Greed

In this short tale, it is question of gold seekers. Well, I guess those two characters searched for gold as John Newland searched for inspiration. The first part of this story is OK, not bad, because it shows a solid picture of two ordinary people in whom some audiences could recognize themselves. A couple with money problems who suddenlly, of course, will have to face eerie issues, enter into some kind of a twilight zone. The second part is still better than the previous episodes of this NEXT STEP BEYOND tv show, but in the end, it is disapointing, not too much but still flat. However my feelings are a bit better than in the other stories of this seventies STEP BEYOND series. But I will always prefer ONE than NEXT. Plus, John Newland remade his own stuff from the early sixties. He thought that the audiences would be too dumb to notice?

Failed writer and his wife in a cheap motel... husband wakes up and finds he's written a short story in his sleep... Wife submits the story to a magazine... Oh yes, we remember 'Dead Man's Tales' from the old black-&-white 'One Step Beyond' series. And this remake leaves us wondering why they bothered reviving the series at all, with so little to show for it. (It folded within months).

As before, the short-story mysteriously turns out to be an accurate account of two brothers venturing into the goldfields, where they quarrel and shoot each other. One of the widows reads the story and demands to know how they learned the details. Using the money he earned for the story, the husband finds his way to the remote location... and there we must leave it, partly because I don't do spoilers, and partly because I didn't quite grasp the scrambled ending!

Our host John Newland, looking only a little older and greyer, ends on a mini-sermon about greed of gold. Virginia Leith, as the widow, carries a bit more conviction than the unknown used on the earlier version. Apart from that, I don't see any virtue in the new full-colour production.