Halloween Picks: Rod Serling's Night Gallery, Part 4

 While it may not be the absolute summit of Night Gallery, the opening segment of Episode 3 of Season 2 certainly satisfies the premise of the show. It was really a pleasure to be re-introduced to it after all these years. It's one of those episodes I don't have a solid recollection of, yet is tantalizingly familiar. In terms of good old-fashioned horror, it's hard to beat Since Aunt Ada Came to Stay.

In this first of three segments, James Farentino plays a professor of the scientific method who is forced to grapple with implications of the supernatural when his wife's weird old Aunt Ada comes to their happy home, presumably to live out her final years. The teacher quickly becomes wary of the old biddy, who seems to have a penchant for vanishing into thin air, killing off vegetation and pushing her special brand of tea on the Mrs, to "calm her nerves". After bringing a sample of the suspect tea to the university for chemical analysis, he is told that it's a seaweed and is referred to a colleague, the Professor of Metaphysics (Jonathan Harris, best known as Dr. Smith on Lost in Space) for information about the alleged medicinal uses of the plant. The eccentric old metaphysician informs him that the substance is known as "witches' weed" and is used to prepare a chosen victim to be possessed by the witch's spirit. And the coming midnight of the full moon, as it turns out, is the optimum time for the ritual possession to take place. Somewhere in here he finds out that Aunt Ada is an imposter, yadda, yadda, yadda, some other spooky stuff happens and let me just conclude by saying that green carnations figure prominently into the plot. (8/10)

Inspired directing from Jerrold Freedman keeps things interesting on the visual front, and best of all veteran actress Jeanette Nolan plays the role she seems ideally suited for: the old witch posing as Aunt Ada. Nolan was so good at playing witches she played them in two great episodes of Boris Karloff's Thriller, Parasite Mansion ( which also stars my good friend Beverly Washburn of Spider Baby) and, a title I'll be looking at later, La Strega. As to the strangely abrupt way in which this episode ends, if anyone knows what the story behind that is, I'd be interested in finding out. It seems like this segment could have been extended if only they'd thought better of including the next one, the mostly worthless "comedy blackout" With Apologies to Mr. Hyde.

There seems to be the potential of something happening in this stale little misfire--it stars Batman's Adam West as Jekyll and Hyde and Executive Producer Jack Laird as his hunchback assistant, and the laboratory setpiece is pretty cool--but it's all for a Laugh-In- quality pun that only wastes a couple of minutes, regardless. (3/10)

Speaking of Laugh-In, the final segment, The Flip Side of Satan stars a regular face on the 1970's variety show, Arte Johnson, as a disreputable disc-jockey who finds his misdeeds rewarded with a graveyard gig at a radio station of the damned. A classic story, this segment isn't bad at all, allowing the actor to exhibit his talents in an exclusively one-man show. On the down side, the shoe-string budget of the short is all too apparent in the rather unspectacular climax. (6.5/10)

Halloween Picks: Rod Serling's Night Gallery, Part 2

 Aside from The Cemetery, and a few other segments (The Eyes, The Dead Man, The Doll), the short season one (only six episodes) of Night Gallery did little to arouse my vague sense of nostalgia for the show. The more celebrated season 2 fared better, though I don't seem to clearly recollect most of them, either. Indeed, The Painted Mirror and Green Fingers are the only two segments of the second season that I have unshakeable memories of. Still, the difference in quality between the two seasons was already apparent to me with this episode, The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes/Miss Lovecraft Sent Me/The Hand of Borgus Weems/Phantom of What Opera?--even if this was the first episode to feature the infamous "comedy blackout" segments so hated by Rod Serling and derided by fans and critics alike.

The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes was probably a good choice to launch the first true season of the anthology series. It was one of a handful of Night Gallery segments actually written by Rod Serling (whose actual creative contribution to the show was contractually limited by Universal) and it was similar in tone and plot--more than most of Night Gallery--to Serling's legendary Twilight Zone. The segment involves a boy (Clint Howard, brother of Ron) who seems gifted with extraordinary prophetic powers. When his prediction of a Los Angeles earthquake proves exactly accurate, he is given his own television show with an audience that grows with each amazing prognostication--until a final, dire prediction leaves him with a difficult choice.

One could be forgiven for not seeing this as much of a Halloween episode, per se, but there is an appropriately gloomy sci-fi atmosphere during the conclusion. I don't seem to remember seeing this one as a kid, though, so I can't say if it lived up to my expectations. (7/10)

 

 Miss Lovecraft Sent Me is a bit of fluff about a bubble-headed babysitter, played by Sue Lyon (Lolita!), who arrives at the creepy abode of her new client (a decidedly Lugosi-esque Joe Campanella), but begins to have second thoughts when the perilous nature of the assignment is made all too obvious.

Not much thought was spared for this lame one-liner of an episode but I kind of like it. I like to think it fits in better when you consider the fact that this was 1971, the same year The Groovie Goolies was on Saturday morning television. Anyway, it's too short to be very objectionable. (5.5/10)

 The third segment, The Hand of Borgus Weems, is a bit more substantive. A sort of reverse variation of The Hands of Orlac, it concerns a seemingly sane man who goes to a surgeon (Ray Milland) with the request that his right hand be surgically removed, it having fallen under the control of a mysterious--and murderous--power.

Of course any story about a person losing control of a limb to supernatural forces has the potential to descend into parody, and this one skirts the line of camp, certainly. But I think it works on kind of a light-weight 70s acid-trip level. (6.5/10)

Comedy Black-out #2, Phantom of What Opera?, comes off as kind of an homage to the famous unmasking scene in Lon Chaney's 1925 Phantom of the Opera with a screwball twist at the climax. But who is that under the phantom make-up? None other than Leslie "don't call me Shirley"/Frank Drebbin Nielsen in an early comic role! (4.5/10)

Halloween Picks: Rod Serling's Night Gallery, Part 1

 While catching up recently on episodes of Night Gallery, unseen since the early 1970's, I was surprised how few of the them I actually remember watching.  I think as a kid I was completely captivated by the familiar opening blurb--the short, ominous Night Gallery theme accompanied by overlapping images of horrible distorted faces and creepy works of art--but by the time Rod Serling's eerie exposition gave way to the subject of that week's morbid masterpiece, my youthful disinclination to follow storylines more complex than Scooby Doo must have generally driven me to whatever else was competing for my attention that evening. Or maybe I was just too terrified to go on watching those less familiar episodes. Actually, that might have been the case with some of the episodes, seeing them today. All I can be sure of is that the original pilot episode's first segment, The Cemetery, is one episode that was burned into my memory exactly because it was so freaky.

 

The Cemetery (1.1.1) involves a scheming wastrel, played with a wonderful villainous zeal by Roddy McDowell, who bumps off his ailing millionaire uncle for the inheritance, only to find his sanity threatened by his uncle's seemingly haunted painting of the nearby family cemetery--a changing canvas which promises a hideous retribution from the grave. (7/10)

 

 Frantic with terror, the evil nephew rips the phantom painting from the wall and stumbles down the staircase, breaking his neck. It turns out that the rich uncle's faithful butler Portifoy (played by Ossie Davis) arranged for an artist to make several copies of the painting which progressively showed the uncle emerging from his grave and coming to the front door. No sooner than Portifoy--who is the old man's alternate heir in case of the nephew's untimely demise, naturally--can drink to his ill-gotten fortune than the painting begins to change for him, this time for real. This strange turn--that the nephews undead vengeance should be genuine while the uncle's had to be fabricated-- deepens the the absurdity of the plot, but I don't suppose I gave that much thought as a kid.

 

The second and third segments of the Night Gallery pilot are memorable, too, but a little depressing for Halloween viewing, in my opinion. In fact, I'm going to skip ahead to the far superior season 2 for my next pick, which happens to be the four-part first episode: The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes/Miss Lovecraft Sent Me/The Hand of Borgus Weems/Phantom of What Opera?