Corpus Earthling

Production Order #16

Broadcast Order #09

Original Airdate: 11/18/63

Starring Robert Culp, Salome Jens, Barry Atwater.
Written by Orin Berston based on the novel by Louis Charbonneau.

Directed by Gerd Oswald. 

Physician Paul Cameron (Culp) literally has rocks in his head when he overhears a conversation between two chunks of British stone. Paul can't get anyone to believe that the rocks are planning a takeover of the world ala Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Is the exhausted doctor going crazy or are we all headed to the rock pile?

PE: My greatest fear was that, since Culp is portraying a physician, we wouldn't get to see him in his patented white dock shoes. But there they are!

JS: Holy smokes! This was almost our last episode with Robert Culp. And this was not a stuntman, ladies and gentlemen. When the doctor sees him after the explosion, he says, "Thought we fixed the oven Paul." Really? Because a foot tall flame was shooting out of it when you left the room. Clearly fire safety does not exist in this dojo.

Continuing the lessons of Low-budget Filmmaking 101: How to make your just okay monster look awesome. Before you reveal it, show it in a lesser form that looks even cheesier. Like rocks. Or in this case, a pair of jello molds. It's the jiggly twins!

PE: The rocks have a "soft look" to them (much like The Blob) when they talk and that can look a bit silly but I guess the alternatives would look sillier (one of those really bad masks with a hole cut in it?). At least the voices are much better than they've chosen in the last few episodes.

JS: I'll second that. But to be completely honest, by the time we got to the talking jello molds, I had written the episode off. Which perhaps allowed me to be completely blown away. Talk about a come from behind victory.

PE: When the "jiggle twins" morph into face huggers, they're very effective. The attack on Dr. Temple (Atwater) is the show's highlight. Rock #1 morphs in to a crab-like critter, attaches onto the doctor's hand, which is forced onto his face. As the doc goes down, Rock #2 almost seems to be watching in orgasmic pleasure (all that's missing are the pom-poms). In another nod to The Blob, Atwater lets out the same kind of moan heard from The Blob's first victim. Later Atwater re-surfaces as a pallid ghoulie with a frenzied hairdo.

JS: You're getting ahead of yourself. Let's save the best for last. It dawned on me that to the child of the 60s, these creatures could have crawled right out of their Strange-Change machine:

PE: Culp is his usual quirky, excitable self. He's often shown in close-ups. For a lesser actor that could be trouble but here, as in "The Architects of Fear," he owns every scene he's in. Take, for instance when Cameron is sitting in the dark, opposite his wife, listening to the phone ring and ring and ring.  Beautifully shot, resembling a noir film, the cigarette flame lighting the man's face as he takes a drag.  When Laurie rises to answer the phone after several rings, he nastily tells her "Forget it." When she continues her journey to the phone, he snaps "I said... don't touch the phone ...please!" I'm not going to say no other actor could have pulled this off but it sure seems that way to me when he's deep into his craft. The guy was peerless.

JS: At the start of this scene, I was screaming for someone to turn a damn light on. But as it developed, the episode began to turn around for me. Culp and Salome Jens were perfectly paired, and to be frank, Jens was well served by the chiaroscuro lighting.

PE: Jens (another in a series of "Is this actress attractive or not?") takes full advantage of having a pro like Culp in just about every one of her scenes, but ironically it's her big scene sans Culp that she fully shines. When she's confronted by the transformed Dr. Temple in the villa, watch her eyes. She effortlessly moves into first place in my Best OL Actress sweepstakes (and it helps that she looks hot in a slip).

Culp is supported by a somewhat stiff, uninterested Barry Atwater, who runs the gauntlet of unemotional (in particular the ledge scene) to downright creepy (our first glance at him in his make-up brings those old Weird Tales covers to life for me).

JS: Before seeing this episode, Atwater was locked in my mind as Janos Skorzeny from The Night Stalker. From this point on, that image has been replaced with the reanimated Dr. Temple. Falling somewhere between Herk Harvey in Carnival of Souls and Orville from Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, he has cemented his place in my favorite oncreen dead guys.

PE: Atwater's makeup (and to a lesser extent, Jens' as well) resembles the creep in Carnival of Souls and foreshadows George Romero's zombies in Night of the Living Dead. He could very easily have wandered in from the set of "The Incredible Doctor Markesan." And speaking of Thriller, the climax of "Corpus Earthling" would fit right in on that show: the desolate villa, the shadows, the monsters, the "voodoo hoodoo" man burning a circle outside the villa to ward away the evil spirits, a great score, the downbeat ending.

JS: The makeup was far less effective on Jens, and there was one shot after the initial reveal of Dead Temple that was lit so harshly it diminished the impact of the makeup (directly below). Beyond that, every time Atwater was onscreen I was captivated. The shot of him walking up to the Mexican villa is classic. If you haven't forgotten the jiggly twins by this point in the show, you're already dead. And say what you will about the fate of character relationships over the past several episodes - they all pale in comparison to what Cameron is forced to do to neutralize the alien threat in this one.

PE: In the end, the rock monsters are defeated but just before they go down for the count they can be seen eyeing those local tumbleweeds. Stay tuned!

JS RATING:

PE RATING:

David J. Schow on "Corpus Earthling":

From The Outer Limits Companion, Copyright © David J. Schow, 1986, 1998.  All Rights Reserved.  Used by permission and by special arrangement with the author.

Be sure to check back later today for Larry Blamire's Spotlight on "Corpus Earthling."

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