Noirsville Bonus - The Outer Limits (TV Series (1963-65)) The Noir Episodes (Part 4)

 

"There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. 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 all that you see and hear. 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."

THE NOIR EPISODES (Part 4)

S1.E20 Episode aired Feb 10, 1964

The Bellero Shield

Directed by John Brahm. Teleplay written by Joseph Stefano. Story by Lou Morheim and Joseph Stefano. Cinematography by Conrad L. Hall, Music by Dominic Frontiere

The episode stars Martin Landau as Richard Bellero, Sally Kellerman as Judith Bellero, Chita Rivera

as Mrs. Dame, John Hoyt as 'Bifrost' Alien, Neil Hamilton as Richard Bellero, Sr.

The teaser clip shows a woman Mrs. Dame in a wine cellar dragging a glowing body towards a stairway. When partially up the stair, she hears someone approaching and pulls the body back down to the bottom and then turns to meet the person approaching. 

Its Richard Bellero Sr., he orders her to get out of the way, and when he tries to pass her slaps at him causing him to lose his balance and tumble down the stairway. 

The last shot, is of the supposedly dead glowing body opening its eyes (above). 

We get the standard opening series intro before the episode V.O.

V.O. [opening narration]: There is a passion in the human heart which is called aspiration. It flares with the noble flame, and by its light Man has traveled from the caves of darkness to the darkness of outer space. 

V.O. [opening narration]: But when this passion becomes lust, when its flame is fanned by greed and private hunger, then aspiration becomes ambition – by which sin the angels fell."

Story 

Richard Bellero Jr. has just perfected a powerful laser with a rock steady beam shooting far into the sky from one of the mansard roof window.  Richard Bellero Sr. is watching the display but is not too impressed. 

Richard Sr. considers his son a failure, and it was Richard Jr.'s wife Judith who invited him over to see the new laser.

Judith heads down to the wine cellar to pick out a bottle to celebrate with. Watching all this from the shadows is Mrs Dane their housekeeper. 

Richard Sr. spoils Judith's celebration when he tells them that has made plans to pass the control of the Bellero company to someone outside the family. 

Later that night while Judith is in the lab,  a glowing alien being rides down the laser beam. Judith freaked out. grabs one of the Bellero company's lazer guns and shoots at it. Shoot first. ask questions later. 

Before the laser can reach the alien, he creates a clear impenetrable shield by pushing a button devise near the palm of his hand. Judith rushes out to get her husband, and is excited about the shield technology, and what it would mean for her husband and the Bellero Company. 

Again we see Mrs. Dean has been observing it all.

Richard Jr. explains his wife's fear reaction to the alien and he removes his shield. 

Richard and the alien get along well. The alien explains that he is not from another world but from another dimension which "hovers just above the ceiling of your universe." .The dimension is comprised of the same coherent collimated electromagnetic waves of concentrated energy photons as his laser. 

Judith now insists, because Richard Sr. will not take her calls, that Richard Jr. go and personally get his father who lives nearby to get him to come back to see the protective shield. 

While Richard is gone the alien explains to Judith that he can't wait much longer and must return to his dimension.

It goes Noirsville, when  Judith panics and leaves the lab to go and get a revolver. 

When she returns to the alien in the lab, Judith keeps her mind blank, and after the alien apologizes about not being able to stay, Judith waits until he turns his back to her and climbs back up the ladder to the laser beam.

She shoots him in the back of the head and the alien falls back to the floor of the lab. 

A barefoot Mrs. Dean, immediately out of the shadows and into the scene....

Noirsville 

V.O. [closing narration]: When this passion called aspiration becomes lust, then aspiration degenerates, becomes vulgar ambition, by which sin the angels fell.

S1.E26 Episode aired Mar 23, 1964

The Guests

Directed by Paul Stanley. Written by Donald S. Sanford. Cinematography by Kenneth Peach, Music by Dominic Frontiere. This one has a great sound design so a shout out to Jay Ashworth and Arthur Cornell.  There's a mechanical thrumbling rhythm beat that's on par with the voodoo drumbeat in Val Lewton's  "I Walked With A Zombie."

The episode stars Geoffrey Horne as Wade Norton, Nellie Burt as Ethel Latimer, Vaughn Taylor (The Lineup, Psycho, Screaming Mimie) as Randall Latimer, Luana Anders as Theresa 'Tess' Ames, Gloria Grahame (The Naked Alibi, In A Lonely Place. The Big Heat) as Florinda Patten, and Burt Mustin as the Old Man - Dr. Ames (un-credited). 

A great teaser, we see a man Wade Norton attempting to storm out of an old mansion but we hear a loud rhythmic beating sound, and he is halted in his tracks and them seemingly pulled by his head and upper body in a weird backwards angle. Pulled by some invisible force and dragged up a darkened stairway.  

Randall (Vaughn Taylor, Ethel (Nellie Burt) and Florinda (Gloria Grahame)

All this is being watched by Ethel and Randal Latimer along with Florinda Patten. Randal is telling Wade he can't fight it and that they all had to go through it. The other two are asking inane questions, something seems off.

Cut to the standard series opening credits. 

This is the only episode in the series with no opening or closing narration.

Story

An old man dressed in an old style suit is running through a wooded area. Barred Sunlight slants down the leaves and branches. he keeps looking backwards. 

Burt Mustin as the Old Man

When he gets to a road embankment he stumbles and falls. He turns his head to once again look backwards. We see what he sees and on a small rise above a tree line sits what looks either like a giant bent over wrinkled ass or a giant brain with cleavage. 

The old man seems to lose his remaining strength and pass out face down in a gravel /dirt roadway.

Cut to a 1938 Ford ragtop jalopy cruising down the same dirt road. Wearing sunglasses is Wade Norton, a drifter, at the wheel. He comes around the bend and spots the old man and he swings out and hits the breaks as he swerves around the guy in a cloud of dust. 

Wade rips off his sunglasses, hops out and checks on the old timer. He's still alive. Wade takes off his leather jacket and makes a rest for the old man's head. 

Then, he tells the guy he'll go to get some help. The old man shakes his head and reaches out silently to stop him. but Wade was already turned away on his way up the embankment of the road. 

Geoffrey Horne as Wade Norton aka The Drifter

At the top of the embankment we start to hear that rhythmic beating again. 

Wade looks back down at the old man once more, see's him wringing his hands at him but turns and follows the sound into the trees. 

We cut to the giant ass sticking above the trees and watch as it transitions into a Queen Anne style mansion. 

We cut again, back to the roadway where Wade has just left  the old man and his '38 Ford.  The old man transitions to dust and a breeze blows the dust and the empty clothing he was wearing out of the frame.

As Wade continues further he spots a pocket watch, opens it and looks a photo of a young woman. 

Wade continues, and now sees the mansion.  We cut to an extreme closeup of the mansion. Our view is limited to just a  single curtained attic window in the mansard roof. 

The curtains pull ever so slightly apart. We cut to a reverse angle looking downward through the curtains at Wade advancing down a bluestone sidewalk towards the mansion.

When he's on the porch he knocks on the door and it just opens. Wade walks into the foyer and shouts out "is anybody here?" No answer.

He walks across the foyer into a drawing room, and spots a plume of cigarette smoke, coming from a butt burning on a piano edge. 

Wade walks over and picks up the butt.. We see its lipstick stained. Wade puts it out in a nearby ash tray, then walks back out into the foyer and again yells, this time up the stairway. "Is there anybody here, I need help."

Wade, heads back into the drawing room and this time spots the arm of a young woman as it slips off the armrest of a chair. She has fallen asleep while reading apparently. 

When he wakes her she is startled and runs off out into the foyer. Wade follows and comes to a very dark corridor where he lost sight of her. He heads back into the drawing room, walks over to the chair,  and kneels down to examine the book. When he looks back up, standing in the doorway to the foyer are Ethel and Randal Latimer, and Florinda Patten. 

There's something off about the group. They don't quite react the way Wade would expect them to act. Also, the way Gloria Grahame plays Florinda, if you didn't know her from her films. you would think she has a speech impediment. Her line readings are stilted. You also wonder, if you know anything about Grahame, that she was obsessed with her upper lip. She resorted to surgeries and also to the extent of using wadded tissue paper between her teeth and upper lip. She wanted an ideal pouty look.

Wade announces that he found an old man lying in the road. Ethel and Randal glance at one another while Florinda who was slightly behind them steps up and asks...

Florinda: You saw an... old man?

Wade: Yes. Lying in the road. 

Ethel [walking closer to Wade]: Is that his watch you're holding?

Wade: I think so, I found it in the brush. He needs attention!

Randall: I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place young man.

Ethel: Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense.

Randall: [partially to Ethel]: The watch and the old man have obviously no connection, none whatsoever.

Florinda: Was he, very old?

Was he... Very old?

Wade: Listen I came here for help, but if you people don't want to help can I at least use the phone to call the nearest hospital.

Ethel: There is no phone in this house and that's that. 

Wade: You don't understand there an old man lying in the road

Ethel: Oh you'll understand bye and bye. Won't he Randall.

Randall: That's so.

Florinda: Was he... very old?

...the oldest man I ever saw."

Wade: Yes he was the oldest man I ever saw.  

More inane conversation between the residents is frustrating Geoffrey and he announces that he's going out to help the old man. He walks out into the foyer and meets Theresa 'Tess' Ames. 

Luana Anders as Theresa 'Tess' Ames

Theresa 'Tess' Ames: He's gone by now.

Wade: Gone? 

Theresa 'Tess' Ames: You're very kind to want to help. Did you really want to help him?

Wade: Yes, Yes I did. 

Theresa 'Tess' Ames: I'm sorry that your kindness will not be repaid in kind. [turns away]

Wade [holding out the watch]: Wait a minute this is your picture isn't it? 

Theresa 'Tess' Ames: Yes

Tess walks away.

We start to hear the thrumbling rhythm beat again and its getting louder.  Florinda comes out into the foyer and looks up the shadowy stairway. Wade walks back into the drawing room. Ethel wants Randall to tell Wade what is going on. Wade is again frustrated by their lack of empathy. Florida tells him to go ahead leave for help. 

Wade begins to walk towards the entrance door but now the rhythmic mechanical thrumbling gets louder and we get the opening teaser sequence and watch as Wade gets pulled up the stairway and into the darkness. While Randall announces that he "drifter" can't fight it, and that it happened to all of them.

Suddenly a bright light / scan is flooding Wade's face and a misshapen blob being "the thing" is approaching. 

The Host [laughing evilly, and speaking in an impersonation of Vincent Price's style]: You feel fear. You feel anger as well. 

Wade: Where am I? What are you? 

The Host: You are in the control center of my searching self universe. I am The Host. Can you give me the answer?

Wade: Answer.

The Host: The missing vector. The unknown statistic. The factor that will balance the equation. Do you know what an equation is? Close your eyes, When you open them your fear will be temporarily anesthetized, you will converse with me calmly. An equation is a mathematical expression asserting the equality of two quantities, correct? 

Wade: Like two plus two equals four.

The Host: Yes. Would you agree that the race thought, the mental drives of your species, could be analyzed, separated into its components, and described as a seriess of mathematical symbols?

Wade nods.

The Host: Then you will agree that such a mathematical expression is equal to the ultimate destiny of your species. Watch closely the walls of my thought. 

Visions appear to us representing the various factors presented by the Host.

The Host: You will see the answer computed from its component factors. First, the positive factors: the instinct to survive - procreation, work, faith, art. Art COULD be Man's destiny if there were no negative factors in the equation, but there are: destruction, fear, hopelessness, hate. There is the answer to the equation - total destruction of this planet Earth.

Wade: You left something out, if that's the answer to the equation.

The Host: Yes, there IS a missing quantity. The equation does not balance. That missing quantity may be in YOUR experience. I will search your mind for it.

Wade:  No.

The Host: You intend to resist.

Wade: I don't know why. At least I have to try to resist it.

The Host: What is this emotion that you're transmitting? I have not encountered it until now.

Wade: Everyone I've ever known has called it defiance.

It goes even more Noirsville when, once Wade is reunited with the others in the drawing room, they tell him he is in a virtual prison. When he  doesn't believe them, he tries to escape through the front door, only its disappeared. When he checks behind the curtains he finds that there are no windows. 

Wade runs back out into the foyer and heads into a labyrinth of dark hallways leading to empty rooms. He is followed by Tess.....

Noirsville 

This one is another great episode that makes good use of the Noir Visual Style and also a bit of Audio Style with a couple of Noir Vets Vaughn Taylor and Gloria Grahame bringing along, some cinematic memory. 

End of Part 4