Horror on TV: One Step Beyond 2.27 “The Clown” (dir by John Newland)


For tonight’s excursion into televised horror, I want to change things up.  Tales From The Crypt will return on Monday but, for the next three days, I want to take a look at some different show.

Like One Step Beyond, for example!

Now, I have to admit that I don’t know much about One Step Beyond.  I came across several episodes on YouTube while I was searching for any Twilight Zone episodes.  Apparently, One Step Beyond was an anthology series that aired from 1957 to 1960.  (It actually predated the Twilight Zone.)  One Step Beyond often claimed that its stories were meant to be dramatizations of actual events.

The episode below is from the 2nd season.  It originally aired on March 22nd, 1960.  The title of this episode?

The Clown.

Scared yet?

You should be.  Clowns are creepy!

Watch the episode below and find out just how creepy!

Enjoy!

 

Horror On TV: One Step Beyond 2.5 “Night of the Kill”


John Newland is back with yet another “true” story designed to take us One Step Beyond.  In this episode, a young boy named Dewey goes missing but then shows back up and says that he’s been hanging out with a Bigfoot-like monster.

This episode first aired on October 20th, 1959.

 

Horror On TV: One Step Beyond Ep. 16 “The Burning Girl”


When I first started searching YouTube for episodes to use in this feature, I came across quite a few episodes of an old black-and-white TV show called One Step Beyond.  Running for three seasons (from 1959 to 1961), One Step Beyond was hosted by John Newland.  Every week, Newland would tell the audience about some sort of possible paranormal phenomena.  Then, a dramatization of a “real” event would be shown and occasionally, the show would end with Newland interviewing the real people whose story we had just watched.

To me, that all sounds like a lot of fun.

The 16th episode of One Step Beyond was called The Burning Girl and it dealt with a teenage girl who, whenever she got upset, could apparently cause fires to spontaneously erupt.  It was written by Catherine Turney and directed by John Newland himself.

It was originally broadcast on May 5th, 1959 — presumably long before Stephen King even had the idea to write about a girl named Carrie.