Night Gallery - Miss Lovecraft Sent Me

Sue Lyon (the titular character in Kubrick’s Lolita) arrives to babysit for “Miss Lovecraft”, meeting her vampire husband (Joseph Campanella) as he opens the door to his gothic castle. Dressed as a count, complete with slick backed hair, purplish skin tone, and white vampire fangs, Campanella applies a rich Transylvanian accent to fully embody a Lugosi-stylized Dracula archetype. While he prepares a fire and tells Lyon that Miss Lovecraft had already left “for the party”, Campanella proceeds to go to his son to inform him of the babysitter’s arrival. He tells his growling son that he would just “eat her up”. Meanwhile Lyon studies the various literary subjects on the book shelf near the fireplace, noticing that they all deal with the occult and Satanism. Right before this she didn’t see Campanella’s reflection in a mirror, but the book titles and the son that sounds more like a canine (references to Miss Lovecraft indicate that she is a werewolf) than human child flick a switch in her mind to flee the residence as fast as possible. Lyon’s eyes bugging and she dumps her little radio to the floor, with the door wide open indicating her quick exit close the episode as Campanella realizes he no longer has a babysitter. He had told her that he and the wifey would be back at dawn. Night Gallery had these quick shorts on each episode to pad out the running time of an hour. It is little more than a minor horror joke and, once it is over, nothing about Miss Lovecraft Sent Me gives you much to think about. It comes and goes. Campanella is amusing for the time he has, while Lyon chews gum and speaks about modern times. It is too bad Lyon never was able to truly capitalize on her fame from Lolita. That kittenish sex appeal never quite brought her stardom. Certainly done no favors is Lyon in a throwaway segment of Night Gallery.