Revisiting the First Season of Night Gallery...

I had wrapped up the third season (and additional content included, “the Lost Tales”) from my DVD set and has some time to kill Sunday evening so I slipped in the first disc of the first season—I had intended to watch all the episodes of this set much earlier in 2019 but never seemed to get around to it—and watched the Pilot (after the official first season episode, with “The Dead Man” and “The Housekeeper”). It just reminded me of how different Night Gallery started to where it finished it terms of overall quality. Granted the first few episodes of the first season were still a mixed bag to me, but the Pilot had three tales that really landed well with me personally even if I wasn’t all that wild and crazy for the episodes the followed in the first season’s early goings. I knew I would be focused on Twilight Zone Monday onward for a wee little bit (I have already saved the schedules for New Year’s Eve and Day for marathons to be presenting the show on both Syfy & Decades Network as a sort of a guide to determine what I might watch Monday evening after work, also determining what will be available to me in the brief time I have Tuesday, the 31^st as I have work in the day and family plans that night), so I wanted to devote as much time, attention, and affection to Night Gallery (and Rod Serling) before this change in content. Before work, I want to watch the second episode of Night Gallery then turn my attention to Twilight Zone upon return from work Monday evening.  Reason I am delaying the second episode of Night Gallery is that a memory of awakening out of sleep to catch Diane Keaton in “Room with a View” always remains fondly on the mind any time I watch it. It was on the now defunct Universal horror channel, Chiller, early in the morning and there she was on Night Gallery, leaving me quite startled to discover she had been on the show. This was early in the life of Chiller when it was showing content right out of the Universal vault, as startup channels often do before they start producing original programming. I remember Chiller regularly offering the Universal monster movies on Saturday mornings just as Sci-fi Channel did in the 90s during sleepy weekday afternoons. So I hope to do so similarly early Monday morning if at all possible. From what I understand, in syndication, “Room with a View” wasn’t shown alongside the excellent “The Little Black Bag”, with Burgess Meredith, and “The Nature of the Enemy”, a NASA moon landing story with a silly twist.

Roddy McDowell’s sleazy, greedy benefactor of his invalid uncle’s estate and wealth (the mother dead and no other surviving relatives available to lay claim to the inheritance) must say the name of Ozzie Davis’ Portifoy at least thirty to forty times, always talking down to him or besmirching him. You just love to hate this dick. McDowell was a very likable actor in many of his roles but he was also capable of pulling out a real scumbag if he needed to and did so in “The Cemetery”. Leaving the window open so his uncle would “catch cold” and die was really unsettling, and how the camera takes us from the room to outside the mansion as the surrounding trees and bush get caught up in a tumultuous wind with that nearby cemetery just waiting for him is quite effective. The use of portraits regarding the dead rising from graves really was a gimmick I thoroughly dug.

I have written about “Eyes”, the Steven Spielberg directed effort starring Joan Crawford, in the past, and the isolated review did well on this blog. I was very proud of that write-up, too. All the victims Crawford’s blind and vicious but extremely wealthy Claudia Menlo “encourages” (more like “bend to her will”) towards providing her eyes with sight for about eleven total hours and how a blackout deprives her of the satisfaction she so desperately longs for in terms of experiencing COLOR among other things provides us with quite a monstrous portrait. The eye surgeon (Barry Sullivan) with an abortion death out of an affair used as blackmail and a sad sack gambling addict deep in debt to the wrong individuals both serve a purpose for Crawford. She uses and discards those she needs to provide her a service. A flight out of a cracked window just as she sees the sun briefly…could not have happened to a more deserving victim.

Richard Kiley as a Nazi in hiding in Venezuela, Herr Strobe, unable to ever evade the authorities very long, hopes to escape into a painting at a local museum, featuring a fisherman on a lake somewhere far away, makes the skin crawl. A scar on the eye (looks like a burn), sweaty clothes, and a face unshaven provide Kiley with a disheveled and panicky always-looking-over-his-shoulder man-on-the-lam. I love how Serling always writes the tales of Nazis getting their comeuppance and Kiley choosing the wrong painting to will himself into was such a thrill. Sam Jaffe as a concentration camp survivor who spots Kiley and recognizes him—their talks, especially outside a café when Kiley’s true character emerges after enough drink loosens his mind and lips, revealing what he truly is, really are quite memorable—is especially noteworthy. The crucifixion painting is haunting. The setting is one of those hideaways where many folks trying to get away from their past might go to set up temporary digs. Norma Crane, as a local floozy who happens to be in the room adjacent to Kiley, is fun as his tormentor. She knows who he is and never fails to remind him of how pathetic he has become.

“The Dead Man” deals with hypnotism, conquering death, and psychosomatic illness, not to mention, how the subconscious mind and jealousy can create a lot more than bargained for. A psychiatrist (Carl Betz) decides to focus on one patient (Michael Blodgett; “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”), a hypochondriac who seems to physically manifest a different kind of illness/sickness every time he visits a doctor. Betz calls on his mentor (Jeff Corey) to visit him so he can show him how Blodgett might be an astonishing breakthrough towards “curing dying/aging” and using hypnotism to defy illness by training the mind to alter the body. Everything gets messy when Betz’ lovely wife (Louise Sorel; a memorable soap opera actress) falls for Blodgett and leaves the psychiatrist agonizing over whether to put a stop to the obvious affair and lose his patient or contend with the pain in order to present the world with an amazing discovery. When Betz “kills” Blodgett to resurrect him as a point to Corey, the important series of knocks intended to bring the patient back to health and out of sleep doesn’t go according to plan. Sorel fleeing the mansion in hysterics screaming like a raving lunatic towards Blodgett’s final resting place is so over the top I found her comical and the ending with Corey finding those involved in the love triangle in such a bad state didn’t impact me despite its macabre presentation.

“The Housekeeper” cracked me up. Jeanette Nolen is quite well known to Twilight Zone fans and in this tale she’s considered an ugly old hag with a kind heart and moral compass requested by greedy alchemist Larry Hagman to assume his wife’s body in a personality swap. Suzy Parker as the wife Hagman tires of (and wants all the money from) tells him she’s through and will be divorcing provides a feisty, vocal spitfire unable to avoid the process that will lead to her doom. Hagman is surprised by Nolan once occupying Parker’s body as she won’t cooperate with his desire to bed her and share the wealth, having to resort to similar methods against her in order to get his way. That frog sure does come in handy. Hagman is a hoot as the unscrupulous husband wanting the money and escape from bad marriage, while Nolan dutifully fulfills her role as a ridiculed but upbeat maidservant who takes a lot of flak for her looks and appearance.