Encounter with the Unknown

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.

Hey .. About this movie i mostly like the first story about the cursed kids in billiards... But the most importantly , I'm really proud of myself and all you people reading this , meaning we that care much about movies that spend dollars to find these old and unique movies and watch em so carefully that come to check out what others think bout em ...!! We dont let the film maker's efforts just be for nothing... Thank you all ... I also should thank the producers of this movie and all alikes for spending time , energy and money to at least try to make something ( Movie ) with low and the loss of equipments at that time like 50 years ago for the 1970's fans and us in 2021 and so on .... Who knows ?? Maybe somebody in 2071 comes reading my Comment and thanks me for my ideas in my time... Lol ..... Ok , let's wait and see...

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.

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.

If you're familiar with the Twilight Zone series, it was an anthology of horror and sci-fi stories. Sticking with the horror motif, this movie takes three stories: a traumatic mother's prophecies, a hole in the ground and the traditional story of the ghostly hitchiker, and tries to scare us by claiming they're true. While there are numerous hitchhiker stores out there, Resurrection Mary the most famous, the movie actually makes a slight impact on the atmosphere level, but it is a bit lacking in its suspense factor. The production as well as some of the musical score is a little off-kilter, but the actors do put a fair effort in telling the stories and relating them to the viewer. It's great entertainment for horror fans opposed to the sensationalism of the blood-and-gore pics, but it's just not as scary as it tries to be..