Note: The video quality is so poor, it is not worth grabbing any pictures.
Editor Ed Tratnor assigns his two best photographers Mel & Verda Wingate to get pictures of a UFO. The married couple is exploring mysteries just like Ed & Lorraine Warren only less fictional. There have been reports of strange lights from airline pilots in southwestern New Mexico. Mel shows he has no future in paranormal research by asking a perfectly reasonable question, “How far are the sightings from the White Sands Testing Facility?” Ed says the military assured him there was no testing in that area; but they said the same thing about the ocean off New York on July 17, 1996 so who knows.
Editor Ed is willing to finance this trip because up to now “most pictures of UFOs have been taken by amateurs and other handicaps.” What? Ed Ed hopes they can get some professional shots that experts can actually analyze. I hope he didn’t book their return flight because we’ve been waiting 60 years for these pictures. While there, they are also supposed to look into the disappearance of some people from a Mexican village near the US border. Yeah, there’s a mystery; where ever could they have gone?
Ed Ed suggests they look into reports of a spacecraft in the mountains and turn that into a “picture story” about the “birth of a rumor”. Mel understands, “I get it — optical illusions, a little superstition, and jumping to conclusions.” I’m all for skepticism, but why even take the trip if the story is already written? The Dewey Beats Truman headline was only 7 years earlier; did journalists learn nothing? Clearly not.
The Wingates take a plane to Los Cruces, then rent a car to go south of the border. They visit the Commandancia de la Policia and ask the about the reported disappearance of several villages, but the chief replies that the stories are exaggerations. Only one man has disappeared, and that was probably due to a flash-flood. They ask if the chief can recommend a guide, and he sends them to Ramon Sanchez.
They arrive at Sanchez’s desert shack which is the same shack from Stranger in the Desert. Despite being dissed by Mel calling him “Raymond”, Ramon Sanchez agrees to lead them into the mountains for $5 per day. While stopped to photograph a mountain lion, they see a flying saucer, but it quickly disappears. That night they actually do get some pictures of lights in the sky.
The next day, Sanchez finds a rifle with his brother’s initials on it. He was the man who went missing. Sanchez believes the lights in the sky killed his brother. Later the horses refuse to go on. Looking for what might have spooked them . . . a snake, a cougar, an Elmer’s Glue factory, Mel spots a bleeping dead alien. Where to start?
- For the first time, Mel pulls out the video camera. So to recap: It is still pictures for moving spacecraft and motion picture film for a dead alien.
- Mel refuses to allow Verda to see the alien. He twice warns her to stay back.
- The viewers also never see the alien as it is hidden behind a boulder.
- It might have died from a shot that idiot Mel blindly fired into the brush that day. Did they learn nothing from Trial by Fire?
Sanchez suggests maybe it is time to head back home. Mel agrees, but says they are taking the alien with them. Sanchez is worried the aliens (which he calls caballeros [1]) might come back looking for their amigo. He is so scared that he pulls a gun on the Wingates and begins unloading the alien from the horse. The aliens shoot a laser frying him like a . . . hmmm, any food I mention will be deemed racist. Let’s just go with juevo — I mean egg. A fried egg.
The Wingates make it back to their hotel. While Mel develops the pictures, Verda calls Ed. Mel discovers every one of the pictures is ruined, destroyed by radiation. The Commandante shows up looking for Sanchez and Mel tells him that, like his brother, Ramon was killed in a flash-flood. When they finally reach Ed, Mel tells him it was all rumors.
- So Mel killed an alien, possibly triggering a galactic war resulting in the destruction of Earth and the enslavement of humanity.
- He doesn’t bust the Commandante for not telling him Ramon was the dead man’s brother.
- Mel lies to his editor for no good reason when the destruction of the film is still a better story than the rumor-angle.[2] Not to mention, who could question two eyewitness accounts bearing the credibility of the journalistic profession?
- The Wingates will soon be dead from radiation poisoning.
More junk.
Post-Post:
- [1] My high school Spanish was German, but Google tells me this means a Mexican gentleman or a horseman, neither of which make sense. I could understand a basic Hombre, but why elevate the aliens to gentlemen?
- [2] The alternate interpretation is that they made up the flash-flood story to satisfy the Commandante who was overhearing the call. It would even be a nice winking non-admission to the Commandante. Sadly, I don’t think SFT has the level of sophistication necessary for that to be likely.
- Title Analysis: No idea what they were going for. The time period of one hour was not significant. The only thing nightmarish was Ramon and the horse getting blown up, but that’s not really the main thrust of the story.
- Unless the horse was a Pinto.
He is understandably skeptical, but finally accepts that he is back from the dead. Unfortunately, the doctors tell him that he will die again in a couple of days. They just haven’t worked out all the bugs yet. In an unusual departure for Outer Limits, this miraculous scientific breakthrough is made by two guys working in a dark lab rather than one guy working alone in a dark lab.
Houghton is mugged in the parking lot. After a struggle, he is shot. McCamber wastes no time dragging his dead ass back into the lab where he can be resurrected. When he awakens, his first thought is that he will soon re-die like Oscar did. McCamber drives him home where he hopes he can make up for years of neglect. The next day, instead of buying millions of dollars of life insurance, he takes his wife and daughter to the park. They then go out for a nice lunch. Out the window, Houghton sees the man that killed him.
It was a good story with a great premise mostly supported by the usual Outer Limits quality production. It felt like a little bit of a slog at times, though. The most interesting thing was seeing Stephen Lang much younger than he was in 
The episode begins with a bit of German Expressionism; and I believe that expression is ausgezeichnet! [1] It was an unexpected bit of black & white artistry in a frequently dreary series with rain, fog, shadows, odd angles, Kafkaesque police, and big-ass clocks just scary in their size and starkness. I guess a whole episode in this style would have been too much, but what an awesome opening! Alas, it was just a Traum.
Denise gets away from Ron and runs downstairs. Wanting to help the family, Jimmy points the gun at Ron. That goes about as you expect — Ron takes the gun from him and murders the entire family. Again, this is awesomely — sorry — executed.
Irving Randall is in a poker game with 3 co-workers. Well, 2 co-workers and his jerk of a boss. His boss Smalley goads him into betting over his head, not with it. He loses big. On the way home, he is stopped by a cop for walking alone at such a late hour. The cop warns him this neighborhood is not safe at night.
suit. He asks, “How can I be sure the cash is mine?” The detective says, “Because he was caught exactly 3 blocks from where you were mugged, running like the devil was chasing him. That’s what I meant by real evidence.” Well, that is pretty fishy, but not exactly conclusive.
and especially offensive to me, hair — just a huge shock of tall, thick, upswept hair. The bastard.
The next morning, Irving has to stop by Smalley’s apartment to pick up some papers. He finds Smalley roughed up with a band-aid on his chin. He was robbed by some kid of $92. Irving finally feels some relief with the confirmation that the kid was a crook after all, and he didn’t steal money from an innocent person to cover his own shame at losing the money in a card game.
Matthew Foreman (Scott Wilson) is awakened from suspended anim-ation. In the future, it is apparently recommended to shine a flashlight directly into the eyes of people waking up after a coma. Sarah is evasive about how long he has been asleep. He tells her to “cut to the chase” thus ensuring that idiotic phrase will survive another 324 years into the future.
Three weeks ago, the remote viewers spotted an asteroid heading toward earth. That image is telepathically sent to Foreman. Such a rock could pound the earth back to the stone age which is, granted, not as far as it used to be. They hope Foreman can use his engineering skills to instruct satellites still in orbit to blast the asteroid into bits, and also get free HBO.
Wracked with guilt, Foreman sits on the porch and looks at the stars. As a kid, he had gone into engineering hoping one day to go out there. Now he feels unworthy. The remote viewer offers to show him the universe. He declines, but she does a quick mind-meld [1] and gives him a fly-by of Saturn. The hell with the 1,000 people he killed five minutes ago, he excitedly decides to explore the galaxy from the front porch.