Where were you Sept. 16, 1963? If you were a self-respecting baby boomer, sci-fi nerd or an intellectual intrigued by the subject matter, you probably were in front of the television to watch the premiere of ABC’s thought-provoking and often terrifying anthology series “The Outer Limits.”
Unlike CBS’ acclaimed “Alfred Hitchcock Hour” and Rod Serling’s landmark “The Twilight Zone” anthology shows, “The Outer Limits” didn’t have a host but a mysterious disembodied voice called Control who told viewers: “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft-blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control what you see and hear. We repeat: There is nothing wrong with your television set. We are about to control all that you see and hear. We repeat: There is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to….”The Outer Limits.”
Though the series only lasted two seasons (a 1995 to 2002 reboot aired on Showtime, Syfy and in syndication) it has had a lasting impact in the cultural landscape. Created by Leslie Stevens, the cerebral series explored such themes as the horrors of the atomic age to Cold War paranoia
Martin Landau, Shirley Knight, David McCallum, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, Cliff Robertson, Robert Culp and even Miriam Hopkins were among the actors who appeared on the series. Directors included noted filmmakers such as Byron Haskin (“The War of the Worlds”), Laslo Benedek (“The Wild One”), John Brahm (“The Lodger’), Robert Florey (“God Is My Co-Pilot”), and Felix E. Feist (“Donovan’s Brain”). Oscar-winning cinematographer Conrad L. Hall shot 15 episodes the first season.
“I always found ‘The Outer Limits’ a very smart socially and morally relevant show,” Jimmy Kaufman, who directed many episodes of the reboot, told me in a 2000 L.A. Times interview. “I have done other sci-fi projects, and this one I truly love because it was meaningful.”
The series was especially meaningful to writer Joseph Stefano, who is best known for his screenplay for “Psycho,” who produced the first season of “The Outer Limits,” as well as penning 12 episodes including the creepy “Feasibility Study,’ which starred Sam Wanamaker, and a revolved around a typical suburban neighborhood who discover they have been kidnapped by a dying alien race. He also updated and revised the script for the Showtime version in 1997.
I had the opportunity to interview Stefano for the Los Angeles Times in 1997 and 2000 about “The Outer Limits.” Stefano noted “The Outer Limits” was the centerpiece of his career. “I met more people because of it. I feel I communicated with more people than anything else I have done before or since.”
The original series ran into censorship problems especially with “The Architects of Fear” installment because Robert Culp’s makeup was considered too hideous. “One city, I guess, blacked it out,” recalled Stefano. “I certainly didn’t feel there was any reason to be that afraid of that particular monster. We had censorship problems continuously.” So much so he was often on the phone with the woman in standards and practices at the network. “Sometimes she just wouldn’t know what it was that ought to be removed or changed. She would say ‘It’s too scary, too, unsettling.’ Sometimes I saw little things I could do to change it. The weirdest kind of shots do unsettle us. There is a shot in “The Exorcist” where the priest walks up the stairs. It’s just so unsettling. Not because I don’t know where he’s going; it’s just the way it was shot-the sense that sometimes when you go to your doom, you have to walk upstairs to it.”
I talked to Stefano about my favorite episode “The Man Who Was Never Born,” starring Landau and Knight in which a transmuted human of the future travels back to 1963 to stop the birth of a scientist who creates a bacterium that will turn humanity into mutants. While on earth he uses hypnosis to transform into a handsome, perfectly normal human. He soon finds himself in love with the young woman who will become the mother of the scientist. “”The Terminator’ was taken from that,” Stefano noted. “Anthony Lawrence wrote that. It was one of the most beautiful shows we did. I had a trick of saying, ‘let’s do a haircut’ on something, like let’s do a haircut on ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ Landau loved the part, he noted, because he got to be the horrendous mutant “and at the same time look very handsome and be loved.”
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