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95 of 96 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
"One Step Beyond" deserves much better, April 27, 2004
This review is from: One Step Beyond (DVD)
Can't some company, somewhere give "One Step Beyond" the respect it deserves? I have long admired this fantastic, bizarre anthology series. I remember watching it as a kid first run on television and being scared to death. "Your tour guide into the unknown" John Newland is enough to scare the pants off of anybody, especially the way he wanders through a lot of the episodes. He's usually not content to just show up at the beginning like Rod Serling. While Serling presented himself as the sardonic writer/host of "The Twilight Zone," Newland as director/host of "One Step Beyond" is presented with all the charm of a funeral director who has just heard about a 25 car pile-up on the interstate. He's just plain creepy. The episodes presented here are, for the most part, great. It's the prints for most of the episodes that are lousy. Most are too dark and are full of scratches and specks of dirt. But the worst sin of all is that many are so choppy from splices that it ruins a lot of the dialogue, and dialogue is an important element in the enjoyment (and sometimes understanding) of "One Step Beyond." These prints look like worn-out 16mm films found in the backroom of some television station. Why can't some company out there give the same treatment to "One Step Beyond" that was done a few years ago with "The Twilight Zone"? In other words, clean up the picture and the sound, digitally remaster each episode, or, better yet, find the original negatives and work from those. Let's see this "journey into the unknown" the way it was meant to be. Geez, it that asking too much?
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95 of 99 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The reason for quality issues, September 16, 2004
This review is from: One Step Beyond (DVD)
Well, allow me to explode a little myth. The reason these episodes are in such "low quality" is not because the company "doesn't care about the customer" or some such shallow gripe. The reason these DVD discs are mastered from somewhat bad quality 16 mm film prints is that this series is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN. Almost everything released by Delta is a Public Domain film or TV show. That means (usually) that the copyright holder has gone bankrupt and did not renew the copyright, causing the content to enter the public domain (a very difficult and complicated topic, look at www.eldred.cc for more information).
Anyway, sometimes this means that the negatives or "masters" are not even available. They may have been misplaced in storage, are held in some tight-fisted collector's vault, or simply thrown in the garbage by someone who did not know what exactly they had. In such a case, the only copies left are film prints floating around in the hands of various collectors. This is probably also the reason why not all of the episodes have been released: the releasing company could only lay their hands on a certain number of 16 mm film prints out of the entire series. Fortunately, the fact that these episodes are in the Public Domain means that we, the public, can legally see them, since a company (or anyone else) can legally duplicate and sell them. So don't cry or moan about the low quality here: we're probably lucky we've got these episodes to view at all. As far as the dramatic content, there's plenty here for fans of The Twlight Zone and other similar shows, and I can recommend them highly on that basis with no qualms or modifiers whatsoever. Great stuff out of the past.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One Of The Scariest Shows On Television, July 24, 2005
This review is from: One Step Beyond (DVD)
...was One Step Beyond, hands down. I first saw this show as a kid and it scared the bejesus out of me. It must be a psychological thing but old black-and-white films have an eerieness that is lost on color film, and to turn up the chill factor even more was that spooky Harry Lubin score that usually played in the background just at the climax of a scary scene.
This show didn't have to rely on a lot of special effects to scare a person witless since most of the terror came from the fact that all of the episodes were based on true stories. Also, John Newland did a splendid job setting up the show and lended, as others here have noted, a sense of creepiness to the proceedings.
BTW, you'll recognize many an actor and actress in these shows, many before they became famous. So sit back, prop your feet up, and break out the popcorn. Just don't turn off the lights!
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