One Step Beyond-Volume 3

Rating:
Summary: Four quality episodes but no true One Step Beyond classics
Review: Before The Twilight Zone, there was One Step Beyond. This show, which debuted on ABC in 1959, purportedly dramatized true stories of high strangeness, and what it lacked in budget and production values it more than made up for in atmosphere and -quite often - genuine creepiness. Since the stories were supposedly true, that made the Twilight Zone-like fun all the juicier, and John Newland, your guide into the unknown, had a personality and style of delivery guaranteed to heighten the effects of the strange dramas he introduced each week.

This Volume 3 DVD contains four episodes from the first season. I would caution you to always refer to the DVD box itself in terms of seeing which episodes are included in which volume, as this episode information is oftentimes quite wrong in product descriptions. The episodes actually collected here on Volume 3 are The Aerialist, The Captain's Guests, Echo, and Front Runner. These are all quality episodes, although they do not rank among the true classics from One Step Beyond's three year run.

The Aerialist, the 15th episode of the first season, originally aired on April 28, 1959. Mike Connors stars as Mario, a young acrobat who experiences something quite unexplainable up on the trapeze. Mario is wracked with guilt when his father is seriously injured during a performance - just before the show, he had gotten into an argument with his father and made a rash comment about not catching him this time. As luck would have it, he did indeed fail to catch him, although it was not intentional on his part. Mario sinks ever deeper into depression, eventually becoming suicidal - but his life is saved in a completely unexplainable way.

The Captain's Guests, the 19th episode of the first season, originally aired on May 26, 1959. Here we meet a married couple looking to get away from the big city. The husband is enthralled by a certain house and decides to rent it, ignoring warnings about the unfriendly nature of the long-abandoned place. Once the couple moves in, the husband begins to change, acting more and more like the miserable old sea captain who lived there many years earlier. The ending of this one is a little hokey, but the episode itself is a satisfyingly different kind of haunted house story.

Echo, the 20th episode of the first season, originally aired on June 2, 1959. Ross Martin stars as a man who has just been found innocent of murdering his wife. Murder will out, of course, and Martin's character eventually snaps, leading him to kill a second time - the formidable sense of irony that pervades this episode's conclusion will not be lost on the viewer.

Front Runner, the 21st episode of the first season, originally aired on June 9, 1959. This is quite a good ghost story - a very unconventional one, as well. A dying jockey struggles to tell his life's story to a journalist in the final hours he has left to live, desperately hoping to find someone who will finally believe what he is saying. His story is a real humdinger, making this the best episode of this particular volume.

Rating:
Summary: Correction: Amazon Episode Listings
Review: If you order Volume 2, you will get the episodes listed as Volume 3 on Amazon. If you order Volume 3, you will get the episodes listed as Volume 5. And if you order Volume 11, you will get episodes listed from Volume 10 on the Amazon description. If you go by the Amazon thumbnails, you will get the right episodes, because the photos do not match the volume listings as provided by the Amazon editorial/description. There is some confusion, because I could not even find Volume numbers on the boxes.

Rating:
Summary: One Step Beyond VHS
Review: This DVD has 4 episodes from the 1959 sleeper, One Step Beyond. Each program in black and white and approximately 25 minutes in length has been mastered from the "best available" source. The show has not been remastered in any way, showing much age with grain, scratches, some film rolls and plenty of popping audio and jump cuts just like I've always seen the cult classic hosted by John Newland, in syndication. This does not distract from my viewing enjoyment, however. The audio is fair to good with a slight hiss, as expected. The interactive menus are very basic, but some effort was taken at least. Volume 3 seems to have some of the better episodes. "The Devil's Laughter", with Alfred Ryder(guest starred in the Outer Limits(1964) episode: "The Borderland")tells the tale of a criminal who is about to be hanged, but with with mysterious results. "The Secret" is eerie and touching, concerning a lonely woman who befriends a ghost. And "The Return of Mitchel Campion", starring Pactrick O'Neal,(also starred in the Twilight Zone episode: "A Drink from a Certain Fountain") centers around a man who vacations for the first time on a Spanish island, whom everyone seems to know. My least favorite, "The Vision" focuses on soldiers who stop fighting because of a strange light. Looking at the whole picture, considering the rarity of the series and the extremely economical price of each DVD, this is a fair bargain if you consider yourself a fan of One Step Beyond or have never seen it, enjoy the Twiligt Zone and want to see its predecessor. Although the series did not have the budget of the more successfull Twilight Zone, the show has a certain charm and one can detect style elements that were later used on the Serling classic. Interesting, perhaps psychic.