"One Step Beyond" Dead Ringer (TV Episode 1959) Poster

(TV Series)

(1959)

User Reviews

Review this title
5 Reviews
Sort by:
Filter by Rating:
8/10
Is it an out of body experience, paranormal sighting, or just an arsonist?
tinman1960200321 July 2006
In "Dead Ringer" (ep. 2-11) We meet Bill Quentin (Williams) who is brought to distraction by his wife's mysterious illness. She suddenly has a fever and then suffers from dreams that frighten her. When she recovers, she is always anxious about there being bad news in the newspaper. Especially reports of fires.

The doctor (Prentis) is baffled by Esther Quentin's (Norma Crane) mystery ailment. But when Esther convinces her husband to get the chief of police to come over, he is even more baffled. Esther confesses that she had a twin sister when they were growing up in the orphanage. She explains that there was a fire, and since then her sister has been insane and goes around setting fires, usually to orphanages and church run schools.

At first the chief is skeptical, but when Esther insists that she can "Will" her sister to call, he agrees to return to further investigate her claims. The next evening, the phone rings and a mysterious woman asks for Esther. Suddenly Esther has a vision of a church school being torched. The chief calls the school, which is in another town, miles away. While he is on the phone, the fire alarm breaks out and the nun he is speaking with must evacuate the school. Later they learn that no one was harmed.

Finally Esther insists that her sister will be at the train station and they must go and arrest her or the fires will continue. When Bill and the chief arrive at the station, a mysterious woman who resembles Esther is there. She looks frightened by their appearance and rushes into the station. When the men look inside, no one is there! They discover only one more thing, a call to the orphanage where Esther and her sister lived, results in the discovery that Esther did have a sister and that the girl was killed in the fire! Was the dead girl burning buildings? Or was it Esther causing the fires with her "fevers". What was the real problem? John Newland again explains that the events were real. The transfer of the episode is very good, the acting by Norma Crane is top notch. Well worth seeing this episode.
12 out of 12 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
6/10
Spontaneous Combustion?
sol-kay4 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
***SPOILERS*** Every time that Esther Quentin,Norma Crane, gets a fever a school,mostly a Catholic school or orphanage, bursts into flames sometimes as far as 250 miles away. This condition has Esther's concerned husband Bill, Grant Williams, have her checked out by the Quentin family physician Doc. Parker, Ed Prentiss, to see what's causing this condition. All Doc.Parker can come up with is that he can't come up with anything that he learned in medical school or came across as a practicing physician over the last 20 or some years.

It's when Esther finally reviles that she had an identical twin sister named Emiily who liked to play pranks on her and her fellow orphans at the orphanage that they were at that it becomes evident to her that she's the one causing all this fiery destruction. As much as Bill Doc. Parks and the local police Chief Wilson, Dort Clark, try to dismiss Esther's claims about Emily she still insists that she's the one causing all this damage!

***SPOILERS*** As it turns out it's discovered by Chief Wilson that Emily was indeed Esther's twin sister but she died in a fire at the orphanage that they were staying at when she was 10 years old! Could it be that both Emily and Esther are one and the same person? But what explains the fact that every time a fire breaks out at a school and orphanage within 250 from where the Quentin's live Esther knows about it before it hits the newspaper headlines?

It's up to the host Jon Newland to explain to the audience of what's exactly going on in this "One Step Beyond" episode because no one else can. And Newland doesn't do such a good job at explaining it in that you end up far more confused about what's going on after he explains it!

P.S It's good to see tall blond and handsome actor Grant Williams with his blond hair dyed jet black finally overcome his phobia of him not being quite able to measure up, to his six foot one inch frame, after shrinking into nothingness as Scott Carey in the movie "The Incredible shrinking Man" that he stared in two years earlier. In this episode at least Williams is the tallest actor in the entire cast!
5 out of 5 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
6/10
Two Sisters
AaronCapenBanner15 April 2015
Tale of two twins is the focus as Norma Crane plays Esther Quentin, a housewife who has fallen into a deep fever, where she claims to have a psychic vision of that twin sister, who is reputedly an arsonist in the process of burning down an orphanage. Grant Williams("The Incredible Shrinking Man") stars as her concerned but disbelieving husband, as indeed Esther 's vision is dismissed as being nothing more than a fever-induced delusion by both her doctor and the police. Eventually the claim is checked out with surprising results for all... Medium episode has an interesting enough premise but only generates a passable degree of dramatic fire.
4 out of 4 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
7/10
"I'm gonna get action on this right now."
classicsoncall3 February 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Well if nothing else, this story will hold your attention right until the very end. Esther Quentin (Norma Crane) has recently experienced spontaneous instances of burning fever so debilitating that they confine her to bed. Though there appears to be no apparent cause, the following day's newspaper usually carries a story of a disastrous fire. After some time, Esther insists that the fires are being set deliberately by her twin sister, though investigative work by the local police chief reveals that Esther's sister actually died in an orphanage fire when the girls were ten years old.

So was Esther responsible for the actions of an already dead sister? As he did for a first season episode of "One Step Beyond" called 'The Aerialist', series host John Newland offers a possible explanation for Esther herself being in two places at the same time, a phenomenon known as bilocation. To her mind, Esther's sister still existed as an 'etheric double' and the evil 'Emily' was her 'other self'. This all sounds rather perplexing, and the events occurring as they did at great distance between Esther and the physical locations of the fires beg some kind of explanation. Obviously, this is one of the more bizarre entries in the series and one for which there really is no satisfactory answer.
2 out of 2 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
4/10
Spontaneous Combustion
wes-connors14 March 2010
Warning: Spoilers
Sickly wife Norma Crane (as Esther) tells handsome husband Grant Williams (as William "Bill" Quentin) she has a wicked twin sister, who has been setting fires at orphanages. Family doctor Ed Prentiss (as Parks) and police chief Dort Clark (as Wilson) work with Ms. Crane and Mr. Williams to try to find evil twin "Emily" before she can either strikes up another blaze, or Crane goes completely insane. "Dead Ringer" doesn't exactly set the TV on fire. But, you do get to see a full-sized Williams ("The Incredible Shrinking Man") and character actress Olive Blakeley (Mrs. Aldrich) in her final performance.

**** Dead Ringer (12/1/59) John Newland ~ Norma Crane, Grant Williams, Ed Prentiss, Olive Blakeley
1 out of 4 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

See also

Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews


Recently Viewed