Remember how I said in my last review of The Outer Limits the first season is really good and the second season after the network execs got involved, not so much?
No? You didn't read it? Whew. Although that means you're probably not reading this, either. But let's assume you are reading this. In which case, let me clarify: as I suggested, the second season has some good episodes, primarily the ones written by Harlan Ellison. And the first season has a lot of duds: those Joseph Stefano and Leslie Stevens weren't directly involved with.
"Tourist Attraction" is one of those duds. Poor acting, maudlin romance, low-budget creature effects, uninspired plot, mediocre acting. Yep, "Tourist" has it all. I suppose they can't all be winners. That's the problem with a DVD collection: you watch the good ones first and then if you're a completist you watch the rest. And the rest... aren't that good.
It doesn't help that the episode is a lightly redone remake of the movie The Creature From the Black Lagoon. With a bit of King Kong thrown in. It's like the creative team (and writer Dean Riesner) took those two movies and a few more 40s and 50s monster-runs-amuck horror movies, tossed them in a blender, and wrote what came out.
What's the plot? An American Howard Hughes type, John Dexter (Ralph Meeker) is down in the fictional country of San Blaz. Which sounds like "blasé", and one suspects that's what Riesner thought of the script. Big John has bought the boat of Tom Evans (Jerry Douglas), a ship owner and marine biologist. Presumably, the crew used to work for Tom, but we never find out and all they do is hover in the background and obey John's every order. Also along for the ride is John's girl Friday Lynn Arthur (Janet Blair), who has lines like "By the way, anybody who rubs my back with suntan oil automatically is entitled to call me Lynn." Ugh. She's the center of the very obtuse love triangle between her, John, and Tom. She wrote a magazine article critical of John, so he bought the magazine and fired everyone except her.
For some reason, John is dropping sonar equipment and cameras into a lake. He sees a pug-ugly ichthyosaur-like creature on the camera, and kind of shrugs and calls Tom over. Tom sees a little of it, and dismisses it as a lungfish. A man-sized lungfish with piranha-like teeth and prehensile fins. That's not what a lungfish looks like.
John is making nice with the local revolutionary turned dictator, General Juan Mercurio, played by Henry Silva, who is the most interesting thing about the episode. However, Silva is a lot better in "The Mice" which aired two episodes later. Mercurio can't get people to come to his world's fair, and he claims the people love him. And he's kinda dictatorial when he doesn't get his way. That's about all the characterization he gets, which makes him as three-dimensional a character as Peter Falk as the dictator Ramos Clemente in the Twilight Zone episode "The Mirror". Which is to say, not very much.
John and Tom go down to capture the creature, and Tom apparently panics and swims up to the surface. It's hard to tell because the underwater photography is competently done except for being badly lit. John stabs the creature and brings it to the surface, and they freeze it and take it to a local university. A helpful professor (Jay Novello) theorizes it's a modern-day descendant of the prehistoric ichthyosaur.
John gives Tom the boot because of his cowardice, which makes absolutely no difference to the plot because Tom goes to work for the professor free of charge. We also find out John and Lynn have some kind of romantic relationship but she's currently not happy with him because of how he's treating Tom.
The creature heals and starts giving off sonic emissions. When some dopey local thaws it out by accident, it breaks free and sonic-blasts the local's buddy until it gets recaptured. Mercurio wants to use it to bring tourists in for his world's fair. John punches a soldier and prepares to take the creature to the States because it's his. However, the creature's buddies decide to blast the local dam with their sonic emissions for some reason. What this has to do with anything, I don't know. The creatures then swim ashore as John and his crew put the captive creature on a truck. John grabs a submachine gun and makes like James Cagney in White Heat ("Top of the world, ichthyosaur!"). The creatures blast him with a migraine, Tom cuts the creature loose, and it goes off with its buddies.
Then the dam collapses anyway and wipes out the city. In the end, Tom does something or another, and Lynn and a more-modest John decide to make a go of it. I think. We also see Mercurio's corpse in the debris, and the Control Voice (Vic Perrin) sums up the episode by talking about how dictators who dictate eventually have their fates dictated to them by dictatorial forces beyond their dictate. Or something. It's not very clear, and Mercurio being a not-so-nice guy has been such a minor theme of "Tourist" that you wonder why the Control Voice is wrapping up the episode by expounding on it.
So good points: the creatures are halfway decent looking as long as the camera doesn't dwell on them too long. They're stuntmen in awkward suits: don't go in expecting too much. The creatures are supposedly as intelligent as dolphins, and Tom makes an effort to talk to them. It doesn't go anywhere, though. The creatures do spare the local and John after giving them migraines but we never find out why. Throughout the episode, I'm rooting for the creatures.
If it wasn't for their sonic powers, the creatures wouldn't be any kind of a threat. John knife-stabs a single one into submission when it's in its natural environment, and later mows them down with a gun. There's some talk about them being the basis for the local god myths but nothing comes of that, either.
Ralph Meeker is stuck in a Speedo for the first third of the episode and it's not a good look for him. His golden days were in the movies: Kiss Me Deadly (1955) as Mike Hammer, and The Dirty Dozen (1967). And he was Carl Kolchak's FBI contact in the '72 TV movie. But Meeker had his share of stinkers, including The Food of the Gods (1976), which has the dubious distinction of being the worst H.G. Wells adaptation of all time. He spent a lot of time bouncing around the silver screen in major guest starring roles during the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
Other than Silva, the rest of the cast is pretty undistinguished. Jerry Douglas as Tom has a jaw so straight he probably gave himself paper cuts. Janet Blair is easy on the eyes but is totally at a loss for how to play her independent headstrong woman who is hopelessly involved with her dickweed of a boss.
So if you're checking out Outer Limits episodes on DVD or retro channels, "Tourist Attraction" isn't the worst episode you could pick to watch from the first season. But if you're a connoisseur of monsters-run-amuck 40s and 50s movies, you've already seen it. And if you don't like those movies, you probably won't like "Tourist Attraction".
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Written by Gislef on Feb 17, 2019
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