"The Forms of Things Unknown" is an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show.
The unaired pilot is also named “The Unknown” and was commissioned by ABC who later declined to green-light the proposed series.
.They used some common scenes between the two, but changed the story for the pilot because it had a different purpose.” [1] In the French countryside, playboy Andre Pavan drives with Kassia Paine and Leonora Edmond.
While stopped for a swim at a small lake, Andre gloats about recently blackmailing Leonora's father and demands the women make him a drink.
He retires, asking not to be disturbed, but the women see that Andre's corpse is in Hobart's room, lying on a strange device.
Colas finds Hobart lying in the road who begins searching for Andre to fix the mistake he made in reviving the dead man.
She has found a letter which reveals that Hobart left school to discover a way to return his dead mother to life.
In The Unknown pilot version: Andre reveals there is no Thanatos plant, and thus he was not dead; the time tilter did not in fact work; Hobart was not dead but merely in a coma; and lastly, Kassia uses the pistol to kill Hobart, thinking he is attacking Leonora.
[citation needed] The episode is noted for its similarities to Hitchcock's Psycho, for which Joseph Stefano had also written the screenplay.
David McCallum's dead-mother obsessed inventor Tone Hobart is analogous to Norman Bates.
[2] Bruce Bennett in a review of Outer Limits cited "The Forms of Things Unknown" as a standout episode, describing the screenplay as a blending "Clouzot's Diabolique, James Whale's The Old Dark House, and Stefano's own Psycho screenplay into a hypnotic 51-minute neo-gothic psychodrama pitched somewhere between a fairy tale and a stag film.