The Outer Limits: Keeper of the Purple Twilight

Nearly every episode of The Outer Limits I’ve seen is excellent and memorable—chiefly because of the sheer ugliness of the alien aberration presented as a central, integral aspect of the plot. In “Keeper of the Purple Twilight” (a line borrowed from Tennyson: “Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales”), we have a bulbous-headed alien horror with slanted, normal-sized eyes, huge Spock ears that stick out perpendicular to the head, and what looks like gill slits running down the face from the nose. (Or was there a nose? I can't clearly remember.)

The opening narration tells us:

“There is no limit to the extension of the curious mind. It reaches to the end of the imagination, then beyond into the mysteries of dreams, hoping always to convert even the dreams into reality, for the greater well-being of all mankind…”

A mad scientist (what other kind is there?), Dr. Eric Plummer (Warren Stevens), is creating a death ray when an alien from a world wherein everyone is a misogynistic ant in a beehive colony (mixed metaphor) shows up. This alien is wildly interested—despite their relative lack of emotion—in conquering the world. (Are aliens in these old movies ever not interested in conquering the Earth?)

To that end, Ikar (who can trade off his hideously ugly, long, pincer-clawed alien self for a sort of middling-handsome 1960s TV actor form) steals the emotions of Dr. Plummer. (The human form of Ikar is portrayed, by the way, by Robert Webber.)

Dr. Plummer gets busy building his outer-space death ray, and Ikar—handsome alien dog that he now is—starts cozying up to Mrs. Dr. Plummer, Janet. (Wouldn't you know that would be the name?) She eventually discovers that Ikar is not really so handsome, but is actually a hideous mutant menace from Mercury (har-har), who is a second cousin twice removed from the Metaluna.

Aside: Or maybe the legendary “Melonhead” children said to haunt Michigan, Ohio, and points unknown, who are either the result of inhuman experiments by the mysterious Dr. Croft—who injected their baby craniums with some weird growth hormones that turned them into monster mutants that eat human flesh. (Okay, I’m just riffing with that last thing.)

Getting back to it: Ikar romances Janet (played with televised desperation by Gail Kobe), who becomes increasingly unhinged as he grabs her around the throat and complains that he can’t fully appreciate human emotions, so all the nookie is really having little impact. He already stole all of Dr. Plummer’s emotions, trading them for his coldly alien, Spock-like logical reserve—and when he did it, his eyes started glowing, which was kinda demonic and weird and looked cool. Okay.

Next on the scene, we have a trio of alien heavies with small heads but similar gill-faces who materialize because Ikar doesn’t seem to be following the Plan for Conquering the Earth, which was laid out on their insectoid-like homeworld—where the women are kept barefoot (do they have actual feet?) and pregnant. Probably with round silicone eggs borrowed from the Horta in Star Trek.

Anyway, Dr. Plummer builds his gun and gets his love and ability to appreciate mega-nookie back, as the three (of course three, isn’t it always three?) Shamblers from the Stars appear here, there, everywhere with their weirdly microcephalic mien and their vague resemblance to the Ufonauts responsible for the 1973 alleged alien abduction of the Pascagoula, Mississippi fishermen, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker. (I bet you all didn’t think I could spell Mississippi, did ya?)

Of course there’s a subtext here, and I knew it immediately ere I saw the Melonhead alien disappear to be replaced by a normal-looking, albeit emotionless one from an “insect colony” world. His world keeps the bitches barefoot and preggers, and his “human” self—the good doctor, his “Superego”—is replaced by an ugly, ugly “Id” that “masks” or disguises itself under a coldly analytical Ego: a defense mechanism of calculating, sociopathic, imminently logical and detached rationalization that deteriorates under the weight of feminine emotion—which is a clarion call for the Oedipally fixated and emotionally castrated.

Three ruffians appear to assuage his guilt for the self-destructive construction of the laser blaster of his impenitent brain.

But I digress.

And I must go.

The twilight, purple or not, approacheth.

Keeper Of The Purple Twilight

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