It is something special that Robert Culp was in three, two of which made this list, of the best Outer Limits programs. And I wholeheartedly agree Demon with a glass hand is the best episode of the series. Harlan Ellison also wrote the episode Soldier. What a fantastic writer he was.
I was also a kid when I saw it and it really,Really was disturbing….funny thing in 1973 I joined the USAF and became a SP (security police) and I realize that the military unit there were Airforce police,something that didn’t register when I first saw it..me and my buddies joked around about zapping zanti’s
As a kid, these episodes were terrifying as I watched them on my grandmother's TV. The one episode I vaguely remember is when time is frozen and two people I believe try to prevent catastrophic events before time speeds up again. I remember a big truck coming out of a garage and a child on a trike in its path. They fashioned some sort of belt on the handbrake so as soon as time sped up, the handbrake activated and stopped the truck. I THINK it was the Outer Limits
That was a good one. The two "sped-up" people are a married couple, and the child was theirs. The episode was from the 2nd season and called "The Premonition"
I too remember that particular episode and being very much intrigued by the plot of that story. I can still see the image of the child on the trike in the path of the truck backing up and the strap on the hand brake. The story line seemed so original. I recall mulling over that episode for a few days after watching it. Funny how memory works. That had to be close to 60 years ago. I was only a boy, and a huge fan of science fiction (still am).
"Nightmare" was my Dad's favorite, and it (as did most of the series) scared the wits out of 8 year old me. "The Architects of Fear" has been my #1 since the early 1980s when I found the series again in reruns. It will remain so for the rest of my life. Something about the whole story, the Frankenstein-ish change, Robert Culp hitting it out of the ballpark with his acting, and the unbreakable tie in the love of his wife... and probably something in my psyche that makes that all so fascinating and melodramatic where the next person who read that would not know what I mean. "The Outer Limits" literally set the course of my life and I still look for the rush of getting the wits scared out of me. Do you know how fun it is to turn a 100 foot walk with the trash to the curb on a dark night can be? From beautiful summer night to spine-tingling in a simple thought or perception. I love it, every time! And that's what the show did so well. Thanks, Leslie Stevens. Thanks, Joseph Stefano. Thanks, Vic Perrin. Thanks, Dominic Frontiere. And all of the creators and actors who must have had as much fun as I do now, from their stories.
A nice selection. "The Architects of Fear" plot was also used in "The Watchmen" comic and movie. It didn't work either time. David McCollum, who passed away recently, was the best part of "The Sixth Finger" episode. He showed his talent that was so apparent through his acting career.
Now think of it being about a spy asked to infiltrate a hippie group who use drugs, and it might all fall into place. People who look like alien monsters to the older generation, older folks call on a flexible, empathetic ex-soldier to infiltrate and pretend to be one ( something obviously impossible ), and he goes native when he understands the 'others' are no threat at all, and have something he wants to learn, or to escape into. It's very 1960s, and a story often heard in counter-culture circles back then.
❤❤❤. I watched this old series when i was a little child, and it triggered a life-long fascination with fantasy and sci-fi ! The scariest one I recall was " Cold Hands ; Warm Heart " or something like that. It starred William Shatner in his pre-Kirk days ! He landed on Venus and returned with an inexplicable inability to stay warm ; he picked up an alien hitchhiker unknown to him! The one involving the Sand Sharks on Mars scared 😱 😨 😳 me a lot !
A great list! I have fond memories of watching these on TV back in the 1970s at my grandma's house that was located atop a lonely hill with dense forest a few yards from her backdoor. When I would stay over we would watch Outer Limits, Twilight Zone,, or One Strp Beyond. No wonder I'm so disturbed.
These three great Television Series you list are my favorites, as well. I still watch them to this day, even though most are deeply memorized! I was born in 1952 and by the time Rod Serling became a household name - I was hooked.
I was always disturbed by "100 Day of the Dragon" for several reasons. That one is the most plausible. No aliens, just a devious government willing to brazenly kill a president, then plant their own spy masquerading as the killed man. I forget how they managed to find him out, but the horrific way he was dealt with was the stuff of nightmares. It was also a bitter ending because the presidential candidate they coopted was a genuinely decent man who they drugged, disfigured, shot in cold blood, framed as an assassin and had taken away like so much trash. He had a daughter too, who's personal horror at the situation could have been hyped more to add poignancy to the show.
As a little kid I wasn’t allowed to watch Outer Limits with my older sisters after it gave me nightmares. I used to sneak out of bed and hide around a corner to watch it anyway. Hahahaha.
The mental tricks played on the prisoners in "Nightmare" are some of the most disturbing things in the whole series. And every actor is great in "The Sixth Finger," but David McCallum really carries it.
Think you should have included the pilot episode. "The Galaxy Being". Can't argue with your #1 pick however The Galaxy Being deserves either #1 or #2 spot, my opinion.
Great as GALAXY BEING is, do you really think it's as DISTURBING as the ones he listed? After all, the Andromedan is a sympathetic character and a victim!
Even as an 8 year old, when I first saw this episode, I knew I had seen something extraordinary. Cliff Robertson really acted the part of Allan Maxwell superbly. And when he talks to the alien being about the existence of God and is told that electromagnetic waves continue to infinity and that “Infinity is God. God is Infinity”-that was cosmic! And at the end of episode the alien’s last words: “End of transmission”…
The thing about The Outer Limits is that many episodes were morality plays but not all. Some were just straight up science fiction. Morality plays were popular back then since they'd explore stuff tthat might violate folkways and mores of the time. The Zanti Misfits is a good example where aliens sent their criminals here, but we thought they were good guys. When the humans kill them, the aliens knew we would because we're a violent race! The Twilight Zone really was deep in morality plays with The Monsters are Coming to Maple Street as an example.
My all time faves are Soldier and Demon with a Glass Hand, but they're more standard sci-fi/adventures, and not all that disturbing, so I'm good with this list. Thanks for posting this!
Robert Culp starred in Demon With A Glass Hand, Corpus Earthling, and The Architects of Fear. I believe he was the only actor who ever appeared in more than one or two episodes of the series.
I was rarely scared of Twilight Zone reruns as a kid but almost always creeped out watching the Outer Limits. There only being 2 seasons of the original OL bothers me more than the original Star Trek’s short run.
One of my favorite scenes was from the demon with the glass hand episode near the end when the robot Trent reached out his hand to his female human companion for some type of pity or affection and she recoiled from his touch and looked at him like he was a abomination, then Trent realized he could look and act human but could never be Human or truly alive like a human and accepted the fact that he was just a machine to serve a purpose and nothing more
I think that either of the Ellison episodes would be considered quite disturbing, though on a more subtle level. It isn''t the ostensible "menace from without" but rather, as with "Nightmare", the menace from within, as each of these deals with just how dark and cruel we can (and often do) become for what we perceive to be "the greater good". Yes, what happens to Trent is all that... and, what's more, his creators -- a society like our own -- deliberately create him to *think and feel* as if he is human, as a decoy, with no concern for the effect on their creation of this callousness. (Ellison had something of the same motif in his early short story, "Run for the Stars", with a somewhat more brutal result.) "Soldier" leaves the question of whether or not Qarlo is finally learning to let his compassion through, or whether he is simply reacting on an instinctively war-like response... and all because of a senseless, never-ending war where neither side is in the right, or the wrong. They are simply "the enemy", each to the other... again, a theme Ellison was much concerned with (not surprisingly, given his having lived through the periods of the Korean and Viet Nam wars, the latter of which was still ongoing when he wrote the episode, while the short story upon which it is based was written only a few years after the Korean debacle (and isn't it interesting that they decided to call them "police actions" and similar euphemisms when dealing with them -- in the rare instances they do -- when teaching them to the last few generations?) While Ellison certainly celebrated our ability to overcome this side of our nature (vide "Blind Lightning", "Mephisto in Onyx", "I'm Looking for Kadak", "The Wind Beyond the Mountains", "In Lonely Lands", to name only a handful), he was quite aware just how prone we are to succumb to our more venal, violent, amoral side, and how often we betray ourselves as well as those around us. It is this level of "disturbing" that lies behind the two episodes he did for "The Outer Limits". As with Stefano and Morheim's "The Bellero Shield", it is we who are, all too often, the real monsters. And, from what we are seeing at present, we haven't learned a damned thing.
I was 5 years old when I saw Galaxy Being and it scared the crap out of me. There is a scene where it looks in thru a round window in a door at the radio station. I lived in terror of seeing that face looking in thru any window at night. I always kept the blinds closed at night even as an adult. I bought and watched the episode sometime in the 90's. As I watched, I could still feel the fear I experienced as a kid and was shocked to learn that the being wasn't a monster at all. To this day I still keep the blinds closed at night.
I had the black and white photo type trading card and it scared me so I hid it under the couch. I was six when it first broadcasted but i didn't see that one till some years later. I did manage to see some first run but not completely sure which. I have said it before but i believe this to be the best sci fi anthology series ever.
It amazes me now that I can remember back to ages 6 & 7 watching these shows in black & white and being scared enough that I couldn't get the images out of my mind for years. One that bothered me the most was the one about the alien in a box, if you looked through a hole into the box you got sucked inside with this alien that looked like a giant booger! It was called 'don't open till doomsday' or something similar. That one creeped me out for many years after. It was fun to grow up in the 60's!
Good choice. Great performances from Sally Kellerman & Martin Landau. It's in my personal top 5, alongside "OBIT" & "Nightmare". The other two depend on my mood at the time, but may include "Demon With a Glass Hand" or "The Architects of Fear".
What I really appreciate about your list is not giving too much away but just enough to whet the appetite. Darn it. Now I have to find and watch these episodes. Looks like your insidious plan has come to fruition. 😮😮😮😮
Born in the ‘50s and growing up with The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, One Step Beyond, Alfred Hitchcock, and a local Friday night double feature called “Chiller Theater” that ran all the Universal monster movies are some of my best memories of childhood, even though a few of the episodes and movies gave me nightmares! 😱😉
I was 8 years old when the Outer Limits was broadcast. I watch the series with my Father. The series had a great influence on me as it introduced a number of concepts that I would revisit as I aged. Even today I fondly remember being amazed by that series. Many years later I watched a new generation Star Trek episode and had an eerie feeling that it had a Out Limits parallel. I waited through the ending credits and sure enough Joseph Stefano had written that episode. See: Star Trek: The Next Generation first season episode "Skin Of Evil".
Nightmare was the one that stuck with me cause of the soldier who had his brains scooped out. I think number one is the one i blanked out since it was first released.
Great work on the list! Do not forget the incredible contribution of Dominic Frontier- the music was way above par and laid the groundwork for the atmosphere- Never Born is a perfect example of his brilliance. Too bad he was off 2nd Season.
You skipped “Don’t Open Till Doomsday”, a seriously bizarre tale involving innocent youngsters eloping, & an inter dimensional, black box with a monster with an apocalyptic agenda, inside, that David Lynch could’ve directed…(OBIT, the Probe, the Guests, Demon With a Glass Hand, Behold Eck !& several others, deserve honorable mention)
William Shatner starred in one episode he played an astronaut who was having hallucinations or did he really see a strange monster outside his space capsule similar to his Twilight Zone episode with the monster on the wing of the plane.
'The Architects Of Fear', was something I watched... And it gave me bad dreams, and sleepless nights for a long time. The 'Bear' (that's what Producer Joseph Stefano called each monster of the week) is tremendously disturbing, on many levels - I remember seeing it on a cover of 'Famous Monsters Of Filmland', and being a bit freaked out by it - but more disturbing are the ideas behind it: to irreversibly surgically mutilate a man to engender peace. It sounds noble, but what happens to your subject, if, and when, peace is declared? He was probably doomed to be killed anyway. However, the plan unravels pretty quickly. Imagine showing that to the US public, and saying: "Oh, and if you were wondering why there was a multi-million dollar deficit in taxes this year, the truth is, we sidelined it into a black project, which went west very quickly, and made... This!" (corpse of the 'Alien' is revealed). There would be a fair bit of civil unrest, I think. 🤔🤔🤔😆😆😆
ARCHITECTS is my favorite episode of the series. Extreme body horror for 1960s tv and sensibilities! One wonders how much it influenced Cronenberg. (For decades I thought the final form in Cronenberg's FLY remake was a nod to the Thetan from ARCHITECTS -- they look a lot alike if you consider the advances in special effects -- but its creator Chris Walas told me that was not the case -- or at least all he did was make what the script described, anyway.)
Really enjoyed this series growing up. This would be my top ten--- The Sixth Finger, Corpus Earthling, Nightmare, Zanti Misfits,, Fun And Games, Feasibility Study, The Mutant, Galaxy Being, The Bellero Shield and The Architects Of Fear, in no particular order. No matter which ones are your favorites, this series is a classic. And I love the music sound track.
Grew up watching this show first run. Still one of the best Sci-Fi shows ever created in my humble opinion. I even liked the so called 'New Outer Limits'. Wish they would do more.
You pretty much covered my own list of the most disturbing episodes. The Invisibles was basically a 'haircut' of Heinlein's The Puppet Masters. "Production and Decay of Strange Particles" was disturbing in a different way. If you remember Louis Slotin and the "Demon Core" at Los Alamos in 1946, "PADOSP" is beyond disturbing and well into "eeyike" territory. "ZZZZZZ" aka "The Bees" is another one, in its own way more nerve-jangling than "Zanti Misfits". Bees are, after all, organized, cooperative, have what amounts to a dispersed "intelligence", and are of course well-armed. And humans have exploited them literally for millennia. This episode shows what might happen if they decided to turn the tables and had the ability to do so.
i actually used to see the Zanti Misfits at a convention, there was some kind of collectable toy thing of them, and honestly, my thought was "it looks like a bugs life but messed up" years later, my dad told me about how he used to scare his sister with an impression of them, i did it to her and she called my dad a jerk, lolz
O.B.I.T. understood the future and is more relevant today than it was then. Then there's an episode about subatomic particles that scared the hell out of me...
I remember seeing the cleaning lady scene in "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork" while I was a child and had just woken up from a nap next to my grandmother. It creeped me out.
Truly an epic series. I was six when I saw “The Architects of Fear” and kept a light on at night. Now having the series set on Blu-ray it still remains intensely haunting. But now I don’t need the light on.
Feasibility Study stuck with me for years. I was very young when I saw it on reruns and rented it when Netflix just started up. Lots of creepy moments.
When I was 8 years old when I saw The Architects of Fear. Scared the life out of me and when the creature's bottom eyelids twitched my bottom lip quivered out of fear. I'll never forget that
Great list. Glad you included”A Feasibility Study” My personal favorite In reading the comments no one mentioned “Cry of Silence”. Maybe not really fitting the category of most disturbing. But certainly great ,fascinating and disturbing enough!
There was one episode that scared me. It involved an experiment with a miniature city under a large glass cover from an alien civilization. It changed every few days. Then the alien appeared slowly until it broke out and took up the entire lab. It was frietening!
I remember watching the Outer Limits, but who remembers "Way Out", hosted by Roald Dahl ? The one episode I remember was about an actor who copied in makeup the disfigured face of a homeless guy to portray the role Quasimodo for The hunchback of Notre Dame. When he tries to take off the makeup, it won't come off, and he's stuck with the guy's twisted face !
These were all great episodes. I might have also included “Borderland” and “Don’t Open Till Doomsday”. Unfortunately the quality of the show went down in the second season.
That's a great list. I'd replace THE MUTANT, memorable as it is, with OBIT, and THE MAN WHO WAS NEVER BORN with THE GUESTS. MAN is a superlative episode, but not nearly as disturbing as THE GUESTS becomes.
@@josiahslack8720 Did me too! But I would think, from an adult perspective, OBIT is even more disturbing, and at a deeper level, since we are living in a time where, essentially, the machines ARE everywhere!
#1 for me, would be; 'The Invisible Enemy, 'The Zanti Misfits', 'Behold, Eck'. And the one where time stands still, at an Air Force Base (the little girl, on a tricycle), and the one with Eddie Albert, and the tumbleweeds.
#10 "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork" I wasn't allowed to watch the Outer Limits in 1963. However my parents were busy downstairs and I managed to watch most of it - I had nightmares that night. I was also scared when Mom vacuumed the rugs!🤣
‘Galaxy Being ‘ my favorite….not disturbing,but very unique premise…but all of them were. Outer Limits was a darker and much more intense version of Twilight Zone.
What used to worry me the most as a young kid was someone changing the channel before the end of the show and the TV "not being returned to its former operations"! Haha!
I’d say O.B.I.T. Is one of the creepiest due to its accuracy. It’s very prophetic when it comes to the dangers of social media and our obsession with knowing everything about everyone
Also recycled for Star Trek was the alien mask used in "Fun and Games" - became the alien in Star Trek's "Arena". And the giant alien microbe in "The Probe" (the last OL episode to air) became Star Trek's horta. ("I'm a doctor, Jim, not a stonemason!")
The Outer Limits...OMG..I had nightmares about it for years. I was 6 or so when it came out and my Mom loved it! As soon as i knew it was coming on, i'd run to my room and put the pillow over my head so I couldn't here the brilliant intro music. I can still barely watch this series, but I love it. And Architects of Fear is my fave.
Second Chance with Simon Oakland as alien that kidnaps people was scary also Cry Of Silence with desert tumbleweeds controlled by invisible alien was creepy & frogs were controlled too and of course The Galaxy Being was fantastic with modern looking equipment, great alien and sad ending . " The Guests" was terrifying with alien holding people as prisoners for decades until his questions are answered
The Zanti Misfits scared the crap out of me when I saw it as a kid. Your No.1 most disturbing episode did nothing to me. Today it looks comical. Did Robert Culp star in 3 Outer Limits episodes?
The Zanti misfits creep me out as a kid . Bruce Dern was a guest star as these large looking ants with faces on um that are captives from another world that crash land on Earth.
'It Crawled out of the Woodwork' is about how impossible it is to be rid of radioactive waste, and how some of it will 'breed' and irradiate other substances. Quite a bit of SF is warnings from people working with this stuff, and getting the message out in morality plays.
"This isn't your grandmom's bedtime story" No, actually, it is. 60 years ago, grandmom was loving this. 60 years ago, while also worrying about nuclear war with Russia, the people were far tougher than the creampuffs of today.
A Feasibility Study scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. The as an adult, here comes the New Outer Limits and of course the new Feasibility Study and scared the hell out of me all over again.
My all-time favorites are The Zanti Misfits, Demon With a Glass Hand, The Belero Shield, The Galaxy Being, and The Architects of Fear. Too bad today's tv productions aren't nearly as imaginative.
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As the 'real' world around us becomes more and more bizarre, these episodes feel like sanity.
I always thought 'Demon with a Glass Hand' written by Harlan Ellison was one of the best episodes!
Definitely, though maybe not one of the most "disturbing", which was the focus of this list.
*agreed*
I like that one too
Anything by Harlan Ellison is great.
@@MrStonelion63 I'm current reading a reprint of Ellison's first novel, Web of the City (originally published in 1958).
It is something special that Robert Culp was in three, two of which made this list, of the best Outer Limits programs. And I wholeheartedly agree Demon with a glass hand is the best episode of the series. Harlan Ellison also wrote the episode Soldier. What a fantastic writer he was.
I found the ending of "The Man Who was Never There" sad as well as disturbing. And "O.B.I.T." foreshadows current societal issues with media.
Your list is spot on. The Zanti terrified me as a kid watching with my dad....until I saw Night of the Living Dead.
Touche'.
me too... the Zanti messed me up as a kid... this is the first time I see it again...
The first outer limits episode I ever saw holy sheez
I was also a kid when I saw it and it really,Really was disturbing….funny thing in 1973 I joined the USAF and became a SP (security police) and I realize that the military unit there were Airforce police,something that didn’t register when I first saw it..me and my buddies joked around about zapping zanti’s
As a kid, these episodes were terrifying as I watched them on my grandmother's TV. The one episode I vaguely remember is when time is frozen and two people I believe try to prevent catastrophic events before time speeds up again. I remember a big truck coming out of a garage and a child on a trike in its path. They fashioned some sort of belt on the handbrake so as soon as time sped up, the handbrake activated and stopped the truck. I THINK it was the Outer Limits
That was a good one. The two "sped-up" people are a married couple, and the child was theirs. The episode was from the 2nd season and called "The Premonition"
@@josiahslack8720 Oh, awesome. THANKS!! That was such a cool episode. I've got to watch it!😀
I too remember that particular episode and being very much intrigued by the plot of that story. I can still see the image of the child on the trike in the path of the truck backing up and the strap on the hand brake. The story line seemed so original. I recall mulling over that episode for a few days after watching it. Funny how memory works. That had to be close to 60 years ago. I was only a boy, and a huge fan of science fiction (still am).
@@wlodell Thanks for sharing. This clip inspired me to purchase the series from Amazon!
@@davidthomas4489 Hm, Amazon, I think I will do the same.
Loved that show as an 8-year-old. My parents thought I was weird.
Not sure why, but always felt the Orig one was much better than the 1995 OL episodes.
"Nightmare" was my Dad's favorite, and it (as did most of the series) scared the wits out of 8 year old me. "The Architects of Fear" has been my #1 since the early 1980s when I found the series again in reruns. It will remain so for the rest of my life. Something about the whole story, the Frankenstein-ish change, Robert Culp hitting it out of the ballpark with his acting, and the unbreakable tie in the love of his wife... and probably something in my psyche that makes that all so fascinating and melodramatic where the next person who read that would not know what I mean.
"The Outer Limits" literally set the course of my life and I still look for the rush of getting the wits scared out of me. Do you know how fun it is to turn a 100 foot walk with the trash to the curb on a dark night can be? From beautiful summer night to spine-tingling in a simple thought or perception. I love it, every time!
And that's what the show did so well. Thanks, Leslie Stevens. Thanks, Joseph Stefano. Thanks, Vic Perrin. Thanks, Dominic Frontiere. And all of the creators and actors who must have had as much fun as I do now, from their stories.
I love it, but Martin Sheen chews the scenery.
A nice selection. "The Architects of Fear" plot was also used in "The Watchmen" comic and movie. It didn't work either time.
David McCollum, who passed away recently, was the best part of "The Sixth Finger" episode. He showed his talent that was so apparent through his acting career.
“The Chameleon”with Robert Duvall was very unsettling. His frequent giggling was brilliant.
This episode is one of my favorites.
Now think of it being about a spy asked to infiltrate a hippie group who use drugs, and it might all fall into place.
People who look like alien monsters to the older generation, older folks call on a flexible, empathetic ex-soldier to infiltrate and pretend to be one ( something obviously impossible ), and he goes native when he understands the 'others' are no threat at all, and have something he wants to learn, or to escape into.
It's very 1960s, and a story often heard in counter-culture circles back then.
Outer Limits was a great show!
*A Feasibility Study* foreshadows a much later made movie *Dark City* but *Architect's of Fear* is most disturbing.
❤❤❤. I watched this old series when i was a little child, and it triggered a life-long fascination with fantasy and sci-fi ! The scariest one I recall was " Cold Hands ; Warm Heart " or something like that. It starred William Shatner in his pre-Kirk days ! He landed on Venus and returned with an inexplicable inability to stay warm ; he picked up an alien hitchhiker unknown to him! The one involving the Sand Sharks on Mars scared 😱 😨 😳 me a lot !
A great list! I have fond memories of watching these on TV back in the 1970s at my grandma's house that was located atop a lonely hill with dense forest a few yards from her backdoor. When I would stay over we would watch Outer Limits, Twilight Zone,, or One Strp Beyond. No wonder I'm so disturbed.
These three great Television Series you list are my favorites, as well. I still watch them to this day, even though most are deeply memorized! I was born in 1952 and by the time Rod Serling became a household name - I was hooked.
You put together a well-thought-out list. Great job!
I was always disturbed by "100 Day of the Dragon" for several reasons. That one is the most plausible. No aliens, just a devious government willing to brazenly kill a president, then plant their own spy masquerading as the killed man. I forget how they managed to find him out, but the horrific way he was dealt with was the stuff of nightmares. It was also a bitter ending because the presidential candidate they coopted was a genuinely decent man who they drugged, disfigured, shot in cold blood, framed as an assassin and had taken away like so much trash. He had a daughter too, who's personal horror at the situation could have been hyped more to add poignancy to the show.
As a little kid I wasn’t allowed to watch Outer Limits with my older sisters after it gave me nightmares. I used to sneak out of bed and hide around a corner to watch it anyway. Hahahaha.
I was allowed to watch OUTER LIMITS; THRILLER was the one I had to watch in secret!
I KNEW the Zanti Misfits would place high on this list, that episode gave me the willies when i first saw it.
The mental tricks played on the prisoners in "Nightmare" are some of the most disturbing things in the whole series.
And every actor is great in "The Sixth Finger," but David McCallum really carries it.
I loved the late, great James Shigeta in Nightmare.
Agreed.
Yes, that one is full of great actors and characters, but James Shigeta practically "steals" it.@@helenablavatsky9136
Think you should have included the pilot episode. "The Galaxy Being". Can't argue with your #1 pick however The Galaxy Being deserves either #1 or #2 spot, my opinion.
Great as GALAXY BEING is, do you really think it's as DISTURBING as the ones he listed? After all, the Andromedan is a sympathetic character and a victim!
Good point.
Even as an 8 year old, when I first saw this episode, I knew I had seen something extraordinary. Cliff Robertson really acted the part of Allan Maxwell superbly. And when he talks to the alien being about the existence of God and is told that electromagnetic waves continue to infinity and that “Infinity is God. God is Infinity”-that was cosmic! And at the end of episode the alien’s last words: “End of transmission”…
I was waiting for you to mention how "The Architects of Fear" was a direct inspiration for Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel 'Watchmen'.
The thing about The Outer Limits is that many episodes were morality plays but not all. Some were just straight up science fiction. Morality plays were popular back then since they'd explore stuff tthat might violate folkways and mores of the time. The Zanti Misfits is a good example where aliens sent their criminals here, but we thought they were good guys. When the humans kill them, the aliens knew we would because we're a violent race! The Twilight Zone really was deep in morality plays with The Monsters are Coming to Maple Street as an example.
My all time faves are Soldier and Demon with a Glass Hand, but they're more standard sci-fi/adventures, and not all that disturbing, so I'm good with this list. Thanks for posting this!
Robert Culp starred in Demon With A Glass Hand, Corpus Earthling, and The Architects of Fear. I believe he was the only actor who ever appeared in more than one or two episodes of the series.
The outer limits was a great series from the early 1960”s!
I realize it was probubly cheap rubber and ink but the "Moon Rocks" melting down and crawling onto the man's hand scared me so much.
After this episode I always thought I saw the crawling rocks coming out from under my bureau in the dark when I went to sleep.
So I'm not the only one that was freaked out, good to know.@@michaelpoplawski2998
In case you couldn't figure it out, the "alien" on the man's hand was a dressed up glove
I was rarely scared of Twilight Zone reruns as a kid but almost always creeped out watching the Outer Limits. There only being 2 seasons of the original OL bothers me more than the original Star Trek’s short run.
They were all great, but the ones I would call disturbing are The Borderland, The Mice, and The Premonition.
Borderland was one of the most touching episodes, I felt sad when the guy calls out to his son.
One of my favorite scenes was from the demon with the glass hand episode near the end when the robot Trent reached out his hand to his female human companion for some type of pity or affection and she recoiled from his touch and looked at him like he was a abomination, then Trent realized he could look and act human but could never be Human or truly alive like a human and accepted the fact that he was just a machine to serve a purpose and nothing more
I think that either of the Ellison episodes would be considered quite disturbing, though on a more subtle level. It isn''t the ostensible "menace from without" but rather, as with "Nightmare", the menace from within, as each of these deals with just how dark and cruel we can (and often do) become for what we perceive to be "the greater good". Yes, what happens to Trent is all that... and, what's more, his creators -- a society like our own -- deliberately create him to *think and feel* as if he is human, as a decoy, with no concern for the effect on their creation of this callousness. (Ellison had something of the same motif in his early short story, "Run for the Stars", with a somewhat more brutal result.) "Soldier" leaves the question of whether or not Qarlo is finally learning to let his compassion through, or whether he is simply reacting on an instinctively war-like response... and all because of a senseless, never-ending war where neither side is in the right, or the wrong. They are simply "the enemy", each to the other... again, a theme Ellison was much concerned with (not surprisingly, given his having lived through the periods of the Korean and Viet Nam wars, the latter of which was still ongoing when he wrote the episode, while the short story upon which it is based was written only a few years after the Korean debacle (and isn't it interesting that they decided to call them "police actions" and similar euphemisms when dealing with them -- in the rare instances they do -- when teaching them to the last few generations?)
While Ellison certainly celebrated our ability to overcome this side of our nature (vide "Blind Lightning", "Mephisto in Onyx", "I'm Looking for Kadak", "The Wind Beyond the Mountains", "In Lonely Lands", to name only a handful), he was quite aware just how prone we are to succumb to our more venal, violent, amoral side, and how often we betray ourselves as well as those around us. It is this level of "disturbing" that lies behind the two episodes he did for "The Outer Limits". As with Stefano and Morheim's "The Bellero Shield", it is we who are, all too often, the real monsters. And, from what we are seeing at present, we haven't learned a damned thing.
If someone came up with something today that was as scary and groundbreaking as this was back then, you would really have something.
I was 5 years old when I saw Galaxy Being and it scared the crap out of me. There is a scene where it looks in thru a round window in a door at the radio station. I lived in terror of seeing that face looking in thru any window at night. I always kept the blinds closed at night even as an adult. I bought and watched the episode sometime in the 90's. As I watched, I could still feel the fear I experienced as a kid and was shocked to learn that the being wasn't a monster at all. To this day I still keep the blinds closed at night.
My favourite episode too, the being meant no harm but looked really eerie .
I had the black and white photo type trading card and it scared me so I hid it under the couch. I was six when it first broadcasted but i didn't see that one till some years later. I did manage to see some first run but not completely sure which. I have said it before but i believe this to be the best sci fi anthology series ever.
It amazes me now that I can remember back to ages 6 & 7 watching these shows in black & white and being scared enough that I couldn't get the images out of my mind for years. One that bothered me the most was the one about the alien in a box, if you looked through a hole into the box you got sucked inside with this alien that looked like a giant booger! It was called 'don't open till doomsday' or something similar. That one creeped me out for many years after. It was fun to grow up in the 60's!
"the bellero shield" a harrowing look at the depths of human ambition, and the price paid by the selfish woman who misused power from the stars.
YES! The end, when she couldn't get out of the cage because of her guilt was disturbing.
Good choice. Great performances from Sally Kellerman & Martin Landau. It's in my personal top 5, alongside "OBIT" & "Nightmare". The other two depend on my mood at the time, but may include "Demon With a Glass Hand" or "The Architects of Fear".
The Architects of Fear had me afraid of the dark through to my teenage years 😂😂 'Wood Work was the next scariest 😮
The intro for The Mutant was actually from the episode Moonstone.
What I really appreciate about your list is not giving too much away but just enough to whet the appetite. Darn it. Now I have to find and watch these episodes. Looks like your insidious plan has come to fruition. 😮😮😮😮
Born in the ‘50s and growing up with The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, One Step Beyond, Alfred Hitchcock, and a local Friday night double feature called “Chiller Theater” that ran all the Universal monster movies are some of my best memories of childhood, even though a few of the episodes and movies gave me nightmares! 😱😉
I was 8 years old when the Outer Limits was broadcast. I watch the series with my Father. The series had a great influence on me as it introduced a number of concepts that I would revisit as I aged. Even today I fondly remember being amazed by that series.
Many years later I watched a new generation Star Trek episode and had an eerie feeling that it had a Out Limits parallel. I waited through the ending credits and sure enough Joseph Stefano had written that episode. See: Star Trek: The Next Generation first season episode "Skin Of Evil".
Nightmare was the one that stuck with me cause of the soldier who had his brains scooped out.
I think number one is the one i blanked out since it was first released.
Heart, not brain. He'd had a heart attack, and the Ebons had removed it to attempt to repair it, but had failed
"Keeper of the purple twilight" was a phycops. Thise faces aliens had . Never looked a vents the same way ever.
Gwyllim(David McCallum) has just died.
Rest In Peace, Mr. McCallum.
Great work on the list! Do not forget the incredible contribution of Dominic Frontier- the music was way above par and laid the groundwork for the atmosphere- Never Born is a perfect example of his brilliance. Too bad he was off 2nd Season.
This show scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. It still does. But it was a great show.
You skipped “Don’t Open Till Doomsday”, a seriously bizarre tale involving innocent youngsters eloping, & an inter dimensional, black box with a monster with an apocalyptic agenda, inside, that David Lynch could’ve directed…(OBIT, the Probe, the Guests, Demon With a Glass Hand, Behold Eck !& several others, deserve honorable mention)
I'm Only Familiar With The 1990's Version But I did catch a few episodes of the original Outer Limits on THIS TV
Corpus Earthling's original entities were supposed to be cats. They made them rocks because they were afraid that people would hurt their pet cats.
I don’t think a cat sucking on somebody’s face would work.
Great list Rich, thanks.
Demon with a Glass Hand. The tone is incredible.
William Shatner starred in one episode he played an astronaut who was having hallucinations or did he really see a strange monster outside his space capsule similar to his Twilight Zone episode with the monster on the wing of the plane.
Cold Hands, Warm Heart....that creature outside his spaceship scared rhe shit out of me 😅
'The Architects Of Fear', was something I watched... And it gave me bad dreams, and sleepless nights for a long time. The 'Bear' (that's what Producer Joseph Stefano called each monster of the week) is tremendously disturbing, on many levels - I remember seeing it on a cover of 'Famous Monsters Of Filmland', and being a bit freaked out by it - but more disturbing are the ideas behind it: to irreversibly surgically mutilate a man to engender peace. It sounds noble, but what happens to your subject, if, and when, peace is declared? He was probably doomed to be killed anyway.
However, the plan unravels pretty quickly.
Imagine showing that to the US public, and saying:
"Oh, and if you were wondering why there was a multi-million dollar deficit in taxes this year, the truth is, we sidelined it into a black project, which went west very quickly, and made... This!" (corpse of the 'Alien' is revealed).
There would be a fair bit of civil unrest, I think. 🤔🤔🤔😆😆😆
ARCHITECTS is my favorite episode of the series. Extreme body horror for 1960s tv and sensibilities! One wonders how much it influenced Cronenberg. (For decades I thought the final form in Cronenberg's FLY remake was a nod to the Thetan from ARCHITECTS -- they look a lot alike if you consider the advances in special effects -- but its creator Chris Walas told me that was not the case -- or at least all he did was make what the script described, anyway.)
Really enjoyed this series growing up. This would be my top ten--- The Sixth Finger, Corpus Earthling, Nightmare, Zanti Misfits,, Fun And Games, Feasibility Study, The Mutant, Galaxy Being, The Bellero Shield and The Architects Of Fear, in no particular order. No matter which ones are your favorites, this series is a classic. And I love the music sound track.
Grew up watching this show first run. Still one of the best Sci-Fi shows ever created in my humble opinion. I even liked the so called 'New Outer Limits'. Wish they would do more.
Well, now I know what inspired Ozymandias.
You pretty much covered my own list of the most disturbing episodes. The Invisibles was basically a 'haircut' of Heinlein's The Puppet Masters.
"Production and Decay of Strange Particles" was disturbing in a different way. If you remember Louis Slotin and the "Demon Core" at Los Alamos in 1946, "PADOSP" is beyond disturbing and well into "eeyike" territory.
"ZZZZZZ" aka "The Bees" is another one, in its own way more nerve-jangling than "Zanti Misfits". Bees are, after all, organized, cooperative, have what amounts to a dispersed "intelligence", and are of course well-armed. And humans have exploited them literally for millennia.
This episode shows what might happen if they decided to turn the tables and had the ability to do so.
i actually used to see the Zanti Misfits at a convention, there was some kind of collectable toy thing of them, and honestly, my thought was "it looks like a bugs life but messed up" years later, my dad told me about how he used to scare his sister with an impression of them, i did it to her and she called my dad a jerk, lolz
I found Nightmare the most disturbing, especially at my first viewing. And the twist near the end was so compelling. Who are the real monsters?
You the man!Rick great 👍 synopsis w these movie plots & good choices.
O.B.I.T. understood the future and is more relevant today than it was then. Then there's an episode about subatomic particles that scared the hell out of me...
"It crawled out of the woodwork" is the reason I refuse to vacuum the house.
I remember seeing the cleaning lady scene in "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork" while I was a child and had just woken up from a nap next to my grandmother. It creeped me out.
Truly an epic series. I was six when I saw “The Architects of Fear” and kept a light on at night. Now having the series set on Blu-ray it still remains intensely haunting. But now I don’t need the light on.
Feasibility Study stuck with me for years. I was very young when I saw it on reruns and rented it when Netflix just started up. Lots of creepy moments.
When I was 8 years old when I saw The Architects of Fear. Scared the life out of me and when the creature's bottom eyelids twitched my bottom lip quivered out of fear. I'll never forget that
Great list. Glad you included”A Feasibility Study” My personal favorite
In reading the comments no one mentioned “Cry of Silence”. Maybe not really fitting the category of most disturbing. But certainly great ,fascinating and disturbing enough!
the "ants" in The Zanti Misfits" freaked me the F out seeing it as a 7 year old.
There was one episode that scared me. It involved an experiment with a miniature city under a large glass cover from an alien civilization. It changed every few days. Then the alien appeared slowly until it broke out and took up the entire lab. It was frietening!
I wish you had spent more time on each episode. I found myself wanting more info and more visuals.
Those eyes scared the bejeebers out of me as a kid.
The episode w/ Eddie Albert about the tumbleweeds scared me as a child! 😬
To this day,, 'Zanti' and 'Architects' still send a little shiver of fear and dread up my spine.
"The Galaxy Being" was my favourite, the special effects and sound effects were great for the time.
You missed "Demon With A Glass Hand". This was a supremely creepy episode, one of their best.
I remember watching the Outer Limits, but who remembers "Way Out", hosted by Roald Dahl ? The one episode I remember was about an actor who copied in makeup the disfigured face of a homeless guy to portray the role Quasimodo for The hunchback of Notre Dame. When he tries to take off the makeup, it won't come off, and he's stuck with the guy's twisted face !
These were all great episodes. I might have also included “Borderland” and “Don’t Open Till Doomsday”. Unfortunately the quality of the show went down in the second season.
That's a great list. I'd replace THE MUTANT, memorable as it is, with OBIT, and THE MAN WHO WAS NEVER BORN with THE GUESTS. MAN is a superlative episode, but not nearly as disturbing as THE GUESTS becomes.
I'm going to disagree with you about "The Mutant" - that one gave me nightmares.
@@josiahslack8720 Did me too! But I would think, from an adult perspective, OBIT is even more disturbing, and at a deeper level, since we are living in a time where, essentially, the machines ARE everywhere!
#1 for me, would be; 'The Invisible Enemy, 'The Zanti Misfits', 'Behold, Eck'. And the one where time stands still, at an Air Force Base (the little girl, on a tricycle), and the one with Eddie Albert, and the tumbleweeds.
#10 "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork" I wasn't allowed to watch the Outer Limits in 1963. However my parents were busy downstairs and I managed to watch most of it - I had nightmares that night. I was also scared when Mom vacuumed the rugs!🤣
‘Galaxy Being ‘ my favorite….not disturbing,but very unique premise…but all of them were.
Outer Limits was a darker and much more intense version of Twilight Zone.
What used to worry me the most as a young kid was someone changing the channel before the end of the show and the TV "not being returned to its former operations"! Haha!
I still remember being spooked by the very 1st episode - "The Galaxy Being."
I’d say O.B.I.T. Is one of the creepiest due to its accuracy. It’s very prophetic when it comes to the dangers of social media and our obsession with knowing everything about everyone
I haven't seen these in 45+ years. I'm going to find it and watch it all over again.
I like "behold Eck" and Demon with the
Glass hand.
the mask in #5 was used again in an episode of star trek tos
Also recycled for Star Trek was the alien mask used in "Fun and Games" - became the alien in Star Trek's "Arena". And the giant alien microbe in "The Probe" (the last OL episode to air) became Star Trek's horta. ("I'm a doctor, Jim, not a stonemason!")
I found episode 26 - The Guests - from Season 1 to be the most disturbing. It was originally televised in 1964 and still sends chills up my spine.
The Outer Limits...OMG..I had nightmares about it for years. I was 6 or so when it came out and my Mom loved it! As soon as i knew it was coming on, i'd run to my room and put the pillow over my head so I couldn't here the brilliant intro music. I can still barely watch this series, but I love it. And Architects of Fear is my fave.
Second Chance with Simon Oakland as alien that kidnaps people was scary also Cry Of Silence with desert tumbleweeds controlled by invisible alien was creepy & frogs were controlled too and of course The Galaxy Being was fantastic with modern looking equipment, great alien and sad ending . " The Guests" was terrifying with alien holding people as prisoners for decades until his questions are answered
My favorite show
The Architects Of Fear is a good pick for Number One.
"Demon With a Glass Hand." Coincidentally, also with Robert Culp
The writing for this and Tzone, was just incredible. They didn’t have modern effects, but they used wonderful writing!
Can the Architects of Fear be seen free on TH-cam?
The one with that guy with the bug eyes, and those ants with the human faces always stuck with me. I STILL have dreams about them.😦
The Zanti Misfits scared the crap out of me when I saw it as a kid. Your No.1 most disturbing episode did nothing to me. Today it looks comical. Did Robert Culp star in 3 Outer Limits episodes?
Yes, he did. The Architects of Fear, Corpus Earthling and Demon with a Glass Hand.
The Zanti misfits creep me out as a kid . Bruce Dern was a guest star as these large looking ants with faces on um that are captives from another world that crash land on Earth.
Architect’s of Fear is my #1 but The Mutant is my #2.
These outer limits were on tv too late for me to watch as an 8 yr old, but I still want to watch them decades later.
'It Crawled out of the Woodwork' is about how impossible it is to be rid of radioactive waste, and how some of it will 'breed' and irradiate other substances.
Quite a bit of SF is warnings from people working with this stuff, and getting the message out in morality plays.
"This isn't your grandmom's bedtime story" No, actually, it is. 60 years ago, grandmom was loving this. 60 years ago, while also worrying about nuclear war with Russia, the people were far tougher than the creampuffs of today.
A Feasibility Study scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. The as an adult, here comes the New Outer Limits and of course the new Feasibility Study and scared the hell out of me all over again.
The Mutant is a wild one. That guy was talking reckless through the whole episode.
My all-time favorites are The Zanti Misfits, Demon With a Glass Hand, The Belero Shield, The Galaxy Being, and The Architects of Fear. Too bad today's tv productions aren't nearly as imaginative.
I was a little kid so they wer all upsetting (especially Zanti misfits). Not sure why I watched them and still do?