The live US anthology series, Playhouse 90, premiered on 4 October 1956 with this 90-minute story directed by John Frankenheimer (who helmed 27 episodes), with Rod Serling adapting Pat Frank’s Cold War thriller novel, Forbidden Area, about Soviet sleeper agents trying to sabotage the US war effort.
The story starred Charlton Heston, Tab Hunter, Diana Lynn, Vincent Price, Charles Bickford and a pre-Addams Family, Jackie Coogan. It is hosted by Jack Palance. Vincent and Tab would go on and appear together in the 1965 AIP adventure, War-Gods of the Deep, in which Vincent played the Nemo-esque Sir Hugh opposite Tab’s Pat Boone-styled hero. Forbidden Area, however, is made of much sterner stuff.
Watch it in full here, courtesy of the Vincent Price Legacy YouTube channel.
Watch it in full here, courtesy of the Vincent Price Legacy Vimeo channel
Dear Curator (Dear Peter); What has YouTube got against Sony Pictures? YouTube has blocked your video of the Playhouse 90 episode, “Forbidden Area”, from your Vincent Price Legacy channel on the app on account of some disagreement with Sony Pictures, and now the video on your webpage is unavailable. It’s a good thing you put a copy of it on Vimeo for me to see. I have put that copy of the video on my Dropbox app to watch and removed the blocked copies of Forbidden Area from my YouTube Liked Videos list and my Dropbox app.. Please put the Vimeo copy on your webpage to replace the unavailable video. Yours truly, Margaret Garnto