Bill Russo's video: Science Fiction Theater: The Legend of Crater Mountain S 2 E 16 1956

On the menu in this episode of SFT is a two-course serving of UFOs and Telekinesis. The ingredients are skillfully blended, and served one after the other. First up – the legend of a UFO. It was a spaceship that was seen in the skies of the far west, near the Cascades. The ship was visible for a few moments as a bright light in the sky, before crash landing on a plateau of one of the peaks. It left a large crater that gave the mountain its name. The crash was said to have occurred two hundred years ago. On the flat waste-lands below, is a tiny village of a few hundred people. There is a one room school house with eight pupils. Three of them are from a family which has a two-hundred-year history of powerful paranormal abilities, handed down from one generation to the next. The disruptive trio of siblings badger the teacher, forcing the chalk to fly from her hand, and making a map fall from the wall to the floor. After those nuisance incidents, the kids’ anger increases, and the real trouble begins. This is one of the season two black and white episodes. The producers were an early adopter of ‘color’ TV. All of the season one episodes were produced in color, which was an expensive extra in the early days of TV. In season two, they apparently decided the extra expense was not warranted, so all of the second season episodes are in black and white. Before the Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond, and the Outer Limits, there was Science Fiction Theater, which ran from 1955 to 1957. Hosted by Truman Bradley, a radio/TV announcer and 1940s film actor, each episode of Science Fiction Theater introduced stories based on scientific or pseudo scientific Principles. The tales usually related to the life or work of scientists, engineers, inventors, and explorers. The program concentrated on such concepts as space flight, robots, telepathy, flying saucers, time travel, and the intervention of extraterrestrials in human affairs. Broadcasting a total of 78 episodes, I t was also known as Beyond The Limits for repeat syndication during the 1960s, and alternatively as Science Fiction Theater.