| Series: | The Outer Limits |
| Season: | 1 |
| Episode: | 32 |
| Production: | 24 |
| Director: | Gerd Oswald |
| Photographer: | Conrad Hall |
| Episode List: | List of The Outer Limits (1963 TV series) episodes |
| Prev: | The Chameleon |
| Next: | Soldier |
"The Forms of Things Unknown" is an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show. It first aired on May 4, 1964, and was the final episode of the first season. It was filmed in a dual format as both a regular episode of The Outer Limits and as a pilot episode for a possible series called The Unknown. The opening and closing narration listed here are only in The Unknown version and not in the broadcast The Outer Limits episode. There are plot differences between the two versions.
In the French countryside, playboy Andre Pavan (Scott Marlowe) drives with Kassia Paine and Leonara Edmond (Vera Miles and Barbara Rush). While stopped for a swim at a small lake, Andre gloats about recently blackmailing Leonara's father and asks them women to make him a drink. They poison it and load his corpse into the trunk of the car. While searching for a burial location, they see a funeral procession that puts Leonara on edge. That night during a thunderstorm, lightning flashes makes her believe the corpse blinked.
They go to a nearby house greeted by the blind Colas (Cedric Hardwicke), who informs them that Mr Hobart is not at home but will return soon. In the house they see odd decorations including a toy tightrope walker. Hobart returns home and is revealed to be an inventor, he retires asking not to be disturbed, but the women see that Andre's corpse is in Hobart's room laying on a strange device.
While Kassia checks the car, Leonora becomes mesmerized by the tightrope walker. Hobart enters and asks her about Andre, and Leonara answers truthfully as if hypnotized. Hobart invites her upstairs to watch him revive Andre and thus free her of her guilt of the murder. He explains that he has invented a device that "tilts" the past to resurrect the dead. Hobart's room is dominated by the time tilter, a large collection of clocks all connected by wires to a pole in the center of the room. The loud ticking overwhelms Leonara who faints, but Hobart is distracted by the fact that Andre is missing.
When Leonara awakes, Kassia has returned and Hobart has left to search for Andre. Colas is revealed to be the owner of the house and Hobart is a boarder. Colas claims that Hobart had died and been brought back to life by the time tilter.
Kassia and Leonara try to leave, but the exit is blocked by the trunk of the car. A fully-clothed and living Andre emerges; Leonara flees. Colas finds Hobart lying in the road who begins searching for Andre to fix the mistake he made in reviving the dead man. Hobart confronts Andre with a pistol. Andre disarms Hobart when he becomes hypnotized by the tightrope walker. Andre shoots the pistol into a chair mere inches from the inventor's head and tosses the gun. Andre leaves with Kassia who jumps from the car, he makes to back the car over her and she leaps out of the way. The car crashes and Andre is killed, returning him to death.
Hobart finds Leonara near an open briefcase in his room. She has found a letter which reveals that Hobart left school to discover a way to return his dead mother to life. Hobart disappears into the time tilter after asking Leonara to destroy it.
The show was filmed with two endings and was allotted double the normal production time. In the pilot version: Andre reveals there is no Thanatos plant, and was thus not dead; the time tilter did not in fact work; Hobart was not dead but merely in a coma; and lastly, Kassia uses the pistol to kill Hobart, thinking he is attacking Leonora.
The episode is noted for its similarities to Hitchcock's Psycho, for which Joseph Stefano had also written the screenplay. David McCallum's dead-mother obsessed inventor Tone Hobart is analogous to Norman Bates. The episode also draws on Les Diaboliques, a precursor to Psycho, with Vera Miles and Barbara Rush corresponding to Simone Signoret and Vera Clouzot.[1] Bruce Bennett in a review of Outer Limits cited "The Forms of Things Unknown" as a standout episode, describing the screenplay as a blending "Clouzot's Diabolique, James Whale's The Old Dark House, and Stefano's own Psycho screenplay into a hypnotic 51 -minute neo-gothicpsychodrama pitched somewhere between a fairy tale and a stag film."[2]
This episode was the final acting role of Sir Cedric Hardwicke. He died on August 6, 1964, three months after this episode aired.