With One Step Beyond: The Complete First Season(CBS), creator Merwin Gerard got the jump on The Twilight Zone by premiering in January 1959, nine months before Rod Serling’s classic anthology series. These half-hour episodes, directed by their host John Newland, were based on what were called real-life paranormal occurrences rather than the imaginative fiction of The Twilight Zone. Even so, there are effective shows here, like a man arriving on a Mediterranean island for the first time but where everyone knows him, or the honeymoon of a couple on the Titanic after the wife has a premonition that her husband will drown. One Step Beyond’s “hook” is enough for even the lamest of its episodes to give viewers a creepy chill down their spines—including its melodramatic pilot, “The Bride Possessed,” which is shown in an extended version as one of a few brief extras.
began writing reviews in 1983 for his college newspaper, the Buffalo State Record. Since then, he's written about movies, music, theater, books and videos/DVDs for the New York Times, Buffalo News, Buffalo Night-Life Magazine, Metro Weekend, Blue Dog Press, Queens Resident, New York Resident, Stagebill, Playbill, Time Out New York, Brooklyn Bridge magazine, Musicworks magazine, Brooklyn Paper, West Side Spirit/Our Town, staticmultimedia.com, amazon.com, film-forward.com, filmfestivaltraveler.com and timessquare.com. He's also written the program notes for Brooklyn Philharmonic concerts and penned the liner notes for the 2004 Special Edition CD of "The Big Chill" soundtrack.
With One Step Beyond: The Complete First Season (CBS), creator Merwin Gerard got the jump on The Twilight Zone by premiering in January 1959, nine months before Rod Serling’s classic anthology series. These half-hour episodes, directed by their host John Newland, were based on what were called real-life paranormal occurrences rather than the imaginative fiction of The Twilight Zone. Even so, there are effective shows here, like a man arriving on a Mediterranean island for the first time but where everyone knows him, or the honeymoon of a couple on the Titanic after the wife has a premonition that her husband will drown. One Step Beyond’s “hook” is enough for even the lamest of its episodes to give viewers a creepy chill down their spines—including its melodramatic pilot, “The Bride Possessed,” which is shown in an extended version as one of a few brief extras.
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