(1973) 2.5 Bruce Eder This made-for-television feature, presented as part of ABC's Movie of the Week, has series pilot written all over it -- or, in this case, busted series pilot, as it never became a weekly show. Taking ideas that were better executed in the feature films Quest For Love (1971) and Journey To The Far Side of the Sun (1969), the Irwin Allen series Land of the Giants (without the size differential angle), as well as the Twilight Zone installments "The Parallel" (and, more subtly, "Third From The Sun"), the story concerns an astronaut (Glenn Corbett) who returns from space, only to find himself on the "wrong" Earth. Actually, in this case, he's not on a planet called Earth at all, but on a very similar world called "Terra," on which the people and the names, and the language may seem a lot like those from where he came, but where history and life have taken very different turns from the planet he left. It's never made 100% clear -- as our hero (for very good reasons) doesn't stay in official custody long enough to find out what the scientists understand about his situation -- whether Terra exists in a parallel dimension (or parallel reality, connected to our universe by some dimensional warp), or in a parallel orbit to Earth, or precisely how he came to make the transit from one planet to another. The idea was an interesting one, and a weekly series could have played something like The Fugitive with a distinct science-fiction twist, as the hero makes his way in a world ruled by a totalitarian government, whose agents regard him as an invader, and a source of cultural and intellectual contamination, to be contained and destroyed. But the makers of this pilot -- which was done for Bing Crosby Productions (which already had experience with that kind of quest/pursuit series, by way of The Guns of Will Sonnett)-- did this movie on the cheap, and ruined whatever chance they had of making the idea work. Glenn Corbett, who had already played space travellers out of his own time and place in episodes of Star Trek ("Metamorphosis") and Land of the Giants ("The Weird World") was good enough as the Earth astronaut who realizes almost too slowly precisely how much danger he is in; and Sharon Acker, who would not have been in the subsequent series (at least, playing the character she does here), made a good sympathetic first friendly contact. But by 1973, Cameron Mitchell had already descended into one-note performances when he had a good part to work with, and that was not the case with the principal villain's role here; additionally, the makers populated the pilot with the kind of guest and supporting players that anyone (and especially network executives) knows they couldn't possibly get for the regular run of the show, including Lew Ayers (playing a role similar to the one he would later portray in Salem's Lot) and George Coulouris. But the truly lethal attribute in what could have been a successful suspense series was the cheapness -- "Terra" is not a "parallel" Earth in the sense that the same people exist in different guises; it is a planet very similar to Earth. So why does everyone drive cars that look like standard production-line Detroit vehicles? (One of the robots in the MST3K presentation of this movie even referred to it as "Planet of the Fords"). And while we're about it, even if the language spoken where Corbett's character landed were English, there would be little differences in the language, in terms of usage and slang (check out the Richard Matheson-authored Twilight Zone story "Third From The Sun", where it's the little differences in phrasings and usage that throw us off just a little, so in the back of our minds we know there's something not 100% right about what we think we're seeing). Instead, we get all of those silly consistencies with day-to-day reality, which just make the viewer feel like they're watching a decent idea done half-assed, and none-too-well, despite a lot of sincere effort by almost everyone on camera. And it's not that the script doesn't try for some startling and great moments -- the fate of Tim O'Connor's character is especially memorable and haunting, as is what happens to Acker's character; it's all nicely cold-blooded, showing that the writers and producers were willing to take some chances with viewer sensibilities. It's just that they don't seem to have fully thought out how to get there from here, especially in the small details.

The Stranger on AllMovie

The Stranger (1973)

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genres

category

Feature

directed by

Lee H. Katzin

countries

USA

released

1973

run time

100 min.

produced by

Bing Crosby Productions

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by Bruce Eder synopsis

Astronaut Neil Stryker (Glenn Corbett) returns from space, only to find himself held incommunicado by government security people he's never seen before, in a hospital facility that he's never heard of. He escapes from the hospital and, to his shock, sees a night sky lit up by three moons. He now knows that he's not on Earth -- but on some sort of near-duplicate of Earth, a parallel planet. He learns that the planet is called Terra by its inhabitants; and it resembles Earth in gravity, atmosphere, and environment -- it could pass for Earth, and the place where he is stranded might pass for any northeastern American city; but this world is ruled by a totalitarian government called The Perfect Order, which regiments day-to-day life on a level that would make even the worst Communist regime seem like amateurs; and it is ever on the lookout for unbelievers, non-conformists, subversives, and potential sources of contamination -- of which Stryker is a prime example, as someone from another world. Security agent George Benedict (Cameron Mitchell) is on his trail, and quite prepared to prevent any "contamination" that Stryker leaves behind along the way, even sending the rather high-ranking physician (Tim O'Connor) who spent time interrogating Stryker to the dreaded "Ward E," where his memory, free-will, and reasoning ability are cleaned and reshaped. Stryker quickly discovers that it's virtually impossible to trust anybody, because almost 100% of the population is in the Perfect Order's hold. He manages to find an ally in a young doctor (Sharon Acker), who enlists the help of her free-thinking mentor (Lew Ayres) on Stryker's behalf. But his only hope of true escape is to reach the government's launch facility, commandeer a spacecraft, and try to return to Earth.

characteristics

- Political-intrigue

- Time-travel

- Fugitive

- Escape

- Astronaut

- Dimension-travel