Night Gallery - Fright Night

I’ve always liked Stuart Whitman and Barbara Anderson is a loving, patient, affectionate, doting wife (probably would make many cringe today, or perhaps even then), so the casting works for the most part in this haunted countryside episode of Night Gallery. It really isn’t “Fright Night” as the title suggests but more like “Fright Days and Nights”. I think the best part of the episode is the emphasis on a really cool portrait of Alan Napier, with plenty of atmospheric lighting and close-ups giving his face a sinister quality, as if his Cousin Zachariah, known to the locals to be a very difficult man who practices and studies the occult, is not as dead as his distant relative, Tom Ogilvy and wife Leona were led to believe. Ellen Corby has a brief but fun appearance as Zachariah’s only lasting employee, a housekeeper who doesn’t stay after dark and is quite bossy and snappy. She tries to warn Tom and Leona that to stay at this country home (heavily furnished with antiques and furniture) would perhaps bring unpleasant dangers, that Zachariah was involved in the dark arts. The conclusion of the episode as Napier, ghoulishly undead and attired like the Grim Reaper, on Halloween, looking for a trunk he insisted shouldn’t be moved from the attic.

Now my DVD’s caption has the two disputing ghouls emerging from the very lively trunk listed as “Goblin 1 & 2” so perhaps that is what they are, but it appears they desire to have Leona’s soul and want Tom to burn her lips with hot, white liquid (later cooking to warm milk, yuck!, that is almost the case when the two become enraged with each other, brought on by the dark atmosphere of the location and evil that resides in the house) in order to carry out a cursed possession. Lots of crickets and birds chirping away but going silent just briefly when the darkness of the house kicks up, and the presentation of the trunk’s wickedness by character actor-director, Jeff Corey, distorts what Tom sees, treating him to a psychedelic kind of trip. As the episode goes on Tom becomes increasingly agitated and short-tempered while Barbara, so thoughtful and level-headed until fear of what the house will do to her starts to emerge (one of the goblins actually forces itself on her, leaving print-marks on her arm), eventually goes off on her husband for his bad case of writer’s block and lack of financial well-being. There is a nice stoppage of the high tension doom and gloom when kids in masks pop up at their door knocking, trick-or-treating, with Tom and Leona able to giggle a bit. Then Zachariah arrives for the trunk, instead leaving it for next year, providing enough incentive for Tom and Leona to leave all this bullshit behind. I think this is all spookshow theatrics, very much mining the usual haunted house tricks, nothing much that really stands “Fright Night” out from its betters. Whitman as Tom grows wearier as the book he’s tasked to write doesn’t coming together, and the house’s dark personality interferes with his life. I liked Anderson as the wife, her patience wearing thin as the goblins make their presence known, even typing out a dark plot intended for her. But this is very much Amityville light. 2.5/5