Screen capture from 1990’s “Robot Jox” reviewed by Jamie Uhler as part of Halloween Horror Fest 2010
by Sam Juliano
The pandemic is again gathering fearful momentum as America prepares for the most important Presidential election in modern history. The President’s COVID diagnosis has shocked many, though most see reckless decision-making as paving the way for it to happen. Both topics of course have dominated all means of coverage and attention as some are trying hard to usher in the autumnal season and Halloween. Here at Wonders in the Dark October 31st is bring honored with our stupendous annual Halloween Horror Fest courtesy of it resident founder Jamie Uhler. This week we have two fabulous capsules to add to the series. This past week Jim Clark continued his seminal Ingmar Bergman series with a masterful essay on 1976’s Face to Face. I also have added my latest entries in my nearly-completed Top 27 Night Gallery FB countdown, with only the #1 choice still to come. Wishing everyone to stay safe!
Robot Jox (S. Gordon… 1990)
The tale of gladiatorial bouts where men represent country company state teams while manning large (roughly) 6 story robots with the technology to match the movements of the pilots inside them. If this wasn’t enough, the twist comes in the outcome as we’re in a hellscape more or less, so the loser gets stomped to death or just parishes in explosion, approximating the fighters to futuristic gladiators, the representatives for global multinationals that fight for territories rich in resources. Early, a match between a Russian (or a generic facsimile of the Soviet bloc) and American cowboy one has Alaska’s oil and forests as the price, but it goes tits up and hundreds of lowly spectators are killed. In the aftermath the American hero retires (as this is his last contractually obligated 10th fight) and the plot spirals out of control. You could guess where it’s going when his sudden, budding love interest, a female human created in a lab as the perfect robot jock, is set to replace him against the Russian in the rematch, since the spectator murderous bout ended in a draw. Yeah, he comes back to fight and be the reluctant hero.
For Gordon this lacks his usual exhilarating panache, the fights—all models and practical effects on sound stages—move and look hokey, and his no name cast (Jeffrey combs has just a small cameo) is mostly dull. Plus, while the concept is ripe for satire, it’s really dry, desperately calling for the razor edge of, say, Starship Troopers. Sure, Transformers begat Robot Jox, and Robot Jox certainly gave us del Toro’s Pacific Rim, but while this film has a small cult, I won’t ever be one of them. Pass, or watch Pacific Rim again, which, for what it is, is a masterful work (or, if you want obscure Gordon, do Space Truckers or Castle Freak or hell, his masterpiece From Beyond). I don’t blame Gordon, del Toro had 20 times the budget to muck about with.
Switching gears, I’ve been mildly thinking about 10 to Midnight all month, thinking that two favorite genres of mine—the buddy cop film and Horror—should mix a lot more often. So, doing a little research, I’ve discovered a few, and might watch them interspersed throughout the rest of the season. First up was,
Dead Heat (M. Goldblatt… 1988)
This, unlike the nightmarish, outlandish right wing wet dream (nightmare?) 10 to Midnight, is more in line with the Buddy Cop run of films in the ’80’s and ’90’s, where jokes run at a quick clip to keep the self-referential nature of the proceedings humming along. Our guys may face peril daily, but, they’re pros who’ve been-there-and-done-that, so they wise crack and laugh (literally) in the face of danger. This, however, is also the tale of Dantes Pharmaceutical corporation who’ve unlocked the key to cheating death in the form of re-energizing stiffs they take from the morgue. When they employ several to rob some jewelry stores the cops get hot on their trail, realizing these zombie hoods are hard to kill, even when pumped full of lead (yep, cops in 1988 were also more than willing to do 75 shots when 1 otherwise would have sufficed like our 2020 ones). Hotshot tandem Treat Williams (Roger Mortis) and Joe Piscopo figure it out quickly, but when an accident at Dantes Pharmaceutical lab goes haywire and Treat is killed, the cops decide to reanimate him so that, in zombie death (get it, his name is a spoof on rigor mortis setting in) he can solve the crime and still be the hero cop he was in life. But, like great noir DOA before it, he’s only got about 12 hours before he fully decomposes…
While an otherwise cool flip to the Horror Comedy genre and a young Treat Williams goeing a long way, this also has Joe Piscopo in the role that other films in the genre give Eddie Murphy, Mel Gibson and Martin Lawrence. Meaning, the laughs are lame as hell—not only is he not funny in the slightest, he’s also a boorish oaf, so half of the premise never animates. We’re left with a few kills, granted some are gloriously funny, and a rare, very late cameo from legend Vincent Price, making it a mild curio to genre buffs for its uniqueness. Plus, it’s smart to be just under 90 minutes so we’re not left checking our watches ever. Otherwise it’s just a cheesy, mildly bad flick. Meh, I’ve seen worse.
Top 27 Rod Serling’s Night Gallery segments (presented in reverse numerical order)
Segment Number 2 “The Sins of the Fathers” (Season 2) 29:22
I kept going back and forth with my Top 3 Night Gallery episodes for weeks and to be sure each in the final trio spent a little time at the top, with the Number 4 and Number 5 also in play right up until closed shop on the frustrating quandary. This is no wonder of course when the absolute creme de la creme is sorted out and to be sure Night Gallery’s Top 5 segments must surely compete for any listing of television’s finest entries, even if overall The Twilight Zone is decisively a greater enterprise in the Rod Serling literature and the in the medium in general. The ferocious, nightmare inducing period segment “The Sins of the Fathers” written by Halsted Welles from a short story by Christianna Brand is a Bavaesque excursion in Middle Age rituals and customs that leaves you drained and spooked to the core of your being. There is no grimmer topic in the Gallery, nor for that matter anywhere on television and the execution was daring and provoked master class acting, jolting decor, a literate script and a dramatically anguished presentation that has always left viewers emotionally scarred from the proceedings.
The narrative is set in plague ravaged and famine ridden Wales apparently in the early nineteenth century according to press sources, though the visual and thematic implications suggest an earlier time, perhaps even the Middle Ages. Either way the terrain is forbidding and clandestine and superstitions suggest a society suffocated with fear and retribution, a time when education and enlightenment are severely muted. The entry point is a stone house on a desolate heath where the newly-widowed Mrs. Craighill awaits the return of a servant who has been dispatched to search the countryside for a “sin eater” to negotiate the funeral of her diseased husband. Ancient beliefs designate that the sin-eater will feast alone in front of the corpse, thereby absorbing the sins of the dead person’s spirit can go to God. The dwarfish servant, overcome from exhaustion after three days of unsuccessful searching rides up to the impoverished hut of Mrs. Evans to beg enlistment of her ailing husband. After the servant describes the mouth-watering banquet that awaits anyone who accepts the succulent assignment, she is too weak to set aside an idea that her slow-witted son Ian replace her husband. The servant initially balks at the proposition but the woman presses the case. Ian himself is repulsed by the idea of stuffing himself aside a corpse as famished as he is. The woman has a scheme. She tells Ian first off that he must recite the sin eater’s prayer and yell out as the sins enter his body. But since he will be alone, without mourners, he can stuff all the food until his coat and bring it back home.
At first Mrs Craighill is furious with the servant for bringing an adolescent to perform this mature act, but the midget mercenary argues that no other person could be found and they are pressed for time, what with the husband needing to be buried the following day. Ian becomes intoxicated by the banquet room where fruits, breads, cheeses, meats and cakes insure a culinary panacea for encroaching starvation. All the others urge him to gorge himself but he tells them to leave, a request perfectly acceptable in for this unspeakable endeavor for whatever temporary satiation it guarantees. Mrs. Craighill hesitates but goes along and Ian is left solitary to pray and to furiously stuff the food into his cloak. While doing this he is repeatedly tempted to cheat but he somehow resists. He concludes by delivering the scream that confirms he has eaten the corpses’ sins and darts from the house, forgotten the coin payments. Unbeknownst to the terrified simpleton boy his father had also died and the food is arranged around him so the boy can again serve as a sin-eater this time unable to set aside the macabre order as he maniacally wolfs down all the food he stole for a domestic banquet most foul.
The young Richard Thomas of “The Waltons” fame gives a spectacular performance as the mentally-compromised Ian, exhibiting emotional turmoil and physical convulsions as the central protagonist in this terrifying funeral dirge. He challenges William Windham and Lawrence Harvey for top acting honors on Night Gallery, but there other great thespians also give unforgettable performances: Geraldine Page as Mrs. Evans’ Michael Dunn as the dwarf servant and Barbara Steel and the Widow. Great too that Alan Napier and Cyril Delevanti are featured as mourners in an acting feast unequaled easily in any other Night Gallery episode. This is director Jeannot Szwarc greatest segment, and the saturated muted color scheme by cameraman Gerald Perry Finnerman is one of the series’ most brilliantly negotiated on that front. Composer Oliver Nelson evokes Carl Orf with his lower strings and muted brass which suggest nausea in the film’s stomach churning showpiece and the aural scheme is a brilliant complement for the eerie visuals. Welles’ teleplay competes for Night Gallery’s finest in one of the furthest reaches television in the United states has ever achieved.
Top 27 Rod Serling’s Night Gallery segments (presented in reverse numerical order)
Segment Number 3 “Silent Snow Secret Snow” (Season 2) 16:18
An extraordinary, lyrical investigation into mental illness based on a classic short story by Conrad Aikan, narrated by Orson Welles, “Silent Snow secret Snow” in spellbinding terms is one of the most unique and entrancing television episodes ever filmed. A sensitive evocation of childhood, the haunting segment is unquestionably the most sensory of any on Night Gallery and is imbued with the literary sensibilities of Willa Cather, conveyed with the sonorous tone of Welles, and the poignant, emotional score by Paul Glass, one this writer believes in the very best music written for the series. Incredibly the segment betters the monochrome version of the story from the mid 60s, which remarkable was produced by Gene Kearney, who directed and wrote the teleplay for this Season 2 masterwork. The use of the snow setting while intrinsic to the tale in literal terms brings an acute metaphorical connection to the underlying psychology of this profound and challenging tale of an escape from reality by a ten-year old boy.
Young Paul Hasleman holds close to a secret which he’s divulged to not a single person including his parents. It is an exhilarating escape from the world, and as a result he becomes increasingly distant from all around him. The secret is wholly elemental and is couched in the falling snow and the muffled sound of accelerating drifts. Though he is initially undermined by the visual evidence of bare streets he is mentally attuned to the encroaching snow, which is both menacing and mysterious. Soon enough, much like the titular character in the short story masterpiece “Paul’s Case” young Paul’s odd behavior is picked up by his teacher and parents who believe he is daydreaming, which he is really listening to the whispering, intoxicating voice of the snow. He hears the postman’s heavy, chomping footsteps, which he attributes to a major snowfall, but he’s betrayed by the dearth of the white stuff when he peers out to inspect. Paul’s parents, who fail to exhibit warmth and empathy with their son, (think Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows”) begin to realize there is serious disconnect as the boy becomes increasingly exasperated as he imagines the outside snowier and snowier, a mental state not corroborated by the physical reality. Still he comes to realize this alternate world is personal and not transferable to those around him.
The parents summon the family physician to investigate Paul’s worsening indifference but Paul tunes out even further, rejecting any effort to interfere with his private immersion. The snow speaks to him, urging the boy to banish and refuse to speak to anyone, and tells the boy that this metaphysical presence will meet him in his room and surround his bed, while a drift against the door with bar intruders from access. He races up to the room to behold a canopy of whiteness. In a state of ecstasy Paul jumps onto the bed and raises his arms as a cascade of snow engulfs him. Suddenly his mom enters and the snow disappears. Paul angrily shouts at his mother to leave and tells her “I hate you.” The snow speaks for the final time and the ensuing monologue is electrifying: “We’ll tell you the last, most beautiful and secret story. A story that gets smaller and smaller, that comes inward instead of opening like a flower. It is a flower that becomes a seed – a little cold seed. Do you hear? We are leaning closer to you…” Darkness then descends upon Paul as a whisper envelops the scene, one that chillingly evokes the final graveyard segment of James Joyce’s “The Dead.”
The stunningly beautiful segment is films moodily by ace cameraman Lionel Lindon under the inspired orchestration of Kearney. The young actor Radames Pera (Paul) brings wonderment, joy, disillusionment and despair to his complex role of one who has made a connection with nature. It is surely one of Night Gallery’s most unforgettable turns for any age, especially as it crosses the line of mental affliction. An isolated child, adrift and almost held in suspended animation is a feast of a role and Pera brings much poetic conviction to the proceedings. As the narrator Welles is magnificent and his booming , textured voice heightens the aura of mystery and supernatural confluence. Lonny Chapman, Lisabeth Hush and Jason Wingreen are vividly etched as the befuddled parents and the doctor. And Night Gallery’s greatest musical score (by Paul Glass) recalls the melodic simplicity of Elmer Bernstein’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” is its powerful childhood evocation via the flute and strings. The music is magnetic and soulful and humanizes the other-worldly contours of the narrative. “Silent Snow, Secret Snow” is one of television’s most brilliant and haunting entries and it benefits greatly by re-viewings, when new revelations invariably surface.
Top 27 Rod Serling’s Night Gallery segments (presented in reverse numerical order)
Segment Number 4 “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar” (Season 1) 40:10
Few scripts in Rod Serling’s career equaled the emotional depth of his Emmy Award winning first season elegiac masterpiece “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar” and there are more than a fair share of Night Gallery aficionados who will maintain poll position regard wen the 70s era show is recalled. I for one sometimes think in those same terms, but it seems I am always shuffling the order of the Top 5, so it one sense it depends on my mood. Much like Serling’s The Twilight Zone masterpiece “Walking Distance” and to a lesser but still formidable degree “A Stop at Willoughby” the script for “Tim Riley” explores the hopes, illusions and regrets of ordinary people derived largely for personal experience. The richly defined, melancholic piece further examines like its TZ predecessors the midlife crisis, disillusionment with career and an insatiable desire to revisit the idyllic and less-complicated yesteryear. This forty minute work rates among the most lyrical in the writer’s canon and it brought him awards and critical praise not sent his way since back in the 50s with “Requiem for a Heavyweight.”
The entry point of the dreamy time-travel drama is Pritkin’s Plastic Products where the central protagonist Randolph Lane is victimized by a two-faced assistant, Harry Doane, who passes off Lane’s reports as his own leaving the exasperated veteran low on resolve and energy. Despite the impassioned support of his secretary Lynn Lane’s value to the company is diminished and his twenty-fifth anniversary passes without the slightest acknowledgment. Lane’s best days are behind him and as a widower he is doomed to after-work loneliness. He begins to live in the past and has taken up visiting and old haunt from his youth – Tim Riley’s Bar, a location condemned, boarded up and scheduled for a meeting with the wrecking ball. He makes the metaphorical connection of the impending fate of this once jovial and reaffirming establishment with his own ebbing career. Repeated visits transform the reverie into reality when the darkened bar showcases the most treasures moments of his earlier days including his return from World War II service and re-union with his fiancee, Katy, re-connection with his beloved Dad and others who friendship he cherished. Though they are long dead they appear like the students in Twilight Zones’ “The Changing of the Guard” to serenade him with “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”
The autumnal phantoms, who remind him of times he cherished more than any in his lifetime (in a mirror-image of Martin Sloane in the aforementioned “Walking Distance”) obscure his disdained real life, one where his secretary is falling in love with him. Like the entranced Charley Parkes, who returns to the museum daily to ingratiate himself with his dollhouse figures, Lane breaks into the off-limits space, narrowly escaping arrest via the timely intervention of an old neighborhood friend, Officer McDermott who listens to his old friend’s pleas and declarations that he paid his dues in life. McDermott is badgered into driving him to the house Katy and Lane has once lived in. Lane again hears the sounds from the past which segue into the present. He is interrupted by Miss Alcott and he opens up to her about his wife death from pneumonia. He breaks into the house and is whisked off into the unconscionable moment back in time when his wife is wheeled away on a gurney. He collapses and is later arrested and fired from his job. Miss Alcott admonishes Pritkin for his indifference to twenty-five years of service from Lane. He firmly tells the boss that he owes at least that to his departed employee. Lane heads off to try and permanently enter the spiritual realm at the bar but it is too late as they begin to fade, as the rendezvous with destruction is nearing. Lane leaves with abiding sadness and wonders up down the street to his present-day bar where he is again serenaded with “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” is a scene all-too-reminiscent of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” A sheepish Pritkin, Miss Alcott greet him with the former initiating an apology and assuring his grossly-slighted employee that he is held in esteem and affection. Pritkin toasts to Lane’s next twenty-five years with the company.
“They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar” is one of television’s crowning achievements and of course a Nigh Gallery high watermark. As I stated earlier I am not adverse to having this even higher than the four-hole, even at the top of the heap. Serling’s classic script is superbly complimented by William Windom’s unforgettable performance as Lane who must visit his past to comes to terms with his current day limbo. It is one of the finest turns on the series needless to say. Diane Baker is so appealing and lovely as Lynn Alcott, and Bert Convy, John Randolph and Henry Beckman round out the main cast with achingly memorable performances. The dreamy photography of William Marguiles is integral to the segment’s visually intoxicating allure and the big band score by Benny Carter is a vital aural underpinning to that end. Director Don Taylor deserves special kudos for his deft orchestration and resistance to maudlin histrionics in favor of resonating nostalgia and sobering revelations on life. “Tim Riley’s Bar” is a staggering masterpiece.
Top 27 Rod Serling’s Night Gallery segments (presented in reverse numerical order)
Segment Number 5 “The Caterpillar” (Season 2) 33:08
Stomach-churning horror is served up in subtle and uncompromising terms in the classic segment “The Caterpillar” which some Night Gallery fans count as their absolute favorite in the series. Indeed, the struggle to numerically gauge the best episodes often has this even higher than this lofty Top 5 placement, but for the sake of my latest and painstaking judgment we will leave it here. Lawrence Harvey was a major casting coup for ace director Jeannot Szwarc and as Stephen Macy, the corrupt and would-be murderous villain who gets his just rewards, and his emotionally complex performance is surely one of the very best on Night Gallery. The entire cast is extraordinary to be sure, but Harvey is tops in his intricately etched portrayal of a character easily tempted by proposed evil. Appropriately, the opening canvas of the segment, beheld much too briefly is also one of the most visually powerful Night Gallery ever offered up.
Monsoons are all the rage in Borneo, a British colony circa 1900 where Stephen Macy is on contract to work with plantation owner John Warwick in negotiating the tobacco crop. But the constant rain, humidity and insect preponderance has left him anguished and in an acute state of ennui. Simultaneously he finds himself attracted to Warwick’s younger and quite beautiful wife, Rhona those his efforts to impress her are graceless and quickly rebuffed. Of course such rejection only emboldens his resolve. While Warwick is completely unaware of Macy’s interest in his wife, an ungainly local trafficker with a criminal record back in the UK proves to the resident Iago when he notices Macy’s attraction and suggests that he knows a method that can eliminate Warwick permanently. They meet up at a sailor’s dive to discuss payment for the diabolical services and to identify the method involving an “earwig,” a caterpillar-like creature that enters through the human ear, where it gains access to the brain and slowly feeds on it, causing inexorable pain and agony for weeks. The victim is guaranteed an almost certain death after the creature runs its course.
Robinson promises to sent an accomplice to Warwick’s room in the middle of the night to engineer the heinous act of depositing the earwig in Warwick’s ear. Macy is initially resistant but his appetite is insatiable, so much so that he agrees to the unconscionable slow killing. At breakfast Macy notices no change in Warwick’s pleasant demeanor. Soon enough Macy addresses an itch in one of his own ears by inserting a rolled up napkin to discover blood. He is horrified at the realization that Robinson’s men mistakenly took his own bedroom for Warwick’s and his own head houses the deadly parasite. He becomes hysterically and rages on. He is then strapped to his bed to prevent any self-inflicted harm and for weeks he is in extreme agony. A miracle happens though when Macy recovers after the earwig exits through his other ear. Warwick allows Macy to leave without pressing charges, as the scheme is now known by all. The doctor (John Williams) hands down the alternate sentence which may be the worst any human can be given: “I took a look at the earwig that came out. It was a female….and the female lays eggs.” Realizing his grisly doom Macy screams in bloody terror.
In addition to Harvey, John Williams is once again superlative as the humorless physicians who conveys unmitigated terror, and Joanna Pettet is excellent as the inscrutable Rhona. Don Knight’s screen delivery is a hoot, but one with a chilling cockney undertone and as Warwick Tom Helmore refuses to enact the justice that nature has sorted out. Atmospherically set in the African colony Gerald Perry Finnerman’s photography is lush and properly exotic, and Eddie Sauter’s score is unquestionably his finest for the series, as he evokes heightening terror through gong-laden orchestration with ethnic aural textures. Above all though it is Rod Serling’s brilliant teleplay from Oscar Cook’s story that stands tallest. It is quite simply one of the best scripts Serling ever wrote for television.
Top 27 Rod Serling’s Night Gallery segments (presented in reverse numerical order)
Segment Number 6 “The Doll” (first season) 19:48
Compact and subtle, “The Doll” is one of Night Gallery’s most terrifying tales and it competes for the best-written teleplay which not surprisingly was penned by Rod Serling himself from a story by ghost writer extraordinaire Algernon Blackwood. Twilight Zone’s classic episode “Living Doll” also concerned a murderous facsimile of a human, as did a series of Chucky movies in gruesome bombast, but this eerie, atmospheric first season segment earns chills inconspicuously and through extraordinary acting, especially by the sparkling John Williams as a stiff-upper lip British military gent. Directed with admirable restraint by Rudi Dorn, who makes splendid use of William Margulies’ opulent cinematography couched in the gloomy Edwardian era setting, “The Doll” is nightmarish and difficult to shake.
The setting is the turn of the twentieth century when British colonialism under Queen Victoria is as entrenched as ever. Colonel Masters (Williams) returns to his London home from his post in India after a lengthy time, though he tells his housekeeper Miss Danton (Shani Wallis) that he can be summoned back on a whim. Danton attends to the welfare of the Colonel’s young niece Monica (Jewel Blanch) who excitedly boasts about a new doll she is smitten with. The doll is filthy and tattered and sports an ugly black circle around its eyes. Immediately Masters appears not at all surprised, and after he is informed it came in the mail it informs the startled maid it was meant for him, not his niece. “It was a gift to me” he chillingly asserts. He privately tells Miss Danton that she must do something to get the doll away from his niece, but not in the presence of the doll, acknowledging some supernatural power and impending danger if his niece is allowed to maintain possession.
But as much as the Colonel abhors and fears this unwelcome new arrival his niece stands her ground and tells him she has become very taken with it, further revealing that he talks to her. (think young Christie and Talking Tina in “Living Doll”) The Colonel admonishes his niece for telling such a tall tale, but Monica persists. When a new doll is brought in the young girl rejects it, and tells her uncle that her first doll resents it and wants it to be taken away. The new doll is later torn apart and the culprit is clear enough as it is seen with its white teeth bared as it stares threatening at the Colonel whose own future has now been marked. Much like the Telly Savales character in “Living Doll” Masters tries to get rid of the doll, but it always returns to Monica. An intruder enters his house and the true motive of the doll is revealed. The man’s name is Chola (Henry Silva) and he seeks revenge at his brother’s death, one ordered by Masters (a similar plot element was seen in Night Gallery’s “A Question of Fear”, Number 27 on this countdown). He confidently tells Masters that the doll has teeth and once bitten there is no medicine on the earth that can save the victim.
Masters dashes up the stairs and sees the terrible doll grinning at him from the top. As Miss Danton attends to the sobbing child, she hears a loud shriek and runs downstairs to behold a gash on Masters’ arm. Dying in his chair Masters directs the housekeeper to hand deliver a special envelope in his desk, one addressed to the Indian man who intruded to inform Masters of his fate, to relay the news that “the thing has happened.” Chola, who is preparing to return home to India soon hears a knock at his door. An Indian messenger delivers a package to him as he states “Colonel Masters did not wish to appear ungracious. You gave him a gift – he reciprocates.” Chola experience his own measure of consternation as he opens the box to see another doll, this one sporting the colonel’s effigy with a hellish grin protruding through the whiskered mouth. Karma has come full circle.
Williams delivers one of Night Gallery’s finest leads as the imperious though all-too cognizant Colonel, a man who understands the power of the occult, and Shani Wallis (so memorable in the great 1968 musical “Oliver!) registering an incredulous reaction to the events is a nice fit as the loyal housekeeper, much as Henry Silva as Pandit Chola is quietly menacing as one who is also greeted with comeuppance. Young Jewel Blanch is tenaciously wed to her murderous doll, seemingly unduly influenced by its evil energy. In addition to the aforementioned Serling script and the Gothic chamber lensing by Marguilies, the string score by Robert prince eerily integrates Indian instruments and musical themes. Christopher Muller’s doll sculptures are impressively attuned to one of the series’ most horrific segments.
Top 27 Rod Serling’s Night Gallery segments (presented in reverse numerical order)
Segment Number 7 “The Cemetery” (pilot-first chapter)
The very first Night Gallery segment to air, “The Cemetery”, starring Roddy McDowall, Ossie Davis and George Macready, is right out of the ghoulish literary arsenal of W.W. Jacobs, whose “The Monkey’s Paw” is compellingly evoked in the terrifying finale. A study of avarice, perpetrated by one of the most unrepentant and evil characters on the series, the setting in a mansion-like house has a sinister Dark Shadows aura, though the supernatural underpinning is a far cry from vampirism. The segment is spooky and one knows early on just rewards await those who commit murder. Superbly orchestrated by talented director Boris Sagal and photographed lushly by Richard Batcheller, “The Cemetery” is one of Night Gallery’s most chilling entries and an inspired launch to both the pilot and the entire enterprise.
A wealthy recluse named William Hendricks (Macready) can no longer speak after a severe stroke and he’s relegated to a wheelchair. He is attended by a loyal butler, Osmond Portifoy (Davis), who also maintains the southern mansion and helps the dying man negotiate his painting hobby. Jeremy Evans (McDowall), an unscrupulous nephew arrives to claim his inheritance as the only nephew after his uncle expires. Jeremy, though is disturbed by the morbid subject of the paintings that hang in the stairwell, which includes a creep view of the family graveyard. After he finds out that his uncle is planning to write him out of a new will he races to speed up the death process by visiting the old man and wheeling him to an open window where he promptly catches pneumonia and dies. While evidence of his murderous act can’t be proven it is clear to Portifoy and the doctors that he had a hand in it. He inherits the fortune and allows Portifoy to stay on not out of charity but because he fears being alone and needs someone to verbally abuse. After he notices a freshly dug plot in the lower painting he begins to become mentally unhinged and his cocky demeanor turns to nasty insults of Portifoy after he sees further changes in the painting which exhibit an open casket and the visible body of his uncle.
He implores the calm and unfazed butler to look at the changes in the paintings but Portifoy states he has seen no change. After he is struck, Portifoy quits and checks into a hotel in town. Jeremy practically begs him to stay but is sharply rebuked. During the night Jeremy hears noises and thinks Portifoy has returned. He rushes down to the door but is distracted by a horrifying realization. In the painting Hendricks is opening the cemetery gate and is walking towards the house. Jeremy frantically dials up Portifoy but the call can’t get through to him. Meanwhile the figure of his uncle gets closer to the front door. After hearing a pounding on the door he angrily grabs hold of a painting of his uncle, loses his balance and falls down the stairs, breaking his neck. Portifoy enters and later pays the artist who provided him with all the carefully altered paintings. With Jeremy out of the way he inherits the full fortune. But his good fortune is short lived after he himself to his horror sees changes in the stairwell painting. Now Jeremy is heading to the front door and Portifoy screams as he huddles on the floor.
McDowall is a fabulous charismatic fit for the obnoxious Jeremy who is proud of his evil pedigree and status as a family black sheep. Davis too is exemplary as the unfazed butler who is slow to show his cards until his scheme bears fruits. The accomplished veteran Macready (Paths of Glory and numerous anthology television appearances) is chilling in his death-warmed over role and Barry Atwater and Tom Basham are fine in minor appearances. Sagal also directed The Twilight Zone’s “The Silence” and despite a few plot holes in how the paintings can be placed and observed by Jeremy, the segment is riveting and spine-tingling. In addition to the aforementioned terrific lensing and Rod Serling’s extraordinary teleplay, William Goldenberg’s buzzing, electric keyboard score accentuates the
mounting terror. “The Cemetery” is justly regarded as one of the very best Night Gallery episodes and for me at least the top chapter of the excellent pilot.
Top 27 Rod Serling’s Night Gallery segments (presented in reverse numerical order)
Segment Number 8 “Cool Air” (Season 2) 25:59
Along with the Orson Welles-narrated “Silent Snow, Secret Snow” the Rod Serling-penned “Cool Air”, based on a short story by fantasy-horror icon H.P. Lovecraft is one of Night Gallery’s two most lyrical segments. Serling turned it into a love story of sorts, which is precisely what the other Lovecroft story that Night Gallery adapted (“Pickman’s Model”) explored in its ghoulish teleplay. Serling accentuates the emotional underpinnings of the Lovecroft story and puts the narration in the mouth of the female protagonist, who relates an aching tale of unrequited love couched in a tragedy that even in its death throes subtly hints at necrophilia after the main character, a charming and articulate physician dies for a second time in his physically-truncated lifespan. “Cool Air”, unremittingly mournful and melancholic is finally an elegiac exploration of the time-worn “Beauty and the Beast” premise that haunts well after the chilling finale image of a gravestone exhibiting two death dates.
“Cool Air” is in the opinion of this reviewer a stronger episode than “Pickman’s Model” though both Lovecroft entries are exemplary. Richly shot in lush color by Leonard J. South, under the inspired direction of (who else?) Jeannot Szwarc is set in New York City, circa 1923, where a widowed Spanish physician, Dr. Juan Munoz is visited by the lovely daughter of an old medical colleague named Agatha Howard. Though the doctor has laudable taste in furniture and holdings, he maintains a peculiar refrigeration machine in his apartment that maintains uncomfortable, frigid temperatures. He tells her he has a rare illness, which requires the apartment not go above fifty-five degrees. Ms. Howard addresses a startling similarity between her late father and Munoz: both refuse to accept the finality of death, much as Doktor Markeson did in one of Thriller’s most popular and macabre entries. Munoz declines the offer of dinner, stating he can’t leave the apartment because of his malady, though he is genuinely touched that Ms. Howard is interested in being invited to eat in his most inhospitable abode. She finds him sensitive and warm (quite the opposite of Richard Pickman) and is moved by his isolationist plight one further complicated by his wife’s suicide ten years prior.
Subsequent visits further intensify her deepening feels for this amazing intellect and she grow to become oblivious to the icy environs. After a heat wave grips the region Agatha received a frantic call from the doctor who tells her in cataclysmic serenity that his refrigeration machine has faltered and needs a pump arm. She races to the apartment and beholds Munoz draped in a sheet, imploring her to obtain a plethora of ice that is vital for his continuing existence. An iceman is miraculously reached in the middle of the night and he fills the bathroom where Munoz remains concealed with hundreds of pounds of blocked ice. However, this temporary panacea cannot replace the machine and Munoz hauntingly tells Agatha that she must not enter the bathroom as he is dying. He manages to tell her that his wife committed suicide ten years ago because she could no longer tolerate living with a corpse. He chillingly concludes: “You see my darling, I died that time, ten years ago!” After hearing his fall she enters to see a rotting corpse in a denouement with physical and thematic similarities to Night Gallery’s “The Dead Man.” Agatha returns decades later as an old woman to lay flowers at his neglected grave in an extraordinary sequence showcasing a stunning sensory monologue that may for some evoke the brilliant snowy finale of James Joyce’s “The Dead.” The gravestone frightfully frames this eerie tale: Dr. Juan Munoz. Born 1887. Died 1913 and 1923.
Though it is difficult to manage a visual constriction of Lovecraft’s writing style, “Cool Air” captures its existential aspects. Barbara Rush is irresistible as the devoted Agatha, one as indomitable in her subservience to forces she she is incapable of fully understanding, comparably compellingly with Mavis Goldsmith (Louise Sorel) from “Pickman’s Model.” Henry Darrow plays Munoz with emotive soulfulness as an aristocrat hopelessly doomed. The landlady, played by Beatrice Kay is alternately humorous and austere. The decor and set design by the incomparable Joseph Alves is magnificent and Robert Bain’s solo guitar, full of Spanish accents, tender underscores “Cool Air”‘s budding romance. This Poe-like Lovecraft work is given superlative treatment in what is surely one of Night Gallery’s crowning achievements.
Top 27 Rod Serling’s Night Gallery segments (presented in reverse numerical order)
Segment Number 9 “Green Fingers” (Season 2) 19:30
A haunting, synthesized rendering of the Elizabeth era instrumental number “Greensleeves” is the aural entry point for one of Night Gallery’s signature segments, a Rod Serling-penned teleplay based on a well-known short story by R.C. Cook. “Green Fingers” featuring screen icon Elsa Lanchester and esteemed actor Cameron Mitchell is a pastoral confection replete with bullying, murder, paranormal events that play out in an impressively paced nineteen minutes, and aesthetically accompanied by ace photographer Lionel Linden’s rustic visuals and composer Oliver Nelson mixed electronic and acoustic instruments which build and sustain suspense after initially using the aforementioned song classic to powerful effect.
Industrial tycoon Michael J. Saunders Cameron Mitchell), whose arrival is aurally negotiated by instrumental fanfare, is driven with his associates to the tidy and isolated cottage, owned by the widow Lydia Bowen (Elsa Lanchester of “The Bride of Frankenstein” fame) whose sole wish to be left to tend her garden, via her unique “green fingers.” Though warned by his underling Ernest (Michael Bell), who previously had spoken to Bowen and was appraised of her intractable position, the spoiled Saunders, cocky as ever, intends to force the eccentric to surrender her land at a higher than market price so that he build factories. Without the land where Bowen’s cottage sits the elaborate plan will be foiled. Saunders, who has assistants light his cigars only to toss them away before having new ones lit, is a man who is not accustomed to being refused so he visits Bowen to bargain. She is not remotely intimidated by his bullying tactics and his bluster about a multi-million dollar project and she changes the subject to her garden telling him with territorial pride: “Everything I plant grows. I have green fingers.” At first exasperated by her inexplicable indifference to his generous final offers and convinced she is trying to get him to raise the price to match the national reserve, he loses all patience with the “horse-trading New England biddy” as his manner turns hostile. Bowen, unperturbed and determined to stand her ground both literally and figuratively mocks Saunders for his disingenuous tactics and opines he was probably the way he is since he was a young child. But that point Saunders has devised a scheme to force Bowen’s hand.
He meets in the dark with an unsavory thug named Crowley and tells him “I want her out of there. That’s all I want.” The actual aggression isn’t visualized, but the results are clear when sheriff’s cars race down to the cottage on a distress call to find a bloody axe on the kitchen floor and the widow Bowen in shock due to blood loss, still digging and planting in her garden. Crowley’s scare method was to cut off one of her fingers. Blood is spurting out of her left hand as the men quickly carry her to the ambulance. Oblivious to her critical condition she again boasts that she has green fingers, and that everything she plants….grows! Because of her advanced age Bowen dies. Ernst drives up to the cottage where Saunders strolls after his murderous triumph and tells his superior with disgust that a woman has died because of his tactics. Saunders defensively responds that he did not order that killing, but Ernst who chides the tycoon for gloating drives off with disgust as Saunders beholds some terrifying supernatural happenings. He hears digging and witnesses two hands stretching out from the ground and then two arms and then the complete widow Bowen who rises from the ground from the spot where her chopped off finger was planted. Much like Velia Redford in Season 1’s “The Dead Man” Saunders has by then lost his grip on sanity and like the scheming female protagonist in Thriller’s “The Premature Burial” he has fulled earned his fate, permanent insanity.
Saunders glumly follows the resurrected Bowen into the cottage where she sings in her rocking chair covered in earth and roots. Smiling at Saunders she again proclaims her unique gardening propensity to which Saunders, now white-haired stumbles outside completely deranged. Serling added the Saunders character to his teleplay to deepen the moral compass of the segment which chronicles an innocent and beloved old woman revered by even the Sheriff (who remembered her since his own childhood) who is brutalized and killed in the name of callous industrialization. As Bowen Lanchester, an iconic thespian exudes charm and a hospitable manner, but after she is violated she is deliciously triumphant as one whose special powers make her timeless; Cameron Mitchell plays one of the most reprehensible characters in all of the Night Gallery, a real example of the inhumanity of one who gauges success solely by wealth and vocational power. Like the Dad in Twilight Zone’s Season 5 “The Masks” he is unable to appreciate art and beauty. Mitchell’s performance is brilliantly despicable. As the admirably human assistant Ernst, Michael Bell tellingly condemns the extreme plot to evict Bowen, and as the Sheriff Harry Hickox is splendid as a small town law and order figure who values and fondly regards upbringing and early associations. “Green Fingers”, wildly popular, is an absolute Night Gallery classic and a perfect choice to promote the series to disbelievers.