Encounter with the Unknown

Oh wow! I saw this back in the '70s when I was eight year old and the story with the hole in ground scared me for at least a year after seeing it. I never knew its name and pretty much considered it lost but after some time searching the internet roughly 40 years year later I stumbled across people who knew the name. Thankfully it's available on YouTube so I could watch it! The show is actually terrible -- the acting laughable at times. But I was too happy to be able to watch it again to care, I thought it was lost forever! Also, I was pleasantly surprised to discover Rod Serling as the narrator as I later became a huge Twilight Zone fan. I gave it 3/10 (like I said, it's terrible) but for me it's fun nostalgia to watch on Halloween.

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.

Despite clearly having been filmed on a low budget (on location in Arkansas), the fairly creepy anthology film "Encounter with the Unknown" does establish a respectable atmosphere. It's co-scripted by director Harry Thomason, taking its inspiration from three urban legends. Given that legendary 'Twilight Zone' creator Rod Serling is involved, it's nothing if not interesting. It examines ideas such as the dividing line between illusion and reality, the power of the human mind - or, to be more specific, the power of belief - and the concept of witchcraft.

Serling is one of two narrators - the other gentleman is used for the opening two minutes and during the final ten minutes - and does his usual commendable job at drawing us into these stories and giving us the alleged facts of each case. Each of these tales has some potent and chilling moments, and the cast is generally good.

The first tale revolves around college student Frank (Gary Brockette) confessing some strange occurrences to helpful priest Father Duane (Robert Ginnaven): weeks earlier he and his buddies had played what they thought was a harmless prank on a simple minded acquaintance, only for things to go horribly wrong. The young mans' mother (Fran Franklin) then turns to them at the funeral and utters a cryptic warning, which seems to be coming true.

Next, we're told of characters who lived at the turn of the century who discovered a mysterious, misty hole in the earth. The father (Robert Holton) of a boy whose dog disappeared ventures inside the hole; we never find out just what he might have seen, but he comes out a very traumatized individual. Could the hole have been a passageway to Hell itself? Maybe.

Finally, a travelling senator (Michael Harvey) and his wife encounter a strange girl (Rosie Holotik) who asks to be driven home. In flashback we learn that she'd wanted nothing more than to marry the man she loved, but her father (Gene Ross) believed him to be good for nothing and forbade her from marrying him. The senator meets the now aged father who has a revelation in store for him.

The hardcore exploitation / horror buff will be pleased to note the presence of S.F. Brownrigg regulars like Ross and Annabelle Weenick, as well as other familiar faces like the lovely Holotik ("Horror High"), Bill Thurman ("The Last Picture Show"), James N. Harrell ("Race with the Devil"), and comedian Charlie Dell while watching. They help to make this an entertaining view, although the movie falters a little during its final tale as it starts to drag too much. Still, as mentioned in the summary, this does have some genuine curiosity value going for it. Serling as always does an extremely engaging job of posing provocative questions that may not have easy answers. Overall genre fans may find it to their liking.

Seven out of 10.

Encounter with the Unknown is an anthology of supernatural stories revolving around events which are purported to have actually happened. We have Rod Serling's testimony to that fact, which in the mid-1970's was good enough.

It's Night Gallery meets Legend of Boggy Creek. When Encounter with the Unknown really ramps-up it isn't half bad. But when it's bad, it's really frickin' awful. You fans of bad cinema will eat it up. All of your favorite low-budget elements are here; terrible acting, abysmal dialog, amateurish sound and dubbing, grubby set design and costuming, and best of all, the master of ceremonies, Serling, "phoning it in" as only he could do at the very end of his tenure.

The stories are not really bad at all. This film, had it had the budget it needed would be have been a classic. But it wasn't and so now it struggles to keep the chills coming and laughs to a minimum.

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.