the laughing spaceman

The Chameleon is usually dismissed as a well written tale brought down by low budget and poor effects. I must say i found the effects (mainly an alien makeup) completely satisfactory, the apparently low budget didn't make it any less convincing for me. But then again, i'm a Doctor Who fan. Who watches 60's scifi tv for effects anyway?
Of all the mature, psychologically convincing Outer Limits episodes i find this one of the very best. The story is tight and very original, Robert Duvall's Mace is unforgettable. In fact he is a very modern character: a guy who despises himself and finds meaning in life only by throwing himself into any extreme job. Unlike Robert Culp's character in The Architects of Fear, who goes through a similar ordeal suffering for a greater good, Mace gets KICKS out of his sacrifice.
The only trouble i see in this episode-if you accept the effects-is that the acting job rests almost completely on Duvall. The rest of the cast seems a bit clumsy. And oh yeah, the version i saw had NO BARFIGHT IN THE BEGINNING. Thank's a lot, Scifi-Channel!

CIA Agent Defects - to the Stars!

A small cast and a smaller budget convincingly pull off this clever story.

A flying saucer has landed near an Air Force base. It doesn't answer our hails, and one expeditionary team sent to investigate it has been vaporized by the saucer's alien occupants. The base colonel wants to blow it up, but his Intelligence advisor tells him their measurements indicate the saucer has enough combustible elements aboard "to make Hiroshima look like a bonfire, if it's hit." They have a longshot idea to figure out the means and motives of the elusive aliens: send in an undercover agent.

Enter Robert Duvall as agent Louis Mace, a former assassin compromised from further work in the Intelligence game, but whose life is an empty shell without his work. Through a recombinant DNA trick, Mace is temporarily turned into one of the aliens, and given a cover story to gain entrance to the saucer.

But once aboard, the Intelligence team have a little problem on their hands: Mace seems to want to go native with the aliens; they can't be sure that the process they used to transform him hasn't really contributed one more to the aliens' number.

Good script, passable effects, great cast. Wonderfully produced on a shoestring budget.