by G. Jack Urso
World of Darkness (1977) and The World Beyond (1978) are hour-long pilot
movies for a proposed supernatural series about a man who dies in a motorcycle accident
but is brought back to life with the ability to talk with the dead. The concept
draws a bit from Kolchak: The Night
Stalker with a roving reporter investigating classic horror concepts and
reflects the paranoid psychological plots in the post-Rosemary’s Baby/The Exorcist
era. Both films are presented below from the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.
The winters of
1977 and 1978 were long and brutal but having a small portable black and white
TV set, I was able to tune into shows that I was unable to convince my family
to watch on the color set. The concept revolves around a sportswriter Paul
Taylor (Granville
Van Dusen) who, after being briefly deceased, returns with the ability to
communicate with the dead, or more accurately, they with him. The spirit of a
dead person reaches out to Taylor and urges him to help someone close to the
deceased. Taylor is compelled to help to quiet the voice until the next case
comes along.
World
of Darkness (1977)
World of Darkness, on the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.
The first pilot
movie, World of Darkness, a.k.a. The World of Darkness, with the episode title “Sentence of Death,” (original airdate April 17, 1977) jumps in with Paul
Taylor already accustomed to the voices of the dead and on a case. His origin
story is told all in a 90-second pre-credits sequence. We don’t learn anything
about Taylor’s personal life except that he is a sportswriter, which seems to
be almost a spurious detail since we don’t see Taylor show any interest at all
in sports or reference his career in either of the pilot films. No family or
friends are referenced. Taylor is as much a mystery as those he investigates.
The supernatural
aspect of the story is minimal. The voices guide Taylor at a couple points in
the tale, but those aspects could have been written out entirely and the plot
put forth as any standard mystery-thriller. The supernatural part does give it
a distinguishing characteristic, but the story slows down in the second act and
nearly comes to a halt in the third act. Even the climatic fourth act is bogged
down by too much exposition.
Director Jerry
London, who directed the epic 1980 miniseries Shogun, worked with what he had, but the short run length of 50
minutes, hampered his options. Writer Art Wallace had a long resume starting in
1954 and included many of the hit shows of the era, including work on Dark Shadows, writing 87 episodes,
serving as story creator and developer for 267 episodes, and writing the series’
bible, as reported by the extensive Dark
Shadows Wiki. It is from this classic series we see Wallace draw on to
create a moody atmosphere in a large, old house with characters driven by fate
and circumstances; however, it also lapses into the weakness of the soap opera
format (which Dark Shadows was) in
creating long bits of dialog to explain the story rather than let the action
tell the tale and trust the viewers to follow along.
The
World Beyond (1978)
The World Beyond, on the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.
Whatever the
problems were with World of Darkness,
it generated enough interest to warrant a second pilot, once again staring Granville
Van Dusen as Paul Taylor and JoBeth Williams
and Barnard Hughes.
Wallace, this time around creates a truly terrifying horror tale with The World Beyond, with the episode title “The Mud
Monster” (original airdate January 27, 1978). Though it does bog down a bit in
the third act, it’s not quite to the point of World of Darkness. In this pilot, Taylor is compelled by the voice of
a dead man who sends him to protect his sister, played by Williams, from a
monster the man unleashed with an ancient ritual — a golem, a creature made of
mud with a murderous intent.
TV Guide ad.
Set on a secluded island in Maine, Taylor and
Williams are led further into danger by a terrified local played by Hughes. Trapped
in a boarded-up old home in the wilds of Maine and hunted by a soulless monster,
the isolated location intensifies the paranoia and danger. Watching it alone on
a cold winter night, it actually did terrify me a bit as a kid. Wallace learns
from first pilot and cuts down the exposition, increases the action, and makes
the danger tangible.
(Left to right) Barnard Hughes, JoBeth Williams, Granville Von Dusen.
Like the first
pilot, the episode ends with Paul Taylor heading back on the road to face the
unknown yet again somewhere else. The 1970s had a pattern of lonely men cursed with
extraordinary gifts fated to walk alone. The
Incredible Hulk with Bill Bixby comes to mind in this regard, as well as The Six Million Dollar Man and The Man from Atlantis. Taylor fits into
this pattern, but as Homes needs a Watson, as Mulder needs a Scully, or as Kolchak
needs an exasperated editor, Taylor needs a partner to play off of and make necessary
bits of exposition fit more naturally into the narrative. This may have evolved
had the pilot gone to series as I think the lonely, rugged hero bit would run
its course quickly.
The pit where the golem was created.
Slasher horror
film aficionados will likely find the “World of” films boring, and, in truth, both
do suffer from a middle act slow down, World
of Darkness more so than The World
Beyond; however, fans of gothic horror like Dark Shadows or the Hammer Studios films will discover some familiar
elements to cling to. Of the two, and with Halloween upon us, I definitely suggest
The World Beyond as the go-to film.
I
have a friend who had a near-death out-of-body experience, and it certainly
changed her. Yet, in a way, every time we dream we have a sort of out-of-body experience
and every time when we sleep, we flirt with death, giving ourselves over to unconsciousness
and trusting that we will wake from our visit to The World Beyond . . . won’t we?
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