Encounter with the Unknown

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.

Encounter with the Unknown (1972)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Rod Serling narrates three tales that deal with the unknown. The first story has three friends playing a prank on a nerdy guy, which ends up getting him killed. At the funeral the dead boy's mother tells the three something that leads to their fate. In the second story, a farm boy and his father discover a mysterious opening in the woods. In the final story, a man is driving across a bridge when he spots a young woman and picks her up. She requests to go to her father's house.

I'm going to avoid spoiling anything in regards to the three stories. With that said, ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN is a film that is obviously working with a very low-budget. The film reminded me a lot of THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK and it works in the same way that one did. Both films pretty much had no budgets but this worked to their advantage because it created a real atmosphere. This film here has some rather interesting moments but also some very bad ones.

As far as the three stories go, there's no question that the second one is the best. I thought this one here managed to have the best atmosphere and it's easy to see how this story could scare a lot of the young kids who watched it at the drive-in back in 1972. The first story is without question the weakest because it's incredibly easy to figure out what's going to happen. The third and final story is predictable but I thought it played out in an interesting way.

I'd argue that the "closing speech" made at the end of the three stories wasn't needed and in fact the film would have been much better without it. The performances are mixed throughout the three stories but Serling's narration is quite good throughout. Overall, ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN isn't the perfect movie but there's enough here to make it worth watching.

I first saw this film on TV in 1978. I only watched the middle story, however before we switched channels to watch "And Now the Screaming Starts" instead. I was only 7 years old, but the story and images stuck with me all these years. I caught a glimpse of the second story again (the hole in the earth tale) in 1980 in L.A.'s Greyhound Bus Terminal on a pay-per-view TV in the waiting areas. Ever since 1997 nobody on the many horror movie Internet forums could identify this film for me! Finally in 2004 I went to the microfilms at the local library to look up that date in 1980 in the TV listings and that is where the title Encounter With the Unknown came be...well, known (or re-known to me). Not soon after, I won the one-sheet poster on Ebay. On March 30th, 2007, I finally scored A DVD R of this (in great condition) from Retroflicks.com. The film - in all its grainy filmstock, unprofessional acting, Afterschool Special soundtrack music glory...all make for ONE CREEPY VIEWING!!!! Films that are too slick (the ones made today) lack the punch these older films have. In fact, during the first tale, I was afraid to watch this film alone in my apartment. So I watched TVland reruns until I had to wait until my roommate came home before I resumed. As a veteran of watching a darn-near lifetime of horror movies, that's saying a lot! What can be considered production "short-comings" to mainstream movie viewers actually WORKS in this films favor! I bought the whole experience and I, indeed, refuse to watch this one alone. The documentary feel is a hoot to watch. In fact, if this film was digitally cleaned and remastered it might lose some of its effect. Still, I'm glad I'm reunited with an old favorite that has lost none of its appeal all these years. It's exactly as I remembered it.

It's difficult to tell exactly what the filmmakers were going for, though. The subject matter is treated very seriously, and much hubbub is made about the three stories being true. They were supposedly based on research conducted by parapsychologist Dr. Jonathan Rankin, but here's the deal: as far as I've been able to ascertain, there WAS no Jonathan Rankin. Apparently the writers of "Encounter" invented him. Still, kudos to them for dressing up this patchwork quilt of urban legends and drive-in exploitation in a halfway-convincing manner. Rod Serling's narration helps (actually, there are two narrators; the other one is uncredited, but he sounds like Lawrence Dobkin). The first story involves a "witch"--the seventh daughter of a seventh son--placing a curse on the young men who were inadvertently responsible for her son's death. The second is based on a little-known Ozark legend about some sort of monster that lives in the bowels of the earth. The third and final tale is a version of the well-worn "Vanishing Hitchhiker" legend. There's not much action, but there are quite a few genuinely creepy moments. The cast features several regulars from exploitation director S.F. Brownrigg's films ("Don't Look In the Basement", "Poor White Trash Part 2"), including Rosie Holotik (who is terrific as the Vanishing Hitchhiker), Gene Ross, and Annabelle Weenick. "Encounter With the Unknown" will look cheap and shoddy to most mainstream viewers, but I think that everyone involved with the film deserves an A for effort. Horror fans will want to give this a look.

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.