Cry Of Silence is the worst episode of The Outer Limits I've seen thus far. It features a city couple stuck out in the middle of the country who are set upon by tumbleweeds, which attack their faces and bodies. Fortunately, these pesky weeds don't like fire, so the couple get somewhat of a respite when they light a fire. They meet up with a gaunt, fatalistic local farmer who offers them shelter but tells them there's no escape from their predicament. He's stuck, too. Someone or something is up to no good.
No sooner does the plague of tumbleweeds abate than are the couple set upon by thousands of attacking frogs.Is this a Biblical prophecy come true or invaders from another planet? Maybe a little of both. The ending is tiresome and unenlightening, and the narrator makes points about what we have just seen of the kind I've heard done better in other, earlier episodes of the series. Neither Eddie Albert nor June Havoc gives a good performance, but then who could with such a wretched script?
While watching this turkey I kept on asking myself if this was a "parody episode",--you know, a send up of the more serious entries--but apparently it isn't. The humor, and there's a lot of it here, is, so far as I can tell unintentional. This is the kind of episode legendary hack director Ed Wood would have made had he been able to have made it in the mainstream, actually got a script he wrote for a TV series accepted, was given a chance to direct it as well. It's that bad.
Me, I'll take Plane 9 From Outer Space over this one. It's plot is far more lively, with most of the actors seemingly clueless as to the awfulness of the lines they're given to deliver, without the seriousness of the players in this one, which gives that cult film a kind of near hypnotic, out of this world gravitas wholly lacking in Cry Of Silence.