'Way Out
Entry updated 19 November 2023. Tagged: TV.
US tv series (1961). Talent Associates for CBS-TV. Produced by Jacqueline Babbin, Mike Donn. Created by David Susskind. Directors include Marc Daniels, Daniel Petrie, Seymour Robbie, Boris Sagal, Ron Winston. Writers include Irving Gaynor Neiman Jr, Sumner Locke Elliott and Philip H Reisman Jr. Makeup artist: Dick Smith. Host: Roald Dahl. 14 25-minute episodes. Black and white.
A Television Anthology Series of macabre tales, the initial episode being adapted from Roald Dahl's own story "William and Mary" (in Kiss Kiss coll 1960), about a dying professor who volunteers to have his brain kept alive by artificial means (see Brain in a Box). Its range covered horror, fantasy, and some borderline sf tales; the latter included "Button, Button" (28 April 1961), about impending nuclear war, and "Soft Focus" (7 July 1961,) about a photographic retouching fluid whose changes carried over from photos to the faces of the original subjects. Despite being of good quality the programme lasted only four months, perhaps because so many of the tales seemed overly grim to the 1961 US Television audience.
'Way Out was paired on Friday evenings with the original The Twilight Zone (1959-1964), but even so its ratings were never very strong. The series has never been released to the home video market. [GSt/LW]
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