User Reviews

In "The Invisible Enemy", astronauts journey to Mars in search of answers as to what may have wiped out the crew of a previous mission. The story is populated with underdeveloped characters of little interest (not to mention the surprising revelation that the need for artificial breathing apparatus is optional on mars), but what does work is the considerable suspense generated whenever the astronauts venture out to explore the eerie surface of the planet. Though the second season often gets knocked (and justifiably so) for not being as good as season 1, this episode's ingeniously conceived effects rank among the finest work ever done for "The Outer Limits". For genuinely spine-tingling moments, few in the series can out-do the scene in which a strange object rises out of the surface of the landscape and begins moving through the sand like a fish swims through water. Whatever is under the surface, nothing more is revealed until later when our first real glimpse comes in the startling form of two lobster-like claws reaching out of the sand. Later as the thing's dragon-like head finally makes it's appearance, we see the object that had been cruising across the surface is a dorsal fin mounted on top of it's skull. Zeroing in on motion- or the smell of blood- it literally is a sand-dwelling shark.

After the first doomed expedition made the mistake of not following proper procedure, Earth naturally sends another reckless bunch (this time commanded by Adam West no less). Among the crew is a puzzling officer (Rudy Solari) who considers obeying orders secondary to collecting martian flowers and gathering up little diamonds that litter the sand. Also head-scratching is a scene where West seems to be completely deaf to repeated warnings of the sand shark's presence. Later, West finds temporary safety on a rock, but from the viewer's perspective it seems so small we wonder why the creature doesn't just swim over to the marooned astronaut and gobble him up. Ironically, actor Peter Marko, playing here an astronaut eaten by the marauding sand shark would later show up in the "Star Trek" episode "Galileo Seven" in which he lands on another spooky planet to be crushed by a giant ape.

Anyways, despite the not-so-well-thought-out-script and budgetary limitations, director Byron (The War Of The Worlds) Haskin and the Projects Unlimited team deliver a truly memorable monster that's both frightening, and perhaps even inspirational as one wonders if the graboids of "Tremors" may just be the terrestrial stepchildren of this memorable season 2 horror.

The premise is an interesting one. The idea that a series of creatures of predatory nature exists in the sand on another planet ( Mars) much like sharks on Earth.

The acting is sincere and the monsters are surprisingly eerie and dangerous killing four crew members of two ships. The crew goes by the rank of like the air force. Adam West plays Major Merit. Rudy Solari plays a Captain not of the whole ship but a rank lower than that of Meritt's. When the two are trying to get back to the ship and this away from the creatures you do feel some drama.

Look. The now defunct Twilight Zone magazine covered the original Outer Limits series back in the 1980s in the form of episode. Even that magazine review of this ep claimed it was badly done. For one thing it looks really idiotic the way the captain left the ship minus his walkie talkie device and the major has to go in search of him.

Also, why can you see Earth so clearly from Mars?

This ep also had an all male cast. Not good. What, a pretty female as a secretary back in the general's office back on Earth would not have helped?

You really have to think about that line from the closing narrative to this story that I've put in my summary line. It's like a bunch of unconnected words strung together meant to sound coherent, but without context it just sounds absurd. Apparently, many other reviewers thought the story here absurd due to the actions of its characters aboard Spaceships M-1 and M-2, astronauts who disregarded orders from their home base when they felt it expedient to do so. I won't be that harsh on the guys, it's just a story, but it was put together with a complete disregard for actual science. No helmets needed on Mars - who thought that was a good idea? The sand shark concept might have been inspired by Frank Herbert's 1965 novel "Dune", but given the technology and special effects available in the Sixties, the monsters in this episode appeared goofy at best, though totally in synch with the Outer Limits menagerie of frequently appearing oddities. The lobster claws on the sand shark reminded me of the Gargons in 1959's "Teenagers From Outer Space", a flick I highly recommend if you really want to reach the outer limits. This one is not to be taken too seriously, an episode that might have uniquely prepared Adam West for his career defining role as Batman in the mid-Sixties.

The story starts out good. A 2 man team of astronauts lands on Mars, one screams while exploring the landscape and his buddy who goes to help him is never heard from again. Nothing is given away, and I was interested in what killed them. Fast forward 3 years later, when a 4 man team is sent to figure out happened. They are given strict orders to follow protocol, and even go over the orders yet again for the benefit of the audience. Luckily, the atmosphere back then must have been unknown, because they do not need suits to walk around. I have no problem with that, and can look past it. They send a man out to explore. But this is where the episode begins to lose me. One of the very strict orders is to never get out of visual contact. One of the first things the astronaut does is get out of visual contact. Now granted, it was just for a minute, and he wanted some buried debris. But of course he screams and is killed by something in the ground. But because they could not see him, the members on the ship have no idea what it was.

Now up to this point, all 3 men who went out of their ships have died. You think there would be a heightened sense of danger. No, of course not. Why worry? So they send 2 men out, and they are supposed to not go out of visual contact. There is something killing people loose on the planet. So what does one of them do? Goes behind a rock outside of visual contact! "Hey there is a pretty rock!" And a flower! I'll just go behind this rock where no can see me and ignore my commander. It gets the other guy killed of course, but they still don't know by what. The two remaining men are informed they have an hour before the ship will have to head home. Even though it's not flying, it's about to be out of fuel? They sent it all that way so it could be on the planet for 3 hours?

But then one of them figures it out. It's a creature in the ground. But they only have an hour left, so the commander has decided to take a

nap? Really? Hey, you only have an hour before you will be on a long voyage back to Earth, so make sure you nap so you won't be asleep on the way home. Half your crew is missing, and I guess they have zero prep to do, so napping makes sense. And in 5 seconds, he is in a dead sleep. He can't be woken up. So the other guy decides to go out alone on a planet that has killed 4 out of 5 guys that have stepped foot on it. And why? To get what may be a diamond. Magically? Adam West wakes up on his own after being in such a deep sleep, and heads out against orders. They all seem to ignore all orders and common sense. He runs right into the sand , even as his friend is saying "don't run in the sand!". And he falls and instead of getting up and running, decides to crawl. Yeah that's quicker. Adam does make it to a rock and is stuck there. There are only 26 minutes till the ship must blast off. So instead of telling him "dude, that ship is taking off in 26 minutes with or without you. You will be dead either way if you stay on that rock", they just tell the other guy to leave. Don't give him a chance to make it back, just leave. I mean, if he is gonna die either way, at least give him a chance to make it back to the ship. Anyway, we get the ending which is OK, and the show is over. I believe this crew was the great great great grand fathers of the crew from Prometheus. That would explain a lot. The show had a cool premise, and I was really wondering what the invisible enemy was. But this episode falls into a trap so many SciFi shows do and advances the plot through stupidity of characters. It's lazy writing to make the character do something everyone else is screaming "no don't do that!", because they can't figure out other ways to make the story advance. We don't feel sorry for the character, we get angry at them. I wanted a story that doesn't defy logic. I am not gonna pick flowers while something is going around murdering my crew. There was so much of that going on, it took away from the enjoyment of the show. By the end, you didn't care what happened to them, in fact, you may have been rooting for them to die because they were so irritating. Which is a shame, because they had potential here. I did like seeing a young Adam West, but that was about it. If you are a fan of the OL, then give it a shot maybe, but expect to be frustrated at what could have been.

Of interest is that this is the second excursion to Mars for Adam West in 1964. He also starred in 'Robinson Crusoe On Mars' which is worth a look and may even be underrated since I know so few people who have actually seen it. Give that one a try! Originally I had given up on Outer Limits during the second limp season after the 4th episode thus I never did see this episode until I bought the DVD set a few years ago. As with all previous second season episodes I had not originally seen, this one again demonstrates that my decision to find other things to do than watch this in 1964 was not necessarily an erroneous decision. It, too, takes what could have been a good concept and becomes botched in the hands of a production crew who seem to have no concept of what constitutes 'awe and mystery' or no deep down passion for producing thought-provoking science fiction. Anyway, we have a crew going to Mars for exploration. The first crew is massacred by something unknown so a second crew is sent. The first fatal flaw is that as the first crew's rocket is landing, the Earth is clearly seen in the background. This could be another example of the OL team cutting budgetary corners since this very same background is used in other previous episodes (Cold Hands Warm Heart, for example). I'm not sure how much money it would have taken to remove the Earth from the background, but even at 7 years old I would have known that you cannot see the Earth nearly this well from Mars. Yet as with ALL prior OL episodes there are jarring scientific flaws that one tends to overlook if the story is well written and conveyed with distracting thought provoking concepts. This episode is not one of them. The flaws are all too hard to get around. As with 'Robinson Crusoe On Mars', the planet has an atmosphere (which, I suppose cuts down on having to come up with helmets and oxygen tanks from the practically non-existent budget). In this case, the atmosphere is quite adequate for strenuous activity. It is also an obvious sound stage since you are able to see creases in the drywall background. Still, with OL if the story shines, who cares? We are provided with a slight glimpse of the creature that kills the first crew. The creature is actually worthy of the first season's efforts. It does induce uneasy fear. That's why we watch this show! The second crew is sent up with the strict order that safety strategies and protocols should be followed. It starts out well enough but soon it all goes to Hell in a hand-basket. Other reviewers have rightfully pointed out the sheer stupidity of some of the decisions and behaviors. They aren't written into the script effectively as much as it suddenly occurs to the individual, 'What can I do right now that disobeys orders and is entirely lame-brain'? Meanwhile, the ground crew does their best to look stressed and haggard (loosened ties, five o'clock shadows, and rumpled uniforms). So, after two of the four member team are eliminated by the creature - which, again, turns out to really not be such a bad effect, the member with the all-too cliché loose attitude (Rudy Solari) decides not so much to go have a look for them as much as go look for more Mars gems like the ones he found earlier. He also makes the most astonishing revelation about the nature of the creature and the environment as he day dreams while looking from the porthole. He is astonished! He has it all figured out but the commander (West) conveniently falls asleep and can't be roused(!?). Of course, the idiot decides to go out anyway and leaves his 'walkie-talkie' <== yes, it IS called that. Then when Adam wakes up he has to go look for Solari despite a strict command that he NOT go but if he must, the rocket will have to take off at a precise time. Absolutely anyone who would go through all of the training to be an astronaut would know the importance of this. Adam knows this but thinks he can round up the idiot in time. Solari seems completely oblivious to this fact as he scouts for more Mars gems. What follows is what seems like a forced situation to put the astronauts at peril. The creature special effects are, in fact, effective. The astronauts attempting to run across the sandy terrain is not so good. The plan to extract themselves from the situation seems entirely too obvious and ultimately seems misguided when it is discovered that more than one creature exists. Of course then comes the questions wondering how such large creatures manage to exist when there seems to be no consistent other life for them to eat regularly, and why only one ever chose to be active when multiple targets are available, etc? Eventually, they get back to the rocket and go home. Like much of the previous season 2 episodes, there is nothing you walk away with to think about. The adventure simply ends. The only reason to see this is perhaps to see the special creature effects because they aren't half bad, and to see an early Adam West.

One thing that will shock many people (including me) is uncovering the fact that this bomb of an episode was directed by none other than Byron Haskin, the same guy who directed George Pal's War of the Worlds. That movie and the way it shows the alien invaders to be almost indestructible is still creepy today, so I think it's safe to say Haskin was a flawless director when it came to sci-fi, right? Well, you'll think twice after viewing this. The Invisible Enemy begins with two astronauts landing on Mars as part of a space mission. Mission control back on Earth tells them to proceed carefully and be patient when awaiting new orders. Signals from the red planet take around 3 and a half minutes to reach earth, so by the time they get an answer, the astronauts could be lying dead at the bottom of a canyon somewhere. Sure enough, the two men are soon killed by some unknown attacker, and their fates are unresolved. 3 years pass. Another mars mission has been given the go ahead and the commanding officer selected this time is Major Merritt (Adam West). Serving under him are Captain Buckley, Lieutenant Johnson and Captain Lazzari. Once the ship lands, Merritt is tasked with finding out what happened to the ship that landed 3 years earlier. Lazzari exits the ship to look around, and is under strict orders to not stray out of Merritt's binoculars. When Lazzari finds a piece of mangled metal behind a piece of the ship's wreckage, he is heard screaming and Merritt loses visual with him. Johnson later ventures out with a nuclear rocket launcher in order to kill whatever made Lazzari disappear, but he is silently disposed of too. Merritt reports back to earth that two of his crew are missing with one presumed dead, and his superior tells him not to go outside the ship to look for them, as the ship will be leaving in a few hours. Merritt eventually falls asleep, allowing Buckley (minus his radio) to exit the ship and discover the thing that has killed Lazzari, Johnson, and the crew of the previous mission: a large, sand-dwelling creature with tusks. When Merritt awakes, he realizes Buckley is not in the ship, and tells mission control he's going after him. Although this is basically insubordination, he has to do it to save Buckley. Merritt finds him out in a large formation of sand, but the creature traps the former on a rock. Buckley says he's going to run diagonally across the sand in order to use himself as bait for the creature. When the alien is distracted, Merritt makes a run for it and uses the rocket launcher dropped by Johnson to blast it to pieces. Right after this, more sand creatures start appearing, so Merritt and Buckley hurry back to the ship and take off. Quite disappointing by Outer Limits standards. Based on a story written by Jerry Sohl (who worked on Twilight Zone), this episode simply falls flat because there is barely any tension. The monster (at least parts of it) appear very early, so when it starts showing up more regularly later on, you won't even care as much. Apparently, this was ABC's fault as in Jerry's story, the monster didn't appear fast enough. The plot is full of problems. The alien creature roars constantly (same sound effect as used in The Invisibles) but is completely absent from the audio recordings of the dying astronauts. Sadly, I think the most intriguing part of this episode is how the puppet of the creature was operated. The producers spread ground cork on top of a water tank and the puppet's head was maneuvered from below. In order to let the guy operating the puppet know where to steer it, they had to tap codes on the side of the tank. Overall, The Invisible Enemy is not very good. We're never given a reason why the sand monster is unable to kill Merritt as he lies stranded on the rock, but that's the least of its problems. Then again, Haskin was also responsible for arguably the two best episodes of this entire show (Architects of Fear and Demon with a Glass Hand) so maybe I'm being too unfair. It just seems inconceivable that the person behind those two also brought us this.

I've been binge watching Outer Limits for the last couple of weeks. (I was 12 years old when it first aired on TV, and I actually recall a lot of the shows).

First off, to address the bad looking monster(s) in this episode. ALL the monsters on the series were pretty cheesy. Outer Limits definitely wasn't a big budget production and special effect technology back then wasn't anywhere near what it is today.

The complete lack of discipline exhibited by the astronauts made the whole thing frustrating. Out of all five, you'd figure maybe one or two could follow orders. Shaking my head at all the stupidity during the show put me right off the plot.

There was what seemed to be one plot hole.... The first ship was found to be torn up, presumably by the monsters.. So why did the monsters only pick off the crew members who wandered out of sight against direct orders? Why didn't they just tear apart the second ship as they did the first?

An enemy so invisible it's the size of a dinosaur. What a moronic episode this is.

There's an enormous difference between astronauts and astrodummies, a difference unrecognized by the 50s/60s sci-fi writers of TV and cinema. Astronauts are highly-skilled professionals, while astrodummies are merely clueless morons who infest bad pulp sci-fi.

The extremely undisciplined crew behave like half-witted High School dropouts. Correction: TWO undisciplined crews. Quasi-NASA had learned nothing from the failure of the 1st mission to Mars so they REPEAT their mistake by sending yet another undisciplined crew on the 2nd mission - which is supposed to AVOID the screw-ups of the first one. They'd doubled the number of crew from two astrocretins to four, but aside from that I noticed very little improvement in the planning and management of this inept quasi-NASA. The 1st and then 2nd crew struggle to follow orders; they have a REALLY hard time following very simple instructions such as "stay put" and "don't leave the ship" that any ape could be taught to understand. Instructions which are spelled out for them over and over again - and presumably had been drilled into their empty heads before they'd even left Earth.

Or not? Perhaps quasi-NASA briefs their crews only 5 minutes before deciding to send them off on expensive, dangerous trips halfway round the Solar System. In fact, all of the six astrodimwits combined are so disobedient that Earth base has to keep reminding them over and over to do as they are told, to follow instructions.

Where did they hire these astrodummies? At the local pub? Was a secondary school diploma all it took to get this job? An IQ of 12 and a half already met all requirements?

Astrodummie Buckley in particular treats this trip as a goofy adventure with some buddies. Yup, he is the film's resident comic relief, that obligatory space goofball. Every space crew of the 50s and 60s had to have one of those, and the worst thing is that not one of them was ever funnier than a chair.

The strategy of exploring Mars is pretty dumb too. Why not simply send two astrodummies to inspect the terrain? One to investigate, the other to keep his back from a safe distance. That way they could avoid being killed by invisible dinosaurs. Eventually, finally, quasi-NASA does this, but this approach fails too. Why? You guessed it: lack of discipline; the black guy decides to abandon his post, against orders (so very typical) and predictably gets killed by Nessie.

During the 1st mission there was a 3-minute delay in communication due to the Mars-Earth distance. The 2nd mission has no delay though. So what happened? Did this clown-NASA manage to bend time and space in the meantime? Did they learn to send radio signals faster than light? Or did they simply move Mars right next to Earth?

"Nuclear bazooka" - the weapon of choice for CNASA. Clown-NASA likes to go for the overkill approach.

Adam West keeps SMILING while Buckley and the black guy are out there investigating the triple disappearance. West seems to already be over the murder of his colleague, so he just takes the chill approach, I guess. West's absurd smiles aren't half as bad as Buckley's perpetual apish grinning though: that actor has the face of an amoeba. But to underline even more clearly just how stoopid West is, West calls Earth base to report the mission as successful - despite the fact that Buckley still hadn't returned and he's still in the danger zone!

Buckley returns and West gives him a schoolboy scolding. (So silly.) Only a minute later do their combined three brain-cells finally realize that the black astrodummie is missing. The black guy got ambushed, if we can call it that: the monster was in plain sight, yet somehow the astrodummies manage not to notice it. I guess the writer Jerry Sohl was so passionate about the idea of this monster being invisible, he wanted it so badly, that he had no choice but to make the astrodummies act as utter and complete morons. In fact, the entire episode relies on the astroimbeciles acting as morons. With intelligent crews and competent NASA personnel, there'd be literally no story. Because the monster would have been easily identified and dealt with. I mean, it's just a dumb subterranean monster that uses one attack strategy, over and over. Dumb, but not as dumb as the astrodummies it has for lunch and dinner.

Buckley then discovers some diamonds (well, of course he does; in a Mars as cheesy as this one diamonds and sapphires are lying around for the taking), then argues that it's "debatable whether they belong to the gov't". The greedy dumb pig.

But it gets far dumber than that. He actually sneaks out of the ship (disobeying orders for the 785th time), figures out that the monster isn't invisible after all, but instead of rushing back to the ship to inform West he taunts the monster in what is an incredibly idiotic scene. Dumber still, he forgot to bring along his walkie-talkie so West chooses to step outside and look for him, disobeying orders yet again (a running theme in this laughable quasi-military quasi-NASA).

So Adam West, the astrodope, gets stuck on a rock because he doesn't dare make a run over the quick sand to get to the ship, because that INCREDIBLY fast (I mean of course slow) Loch Ness monster is in there, waiting for its lunch. West has literally NOTHING TO LOSE by trying to make a dash toward safety, because if the rocket took off without him he'd be dead and stranded anyway. So why does the Earth base not order him to at least TRY to make a run for it? Because this CNASA is run like a bad circus sideshow. CNASA couldn't manage a school-play, much less a mission to Mars.

When Buckley devises a stupid decoy plan, he starts tripping unconvincingly on the sand just as West had done minutes earlier. This sand is clearly not deep enough or wet enough to prevent quick movement in it, running even. Yet both Buckley and West seem to clumsily crawl on it, in a way that is pathetically unrealistic.

Literally everything about this episode is dumb and unconvincing. The acting is mostly crap, the characters are cardboard idiots, the dialog is pedestrian, the monster looks stupid, the sand isn't even vaguely insurmountable, the constant lack of discipline is absolutely ridiculous, the decision-making is dubious, and the crew selection obviously beyond laughable... The only thing this idiotic episode has going for it is the nice cheesy space sets and the cute soundtrack.

Check out my TOL list, with reviews of all the episodes.