6.0Season 1 • Episode 14
LatestHarvey Cartwright is a timid little man with a shrew of a wife; he is an encyclopedia salesman. Since he can't see well with his new eyeglasses, he accidentally goes to the wrong address: the Jellifers had not asked about a free trial offer of encyclopedias. Their line is taxidermy, they keep stuffed animals-- like Mahatma, a stuffed viper. At home, nagging wife Stephanie harps that she was better off with her previous husband Stanley, before he died. Harvey only wishes to escape from his awful life-- whether at work or at home, he is miserable. Harvey finds out that his new eyeglasses have magical powers: by putting them on, he is reunited with the Jellifers at their place. The Jellifers tell him their stuffed animals can come back to life and kill people; Harvey offers them money to have Mahatma the viper kill his nagging wife Stephanie at 3:00 a.m. But at 3 o'clock in the morning, it is Stephanie who is wearing the magical eyeglasses. It seems she was friends with the Jellifer
Way Out was a 1961 fantasy and science fiction television anthology series hosted by writer Roald Dahl. The macabre 25-minute shows were introduced by Dahl's dry delivery of a brief introductory monologue, sometimes explaining a method of murdering a spouse without getting caught. The taped series began because CBS suddenly needed a replacement for a Jackie Gleason talk show that network executives were about to cancel, and producer David Susskind contacted Dahl to help mount a show quickly. The series was paired by the network with the similar The Twilight Zone for Friday evening broadcasts, running from March through July 1961 at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, under the primary sponsorship of Liggett & Myers. Writers included Philip H. Reisman, Jr. and Sumner Locke Elliott. The premiere episode, "William and Mary", adapted from a Roald Dahl short story, told of a wife getting revenge on her husband. In "Dissolve to Black", an actress cast as a murder victim at a television studio goes through a rehearsal, but the drama merges with reality as she finds herself trapped on the show's near-deserted set. Other dramas offered startling imagery: a snake slithering up a carpeted staircase inside a suburban home, a disembodied brain in a jar, a headless woman strapped to an electric chair, with a light bulb in place of her head and half of a man's face erased.
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