Fans of
THE TWILIGHT ZONE and
OUTER LIMITS may want to check this out. When I was a kid in the late 70s/early 80s I had a marvelous book called
FANTASTIC TELEVISION (thanks to my sister Susan), produced by the people of
STARLOG magazine. It had episode guides to all the classic genre shows and made-for-TV movie summaries, so I was intimately aware of the episodes of, say,
THRILLER, long before I ever saw one. One of the most intriguing shows it featured was a lost TV show that ran against TWILIGHT ZONE and got cancelled. It was Roald Dahl's first foray into American media and it was called
WAY OUT (actually, it was called
'WAY OUT, with the comma).
There are some truly horrifying stills in the book from scary episodes of this creepfest, but like a lot of TV of that time it was lost to the vagaries of studio production and copies were not kept. Produced in New York, it was live and had local actors and the eerie electronic theme music was by noted electronic music composer Tod Dockstader. I know this because I was able to track down a video tape with the 5 remaining episodes back in the early 90's. For a short time, those 5 episodes were available on YouTube in the eartly aughts but eventually got pulled, IIRC. Anyway, they're up now at Archive.org for those who would like to check them out.
I can definitely recommend "Dissolve To Black" as the best of the available ones, as it hits a tone somewhere between the classic film
CARNIVAL OF SOULS and the
TWILIGHT ZONE episode "The After Hours". Enjoy!
General link to WAY OUT episodes"Dissolve To Black"
"So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall."
Roald Dahl
