dream,” and the (real?) distinction between those two descriptions.  But the point here is that the visuals themselves are determinedly dream-like, or more aptly, nightmarish.

“The Guests” opens with expressive film techniques that overtly suggest a Gothic, traditional influence, in keeping with the story’s central locale.  When Wade first approaches the house/brain, director Paul Stanley’s camera views the man from inside a second-story window, through dangling curtains.  However, the curtains draw down mysteriously, falling around Wade in the frame and effectively squeezing out his space. This is a visual cue to suggest that Wade is walking into a trap, and the next shot -- an ominous overhead, extreme-high-angle view of the haunted house’s Victorian foyer -- takes that thought even further.

Eventually, such expressive, Gothic horror compositions give way to more avant-garde, surreal, modern, Beat Generation-styled ones.  While attempting to escape the house later in the episode, for example, Wade ventures into a seemingly infinite realm of darkness, one punctuated only by the occasional Greek column.  Here, there is no end and no beginning.  As viewers, we suspect that we have entered the corridors of the alien’s mind.  

“Interesting architecture?” asks one character in the drama, but that description hardly covers it.  Indeed, in the course of an hour, The Outer Limits goes from employing familiar Gothic, horror-styled visuals to surreal images instead. Doors appear without walls to support them.  Wade seems to walk on a path of light down a hallway of infinite dimensions. Interiors open mysteriously into exterior graveyards, and so forth.

Perhaps because Donald S. Sanford’s story plants its feet for so long within the confines of that dark, old house, “The Guests” thrives as one of the mostly deeply unsettling and claustrophobic episodes of The Outer Limits pantheon.  From the first time that house on the hill appears, the episode aims for throat-tightening fear, and hits the target.  On the soundtrack, a weird, syncopated heart-beat rhythm plays -- repetitious and ominous -- a reflection of the evils trapped inside the edifice.  

Another frightening moment sees Wade dragged up a long, dark, shadowy staircase into the realm of the monster, entirely against his will, while the others watch…smiling at his misfortune.

Perhaps it is that moment of involuntary action that best reflects the point of this Outer Limits episode.  It is a point ably expressed in Tess’s final sacrificial act, and in the work of the Beat Poets.

Sometimes in life, we fear we are being dragged, helpless, out of control, towards a future we haven’t chosen for ourselves. 

But that’s the illusion we must battle, argues “The Guests.” We can choose love over hate, individuality over conformity, and escape over imprisonment.  We can solve the human equation to our liking and not to the tune of tradition or conventions like capitalism.

There’s a reason, this episode isn’t called “The Prisoners.” In its clash of Gothic and Beat Generation aesthetics, “The Guests” reminds audiences how easy it is for humans to decorate even the most horrible cages to appear “acceptable.”   Here, Ethel, Latimer, Florinda and even Tess -- at least for a time -- opt to remain trapped in the known but unsatisfactory past rather than countenance an unknown future.   

Many Outer Limits episodes are anti-war and pro-human in sentiment, but by marrying the terrors of Gothic expression to the criticisms and solutions of the contemporary Beat Generation, “The Guests” proves one of the most emotional, artistic and purely human of the series canon.  It's a weird, weird episode, but one that contributes greatly to an understanding of where America "was" in the early 1960s.