I was 12 when I stumbled on this show one Sunday morning - and I think it permanently Warped My Mind. I'm pretty sure it was my first exposure to absurdism, if you don't count MAD Magazine... I never forgot the show, and for years afterwards I tried to find more info about it. What a thrill to stumble on Wikipedia's entry,which had a link to the full video... and I did *not* know till just now about Henson's role in the production! One can see the roots of many future TV and movie productions here - from THE PRISONER to THE MATRIX to THE TRUMAN SHOW. And considering the times, the production effects and editing are simple yet sophisticated, perfect usages of the possibilities of the medium. A crucial piece of TV history... Be sure to let your preadolescent or adolescent child watch this thing, it'll prepare them nicely for the absurdity to come...!

In 1967, Thomas M. Disch published a short story called "The Squirrel Cage." The story concerns a man who is imprisoned in a big white cube. The man doesn't know why he's there and never finds out. He never gets out of the cube.In 1969, Jim Henson wrote and directed a film called "The Cube." The film concerns a man who is imprisoned in a big white cube. The man doesn't know why he's there and never finds out. He never gets out of the cube.The details, however, are entirely different. In Disch's grim tale, the Man in the Cube is deprived of all human contact. He is provided with the daily New York Times as his only link to the outside world. He writes about various peculiar characters and creatures with no certainty that anyone outside the Cube will read his words.In Henson's version, the characters who visit the Cube are very much in the Henson mold: offbeat, wry, witty, and often just plain weird. This striking dichotomy between theme -- very dark -- and treatment -- very kooky -- makes a lot more sense if you're dealing with a Disch idea and a Henson treatment. This sort of story is Disch's bread and butter.See the movie, read the story, and then read some more of Disch's claustrophobic, hellishly imaginative visions: "Descending" and "Casablanca."

My brother and I were 9 and 10 years old when this aired on Experiment in Television. It haunted us, in the same way as The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone, but more so. Especially the band singing, "You'll never get out til you're dead." Funny that folks are saying it actually aired in color. I remember it without color, sort of like you'd remember a dream. Maybe I just lumped it in my memory drawer with those other creepy black and white shows that I loved. My brother and I would recite the plot to anyone who would listen. When I finally found one more human who had seen it,and clued me in on the Jim Henson connection, I had to marry the guy. Fantastic to know that it outlasted the marriage. So grateful to find it on YouTube last night.

I saw this insane thing at my high school, of all places, stoned out of my face as a little hippie about 1971. I remember laughing myself sick over "The Cube" -- and then I never heard of it again. I almost wondered whether I'd dreamed it up, but my fellow spaceshots remembered it with the same mixture of wonder and disbelief I did. ("What WAS that crazy thing we watched -- and why were they showing it in the auditorium?" I've gone on Google and Amazon and EBay looking for this over the years, and never seen any mention of it. Now I've finally ascertained that it does exist (Jim bloody Henson???) and maybe I'll find it someday. I've cleaned up my act a lot in the last 34 years, so I doubt it will have the same effect. But I'm sure curious...Strawberry jam!