World of Darkness — The World Beyond

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 concept revolves around sportswriter Paul Taylor (Granville Van Dusen) who, after an accident which left him dead for a few minutes, 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 mentioned. Taylor is as much a mystery as those he investigates.

Van Dusen as
Paul Taylor.

Here, a voice from beyond compels Taylor to intervene with Clara Sanford. Clara’s father committed suicide prior to the start of the events in the film and is visiting her Aunt Joanna due to the dubious and unexplained details of her father’s death — and Clara is hearing voices from beyond as well. During the course of his investigation, Paul discovers Joanna has a son who hasn't left his room in five years, and this knowledge puts him and Clara at risk.

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 the characters spending too much time explaining the events, even during the final confrontation.

TV Guide listing.

Director Jerry London, who helmed the epic 1980 miniseries Shogun, worked with what he had, but the script is long on exposition. 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 joined by JoBeth Williams as Marian, who Taylor has been called upon to help, and Barnard Hughes as local Andy Borchard. Wallace, this time around creates a truly terrifying horror tale with The World Beyond, with the episode title “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, and which killed him in return — a golem. A creature made of mud and having a murderous intent. 

TV Guide ad and listing.

Set on a secluded island in Maine, Taylor and Marian are unwittingly led further into danger by a reluctant Borchard, who suspects the reported mud monster is real. 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 and Kung Fu with David Carradine come 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, The World Beyond better reflects the intended series concept. 

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 up from our visit to The World Beyond . . . won’t we?

 

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