Encounter with the Unknown

source: Encounter with the Unknown

Rod Serling made a living late in his life narrating various specials, and this film, which isn't that famous, but for those of us who saw it on television, it was one to remember. Starts off atmospherically in a cemetery, where the following three tales of supernatural encounters are supposed to have been recorded by a paranormal researcher, but I have never seen this person verified!(Was he made up for dramatic reasons?) First story involves a mother's death curse against the three teenagers whose cruel prank led to her son's death; eerie, but becomes repetitive, with too many flashbacks and close ups of the mother. The second story is the best, about a mysterious hole that appears in the ground somewhere in the south, where frightening sounds can be heard emanating from. Really creepy and effective, with a memorable payoff. Not easily forgotten. Third story is the old chestnut of the vanishing hitch-hiker; nothing new, but effectively creates a melancholy air about lost love and wasted life that will stay with you. The entire film is atmospheric, with a notable early 1970's aura about it. On DVD, and worth tracking down.

As another reviewer noted, the hyped "Rankin cluster phenomenon" appears to be total BS. The movie overall has a bit of interest and a few memorable moments. The first story involves a prank that goes horribly wrong and costs a young man his life, so his witchy mother (in the film's most memorable scene) lays a curse on them at the funeral, although she's never seen to curse the person truly responsible for her son's death. And the guys responsible all die in "accidents" on schedule... The second story involves a mysterious hole in the ground that appears on a rural farm in the early 20th century. It's just suddenly there one morning. Smoke roils out of it and weird sounds are heard. A local farmer is lowered into it.... The third is the weakest, a rehash of the tired "Phantom Hitchhiker" story that was already a cliché decades before this film was made. The biggest weakness is that there's so little substance to these stories. Scenes are played over and over and over in obvious attempts to pad it out to feature length. Every story is supposedly based on a "true story" although it seems to either be urban legends or made up from whole cloth. Another amusing bit is in the third story, which has flashbacks to the 20s, and in those scenes were shown a wealthy stylish girl who has long flowing hair...something totally out of whack, as stylish girls of the 20s had bobbed hair! (Of course, by the 70s, long flowing hair was stylish again...) I saw this on a local station back in the 70s or early 80s, and finally came across it again on YouTube. It's cheap hokum, never particularly scary or disturbing, sloppily written and badly edited. Watching it again I can't help but wonder if it was meant to be the pilot for a TV series. It's amusing when one is nostalgic for cheap 70s horror, but ultimately it fails because of the clichéd nature of the stories (except the second one) and the obvious padding. Something with a bit more imagination and more willing to have fun with the material, and even take some liberties with the urban legends, would have been much more enjoyable. The music over the opening credits is memorable, though.

Highly entertaining! Emotionally charged! Riveting! This is a great campy attempt at Twillight Zone. One interesting twist in one of the stories is you will actually see a flashback within a flashback! You don't see that a lot! Kudo's to the filmmaker! To top it off it stars Robert Ginnaven, from Day it Came to Earth and he's teamed up with his partner from that movie, Lyle Armstrong. My friend and I find constant entertainment outta this one. Best skit in this movie is the first story involving three twitty looking dudes being told of a curse in which they all might die! I would suggest viewing this and then The Day It Came to Earth right after.

(Some Spoilers) The movie "Encounters with the Unknown" just can't seem to make up its mind to what it's trying to tell you in the three supernatural stories in it. We get this prologue about this mysterious Rankin Cluster Phenomenon, discovered by a Dr. Jonathan Rankin, that supposed to be as many as 500 graves clustered together in a number of cemeteries all over the country. Were never told what its, the cluster phenomenon, supposed to be or represent! Were then drawn to this funeral for young Jimmy Davis who was killed because of a dirty prank played on him by his three friends Dave Frank & Randy. Jimmy told by the three that they got a hot date set up for him is accidentally shot and killed by elderly Mrs. Wilson who, after mistaking him for a bugler, shot him when her gun went off. Jimmy's mother Mrs. Davis, the seventh daughter of the seventh son of her father-in-law, put a curse on the three boys telling them that they'll end up like Jimmy did stone cold dead! One by land and two by air, in the span of 21 days after his funeral! Seven days time for each of them to meet their maker, and just as she predicted that's exactly what happens! Dave gets hit and killed by a car Frank dies in a plane crash and Randy perished when his parachute fails to open when he's out skydiving! All the three boys die exactly seven, or 21 in all, days apart from each other! The next two stories aren't much better, in fact their even worse. Story #2 is about this hole in the woods that supposedly has the Devil living in it. and where little Jesse's dog Lady ends up falling into. Jesse's straight-laced dad Joe not beveling in all that supernatural rubbish that everyone in town is talking about, about the mysterious hole, decide to go it alone and be lowered down into the hole. Joe tries to get the mutt only to end up stark raving mad when he's brought back up, without Lady. He ends up running through the wood like a mindless lunatic; were told by the narrator that Joe completely lost it and ended up in a padded cell in a local mental institution for the rest of his life. The third and final chapter to "Encounters with the Unknown" has to do with this young girl Susan who's haunting this bridge in rural Arkansas. We find out that she killed herself by driving her jalopy off the bridge and into the river back in 1929. Susan's very strict father forbid her to marry the boy she loved Paul, he wasn't making enough cash, and drove the love sick girl, and possibly her lover Paul, to kill herself. Susan's old man is still alive, this after almost 45 years after the tragic incident, and has to put up with, what can possibly be, hundreds of sighting of his daughter from motorists. Susan gives her dad's address to any motorist who happen to cross the bridge at night when she's there hunting it! This I assume is the old man's punishment from above in trying to interfere with his daughter Susan's love life and it's a purgatory on earth for him. There's nothing in the film that you haven't seem before with Rod Serling, sounding as serious as ever, pinch-hitting in some of the narration, he replaces the original narrator after the first five minutes of the film. The movie also has a very annoying habit of repeating itself, Mrs. Davis' Heptagran curse is repeated almost a dozen times. There's what looks like an abridged version of the film in the last fifteen minutes. Probably in order to pad the film and make it look like a full-length motion picture.

This movie is a simply a little curiosity for those really into 70s movies (this is me) or Rod Serling. Otherwise it is mostly a waste of time, with stories that have one punch line or interesting moment, with the rest filler (A LOT of filler) to make the movie 90 minutes. The whole thing would have been better as three 10-minute shorts. The only neat part for the 70s film buff is the sort of grainy, dreamy quality of the filming, the hair, cars (especially in the first segment). But even then, this can't hold your interest for long. ****Spoilers Ahead Now***** You know exactly what is going to happen in the first segment, so there is little suspense. The mother reciting the curse is the only cool moment. The hole segment is interesting only in the last 30 seconds when you see the result. A little suspense to see if the boy falls in or goes in. Of the three, this is the best one. The last segment is reasonable, but just too long for anyone to care that much for that much time. Also pretty clear what happens, not much of a "twist."

Out of all the horror anthology movies that came out in the 1970s, "Encounter with the Unknown" is among the most obscure, though it's out on DVD for anyone who is really curious. Actually, I can't imagine any potential viewer finding enjoyment with this extremely weak movie. It goes wrong in almost every way you can think of. It's very very very cheap; it seems that most of the budget was blown with hiring Rod Serling to narrate, and to drive an antique car into a river. Threadbare production values from obvious dubbing to airplane crashes happening out of camera range abound. The movie is also ridiculously padded. Certainly the three stories are all extended past the breaking point, but the movie has the gall to tack on a 15 minute epilogue consisting of flashbacks to footage we've already seen while inane narration is being spoken. But the worst thing about the movie is that it has no kick to it. There are no twists or surprises, with the movie curiously content to let viewers know what will happen long before it actually happens. In the end, the only viewers who might be surprised by anything in the movie would be very little kids who haven't seen a horror anthology before... but it's more likely they'll just be as bored as their parents.

After so many years of being a horror fanatic, I still don't understand why certain dull movies enjoy a so-called classic status, whereas other fine and effectively scary ones are doomed to remain stuck in oblivion! Take "Encounter with the Unknown", for instance. I had never heard of it before, and that usually means it's not worth discovering, but surprisingly enough this turned out to be a really neat and atmospheric anthology film, with 3 simply yet genuinely unsettling short tales, all revolving around the supernatural. In the first tale, an obviously terrified young man confesses to a priest on a plane how a silly prank, played by himself and two of his friends, resulted in the accidental death of a neighborhood kid. During the funeral, however, the mother spoke out a sort of curse, and now the boy is persuaded that the three of them will die in freak-accidents. One by land and two by sky, once every seven days. The second story is set in a sleepy little town in Missouri, where a young boy discovers a giant hole in the ground whilst looking for his runaway dog. Ominous sounds and fog emerge from the hole, and pretty soon the entire village gathers around the mysterious place. The father of the boy, who still fears that his dog fell into the hole, finally decides to lower himself into it, but the consequences are tragic. The third and final tale is a famous urban legend known as "The Girl on the Bridge". In the middle of the night, a couple stops at a bridge to pick up a beautiful but clearly confused girl. She requests to be taken home, and even gives the address, but her grieving father already knows what happens next. The girl mysteriously disappears from the backseat again, because she tragically died in a car accident many, many years ago already, when she and her forbidden boyfriend ran off together to get married. Admittedly, "Encounter with the Unknown" is a very cheap and low-keyed production, and none of the stories contain any spectacular stunts or bloody make-up effects. This isn't the least bothersome, though, because the film thrives entirely on macabre ambiance, intriguing stories, and basic but petrifying locations & set-pieces. This gem is literally chock-full of haunting and nightmarish images, like the old cemetery in the first story, the damping hole in the second and the meandering girl in the third. Oh yeah, and there's another thing that makes "Encounter with the Unknown" unique, and it's perhaps its sole link with stardom. The individual tales are introduced and wrapped up by the warm, absorbing and mystical voice of none other than Rod Serling. All to obviously, this was done to generate a sort of "Twilight Zone" effect, but who cares? In fact, I was all set to reward "Encounter of the Unknown" with a glorious score of eight, or even nine out of ten, but the last 10 minutes nearly ruined everything. For some inexplicable reason, a different narrator finds it necessary so reanalyze the three stories in detail and convince the audience that supernatural powers are all around us. The highlights of the films are repeated again, the curse of the grieving mother even three or four times, and the eerie impact of the overall film almost vanishes completely. If you ever come across this obscure puppy, I recommend it wholeheartedly, but my advice is to press "stop" immediately after the end of the third segment.

I only remember bits and pieces of this movie, because when I saw it, i fell asleep on it. I mean, I fell asleep during parts of the movie, so i missed some of it (most of it). The only thing that I can remember (spoiler) is an old woman--she looked like a witch--pointing her finger at these people before they died, and chanting about hexagons, or pentagons, or some geometrical figure. This, of course, freaked me out, because not only do any horror movies from the 70's scare me (I think it's the thick looking fake blood--it looks completely unreal, but it is just so red and gross looking!) but this woman looked like some kind of nightmare! I didn't know what she was doing. Also, I saw the one about Resurrection Mary. This kind of scared me, but not really, because I knew the story. I thought that it was a sad love story. Anyways, I didn't know what this movie was called, because I was half asleep when it came on, and I wanted to see it again, because my first impression of it was that it was a scary movie. Maybe it was only because I woke up on that old woman.

Three tales of terror of the urban legend variety: A trio of college frat boys are cursed by the bitter and vengeful mother (a nicely sinister portrayal by Fran Franklin) of a boy who they accidentally killed with an ill-advised prank; a little boy discovers a mysterious hole in the woods that might just be a pit leading straight to hell; and a motorist gives a ride to forlorn hitchhiker Susan (beautifully played with touching grace by ravishing redhead Rosie Holotik of "Horror High" fame), who turns out to be a ghost. Director/co-writer Harry Thomason relates the entertaining stories at a steady pace and does a solid job of creating a pleasingly spooky atmosphere, with the middle segment in particular standing out as one remarkably creepy affair (the ghastly screams and moans coming up from out of the hole are genuinely scary and unnerving). The earnest acting from a cast of familiar Southern-fried hillbilly exploitation cinema faces helps a lot, with especially praiseworthy work from Gene Ross as Susan's stern disapproving father, Annabelle Weenick as a distraught farm woman, Robert Holton as concerned redneck Joe, Robert Ginnaven as compassionate priest Father Duane, Charlie Dell as pesky village idiot Jonas, and the always welcome Bill Thurman as an amiable local yokel. Rod Serling's exquisitely sonorous narration provides a lovely element of pure class. The backwoods locations give the picture a folksy downhome charm. The fairly polished cinematography by James W. Roberson and Charles Thurston boasts a few snazzy visual flourishes. The spirited shivery score hits the shuddery spot. A really fun fright flick.