One Step Beyond
An anthology that claimed every story was true, a year before The Twilight Zone said the opposite.
One Step Beyond opens with a main title sequence of 28 seconds.
At 28 seconds, it opens well under the 50-second median for horror sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on ABC in 1959, when American Bandstand, The Lawrence Welk Show and The Edge of Night were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
28sFan upload.
More horror opening titles from the 1950s
1 sequence
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Twin Peaks
A bird, a sawmill blade and a waterfall, over Angelo Badalamenti at a tempo no network would approve today — ninety seconds of a town being described before anyone in it speaks.
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The Rookie
A five-second card: THE ROOKIE in tall white capitals over a row of Los Angeles palms against a hazy blue sky, and the episode is under way.
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Dancing with the Stars
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Scrubs
Twelve seconds, an X-ray and a guitar — a medical comedy that spends less time on titles than most shows spend on a network ident.
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Modern Family
Fourteen seconds of family photographs sliding into place, and a card. Nothing else.
- Season 1