One Step Beyond The Lost Episodes Collection (4-DVD)

Join host John Newland, "our guide into the world of the unknown," in rare episodes of this classic TV series that aired from 1959 to 1961. Based on unexplained real-life stories, we are taken beyond the five senses through dramatizations of supernatural happenings to everyday people. Though often compared to The Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond actually premiered nine months prior to that series. Alcoa Aluminium, makers of Alcoa Wrap, were the show's sponsors (in fact, the full title was Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond.)

BRAINWAVE: An alcoholic ship's doctor must perform a lifesaving operation on his captain as World War II rages outside. This tension-filled episode was written by The Twilight Zone's Charles Beaumont. Film historian and television personality Robert Osborne appears in one of his early acting roles.

DOOMSDAY: A 17th-century witch's curse still plagues the first-born sons of a Scottish family in the present day. The head of the clan is played by Torin Thatcher, best known as Sokurah the magician in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958).

REUNION: Four ex-Nazis hold a reunion, but lingering bitterness means they won't all leave alive.

THE GIFT: A phony fortune teller can suddenly predict the deaths of everyone around her.

THE BRIDE POSSESSED: A newlywed is possessed by the spirit of a recently murdered woman. "The Bride Possessed" is One Step Beyond's first episode. It stars Virginia Leith, who played the doomed disembodied head in the notorious cult classic The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962).

EMERGENCY ONLY: A psychic at a cocktail party tells a businessman that he will be killed on his next train voyage. The psychic is played by Jocelyn Brando, Marlon Brando's older sister.

TWELVE HOURS TO LIVE: A young woman is determined to save her husband's life after she has premonitions of his death.

PREMONITION: A teenage girl is convinced that the chandelier in her parents' dining room will be the cause of her death.

THE NAVIGATOR: The course of an ocean liner has been changed by a mysterious stowaway, who is the spitting image of a dead man. The stowaway is played by character actor Olan Soule, Aristotle ‘Tut' Jones on Captain Midnight (1954-1956) and the voice of Batman in Saturday morning cartoons for decades.

THE HAUNTED U-BOAT: A Nazi U-boat is haunted by the spirit of a dead crewman. The U-boat commander is played by Werner Klemperer, whose typecasting as a Nazi culminated in his most famous role, Colonel Klink on Hogan's Heroes (1965-1971).

THE IMAGE OF DEATH: The portrait of a murdered woman provides clues to the identity of her killer.

CONTACT: A voice inside an antique pocket watch compels a man to murder.

NIGHT OF THE KILL: A small boy returns home after being missing for three days, telling his parents that he was kidnapped by Bigfoot. Despite the child's insistence that it means no harm, a lynch mob wants to kill the creature. This unique episode, one of the first television depictions of the Bigfoot phenomenon, stars John Marley, best known for John Cassavetes' masterpiece Faces (1968) and his unforgettable part in The Godfather (1972).

THE DEATH WALTZ: A two-timing Southern belle is haunted by the ghost of a former lover. "The Death Waltz" stars Elizabeth Montgomery, years before she became a household name for Bewitched (1964-1972).

IF YOU SEE SALLY: A ghostly female hitchhiker haunts the highways, and vanishes before the drivers who pick her up can reach their destination. According to Gary Gerani's 1977 book Fantastic Television, ABC was inundated with letters from viewers reporting similar experiences after "If You See Sally" was broadcast.

THE SACRED MUSHROOM: One Step Beyond breaks format to present this documentary-style episode, in which series host John Newland journeys to Mexico to investigate reports of hallucinogenic mushrooms endowing the locals with telepathic powers. By show's end, Newland has ingested the mushrooms himself, and had a life-changing experience. "I think I understand...why for so many centuries they called this mushroom...sacred." According to Newland, series sponsor Alcoa would only air the program if he allowed his reactions to the mushroom to be filmed, putting his stamp of approval on the testimony of the other interviewees. However, due to growing concerns about drug abuse, "The Sacred Mushroom" was rarely rerun after its initial broadcast, making it the rarest episode of One Step Beyond.