Way Out — Season 1, Episode 3: The Sisters
Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy • 25 min • 1 season, 14 episodes • ★ 7.0/10
Episode synopsis
Harriet, the older sister, is immaculately neat; Louise, the younger sister, is a slob. (think: ""The Odd Couple"".) They live together in a cliff-house in Maine. Not only does the domineering Harriet impose her tidy housecleaning habits on Louise, she tries to run her life too-- Harriet ""forbids"" Louise to date Paul Marchand. Possessive Harriet tells Louise she doesn't need men-- after all, they are sisters and will have each other forever. One day, Louise lets Harriet fall off the cliff. Now Louise can do as she likes, and date Paul; (or so she thinks). At night, a woman like Harriet goes around compulsively doing housecleaning. One day, Paul comes to the front door, asking to see Louise. Even though Louise answers the intercom, it is in Harriet's voice that she tells Paul to go away. Louise has become her dead sister. [in the character of Louise-- who adopted the habits of the person she killed-- I see a bit of Norman Bates, from Alfred Hitchcock's ""Psycho"" (1960).]
About Way Out
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.