------------- Review by AMG -------------
Gerd Oswald's "Expanding Human" is one installment of The Outer Limits that has proved especially annoying to fans and viewers over the decades. As a Jekyll-and-Hyde story for the 1960's, it should, by rights, not only have been one of the more suspenseful shows from the series' second season, but also one that was extremely topical, dealing with university experiments with consciousness-expanding drugs; at the time of its original broadcast in late 1964, the public was only vaguely aware of real-life experiments in the field, though by the time the series was cancelled and being rerun in syndication in 1966, this was as contemporary a subject as any science fiction series could have dealt with. Oswald does his best as director to maintain the mood of suspense, succeeding for much of the time in the first half-hour, but the way the script is written, it deflates the mystery and suspense a little too soon. The plot actually bears some resemblance to a contemporary novel called The Power, which was filmed in 1968 by George Pal, about the search for a person, hidden in among a group of researchers, whose ESP abilities are so powerful as to make him a threat to those around him; the difference is that The Power kept its mystery alive for the length of the feature film, where "Expanding Human" shows us just a little too much of the mysterious assassin (especially his face, which is a good make-up job but one that should have been revealed only gradually) -- this was an instance (one of many) where the ABC network's insistence on the presence of a "monster" as early as possible in each Outer Limits show damaged the program's potential for suspense and mystery. One can see that Oswald tried hard to hide as much of the burglar/assassin as possible without being totally successful; the script also gave too much dialogue to the Skip Homeier's character, in the way of planting clues and red-herrings, so that one could easily enough guess why he was there; and not enough is explored about other interesting supporting characters, including Akada, the CE drug researcher, or the mysterious ex-grad student portrayed by Peter Duryea, who appears and disappears too abruptly; and too much of the action takes place in the dullish surroundings of Dr. Wayne's and Dr. Clinton's homes. What does work among the background details is James Doohan's Lt. Branch, who is convincingly worn out and out-of-his depth dealing with crimes whose methods, motives, and purposes are totally beyond his experience; and Keith Andes' Dr. Wayne, whose decency is totally convincing, although this also makes him a very weak ally on the side of the angels in the denouement. Interestingly, "Expanding Human" played horrendously for decades as a broadcast program, with commercial breaks; but on home video, without the commercials it has a suspenseful rhythm that it never showed before. It's a curious artifact of its era, and more reasonably-toned for most of its length than, say, Dragnet's anti-drug diatribes of the same period. |
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