The Mutant

Directed by Alan Crosland, Jr.; written by Allan Balter and Robert Mintz (story by Jerome Thomas). Cast: Warren Oates (Reese Fowler); Larry Pennell (Dr. Evan Marshall); Betsy Jones-Moreland (Dr. Julie Griffith); Walter Burke (Dr. Riner); Robert Sampson (Lt. Chandler); Herman Rudin (Dr. Lacosta). Broadcast March 16, 1964. Story: A United Space Agency psychiatrist visits colony planet prototype Annex I to investigate strange reports. Resident radiation casualty Reese Fowler makes it abundantly clear: the experiment has failed.

Make no mistake: "The Mutant" is a wildly inconsistent episode, careening between brilliance and bombast so readily that it must be considered a troublesome entry. Yet, as further testament to the multiple strengths of the show's first season, this installment projects pure Outer Limits force and stands repeated viewings—indeed, it gains from them, as the fractured elements hindering its best features begin to unite and make sense thematically. At the peak of the questionably-composed pile that makes up "The Mutant" stands the mutant himself, Warren Oates, in one of his most affecting, skilled performances. He is a man named Reese Fowler....

Less a man than a radioactive tyrant—physically and psychologically scarred by the decimating "R.I." (radio-isotope) rain which renders Annex I an utter catastrophe as an Earth settlement. Fowler, losing a battle with destructive impulses increasingly beyond his rational control, is one of the series most awesomely frightening monsters: at once recognizably human and shockingly freakish, his massively swollen eyes, bald head, deadly touch and sadistic glee inspire repellent dread. Yet he is human, struggling with a need for contact beyond domination; this is heartbreakingly conveyed in a climactic scene in which Fowler, unable to tolerate darkness (it physically hurts him), attempts to coax Marshall and Julie out of their cave hideout with a plaintive, pathetically childlike "come out...". It is an Outer Limits moment, magnified by the dignity of Oates's performance as he imparts Fowler's barely masked awareness that the half-truth conceit from which he operates (that he is a mutation, not a monster) is a sham—what he truly is, or is becoming, is no less horrendous than his appearance. He is a sad antagonist, as pitiable as he is terrifying.

Too bad about the romance subplot. Pennell's and Jones-Moreland's characters, it seems, once had a thing going; Julie couldn't take Marshall's constant need to analyze, and bolted into the arms of Annex I leader "Griff" (Hollywood vet Richard Derr, seen very briefly in flashback). The thematic links with the primary plot require some detection, but they are present: connecting notions of privacy and secrecy; needing to know (and knowing too much, either through Fowler's lethal telepathy or Marshall's analytic impulse) contrasted with the allowance of a relationship, a thought or hope or dream merely to be (as both Julie and Lt. Chandler require in order to figuratively and literally survive); the metaphor of constant, revealing daylight contrasted with the respite of veiling darkness. The romance figures in, but as played, it doesn't work—especially on first viewing, as it drains power from the story proper.

Beyond the episode's chilling first quarter, dominated by Fowler and Chandler (Sampson is the only other actor up to Oates' level), the thrust of text and subtext is interrupted ad nauseum by hammy scenes meant to convey the wounded longing between Marshall and Julie—the music swells, Kenneth Peach goes in for (pretty dreadful) maximum close-ups, and the flow of meaning and menace stops dead, straining time and again to restart. The Outer Limits could do romance well, as classic episodes "The Man Who Was Never Born" and "The Architects of Fear" so ably prove; here, it is at best distracting and ill-conceived. Other limitations abound: the bewildered histrionics of butch Pennell (after all, The Beverly Hillbillies' Dash Riprock) and occasional Corman diva Jones-Moreland; the accurate but careless insertion of references to two works of literature dealing with tyranny and disintegration (Orwell's "1984" and Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"); a barely justified use of a retooled Zanti, complete with signature buzz and shriek; and the written-by-committee feel of the script (the credited writers comprise fewer than half of those involved). All would have benefited from director Crosland utilizing his skills as a film editor, his usual Hollywood job (on, among many others, 1955's Marty). Thankfully, even surprisingly, these shortcomings don't destroy "The Mutant." The episode never approaches the ruin of "Tourist Attraction" or "The Special One." This is due in part to the sophisticated (if routinely undermined) quality of the subtext; primarily, though, it is due to Oates' genuinely moving interpretation of Reese Fowler, a man losing his mind and humanity to cruelly random forces. In many roles throughout his career, Kentucky-born Oates often conveyed basic human character and capabilities, while impressively communicating the experience of entanglement in terrifying complexity, and dealing with such circumstance in sometimes crazy, sometimes scary, always fated and strangely sensible ways. His Outer Limits mutant is an emblem of both the actor-as-character, and of the series—impressively, in a non-emblematic episode. Mr. Fowler and Mr. Oates are plainly unforgettable. Rest in peace.

—DCH