Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Outer Limits at 50 by David J. Schow "The Outer Limits at 50" — Limited Edition Book, Available Exclusively at Creature Features. Burbank, CA, March 17, 2014 --(PR.com)-- Visionary Cinema Publicity is proud to announce the release of this exclusively published book, not available on Amazon or other online vendors. Newly commissioned pieces from artists the caliber of Bernie Wrightson, Tim Bradstreet and Steve Bissette mingle with vintage production designs of original creature designer Wah Cheng, exclusive photos of surviving props and new texts from Schow and the original OL 'zine publisher Ted C. Rypel coming full circle. A 20-page preview of the book is now available to select media outlets. The file is available for a limited time only at: All copies pre-ordered before March 17th will come hand-signed by David J. Schow. Pre-orders can only be purchased here: Additionally, Visionary Cinema Publicity is equally proud to announce a gallery event and celebration, "There is Nothing Wrong With Your Television Set" The Special Event takes place on Saturday, March 22, 2014 — 6:00-10:00pm (Gallery Exhibit Continues Until April 12) at the New Creature Features Store and Gallery — 2904 West Magnolia Blvd., Burbank, CA 91506. Join the creators of The Outer Limits at 50 at a display of newly commissioned paintings, illustrations and sculptures inspired by the classic TV series, alongside original props and vintage memorabilia. Mingle with celebrities from the series as well as the artists in a celebration of five decades of Outer Limits fandom. Artists Featured: - Steve Bissette, Tim Bradstreet, Norman Cabrera, Monte Christiansen, Ken Daly, Ricardo Delgado, Frank Dietz, John Fasano, Wolf Forrest, Garrett Immel, Phil Joyce, Bob Lizzaraga, Rebecca Lord, Gregory Manchess, Ken Morgan, Rafael Navarro, Greg Nicotero, Mike Parks, Jeff Pittarelli, Eric October, Tim Polecat, Mike Sosnowski, William Stout, Woody Welch, and Bernie Wrightson For More Information: David Schow. David J. Schow (born July 13, 1955) is an American author of horror novels, short stories, and screenplays. His credits include films such as The Crow and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning . Most of Schow's work falls into the subgenre splatterpunk, a term he is sometimes credited with coining. In the 1990s, Schow wrote Raving & Drooling , a regular column for Fangoria magazine. All 41 installments were collected in the book Wild Hairs (2000), winning the International Horror Guild's award for best non-fiction in 2001. In 1987, Schow's novella Pamela's Get was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for best long fiction. His short story Red Light won the 1987 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction. And in 2015, The Outer Limits at 50 won the Rondo Award for Book of the Year in a tie with The Creature Chronicles by Tom Weaver, of which Schow was a contributor. As an editor, Schow's work includes three volumes of writings by Robert Bloch and a book of short stories by John Farris. Schow has also been a past contributor to liner notes for cult film distributors Grindhouse Releasing/Box Office Spectaculars, notably on the North American DVD release of Italian filmmaker Lucio Fulci's horror film, Cat in the Brain . He has also written text supplements for the DVDs of Reservoir Dogs and From Hell, and has done DVD commentaries for The Dirty Dozen, The Green Mile, Incubus, Thriller and Creature from the Black Lagoon. An upcoming Blu Ray and DVD edition of season one of The Outer Limits features commentary by Schow on several episodes as well as a booklet essay written by him. Going Back to Things Unknown with ‘The Outer Limits’ The Outer Limits is a mix of science fiction, nightmares, and surrealism -- the very things that make life worth living even though they scare the bejeebers out of us. Cinema history has been dotted with pointless false oppositions between artists, as though we can only admire one or the other: Chaplin or Keaton? Ford or Hawks? Bergman or Fellini? Woody Allen or Mel Brooks? Parallel arguments have thrived in any number of schoolyards: Superman or Batman? Donald or Daffy? The Addams family or the Munsters? One of the most august debates among the throngs who care, and who were brought up glued to their televisions in the early ’60s and during subsequent reruns, was The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits ? Consider, if you will, children of the Kennedy administration, a political background combining Camelot glamour and Cold War nuclear-baiting while TV parades an array of violent westerns and gangster shows in between cozy family sitcoms with wise parents and well-dressed suburban tykes. What’s that signpost up ahead? What strange signal takes control of your set from a merciless alien authority? Why, it’s a couple of spooky shows: science fiction, nightmares, surrealism — the things that make life worth living. These two black-and-white anthologies scared the bejeebers out of tender minds during this era, and indeed the latter program was created partly in response to the former. The two series had many things in common, from certain creative contributors to the fact that both titles evoke a sense of dislocation far from any known map of reality. While Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone is generally considered the more intellectual of the two, The Outer Limits boasted something more blunt and effective: monsters. Whereas monsters were only infrequently depicted on CBS’ The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits made an agreement with ABC to feature a fantastic creature in every story. Those who worked on the show called it “the bear”. Some episodes tried to work around this prescription but most embraced monsters and aliens, courtesy of the special effects and make-up departments. This element caused some highbrows to consider the show cheesy and childish, but the powerful attraction to kids is one reason this two-season series has had such a lasting legacy. Another commonality of the two series is that both were uneven. The Twilight Zone could veer into heavy-handed moralizing or allow nifty ideas to dissipate undeveloped save for arbitrary twist endings. The Outer Limits , at an hour, could drag with stories that would have been better knocked out in 30-minutes. Ah, but what matters is that these shows were frequently good and occasionally great, and those kids (and grown-ups) were lucky to have both of them. No wonder they’ve been burned into impressionable brains ever since. These thoughts are occasioned by Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray remastering of Season One of The Outer Limits . Some of the 32 episodes are accompanied by optional commentaries from seven experts. Also included is a 40-page booklet by David J. Schow, who literally wrote the book on this series: The Outer Limits Companion , co-writted with Jeffrey Frentzen. Adopting an emblematic or fractal approach, whereby one small piece replicates in perfect miniature the larger pattern of a given phenomenon, we’ll take this opportunity to alert unwary readers to, in our opinion, the single greatest episode and one of the magnificent achievements in TV drama. I refer to “The Forms of Things Unknown”. The Forms of Things Unknown. The first thing you should know is that The Outer Limits sometimes opened its episodes with a pre-credits teaser that was a scene from later in the show. This episode does that, and you must bypass that teaser. Go directly to the Control Voice playing havoc with the horizontal and vertical elements of the image (must this be explained to the streaming generation?) while intoning: “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission… You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the Outer Limits.” The episode begins as it means to continue: with maximum disorientation, even dizziness. We see a montage of shots of a fancy car speeding and swerving around country roads, the driver (Scott Marlowe) grinning demonically. In one of those interior driver shots, a woman (Vera Miles) suddenly emerges from behind his profile, revealing that she’d been sitting next to him. She doesn’t appear alarmed either. In one of the final shots, she embraces and kisses him while he’s driving! Barely have we processed this dangerous behavior than sound and motion cease in a sudden freeze-frame, followed by a jump-cut to an Edenic lake in a forest. It would explain everything if the characters had been killed and everything from this point is an “Owl Creek Bridge” dream or trip to an ambiguous afterworld, and we’ll never be able to swear such isn’t the case. One of the script’s structural motifs is that we hardly have time to absorb any new information before the episode shape-shifts into something else. That’s why we hesitate to give away any more, but we must spend a little more time in the first act. To lilting music, the camera pans left to where the man is now standing, his crotch initially concealed by a leaf in the foreground. This gives us the impression, astounding for 1964 TV, of a naked man in a forest. When the passing leaf reveals his tight light-toned shorts, he might as well be. Done with posing, he walks into the lake and, like a king or a Greek god of revelry, calls out the first line of dialogue: “Kassia! Leonora! Where’s my drink?” The montage during this speech reveals our first glimpse of yet another woman on this trip: the jittery Leonora (Barbara Rush).