by Sam Juliano
September is right around the corner. The uncertainty with school openings seems headed for an “at the wire” edict. In the meantime politics continues to dominate the daily new cycle and is captivating all Americans, most of whom are not compromising their feelings. The Democratic National Convention was a most inspiring affair. Jim Clark published a masterful essay on Ingmar Bergman’s 1969 The Rite this past week, and J.D. Lafrance chimed in with a fantastic essay of his own on Wong Kar-Wai’s classic Fallen Angels.
As promised I will now post my Rod Serling’s Night Gallery reviews that so far have appeared on Facebook, but obviously I have plenty more to go:
Top 27 Rod Serling’s ‘Night Gallery’ segments (presented in reverse numerical order)
Countdown Segment Number 22 “A Fear of Spiders” (Season 2) 21:48
A Kafkaesque tale of acute arachnophobia featuring excellent performances, “A Fear of Spiders” is a sometimes chilling, black comedy extraordinaire where the main protagonist, a cruel and arrogant narcissist receives a just comeuppance from a hairy arachnid who craves human flesh. Night Gallery’s quintessential snob (though William Sharsted from “Camera Obscura” is a very close second) Justin Walters is a prissy sadist who relishes berating all human contact with heartless bravado, and he seems to reserve the worst repudiation he can summon us for his upstairs neighbor, a pushy librarian named Elizabeth Croft whom he took out for dinner a few times for selfish reasons. Written with an acerbic edge by Rod Serling from a short story “The Spider” by Elizabeth Walker, this theatrically negotiated segment was fabulously directed by John Astin, but is perhaps more famous for who didn’t direct it after a zero hour exit by Steven Spielberg, who at that time was adverse to the grind of network television. Spielberg of course did helm the pilot segment “Eyes” starring Joan Crawford.
Walters is a gourmet critic who is struggling to complete several articles to meet a deadline and is in no mood to extend even rudimentary pleasantries when he picks up the phone from his upstairs neighbor and dispatches her before she can even say a single work with a savage rejection. His crass behavior when his landlord arrives to check the thermostat confirms his people’s skills are uniformly abhorrent. When Elizabeth arrives at his door begging admittance Walters lets her in to verbally abuse her and attack her character with gleeful abandon, leaving her to depart in tears and even stumble on the stairs begging her callous neighbor for help but receiving only a slammed door. Happy with himself for destroying the woman’s spirit and rejection of her warm feelings for him Walters hears noises from the kitchen where he finds an unpleasant surprise in the sink, a larger than normal spider has apparently crawled up the drainpipe. He flushes it down the pipe but it continues to reappear, exacerbating the misanthrope’s dread of the creatures. Every-time the spider emerges it is larger than before Though he is clearly terrified by this unexpected development Walters returns to his typewriter.
Almost immediately he hears a high-pitched squeaking from his bedroom and is horrified to behold a spider the size of a dog. With nowhere or no one to turn to he races upstairs to seek support and security from Elizabeth. Initially the ravaged women is sympathetic to his plight and lets him in for a drink, but when he tells her the reason he desires her company she demands he leave, realizing she is only being used. Justin pleads for sympathy and asks that she accompany him back down to his apartment so he can prove his fantastical claims. Those familiar of course with these kind of tales (think Twilight Zone’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”) know in advance that the one making the inconceivable claims will never be supported by others, so when Elizabeth opens the bedroom door she sees no menacing super-spider nor anything else. Her prior investigation of the kitchen also drew a blank. She invites the trembling writer to enter and see for himself, but suddenly locks the door leaving the terrified Justin to scream out “It’s in here!” Elizabeth indifferently promises to let him out in the morning, but the audience knows only too well what fate shortly awaits him.
Patrick O’Neal is superlative playing a character without a single redeeming quality, which makes his final demise a most welcome plot twist. His prissy and haughty demeanor are splendidly negotiated as is his about turn of face when he begs for sympathy from those he abused (including the landlord who laughingly mocked him for his claim of seeing a spider the size of a dog). As Elizabeth the acclaimed Kim Stanley (who was brilliant in her Best Actress-nominated turn in “Seance on a Wet Afternoon) is equally as excellent as the abused writer who ironically is vindicated when she is approached for the same kind of warmth and camaraderie she herself was turned down for in a neat twist of fortune a la “what goes around comes around.” Tom Pedi turns in fine work in a comedic role as the landlord Mr. Booucher who calls out Justin for his preposterous claims. Nice interior color photography from Lionel Lindon accentuates the claustrophobia in Justin’s apartment, thereby heightening the trepidation. “A Fear of Spiders” is wholly effective and is surely one of Night Gallery’s most best remembered segments.
Top 27 Rod Serling’s ‘Night Gallery’ segments (presented in reverse numerical order)
Countdown Segment Number 23 “A Feast of Blood” (Season 2) 15:54
Exhibiting a hearty dose of morbid humor that became the defining trademark of Alfred Hitchcock “A Feast of Blood”, written by Stanford Whitmore from “The Fur Broach,” a story by Dulcie Gray stars the inimitable still living Hitchcock associate, 106 year-old Norman Lloyd, producer of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” Lloyd plays a smug serial killer who devices a most unique method of dispatching his young female victims after the inevitable rejections that seal their doom with terrifying veracity. The tidy, short segment, directed by Night Gallery’s most distinguished maestro, Jeannot Szwarc is perhaps the best example along with “The Devil is Not Mocked” of concise storytelling devoid of even an inch of narrative padding. Witting, this tit for tat showcase for rhetorical barbs this grisly story evoking the rural ambiance and locale of “An American Werewolf in London” though never revealing the country it was set in, the aptly titled “A Feast of Blood” features of of Night Gallery’s most unforgettable finales.
Sheila Grey is stunningly beautiful but also vain, so although she makes it clear from the outset that she has zero interest in the smallish, unattractive Henry Mallory she succumbs to her mother’s advice that he has big money and would be insurance should her relationship with the much younger “John” lose steam. As the mother feels marrying into wealth matters more than even love she is gobsmacked over his gift of a fur broach of a simulated red mouse mounted on pin, though Sheila herself appears fearful when her mom fastens it to her coat. When Henry arrives to escort Sheila her mother tells him that she is her only “baby” so please take care of her. Her works bear some gruesome irony. At dinner in a posh restaurant Henry obnoxiously tells her that he is the only man for Sheila and proclaims that she will never marry John. Sheila rejects his smugness and tells him she fully intends to tie the knot with the younger man. With the evening crippled by the negative energy expended by both Henry diverts to talking about the broach.
He relates that the creature on the broach is a “voo-do” and an ancestor of the bat, and that the broach itself can never be removed once it is affixed. Sheila says to him that he acts like it is alive and Henry, knowing full well of its powers plays dumb to her conjecture. He again asks her if she will consider his proposal to marry him but again Sheila rebuffs him. In the car on the way back Henry forces himself on Sheila, causing her to be completely repulsed and regale him with a a barrage of insults including “I’d sooner die than stay with you! The ugliest person in the world wouldn’t have a toad like you! Lowering the tension Henry tells her he will always remember her as she was – “beautiful” and “deserving.” He pulls away, leaving her in a wooded terrain, dark and miles from home from which she quickens her pace through a grassy clearing. She finds blood on her hands as a result of a finger prick, but to her horror realizes the voo-do is alive indeed and is crawling up her coat towards her face. It is also increasing in size. In short order the giant rodent causes her to fall over and her ghastly doom is confirmed when two bicyclists who have been drinking discover her bloodied carcass. The last scene shows Henry at it again with another lovely young woman whom he flatters but telling her he “honors beauty” and fastens another broach on her fur coat.
Lloyd is outstanding and the sharp-witted and cunning Henry, calm and reflective and not at all impatient to let time and an acute knowledge of human behavior result in the self-inflicted demise of his young women, in this instance Sheila is is also played superbly by Sondra Locke, who was nominated for an Oscar for her moving performance in “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.” Though spunky and not intimidated her self-absorbed Sheila is also unlike-able, though her sentence is grossly unwarranted to state the obvious. Hermione Baddeley, a splendid British actress who played the maid in “Mary Poppins” and received an Oscar nod for “Room at the Top” is terrific as the doting mom who is solely interested in her daughter’s financial well-being even at the expense of an oddball pairing. Photographer E. Charles Straumer’s dark nighttime exteriors are spooky and bring visual prowess to Whitmore’s spot-on pacing. “A Feast of Blood” is one Night Gallery’s most hair-raising chapters and a clear homage to the Hitch.
Top 27 Rod Serling’s ‘Night Gallery’ segments (presented in reverse numerical order)
Countdown Segment Number 25 “The Little Black Bag” Season 1 (29:35)
No thespian of either gender can claim a closer professional kinship with Rod Serling than Burgess Meredith. His appearances on The Twilight Zone of course are legendary but he served up a marvelous two-fold encore for Night Gallery with impressive performances in Season 1’s “The Little Black Bag” and a mediocre third-season segment, “Finnegan’s Wake” which was solely distinguished by his involvement. The actor was eternally grateful to the anthology titan for giving him some of the best roles of his career, and unquestionably the discredited alcoholic Dr. William Fall joins his list of rich and charismatic performances of characters reduced by society and circumstances to marginal significance. However, Fall is given a short-lived boost by a time travel prop and serves humanity by putting the need of others ahead of avarice.
The segment’s entry point location is a time-travel laboratory circa 2098, where during a routine test a medical bag was accidentally sent back in time to the year 1971. The faux pas was committed by the stuttering “Gillings” who is sadly cognizant that it can not be retrieved. Recalling a homogeneous circumstance in The Twilight Zone’s “Dead Man’s Shoes” where an item is found in a back alley by an inebriated drifter, the Night Gallery episode doubles the human discovery quotient to a pair of panhandling winos, one a doctor who descended to the lowest wrung and the other, Hepplewhite, a hardened low-life keen toward exploiting any gain, ill-begotten or otherwise. Fall is astounded when he beholds the contents of the bag, which confirm medical advances seemingly impossible over the twenty years since he departed the profession. Hepplewhite is far less concerned over the implications of such a miraculous discovery and wants immediate financial compensation, so he coaxes the bewildered Fall into offering it up at a pawnshop. But when the defunct doctor is frantically approached by a woman as he ventures to the storefront he follows her to attend to her deathly-ill child.
Fall sheds his cynicism and follows the directions in the bag, employing its medical instructions and in no time the girl miraculously returns to perfect health. The resurrected physician subsequently discovers upon closer inspection of the miraculous compact anachronism that its patent is date-identified as September of 2098, and the contents indicate a cure to cancer has been found. He goes to work on his old friend Charlie, who is dying of the disease and is even able to use a scalpel without anesthesia, another perk to medical advancement. Charlie recovers and has experience no pain at all. Fall and Hepplewhite retreat to a hotel room where the former rehearses a demonstration he plans to stage in front of a medical profession throng. He plans to announce to them that he will embed a scalpel a few centimetres into his neck which would instantly kill any human, but now this seemingly fatal maneuver will fall harmless. However by now Hepplewhite has plotted his own treachery and he advances on Fall with the aforementioned scalpel for a murder that will allow him to rule the roost. The act isn’t shown but implied and then confirmed when Hepplewhite appears alone at a packed lecture hall where doctors await the announced new discovery.
The ghoulish looking killer goes through the scalpel presentation with its unconscionable bold neck incision. Had the capabilities of the magic bag stayed the course he would have emerged from this freakish demonstration triumphantly but at the exact moment his plunges the blade into his neck Gillings tells his superiors at the futuristic lab that a homicide is being committed as per a warning device. A drone is then deactivated and Hepplewhite effectively commits an unintended suicide in grand public fashion. One doctor, however, tells another who incredulously wonders why he decided to off himself in front of an audience, that Hepplewhite genuinely looked “surprised.”
In addition to Meredith, who gives one of Night Gallery’s finest lead performances as the doomed humanist doctor, Chill Wills (who was nominated for an Oscar in 1960 for “The Alamo”) is quite menacing as the heartless vagrant who wins a rightful punishment and as Gillings George Furth is most fine as the bumbler who set up the time travel escape that still resulted in some cured cases. This is the silver lining in this rather misanthropic view of human weakness allows greed to impede progress, indeed with tragic consequences. Again Jeanne Szwarc compellingly directs a Rod Serling teleplay that incorporates science-fiction elements into a trenchant story of human frailty. “The Little Black Bag” is classic Night Gallery.
Top 27 Rod Serling’s ‘Night Gallery’ segments (presented in reverse numerical order)
Countdown Segment Number 26 ” Big Surprise” Season 2 (10:33)
A teleplay by science-fiction icon Richard Mattheson based on his own short story, a central performance by acting legend John Carradine and orchestration by Night Gallery directorial wizard Jeannot Szwarc would appear to be a surefire recipe to resounding success, and indeed this pooling results in a splendid ten-and-a-half minute Night Gallery segment. “Big Surprise” is more of a skit or vignette but it works marvelously well in establishing mood and building suspense while developing character exceedingly well considering the severe time limitation. Replete with dark humor and the hook of mystery this irresistible revision on the buried treasure theme also boasts unusually lustrous color cinematography by the renowned Lionel Linden that visually incorporates the arid texture of the locale and the boys who evoke the main protagonists in “Stand By Me” are mighty fine, especially Vincent Van Patten as the group’s most undaunted member who is regaled by the titular thunderbolt for his staying the course.
Chris, Jason and Dan routinely traverse dusty back roads to and from school every day, though they were loathe to encounter the eccentric Mr. Hawkins, a crusty hermit whom the kids feared as much as the young ones in “To Kill a Mockingbird” dreaded Boo Radley. But of course for the sake of this brief narrative as well as for the odds that would greet such regular traversing the central deceit is launched when this mysterious figure calls from his doorway to Chris, inviting him to accepting his proposition of a “big surprise.” Evoking a certain location in an epic comedy film by Stanley Kramer where a dying character played by Jimmy Durante issues vital instructions, Hawkins tells his young would-be partaker about “Miller’s Field” and a “a great big oak tree.” He tells Chris that after he negotiates that destination he must “face the steeple of the church, d’ya understand?” Then “walk ten paces, dig down four feet” and you will have your momentous revelation. Chris isn’t exactly reassured by the raspy-voiced man’s malevolent wink, but he enlists the complicity of the other two boys to investigate the claim.
Though Jason feels there isn’t a surprise, rather the affair is a cruel prank, Chris and Dan feel they will unearth a large sum of money. They secure shovels and begin to dig but eventually are overcome by exhaustion before they reach the fruits of their labor. Chris fails to convince his two friends to remain to complete the task, so he continues to dig alone. He finally is jarred by his shovel banging into a hard surface – a wooden box. Before he can pry it open the lid is pushed from within and in the the short segment’s scariest coda a figure arises, one that turns out to be none other than a straggly Mr. Hawkins who diabolically utters in rasping cadence “Surprise!”
Reportedly, Mattheson, a stern critic of his own work and adaptations from it was very pleased with “Big Surprise.” Some critics were disappointed with the ending but I always thought myself the implication, though orchestrated with subtlety was darker, a commentary on the child endangerment, though a viewer’s more literal interpretation could inspire a more humorous take on the “I am everywhere” theme. Carradine again gave a commanding, typically charismatic performance as this potentially lethal rustic threat to area children and though young Mr. Van Patten is wonderful the man who first captivated audiences in “The Grapes of Wrath” remains 33 years later an inveterate scene stealer, more acute than ever in a piece so short. “Big Surprise” will never make the television Hall of Fame, but it remains decades later as a most memorable episode of “Night Gallery” for Mr. Carradine and its extraordinary and economical execution.
Top 27 Rod Serling’s ‘Night Gallery’ segments (presented in reverse numerical order)
Segment Number 27 ” A Question of Fear” Season 2 (38 m)
An Italian born gentleman, Dr. Mazi chillingly relates a harrowing experience he had in a house reputed to harbor ghosts and evil spirits to a small group at an exclusive men’s club. Among the fraternity is the eye-patch wearing Denny Malloy who sneers at the incredulous report, smugly playing pool and obnoxiously boasting how fear is an emotion he has never experienced. Matzi and another man in the fraternity propose a wager that the fearless braggart will not be able to last one night in the house and are so firm in their belief that they will pool this finances and offer Malloy $15,000 in cash. He is dropped off at the dingy, unkempt structure by Mazi and his friend and shortly after his arrival in this properly Gothic abode the spooky sounds and horror devices begin to kick in.
A floating head followed by a shrieking phantom induce Malloy to empty his revolver, and his shaking hands in the kitchen as he prepares coffee attest to his consternation. He hears piano keys and encounters the figure of a man who “hands” burst into flames in a most unnerving display that leads Malloy to cut an electrical wire attached to the chair where the figure sits. He then realizes and later shouts out that Mazi has rigged the entire house. Malloy masks his increasing anxiety by laughing out loud, but by that time he has grown weary and lies down only to be restrained by steel configurations on the canopy bed, which poise him for the central deceit of “The Pit and the Pendalum” though just before the blade slices into his throat the apparatus disappears, since killing him is not part of the bet. When he wakes up the restraints are gone as well.
After he awakens in the morning Malloy confronts a closed circuit television where Mazi appears and coaxes the triumphant Malloy to remember how he set his father’s hands on fire, forever destroying his career as a famous pianist because the man did not possess the information he demanded. At the time the Dad was a junior officer in the Italian army. Mazi tells Malloy that he promised his father he would track down Malloy to the ends of the earth to find him and break him. He goes on to tell Malloy that he will soon be turned into an “earthworm” as a result of him being injected while he slept. Mazi keeps urging him to look in the cellar to encounter his fate and Malloy sees tracks that appear corroborate Mazi’s claims. Finally Malloy looks at the television, where Mazi can see him and tells him he will lose as he shoots himself in the head. A victorious Mazi responds back to the dead body “No, Malloy, you lose. There was nothing in the cellar.”
Leslie Nielsen (Malloy), an actor who has expanded American screen comedy with an array of most memorable performances plays a character bereft of humor but one who laughs incessantly at his own untenable situation, which reaches a climax where he thinks he has defeated his perpetrator’s plans for his physical disfigurement, but in reality has taken the bait and facilitated his own demise. Neilson is for the most part the sole character in the drama aside from the bookends and his vigorous performance documents how his courage and braggadocio are finally broken down leading to the ultimate act of cowardice. As Dr. Matzi, the son of a mangled pianist who fell victim to Malloy’s Second World War sadism Fritz Weaver (who did some great work in The Twilight Zone) is superb as an unperturbed man on a mission, and his television transmission unveiling to the dumbfounded is defiant Malloy is one of the most powerful scenes in any Night Gallery segment. While Paui Glass’ score is stock and rather forced, and the special effects are fairly abominable jack Laird’s direction is taut and the shocks well-timed, and the teleplay by Theodore J. Flicker is solid.
“A Question of Fear” explores how arrogance is passed off as courage and how an evil act leads to the ultimate consequence. While not as “creepy” in an atmospheric sense as Thriller’s classic “The Purple Room” an episode about people who try to scare a friend in a haunted mansion due to the surprisingly primitive camera tricks, the premise, the writing and Neilsen’s performance make this a most memorable “Night Gallery” episode. It may be cheesy in a physical sense but it employs the power of suggestion most compellingly.