THE OUTER LIMITS / "The Mice" Season 1 Episode 15 - 1964

In today's story, an advanced civilization contacts the US to test both worlds' experimental teleportation systems, by exchanging a pair of citizens. Fearing the matter transport will fail, the military selects a prisoner serving a life sentence to be sent to the planet Chromos, 10 light years away from Earth. What could possibly go wrong?..

This one stars Henry Silva, Diana Sands, Michael Higgins, Ron Foster and Dabney Coleman. Henry Silva took drama classes at age 13, in 1955 he auditioned for the Actors Studio and was one of five students chosen out of more than 2500! Diana (A RAISIN IN THE SUN) Sands died at age 39. And, Dabney Coleman is still up and at 'em!

Well, here are the three prisoners brought before officials heading up the teleportation project. After being informed of what was required of them, only Chino, on the right, volunteers for the assignment after the two others decline the offer which includes possible freedom from prison.

Chino is moody and toys with the doctors a bit, it's a weird situation to be in. When the first exchange takes place of the creature from Chromos, he can think of nothing but escaping.

Well, the thing gets teleported to Earth okay but it spazzes out like a Curly, crashing into everything, knocking stuff over and more. It eventually escapes into the woods after getting through the door. It's tougher than it looks!

Chino sees his chance to escape during the commotion and ducks out of the lab. Unfortunately, he runs into a room and tries to jump out a window that has a force field and he gets knocked out cold.

Dr. Richardson is out at the pond in his spiffy 1963 Mercury Comet. He's there to destroy some weird growths he found the creature hiding in the water. And wouldn't you know it, the creepy old Chromoid darts in and kills the doc!

Then, Dr. Harrison sees the monster at the pond, eating slime it pulls out of the water...

It chases her back to the lab and she barely escapes its grasp...

In another room, Chino is set to teleport, but, something's amiss and the exchange fails. Chino faints and is put in a hospital bed to recover.

The creature goes into the lab and starts setting all the dials, preparing for an exchange back to Chromo would be my guess. Chino and the policeman watching him go to the lab to see what all the noise is about...

The thing knocks out the cop and then tosses Chino across the room, into the wall. The Chromoid then places the cop in the transfer location and sends him to Chromo!

Chino gets a gun and the monster attacks him! It's a battle to the death, but Chino holds the thing at bay with the pistol until more policemen arrive.

Dr. Kellander, head of the project, talks to the leader of the Chromoids and tells it that they were lying about their real purpose for the exchange. He says that they only needed to ask for help with their problems on Chromo, Earth would have gladly helped out, instead, they deceived the Earthlings and so the project failed. Yep, it's one of those kinds of endings, you should'a just asked...

And, it looks good for Chino to be released from prison, a free man!.. Check in again on Wednesday for more cool junk from The Dungeon!!..

MUSICAL MUTINY - "Iron Butterfly, Fantasy, The Grit" (1970)

I've got a Psychedelic Saturday Night Special for you that you can thank Tom Moody for. It was Tom's comment that he left on "Pagan Island" that clued me into this happening little flick from 1970 called "Musical Mutiny." "Musical Mutiny" was another one of  Bakersfiel Barry Mahon's wonderful ideas, and is really not much more than a long musical video with a tiny lame story to try and tie it all together, but it's not what it's about, it's who it's about!

 

The star of the show is the Southern California classic psychedelic band call Iron Butterfly. Why they insist on calling them 'The' Iron Butterfly is anybody's guess!

One of the other acts in the movie are a fairly interesting band called Fantasy that was from Florida, and had kind of a Big Brother and the Holding Company thing going on.

 According to the Prog Archives website,

"the band was fronted by a Billy Robbins, and one day, he went missing, and eventually was found dead." Billy Robbins was replaced by a 16 year old Jamene Miller that you will see in the movie. Jamene died in 2008 at the age of 55.

As far as I can tell, Fantasy only put out this one album, and you can get a copy on Discogs for about $13.00 including postage!

It's pretty hard to find out anything about The New Society Band these days, but it looks like at least one member still performs as Rockin' Ron and the New Society Band today.

Likewise about the band called The Grit who perform their song on a merry go round!

Leave it to Barry to come up with "A Fabulous Musical Smogasboard" like this.

(For the record, the proper spelling of the word is Smörgasbord.) Maybe Barry thought it was a cross between a musical buffet and a surfboard!

Nothing worse than a bunch of bored hippies!

"It's a "Musical Mutiny!"

And it's all happening at "Pirate's World" in Dania, Florida!

 This is about the weirdest ride I've ever seen!

A Horseacoaster I guess!

This is what passed for entertainment before rock and roll came along.

The few minutes of a story line will make you wish Barry had picked out another song for somebody to perform, or found another group!

"Pirate's World" was a 100 acre amusement park that opened in 1967, and everybody thought it was pretty cool until Walt Disney World opened in 1971. After that they declared bankruptcy in 1973, and were completely out of business by 1975.

Here's another shot of The New Society Band.

 Here's a pretty good shot of lead singer Doug Ingle of Iron Butterfly!

You can watch just their performance of "Soul Experience" which is one of my favourite songs on the always amazing Internet Archive!

"Musical Mutiny" is only 74 minutes long, and the last seventeen minutes and five seconds is Iron Butterfly doing the full version of  "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida."

Hit It!

 This crowd could have just as easily been at a Sea World show!

So, thanks Tom, and for the rest of you, the best part is that this whole movie streams on YouTube for absolutely nothing, so stay home and watch it! You might feel better about the world for a couple of minutes!!

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN / "The Deserted Village" - 1952

In today's adventure, Lois has trouble getting a friend on the telephone in her home town, so she and Clark drive to the small town of Cliffton to see what the problem is. They find that the town is mostly deserted, and the remaining townsfolk don't seem to want them to know anything about the situation.

Lois gets a gingerbread man in the mail and she wants to thank her friend for sending it to her. No one is answering the phone so she tells Clark. He suggests that they drive to Cliffton to see what the problem might be.

When they get there, Clark notices that someone has crossed out the numbers and now it shows that only five people live in Cliffton!

Then we see this weirdo spraying some kind of gas and then breaking window panes, apparently so the gas goes into the house... .

Clark and Lois decide to go into the house of her doctor when she lived there, they find him on the floor. Clark locates some smelling salts which brings him out of his stupor.

Well, with the doctor in tow, Lois finds her friend, Mrs. Tazey. Both residents want Lois and Clark to leave town, there's no problem here! But when Clark picks up a basket for the lady, he notices a hidden gas mask in it...

Two other people there are store owner Peter Godfrey and his son Alvin, they seem a little suspicious if you know what I mean.

Godfrey's out spying on Clark, but, he gets a glimpse of Superman instead!

Lois goes off on her own and searches for clues in a mine... She finds something!

Good stuff here. Clark knows that the gas the killer is using is deadly and wants Lois to go back to town and stay there while he tries to find out what the stakes are. Lois thinks that Clark's trying to steal her story and they get in a Hell of a fight, best one I've seen between the two!

Superman takes off with the stakes to find out their use from a mining authority.

Even though she promised Clark that she'd go back to town, Lois goes back into the mine, where, the Gasser is waiting for her! Yeah, she should have listened to Clark alright!

The doctor comes in to try and help Lois, only to be conked on the head with a shovel.

Look who it is that saves the day!.. It's Mrs. Tazey with a gas mask and a pistol...

Not that Superman needs any help though...

Yep, it was Godfrey and Alvin to be sure, you see, the mine was full of an element used in making hydrogen bombs!!!.. And that's why they were killing off the locals. They also have a dog die because of the gas! Some of these episodes were brutal at times! Tune in tomorrow when we keep that big ball a-rollin' down that old dusty trail...