It Crawled Out of Tim

The Energy Beast eats Norco guard in "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork."

See important UPDATE further down the page.

In the immortal words of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, "Now here's something you'll really like!" - but first, some background.

A few weeks ago on Facebook, I asked my braintrust there if anyone could help me to see the movies in Arrow Academy's out-of-print CLAUDE CHABROL COLLECTION, Volume 1. I had seen a used copy being offered on eBay, but it was priced outside my range at the time. Around this same time, I participated with all my fellow OUTER LIMITS audio commentators in a ZOOM panel about the classic television series THE OUTER LIMITS, during which we all noted which episodes we would have liked to record commentaries for, but couldn't, either for lack of time or budget. I chose "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork," which I regard as not the greatest Season 1 episode but somehow its most quintessential offering. I was then contacted one day by someone who offered to obtain the Chabrol box set and send it to me if I was willing to record such a commentary, because "It Crawled..." was his favorite episode and he really wanted to hear what I had to say about it. I was tempted, but I had some fine-tunings I needed to make before we could proceed. I told him I'd be willing if he sent me the money for the box set, so that I could acquire it myself, so long as he didn't mind sharing the result with the rest of the world, because I didn't like the idea of doing a private commentary for one person - besides, what he was going to pay me was far below my usual rate, even for doing an hour-long commentary. Long paragraph short, he agreed to my terms and I knocked out a commentary for "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork" in about four days. 

Very interesting. This surprise achievement led to further thoughts.

One of the reasons behind my recent absence from this blog is that Donna and I were examining the different ways that we could make this commentary available - in a way that might repay my time. She wasn't keen on the idea of using our storage space on the VW website to host it, but after thinking through a number of other possibilities - including Patreon and even going directly to Kino Lorber and asking if they might stream it as a promotional device for their OL box sets, none of these options proved workable for various reasons. Therefore, we're returning to the original idea, with an extra tweak or two.

So, here is my first (or second, if you count the one I did for David Lynch's LOST HIGHWAY) à la carte audio commentary - for the classic OUTER LIMITS episode, "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork" - written by Joseph Stefano, directed by Gerd Oswald, and photographed by Conrad Hall... the Dream Team of TV Scream Teams. If you haven't already taken the plunge and ordered the Season 1 and 2 sets from Kino Lorber, or the COMPLETE SERIES set from Via Vision in Australia, this track will give you an idea of what you've been missing. 

Here's how you get it:

Go to THIS LINK. DOWNLOAD, then UNZIP.

ENJOY. Easy as that.

UPDATE: As of today - Tuesday, November 3, at 5:06pm eastern, I replaced the original upload with a slightly amended one, deleting or correcting one or two misstatements and adding an extra piece of trivia right around the beginning of Act IV. If you uploaded the file prior to this, please download this new version in its stead. 

Kent Smith demonstrates how easy it is to sync a Blu-ray disc to one of my commentaries.

The link will remain active for the next 30 days. 

Download it at your leisure, sync it up to your disc at home (however you do that), and enjoy. This is a free introductory offering. I'm not charging anything for it; however, if you'd like to encourage more surprise treats along these lines in the months ahead, consider sending me a token of your appreciation via the Donate buttons. 

The great thing about this idea is that an à la carte commentary can be applied to anything, as long as there exists a standard reference to allow for synchronization. So I could do commentaries for those releases that didn't invite me to contribute, or movies that I had to pass on at the time, and even for movies that don't yet exist on Blu-ray. Mario Bava's DR GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS and SHOCK are two that come to mind, as do SPIRITS OF THE DEAD, personal schlock favorites like THE ASTOUNDING SHE MONSTER, or other individual TV episodes. 

Of course, this is hard work and how often I can generate such depends entirely on how much free time I have available. The regular paid work I'm doing for companies like Kino Lorber, Arrow Video, and Via Vision must take precedence, but in recent months, new assignments have become more spotty. So, with encouragement and time, this could develop into something really interesting.

You can email me your thoughts at tim@videowatchdog.com.

By the way, if you missed the OUTER LIMITS Zoom conference involving all the OUTER LIMITS commentators, you can find the complete 75m symposium here.

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Subscribe to Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog by Email

If you enjoy Video WatchBlog, your kind support will help to ensure its continued frequency and broader reach of coverage.