Night Gallery – Season Two (Universal DVD)
Picture: C+ Sound: C+ Extras: B- Episodes: B-
Though it
took a while, Universal has finally issued Night
Gallery – Season Two on DVD after fans gave the first set a lukewarm
reception. The anthology featured Rod
Serling as a host while Twilight Zone
remained a hot syndicated commodity among other things and retained its
reputation as the greatest TV anthology series ever made, but the producer of
the show was Jack Laird and that would split the show in two by this sophomore
outing. Serling wanted to do an
intelligent show, while Laird wanted to be more sardonic and mess around with
genre conventions. The clash made for a mixed
1971 – 72 season.
Fortunately,
more good shows were made than bad, but some also fell flat in a way that would
not have happened if Serling had better creative control or if Laird was doing
a show totally of his own making.
However, the series still has a good reputation and is somewhat
underrated. Bad syndicated prints over
the years did not help and unlike Twilight
Zone, no one ever wanted to revive this show. However, these DVD prints are more like it
and the episodes are as follows, including key guest cast and commentaries:
Disc 1:
1 – The
Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes (Clint Howard, Michael Constantine)#
Miss
Lovecraft Sent Me (Sue Lyon, Joseph Campanella)
The Hand
Of Borgus Weems (Ray Milland, George Maharis, Joan Huntington)
Phantom
Of What Opera? (Leslie Nielsen)
2 – A
Death In The Family (E.G. Marshall, Desi Arnaz Jr., James B. Sikking)#
The
Merciful (Imogene Coca, King Donovan)
Class Of ’99
(Vincent Price, Brandon de Wilde, Randolph Mantooth)#
Satisfaction
Guaranteed (Victor Buono)
3 – Since
Aunt Ada Came To Stay (Jeanette Nolan, Johnathan Harris)
With
Apologies To Mr. Hyde (Adam West)
The
Flip-Side Of Satan (Arte Johnson)
4 – A
Fear Of Spiders (Patrick O’Neal)
Junior
(Wally Cox, Barbara Flicker)
Marmalade
Wine (Rudy Vallee, Robert Morse)
The
Academy (Pat Boone, Leif Erikson, Larry Linville)
5 – The
Phantom Farmhouse (David McCallum, David Carradine)
Silent
Snow, Secret Snow (Orson Welles narrating)#
6 – A
Question Of Fear (Leslie Nielsen, Fritz Weaver)
The Devil
Is Not Mocked (Francis Lederer)
7 –
Midnight Never Ends (Susan Strasberg, Robert Karnes)
Brenda (Laurie Prange, Glenn Corbett)
8 – The
Diary (Patty Duke, Virginia Mayo, David Wayne)#
A Matter
Of Semantics (Cesar Romero)
Big
Surprise (John Carradine, Vincent Van Patten)#
Professor
Peabody’s Last Lecture (Carl Reiner)
9 – House
– With Ghost (Bob Crane, Jo Ann Worley, Alan Napier)#
A
Midnight Visit To The Neighborhood Blood Bank (Victor Buono, Journey Laird)
Dr.
Stringfellow’s Rejuvenator (Forrest Tucker, Don Pedro Colley, Murray Hamilton)
Hell’s
Bells (John Astin, Theodore Flicker (who wrote the episode)
10 – The
Dark Boy (Elizabeth Hartman, Gale Sondergaard)
Keep In
Touch – We’ll Think Of Something (Alex Cord, Joanna Pettet)
11 –
Pickman’s Model (Bradford Dillman, Donald Moffat)
The Dear
Departed (Steve Lawrence, Harvey Lembeck)
An Act Of
Chivalry (Ron Stein, Deidre Hudson)
12 – Cool
Air (Barbara Rush, Henry Darrow, Beatrice Kay)
Camera
Obscura (Rene Auberjonois, Ross Martin)
Quoth The
Raven (Marty Allen, the voice of Mel Blanc)
13 – The
Messiah Of Mott Street (Edward G. Robinson, Yaphet Kotto, Tony Roberts)#
The
Painted Mirror (Zsa Zsa Gabor, Arthur O’Connell, Rosemary De Camp)#
14 – The
Different Ones (Dana Andrews, Jon Korkes, Monica Lewis, Mary Gregory)
Tell
David… (Sandra Dee, Jared Martin, Jenny Sullivan)
Logoda’s
Heads (Patrick Macnee, Zara Cully, Tim Matheson, Denise Nichols)
15 –
Green Fingers (Elsa Lanchester, Cameron Mitchell)
The
Funeral (Werner Klemperer, Joe Flynn, Charles Macaulay)
The Tune
In Dan’s Café (Pernell Roberts, Susan Oliver, Brooke Mills)#
16 –
Lindemann’s Catch (Stuart Whitman, Harry Townes, Jack Aranson)
The Late
Mr. Peddington (Kim Hunter, Harry Morgan, Randy Quaid)#
A Feast
Of Blood (Sandra Locke, Norman Lloyd, Hermione Baddeley)
17 – The
Miracle At Camafeo (Harry Guardino, Julie Adams, Ray Danton)
The Ghost
Of Sorworth Place (Jill Ireland, Richard Kiley, John Schofield)
18 – The
Waiting Room (Steve Forest, Gilbert Roland, Buddy Ebsen, Jim Davis)
Last
Rites For A Dead Druid (Bill Bixby, Carol Lynley, Donna Douglas, Ned Glass)#
19 –
Deliveries In The Rear (Cornel Wilde, Kent Smith. Rosemary Forsythe)#
Stop
Killing Me (Geraldine Page, James Gregory)#
Dead
Weight (Bobby Darin, Jack Albertson)#
20 – I’ll
Never Leave You – Ever (John Saxon, Royal Dano, Lois Nettleton)
There
Aren’t Any More MacBanes (Joel Grey, Howard Duff)
21 – The
Sins Of The Fathers (Geraldine Page, Barbara Steele, Michael Dunn)
You Can’t
Get Help Like That Anymore (Broderick Crawford, Severn Darden, Lana Wood,
Cloris Leachman, Henry Jones, Pamela Shoop, Christopher Law)#
22 – The
Caterpillar (Lawrence Harvey, Joanna Pettet, John Williams, Don Knight)#
Little
Girl Lost (William Windom)
4, 12,
16 - Authors and Night Gallery
Historians Jim Benson and Scott Skelton
5, 13, 22 - Guillermo Del Toro
#
indicates highlights
It seems
that three episodes, Witches’ Feast, Smile, Please and Die Now, Pay Later are missing, but this is pretty complete
otherwise and if they are not on the first set, they should be on the last
set. The show has more good segments
that I remembered, but still was never a show I was ecstatic about, yet all
these years later, you can see how superior it is to most anthology shows that
followed. Masters Of Horror by
comparison looks awful as compared to this show, despite all the name directors
they have had. For this season, Gallery had Jeff Corey, Jeannot Szwarc,
John Newland, John Badham, John Meredith Lucas, Gene Kearney, William Hale,
Jerold Freeman, John Astin, Allan Reisner, Daniel Haller, Theodore Flicker,
Timothy Galfas, Don Taylor, writer Robert Bloch and even producer Laird, yet
these journeyman director outclass the supposed “masters” who are to often long
played out.
Then
there is the amazing cast of actors that Universal was able to deliver to the
show that would be unthinkable today, even for a cable TV production, but such
was TV and Universal TV in this golden age and the people who made the show (no
matter the disagreements) loved the genres covered in their own way. The scripts have real suspense and
intelligence even at their poorest and was always a quality show that was built
to last.
The only
shortcoming throughout the whole series is that it was not quite as effective
as it thought it was in irony and the twist ending. It was shocking for its time and today, still
has a sense of annihilation you would hardly ever see on TV. However, Roald
Dahl’s Tales Of The Unexpected (reviewed elsewhere on this site) would top
it by the end of the decade, sporting equally strong scripts, directors, guest
casts and became the British cousin
of this show. In some ways, it finished
what Gallery had started. Hardly any anthology series has come close
since and Gallery had its occasional
humor shorts and upbeat shows for a change of pace. Also, some of the stories echoed the best of Twilight Zone simply because some
important points cannot be made enough.
The 1.33
X 1 image is pretty decent throughout with prints that have good color and
detail for the most part, using the Universal backlot to maximum effect. Though some make-up looks dated, it is unique
and was very good for its time. Those
accustom to the poor older prints will be happy. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is on the clean
side considering the age of the show, with good dialogue and music playback
down to Gil Mellé’s classic theme song. Besides
the audio commentary tracks above, the rest of the extras are on DVD 5
including the terrific documentary Revisiting
The Gallery: A Look Back with all new interviews, Art Gallery: The
Paintings in "Rod Serling's Night
Gallery" that is interactive and NBC-TV promos for the show. In total, that makes Night Gallery – Season Two one of the best classic TV on DVD box
sets of the year.
- Nicholas Sheffo
