Tag Archives: One Step Beyond

One Step Beyond — Inheritance (10/27/59)

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Maybe One Step Beyond finally realized that there is just too much sameness in the episodes.  It is a problem that I harp on in every OSB post.  Repeatedly, I use the real estate or pizza metaphors to describe the narrow slice of the genre they exploit.  I point it out every week (i.e. year).  I mean, it just goes on and on ad nauseum.  Nobody likes to hear the same thing over and over and over and over, especially The Piña Colada Song (not even linking). [1]

So, host John Newland broke the 4th wall [6] this week like Rod Serling in A World of His Own and Ray Bradbury in that episode that I’ll be damned if I can find.  Although, Serling did not do it out of desperation, and I think Bradbury wandered off in a Bidenesque moment of dementia.

While his wife is shopping in Mexico City, Newland goes to a cellar bar where Jose the Porter fortuitously introduces him to an hombre with a paranormal experience that will allow him to write-off his entire vacation.

The drunken man says he was once handsome and could have been manager of an enterprise, or at least an Alamo or Budget.  He tells Newland his tale:

Irishman Michael Berry (the drunk mentioned above (but did I really need to tell you that?)) is waiting on his wife, Countess Ferenzi, as she gets dolled up for a night out.  Just as with Elaine Stritch in TOTU two weeks ago, she has all the dough and abuses her husband.  She treats her combination maid / scribe / hairdresser / bookkeeper Grace even worse.

While brushing the Countess’s hair, Grace hits a snag.  The Countess snaps,  “After all those centuries, could you at least learn to comb my hair!”  This makes no sense as these are humans, not vampires or immortals or DC politicians.  I admit, it did give me a brief, tiny thrill of hope that this episode might be something special.  Spoiler:  It passed.

The Countess orders Grace to fetch [5] her priceless necklace.  Michael is finally allowed in the bedroom to put the necklace on her.  Michael then goes to bring the car around since the sexist Flunkie’s Local 130  black-balled [7] Grace for being a dame.  After the Countess takes time to call Michael fat, useless, money-grubbing and beyond his prime; and to call Grace plain, jealous, and incompetent, the necklace strangles her to death. [2] As she lies dead, we see the necklace on the bed — in stop-motion — curling up.

Michael and Grace go to the attorney’s office for the reading of the will.  Michael refers to his late wife as Contessa, not Countess.  That Italian word is strange suddenly coming from an Irishman about his Austrian wife as they live in Mexico.  Only in America!

Her will leaves the house, necklace, everything else to Grace.  Michael is bequeathed 30 centavos for bus fare to see, “his young lady friend” across town.  ZING!

Some time later, Grace invites Michael over to her new mansion.  We learn that it was a double-ZING as the bus fare had increased to 40 centavos!  Well played!  Grace says the Countess had no right to treat Michael that way, but I notice she isn’t handing over any of the titular inheritance, or at least the extra 10 centavos.

Grace says Michael’s girlfriend is too young, the Countess was too old, but that she is jussssst right.  However, she spills the frijoles by knowing the girlfriend’s name, age, and pronouns.  She runs into the bedroom and Michael angrily pounds on the door.  Grace puts on the necklace and it begins strangling her too.  When Michael breaks in, he finds her dead on the floor.

Michael goes to see his girlfriend Nina.  He has the necklace with him.  Before Michael can sell the diamonds off one by one, Nina insists on trying it on.  The necklace, of course, begins strangling her.  Michael is able to tear if off her neck.  He carries Nina to the bed, then sees the necklace on the floor curling up by itself.

Back in the bar, Michael is moaning like George Costanza, “It moved.  It moved.” [4] A man in the bar says Michael spent 8 or 9 years in casa de locos after that.

This was no great shakes during the story, but the ending is just a trainwreck.  OK, seeing a necklace move by itself could be unnerving.  However, Nina did not die, so he still has a hot girlfriend with a Belichickian age gap, and a necklace worth millions.   His plan was always to sell off the diamonds individually, so no one else will die unless they choke on one.  So what’s the problem?  He should be more worried about what the policía have to say about his proximity to 2.5 murders.

Dutifully, John Newland tries to hammer this peg into OSB’s round hole.  He says there have been other necklaces that acted like this.  “Perhaps the vengeful spirit of the Countess managed to impart some sort of life — an evil life — into her necklace.”  OK, smart-guy, but it choked the Countess before this life-force would have been downloaded.  And, really, WTF did Grace ever do to deserve her fate?

Knowing he is on thin ice, Newland continues, “If you want a more rational answer, as Jose the Porter says . . . who knows?”  WTF?  Well, he does say it in Spanish, if that helps.

Not up to OSB’s usual standards.

Other Stuff

  • [1]  Seriously, damn you Sirius XM!  The 60s & 70s Channel plays this f***ing thing 10 times a day.  Released in September 1979, it barely even qualifies.  Seemingly the same length as Der Ring des Nibelungen, it is insufferable enough to drive me to Yacht Rock.  Hypocritically, I’m happy to make exceptions for the heavy rotations of American Pie and Hocus Pocus.
  • [2]  In another non-sequitur, Grace picks up the phone to call nueve-uno-uno.  The operator says, “Bueno . . . Bueno?”   After 25 years in South Florida, I thought I at least had bueno, hola, and puta down. [3]
  • [3]  I was double-checking the definition of puta in MS Copilot.  For half a second, it said: prostitute.  That immediately blinked out and I was instead given this BS PC response:

  • [4]  I purposely did not link.  I really hate those annoying cutaways to memes on You Tube — looking at you, Critical Drinker — and am trying to wean myself off of them.
  • [5]  Pedantically, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, only items with a value less than a flagon of mead may be “fetched”.
  • [6]  Well, I guess those two broke the 4th wall every week when they spoke to the audience.  In these cases, they took part in the story, so I’m out of walls.
  • [7]  Behind the Scenes:  Originally, I thought the phrase was eight-balled and translated it as ocho-balled.  At 7:50 this morning, I realized the phrase I was thinking of was black-balled.  I won’t be translating that one.
  • Hey, it’s TV’s Iphigenie Castiglioni (Countess Ferenzi)!  I wonder if that is the same Iphigenie Castiglioni from The Veil and Thriller .
  • Jose was played by Jose Gonzales-Gonzales, but I’m sure there are a lot of Gonzaleses down there.  If you saw an Iphigenie Castiglioni-Castiglioni, that might be a problem.
  • Because OSB disappeared from Amazon-proper, I was forced to subscribe to a streaming service within Amazon called Best TV Ever for $.99/month.
  • This is Episode 2.6 per IMDb and Episode 2.12 per Amazon.

One Step Beyond — Doomsday (10/13/59)

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Well, yes.  Yes, John Newland, I have.  While One Step Beyond has proven to be a very good series, its repeated trips to the same tiny tract of genre real estate is a weakness.  Yes, I finally gave up on the slice of pizza metaphor.  

In 17th century Scotland — because OSB disdains the US more than a 21st century Ivy League student — the Earl of Culdane barges in demanding to see “Mr. Physician”.  Hey, he didn’t go to barber school for a fortnight and change his name to Physician to be called Mister! [1]

The doctor says, “Your son is dying, my Lord do-lang-do-lang-do-lang”. [2] The Earl is outraged, but Mr. Dr. proudly says in his defense, “I have bled the boy seven times with leach and lancet”.  Shockingly, the Earl is not convinced.  He is a man of science, so suggests it is more likely his son was bewitched by a girl in the village.

The woman, Catherine, was found dancing gleefully in a field.  Then it began to rain — a rarity that happens only about 300 times a year in the Highlands!  The prosecutor also claims to have seen her turn milk sour, and saw “imps flying in the air above her head!”  The judge has heard enough.  Despite no evidence of a crime, an accusor deranged by the death of his son, and a prosecutor on a literal witch hunt, the corrupt judge finds her guilty so that she can cast no more spells or run for President.

This was not her being sentenced to death — The Earl just told her she’d be pretty if she smiled.

As she is dragged from the courtroom, she screams that just as the Earl outlived his son, all of his decendents will also outlive their first born-sons!  Ya know, I was kind of on her side, but since this curse comes true for the next 200 years, I guess she really was a witch!  Although, like all witches, she did not make it rain when she was being burned alive.  To be fair, I guess she couldn’t dance what with being tied to the stake.

In the present day, first-born William has come to be with his father who is on his death-bed after having “an accident” on his death-futon.  The doctor says he has only an hour to live.  These cheap-ass Scots really wait until the last minute to get doctors involved.  Given the family history over the last eight generations, this obviously sends William into a panic.  He wonders how this can be possible since he is in great health and only 28 years old. [3]  He does everything right:  Sugary Dr. Peppers at 10, 2, and 4, only the best scotch kept in his office at work, driving unencumbered in the front seat of his new Corvair, and smoking 3 packs a day of doctor-recommended Lucky Strikes — they’re toasted, for God’s sake!

He refuses to take a sedative from the doctor, although does risk being swallowed whole by this enormous emasculating chair.

While he is simpering alone, his wife comes in and tells him that his father has died, breaking the curse.  Then she and the doctor roofie his drink.  Before he can drink it, however, he goes into his father’s room and sees that it was a ruse!  His father is still alive!  

This so startles William that he staggers backwards right over the balcony.  John Newland states the odds of all the son-first deaths being coincidence is a billion to one.  The odds of two dudes accidentally falling backwards to their death from an open window or balcony in back-to-back episodes on this blog is also unlikely.  However, if Alfred Hitchcock Presents pulls this crap next week (i.e. or maybe in seven months), now that will be a billion to one!

So, another well-done episode.

Other Stuff:

[1]  Wiki:  Monasteries had to train or hire a barber. They would perform bloodletting and minor surgeries, pull teeth and prepare ointments.  The Middle Ages saw a proliferation of barbers, among other medical “paraprofessionals”, including cataract couchers, herniotomists, lithotomists, midwives, and pig gelders.  Cool.

[2]  I would have gone for shoo-lang, but the internet is always right.  

[3]  The actor is actually 39.  Freak’n actors, man.

We have a new contender for oldest actor covered here.  Lumsden Hare (The Judge) was born in 1875.

Hollywood Royalty:  Donald Harron (Jamie and William) played Charlie, the KORN radio announcer, on Hee Haw.  His daughter directed American Psycho.

One Step Beyond – Brainwave (10/06/59)

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One Step Beyond aired 2 episodes of its 2nd season, then took a week off before airing this episode.  I will assume that was for some minor retooling.  The show now opens with a wavy animated intro floating over a starry background.  Sadly, it is very cheesy; this series has proven itself to be above — nay, beyond — such sci-fi tropes.  Besides, this series has always been about the afterlife, not space.

However they have also inserted a second new sponsored-by intro.  We are shown, in glorious B&W (that is not sarcasm), molten aluminum being poured into a vat which, hopefully, is not made of aluminum.  It really is a beautiful shot, but I have to wonder:  Who is this marketing directed toward?

John Newland intros the episode as not taking place in the USA (typical for OSB). Tonight we are set in Japanese waters during WWII. Wisely, they are not again expecting us to empathize with the enemy as they did in The Haunted U-Boat. OSB does its usual great job making the most of their budget, and seamlessly cutting in stock war footage. Well, seamlessly except for how the night sky was filled with tracers and flak one second, and the battle is in broad daylight the next. It is so well done, though, that it doesn’t matter.

Seaman Driscoll panics, but otherwise there is no major damage. The Captain is informed that the electrical board is out so they will be stuck there for 6 hours. He says he hopes no Japanese reconnaissance planes spot them. Hey, Cap’n how about those 10 planes that were shooting at you all night? You think they’re not going to tell any one?

Lt. Commander Stacey goes to check on Driscoll and finds Pharmacist’s Mate Harris drunk. He recommends a Court Martial to Captain Fielding since this is Harris’s third offense and he always bogarts the hooch.

Fielding goes to see Harris in the brig. Turns out Harris is tormented by the memory of his 19 year old brother who was killed. He wasn’t even supposed to be in the war. He was a medical missionary [1] who only wanted to, “take penicillin and the word of the Lord to the Hottentots.” After Pearl Harbor, Harris talked his brother into joining the army, and also suggested he take up smoking.

The Japanese attack again and Captain Fielding is hit. There is no surgeon onboard, so Stacey calls another ship. Dr. Bricker from the other ship is summoned. Harris is recruited to examine Fielding. Over the radio, Bricker tells him to scrub up. Bricker leads him through cleaning the wound and searching for shrapnel. During the most critical point, they lose radio contact.

After a few tense moments of radio silence, Bricker returns.  He leads Harris through tricky maneuvers required to remove a metal fragment near Fielding’s jugular, and to bill Cigna for a combat injury.  After both delicate operations are completed. Stacey returns and reports that Bricker had been killed several minutes earlier in a freak explosion on the Lido Deck.

Like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, One Step Beyond sometimes, and it is a rarity, coasts along on its sheer professionalism.  As usual, the episode is well-cast and well-directed.  The SFX, whether original or stock, solidly support the story.  But there are a couple of problems, large and small.

The large problem has been ongoing.  OSB has restricted itself to a small wedge of the genre.  There are just not many variations on the basic life-beyond-death premise.  So that sameness creeps into a lot of episodes.  

The problem with this specific episode is that it never completes the circuit.  OK, Harris has a brother killed in combat.  Later in the episode he is guided by a different dead man to complete an operation.  Where is the connection?  Why does it matter that Harris’s brother died?  It just feels like padding for a very thin story.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] OSB seems to have a thing for medical missionaries. This calling was last seen in The Riddle.
  • Dr. Bricker is played by Mr. Drysdale from The Beverly Hillbillies.
  • Among the competition that night: The Life and Legend of Wyatt Rifleman, The Many Loves of Tightrope, Fibber McGee and Arthur Murray, and for the kids — Molly Party! Woohoo!

Thanks to classic-tv for the screen shot.

One Step Beyond – Ordeal on Locust Street (09/22/59)

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Host John Newland shows us a house in Boston.  He says the door is kept locked at all times.   The curtains on the window are always drawn.  If they show a Pizza Guy driving up, I’ll get chills.

Anna Parish and her mother are planning for Anna’s beau Danny to visit the house — the first time anyone has been inside since they moved to Boston.  As they work on the Boston Baked Beans and Boston Cream Pie, they are surprised to hear someone shriek outside.  Mrs. Parish assures her daughter that no one can see in the windows.

Outside, Mr. Parish catches Danny still looking toward the window.  “What is it?” Danny cries.  He is shocked and tells Mr. & Mrs. Parish he had heard stories, but now “I saw for myself!  A red velvet chair!”  Well, that is an affront to good taste, but hardly worth screaming like a girl.  He continues, “That’s what was so horrible!  A red velvet chair with a high back!”  OK, lazy-boy, we get it.  Oh wait, he goes on to describe the occupant of the chair which he says would have seemed more at home in the sea than in a house. 

Over Anna’s objections, Mrs. Parish tells him that is her son, i.e. Anna’s brother.  Mrs. Parish assures him the problem is not hereditary or contagious but that they all got two shots and multiple boosters because Twitter experts unanimously told them too.  Danny contemplates missing out on Anna’s Pie and a hoped-for Southie, then flees like he just met Marilyn Munster’s family.

Anna screams that she hates her brother.  Mrs. Parish gives her two really good slaps. [2] Anna runs out of the room.  Her father tells his wife that either they put Jason “some place” or he will leave her.  So that’s the end of Mr. Parish.

Mrs. Parish brings in a defrocked doctor who has had success using a “mind force.”

Dr. Brown hypnotizes Anna as an example.  He does the usual tricks.  He has her raise her hand, act as if she had been burned, ignore the pain of a pin-prick, and check her 401(k) without digging her MAGA hat out of the closet.  He suggests to her that she will forget the pain of Danny running away and, hey, are those beans for anybody?

After reviving Anna, Doc Brown gets the key to Jason’s room.  The scene is from Jason’s POV.  He explains to Jason how he lost his medical license because he doubted the efficacy of masks, but might make an exception in this case.  He also warns that this might take a while.  We see the doctor take his scaley hands.  

Three months later, on Christmas Eve, Mr. Parish comes back home.  He has brought someone with him who will take Jason to a hospital.  Ma Parish is distraught; she will hear nothing of Jason being taken from his home.  She even gets a pistol out of the desk.  

As she is about to ventilate Mr. Parish, Anna enters the room, all smiles.  With her is Jason, now a handsome, unblemished young man.  Doc Brown’s crazy hypno-therapy got him out of that room!  Although the two of them living in there eating beans everyday for 3 months was probably also a factor.

John Newland tells us Doc Brown did not live to see hypnosis become accepted in the medical community.  No shit — I probably won’t either.  

Well, I guess OSB realized what I’ve said from the start.  Sticking to their slim slice of the genre pie was not sustainable.  There was just too much “sameness” to the ghost stories regardless of what time period and majority-white country they took place in.[1]  I appreciate their attempt to branch out, but this was a titular Step in the wrong direction.

Hypnosis might have its place in certain stories, or in helping people quit smoking, but this does not seem a likely application.  Just using the mind caused genetic deformities to disappear, caused scales to fall from his body, and left no scarring.  That’s a leap, even on the Christmas episode of a show about the supernatural. [3]

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  I’ve lost count (and interest) how many OSB episodes are set outside the USA, but they did seem to shoot for about 50%.  As I’ve mentioned before, they never got to Africa or Asia.  Well, they did have an episode in India, but I guess you can’t say “the Orient” any more.
  • [2]  Note to self:  Learn to make GIFs.  Also: running low on peanut butter.
  • [3]  Rules broken:  1) I’ve skipped other episodes about kids with “issues”, but Jason seemed to be older; even though I guess he had been a guppy at one time.  2) I usually skip Christmas episodes because they are so predictable and mawkish.  OSB tricked me by making the episode last 3 months.  And it felt that way, too.

One Step Beyond – Delusion (09/15/59)

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Wow, it is an almost-star cast!  Future Larry Tate from Bewitched, 22 year old Suzanne Pleshette in her 8th TV gig, and one of Hollywood’s few greats: Actor, Director, Producer Norman Lloyd;  George Mitchell and Marjorie Bennett might not be as famous, but their resumes are yuge.  Amazing what an actor can accomplish when they don’t watch MSNBC and Tweet all day.

Harold Stern is working remotely before that was a thing.  He is at home at a messy desk.  Unlike slobs today, he is not wearing his pajamas in a Zoom call; he is wearing a long-sleeve shirt and a necktie.  Although, being a tax accountant, maybe those are his pajamas.

He hears on the radio that the police are looking for him.  They give his last known address twice, although I’d like to think the police already checked there.  I must call out the poor inserts One Step Beyond uses of the police.  OSB has been consistently brilliant at incorporating stock footage of everything from wars to horseraces.  This time, however, the shots are blurry, have distracting shadows, and they seem a little dated even for a 1959 show.

In seconds, Detective Tate is knocking on his door.  Stern, living under an alias, tells him he has the wrong man and tries to close the door.  The officer pushes his way in, so we know this does not take place in Uvalde.  Turns out the police were searching for Stern so he could donate his rare blood type to a crash victim.

This is what Stern was trying to avoid.  He has donated blood 31 times in the past 15 years, but not in the last 3, which is the kind of straight-forward answer you would expect from a tax accountant.  Tate finds an excuse to drag him downtown — signing a false name to tax returns.  Although his choice of signing “Donald Trump” to avoid tax scrutiny was quixotic at best.

He explains to Detective Tate that whenever he gives blood, he can see the future of the recipient.  Sometimes they win the lottery, sometimes nothing happens, but other times they die.  He even has newspaper clippings to prove the fate of his donees.  Well, I don’t think Judge McMann [1] would accept that as evidence of precognition since the events have already taken place.  Stern is taken to the hospital where the girl’s father shames him into making the donation.  

A month later, the recipient, Martha Wizinski, comes to visit him.  That night Stern has a nightmare about Martha dying.  In a blatant HIPAA violation, he gets Martha’s address from the hospital and goes to her apartment.  He finds her unconscious from a gas leak and saves her life a second time.  

She gets mad at him looking out for her.  He offers her a job and a place to stay.  In the next few days, he chews her out for swimming after eating, running with scissors, and scissoring after eating.  She gets tired of his warnings and packs to leave. 

As she tries to leave, Stern struggles with her and somehow kills her.  Her boyfriend is standing right outside the front door.  He can hear this happening and does nothing .  Say, maybe this is Uvalde. 

Stern dies in an institute for the criminally insane.

It pains me to say it, but we might have found something Norman Lloyd was not great at.  He gives his usual fine performance here except when he has to go over the top in anger or panic.  Shockingly, he seems a little hammy. 

Suzanne Pleshette is just as trashy as you would hope her to be . . . maybe that is too judgmental:

  • She has no relationship with her father.  She says he disappeared from her life again after she pulled through. 
  • She has the deep Elizabeth Holmes voice which only works if you are cute or selling bogus complex technologies to horny old men who pretend to understand them. 
  • She can’t hold a job. 
  • In fact, during the episode, she goes to an interview at a strip club.
  • Sadly, the job is “camera girl.”  Low self-esteem or class?  You be the judge. 
  • Also, a smoker.

Sadly, the show again kills a random innocent person.  Even that death is botched.  We see them struggle, but how that turns into a murder is baffling.  The episode also suffers from a lack of suspense, scares, or creepiness.  The Standard Deviation on OSB is pretty slim but sadly, this is one of the lesser efforts.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  I finally got an answer to my question of whether McMann (of McMann & Tate) ever appeared in an episode of Bewitched. He only appeared twice and was played by 2 different actors, Roland Winters and Leon Ames.  At first I confused Leon Ames with Leon Askin.  I think my way would have been better.
  • Title Analysis:  What delusion?  I think Stern proved his abilities were real.
  • Norman Lloyd’s character dies at age 53 — exactly half the age Lloyd lived to.
  • Suzanne Pleshette was last seen in AHP’s Hitch Hike.