Product Description

You hold in your hands an artifact from a time now vanished forever - a compendium of portals into worlds unknown. A four-disc set that controls over 27 hours of transmission from the 1963-64 series, this vessel has sought you out for one specific purpose: to expand your mind to "The Outer Limits"!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34193 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-09-03
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Black & White, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 4
• Running time: 1642 minutes

Amazon.com
From the moment Vic Perrin's omniscient "Control Voice" first proclaimed, "There is nothing wrong with your television set," on September 16, 1963, The Outer Limits was destined for greatness. The dazzling, long-beloved series was a daring experiment in "omnibus" TV, trading the speculative fantasies of The Twilight Zone for farther-out sci-fi concepts. Producers Leslie Stevens and Joseph Stefano had risen as gifted writers from (respectively) Broadway and Hollywood; Stevens rebounded from his previous canceled series, while Stefano had scripted Hitchcock's Psycho and was eager to expand his creative horizons. With an executive order for scary monsters and cold war thrills, their fruitful symbiosis was preceded by the superb Stevens-directed pilot "Please Stand By," named after the series' once-proposed title and changed to "The Galaxy Being" for its broadcast premiere.

Cliff Robertson launched an impressive succession of guest stars, and on meager, oft-exceeded budgets of $120,000 per episode, The Outer Limits became a showcase for shoestring ingenuity. The "blue ribbon crew" (as Stevens called it) included cinematographer Conrad Hall, whose Oscar®-winning skills were honed on the series' cramped TV-studio sets. Packed onto four double-sided DVDs, these 32 episodes (out of a total 49) comprise the series' dynamic first season of moody, frequently paranoid black-and-white adventures. Repeat performers Martin Landau, Robert Culp, and Sally Kellerman excel (respectively) in the fan-favorite episodes "The Man Who Was Never Born," "The Architects of Fear," and "The Bellero Shield" (and who can forget the insect-like menace of "The Zanti Misfits"?). There are a few clunkers, of course, but the series' quality (and parade of monsters) is remarkably consistent, and DVD compression does not compromise its technical achievement. These eerily seductive shows invite repeated viewing, supporting Stephen King's oft-quoted remark that The Outer Limits was "the best program of its type ever to run on network TV." --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Utter bliss! Baby Boomers line up....
With talents like Joseph Stephano and Leslie Stephens as producers, some of the best Sci-Fi Writers and a lot of talented 60's actors and even actors that went on to great fame like Robert Culp, David McCallum, Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall and Martin Landau, this was one of the first quality Sci-Fi series.

Twilight Zone was out there, but at times it was not really pure Sci-Fi, often more mysterious and horror, Thriller hosted by Boris Karloff (PLEASE PUT THESE OUT on DVD) were pure horror and the long running Alfred Hitchcock Present was straight mystery, so SCI-FI fans were captivated from the opening line with that mysterious voice telling you your telly has been taken over for the next 60 minutes. The acting was top notch, the writing literate and thought provoking, and you will even see many of the episodes were later cannibalised later to make movies, such as SOLDIER with Michael Anshara, repackaged in the 80's as The Terminator. To think you get 32 original episodes on 4 double-sided discs is just amazing.

There are a few puppies in the series...In the second year of the series Stephano played a less controlling interest. He believed in thoughty mind twisting Sci-Fi, while Stevens wanted the monster of the week, so some monsters did get a little Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea-ish (Think they even shared a couple with monster doing double time!). But all in this in one super buy is a must for all those Baby Boomers that would once more would like their telly taken over.

Warning to those who have not seen the series, these are vintage, high quality Black & White episodes. I think it adds to the spookiness as they could film in lower light, creating those sinister shadows.

A treasure of TV nostalgia.
I've only watched four of the episodes in this collection so far, but that's enough to be able to say unequivocally that this set is worth purchasing for anyone who remembers the good old days of science fiction on TV. I was only 10 years old when Outer Limits originally aired, and yet some of the images from those programs have remained with me to this day, well into my dotage. I fervently hope a second DVD set will be released, containing episodes 33-49. That would included Harlan Ellison's "Demon with a Glass Hand," the all-time top-rated episode, as well as "Soldier," also written by Ellison, and "The Inheritors," the only two-parter from the series. Not to mention "Wolf 359," a title that should ring a bell with Star Trek fans.
I applaud the notion of eliminating the useless labels on each disk and packing 32 episodes onto 4 disks. I wish more collections would adopt this strategy.
In short, buy this set if you want to take a very pleasant trip back through time. Great TV!

I can't wait to own it...
When I was in the 3rd grade, I used to come to school after the weekend, Outer Limits was on Sunday night, and I would ask all of my buddies "Did you see the Outer Limits last night?", invariably someone did and we would argue the merits of the monster and so forth (very sophisitcated 3rd graders and very liberal parents!).

Since then, occasional glimpses into that stark black and white world peopled with stars and monsters and questions and answers, both disturbing and tempting all at the same time.

A few years back, I began to collect the VHS releases, then the LaserDisc set, but it was prohibitively expensive at the time. Now grubbing around on Ebay and occasionally landing a deal.

When I found out this series was going to be available on DVD, I dove in and ordered it. To settle the debate over the content here is what I know:

There are a total of 1642 minutes of running time, now with 32 episodes in the set, that means 51 minutes and 31 seconds per episode, which figures, minusing out commercial slots. There are 4 discs, double sided of course, so each side holds 8 episodes. They are all there folks. Now as to the number 32..yes there are more episodes, but these are the original 32 that were produced before plot disputes and directional differences forced a change in producers, resulting in less intersting episodes (in my opinion). Here are the contents of the DVDS:
Disc 1
The Galaxy Being,
The Hundred Days of the Dragon
The Architects of Fear
The Man with the Power
The Sixth Finger
The Man Who Was Never Born
O.B.I.T.
The Human Factor

Disc 2
Corpus Earthling
Nightmare
It Crawled Out of the Woodwork
The Borderland
Tourist Attraction
The Zanti Misfits
The Mice
Controlled Experiment

Disc 3
Don't Open Till Doomsday
ZZZZZ
The Invisibles
The Bellero Shield
The Children of Spider County
Specimen: Unknown
Second Chance
Moonstone

Disc 4
The Mutant
The Guests
Fun and Games

The Special One
A Feasibility Study
Production and Decay of Strange Particles
The Chameleon
The Forms of Things Unknown

And as a final note, I loved the long intro and felt they cheapend it by shortening the Vic Perrins dialog. My favorite Outer Limits Ep. is still "The Sixth Finger", with "100 Days of the Dragon" a close second.