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Customer Reviews of Outer Limits: It Crawled Out of Woodwork

Episode 11: It Crawled Out of the Woodwork
This is the eleventh episode in the series, and though I don't think that it is one of the best, it does have its moments. <
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> At the Norco Energy Research Commission, the cleaning lady uses her vacuum cleaner to suck a gooey object from the ground. Once it goes in the vacuum, the vacuum cleaner starts shaking and explodes, releasing a form of pure energy that kills anything in its way. Now, Stuart Peters (played by Michael Forest) is a new employee at Narco, and is made to work with Dr. Stephanie Linden (played by Joan Camden), to discover a method to create or destroy energy. Dr. Linden sends Stuart through a passageway and exposes him to the energy. We see Stuart dead, but after a while, he comes back to life to see his brother Jory (played by Scott Marlowe) and tells him to run away. Later, he (Stuart) is electrocuted in the bathroom due to an accident. Jory is confused and tells Det. Sgt. Siroleo (played by Ed Asner) the details. Det. Sgt. Siroleo now tries to get the whole story behind the murder investigation by interrogating the workers of Narco. <
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>The one thing I really liked about this episode was the idea of man trying to destroy pure energy (and including a murder mystery somewhere as well). The idea also talks about man controlling energy, giving him a sense of power (which can lead to madness). But, it is a very sensitive topic and, unfortunately the writers did not emphasize much on the storyline. If energy can neither be created nor destroyed, then how did it get created in the beginning of the episode in the vacuum cleaner (of all things!)? And if it WAS created, shouldn't there have been a way that it was destroyed in the end? And HOW was that thing able to come out of the facility and kill Warren Edgar Morley (played by Gene Darfler), the security guard, in broad daylight and then somehow go back inside?? It just doesn't make any sense. I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but compared to the other episodes of the Outer Limit series, this one raised far too many questions to make it completely believable. <
>Of course, the cast acted amazingly as usual especially Ed Asner, Scott Marlowe, Kent Smith and Joan Camden. <
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>To quote Vic Perrin (The Control Voice): "The Conservation of Energy Law: a principle which states that energy can be changed in form, but that it cannot be either created or destroyed, and this is true of all energy; The energy of the genius, of madness, of the heart, of the atom. And so it must be lived with, it must be controlled, channeled for good, held isolated from evil, and somehow lived with peaceably."

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It Crawled Out Of The Woodwork = 2.5 out of 5 stars
If you can get by the story of how the "energy creature" was created after a cleaning lady used a vaccum on a dustball, then this is not that bad of an episode (and the creation is really not that important). The wacko doctor manipulates his staff toward where his "creature" is kept, so that it can feed on their energy and help it's survival. Eventually, too many people get involved and the cops get the word, which leads to the ending confrontation, in which "all the beans are spilled." The episode's creature looks like the "cloud" from "The Man With The Power." The episode has solid acting and a nice wierdness to it.

thank you for your time, David

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Nightmare In Lightning
Joe Stefano scripted this nightmarish horror offering. His scripts are often short on logic, this one particularly, but make up for that failing by being long on unsettling or downright frightening imagery. And the imagery in this one is downright frightening.

The "it" of the title is an impossible energy force, explosively brought into existence by an accident involving a vacuum cleaner at an energy plant. How exactly this occurs is never pondered, since frankly it doesn't matter - any more than it matters how a mad scientist can so skillfully control and use the thing to terrify employees to death, and then resurrect them with pacemakers in order to create fully complient slaves.

What matters is the theme and the imagery, and those convey themselves most effectively in this scary little sci-fi thriller. Ed Asner does an early pre-Lou Grant turn as the police inspector unfortunately drawn into a murder investigation at the plant. Michael Forest gets to chew the scenery quite delightfully in two (count 'em, two) death scenes. Joan Lamden is a convincing tortured soul. Scott Marlowe and Barbara Luna are wasted as young lovers in a subplot that exists only to provide the suspicious death report to Asner that furthers the plot and yawningly pads the episode. Kent Smith gloriously chews more scenery than Michael Forest in either of his death scenes, as the mad German scientist (is there any other kind?) responsible for all the mayhem.