OUTER LIMITS / Season 1, Episode 13: Tourist Attraction - 1963

Welcome to Friday Night Sci-Fi TV with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. Our offering tonite was one of the very best episodes of the OUTER LIMITS series, well written, great cast, solid acting and excellent monsters!

The music is by Robert Van Eps, after this, Robert went on to compose music for VIVA LAS VEGAS, LOOKING FOR LOVE, THE MAN FROM BUTTON WILLOW, GIRL HAPPY, MADE IN PARIS and SPINOUT.

Letz bring in our littlest of all Dungeon helpers and button pushers. The one... The only... Rufus The Gnat! And, according to the atomic clock on the wall, itz time to start our show. Push the big red 'GO' button there in front of you, now, Rufus!! Here's... TOURIST ATTRACTION!

The story's about the capture of a legendary, ancient monster in a Latin American lake. An American adventurer wants glory and fame, the country's general wants an influx of tourists.

The American expedition in search of scientific fame is using the very latest tracking and identification equipment to see what they can discover in the mysterious lake.

Because of his role as Mike Hammer in the awesome film, KISS ME DEADLY, Ralph Meeker will always have a special place in The Dungeon's heart. Ralph plays wealthy Norteamericano, John Dexter, here he is testing his expensive new toys.

Dexter is no weenie, he leads the underwater team, and, has an encounter with something unknown!

Nice portrait of Ralph.

Dexter tells the local police captain about the strange thing he saw at the bottom of the lake.

All the locals join in their annual celebration which includes plenty of fireworks! Oh, and skeletons!!

Henry Silva plays the banana republic general. Lots of free Banana Daiquiris for everyone! (Tabonga's deathly alergic to bananas!)

Dexter and the general compare notes on what each would like to see come from the discovery of an unknown creature at the bottom of the lake.

They go back down looking for the mysterious creature. Eventually, they find it and use a net to render the thing helpless and under their control.

This... Is... So... Embarrassing!!!..

The local professor lets everbloody know that they have captured a prehistoric creature called an Ichthyosaur.

The two men who have to keep watch over the captured prehistoric monster start hearing strange voices in their heads.

Yo momma iz sooooo ugly!..

The men are helpless to resist the creature's stinging one-liners!

I got a special mental delivery just for you, puny human scum!!

Ejole, cabrones!!..

Out of the corner of my mind, I was thinking that Professor Arivello was being played by Michael Marks, but, I was wrong. This is Jay Novello, who also had a busy career in TV and film with 198 acting credits.

John and his wife, played by Janet Blair, watch in terror as the Ichthyosaurs start coming onto land...

John tries deturring the creatures with a machine gun, but, the bullets just bounce off!

Not until they release the captured Ichthyosaur do the things peacefully retreat back into the water. This series always had a morality thought at the end of each episode. The message was generally... Man is an inherent ass hole! Artists excluded.

I got this copy from an OUTER LIMITS marathon on good old TNT back in the early nineties...

LE SAMOURAÏ - Roubaix/Rosier - "What Do You Want?" (1967)

What with Halloween just around the corner, I need to get some of these spy and thriller flicks out of my hair, so I can concentrate strictly on the scary, and tonight's flick is no exception! Sometimes it gets kinda lonely down here in The Dungeon, so when we get bored, we play a little game called Twofers, where we take two random things and put them together, and make one, like a Randy Savage head on the neck of a plastic lion doll, it's funny how it works, or maybe you just had to be there, but I can't help thinking that's the basic concept behind tonight's film, "Le Samouraï"!

It's a French film about a modern samurai warrior, i.e. a hitman, or two things that don't make sense when combined, but then again, they do, kinda like me and Tabonga! "Le Samouraï" is the love child of boy genius director Jean-Pierre Melville, whose studio burned to the ground during the same time period that this film was made!

A modern day samurai warrior has to have all the right tools to get the job done right!! Stealing a car when you've got every key combination in the world is a piece of cake!

The average rainfall in Paris, France is 607 - 641 millimeters, or 24 to 25 inches a year!

"Le Samouraï" is stark, it's tough, gritty, and it's very cool!

All the angles are covered when the warrior is working! After stealing the car, he heads on over to the chop shop to have the license plates changed!

The samurai is always aware of of his surroundings and exactly what time it is if he is going to have the perfect alibi!

Great name for a band, "Hotel Sandwichs"

A Hitman with a code of honor, pretty cool dichotomy!

Alain Delon is Jef Costello!! A man on a mission! This is an awesome role for Alain, cold and calculating! Alain's private life is flled with stories, musically, one of the best is that he fathered a child, Christian Aaron Boulogne, with The Velvet Underground's blond chanteuse Nico! What a pair! Alain is still working at least as of last year!

This is Cathy Rosier as la pianiste Valérie! Cathy supposedly released an LP in the early 70's called "Cathy Banana!" I'd ask her about it, but unfortunately she passed away in 2004. No credits for the bass player and drummer, they might have been members of her actual performing trio! Any other music you hear was composed by François de Roubaix, an amazing performer who managed to compose for 86 titles before passing away at 36!

All the pieces are in place, now it's time for "Le Samourai" to go to work!

There is only one problem, Jef Costello has been witnessed leaving the scene!

Serious, but dryly comedic, the very efficient French police don't screw around, and round up 100's of potential suspects in a couple of hours. It definitely works to Jef's favor that his choice of dress is quite common in France at the time!!!

Even though Jef has excuses and witnesses to explain his whereabouts before, after, and during the time of the murder, he is still under a lot of suspicion!! First he was at a poker game, then he was at his girlfriends pad, so what are the cops supposed to do??

The frustration level of the authorities is mounting quickly! While almost virtually unknown in America, François Périer as The Superintendant was very well known to French moviegoers, having worked with all the greats!

Wow, here's the new candidate for the coolest phone ever!! Ce que le F!?

There's only one way to get out of this mess, and that's for the samurai to dive in head first, the only way he knows how!

Jef Costello's girlfriend was played by his real wife and the Mother of his son, Anthony Delon, Nathalie Delon! Nathalie was also co-writer of the English lyrics for a song used in four movies, "I've Seen That Face Before(Libertango)"!

Now the samurai has the guys who hired him, and the police looking for him! The stupid guy with the gun is just about to get his ass kicked!!

In layman terms "A transmitter using a gallium arsenide FET in a power amplifier and having a biassing circuit for generating a gate biassing voltage for the FET, a first power supply for supplying a first power to the biassing circuit and a second power supply for supplying a second power to the power amplifier, the second power being higher in voltage than the first power and being produced at a time delay from production of the first power at a start condition of the transmitter, wherein the first power is supplied to the biassing circuit through a first diode with a voltage drop to thereby reduce the gate biassing voltage below a normal one so that an undesired signal is suppressed at the power amplifier!!!" Translation: Get that bastard!!

So there you go, the tale of The French Samuari, I hope you dug it as much as I did, which would be a lot, or "un grand nombre!" Le Samouraï" is available from those krazy folks over at Netflix! Do yourself a favor!!