Review: Season One of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery on Kino Lorber Blu-ray

Season one of Rod Serling’s horror and fantasy anthology series gets a stunning 2K makeover, backed by a roster of informative extras.

Night Gallery: Season OneIn 1969, Rod Serling returned to the anthology format that he had revolutionized 10 years earlier with his epochal television series The Twilight Zone, this time with a made-for-TV movie titled Night Gallery, a trilogy of terror tales stamped with Serling’s trademark verbal prowess. Probably the best known segment is “Eyes,” with Joan Crawford as a scheming blind woman bent on seeing no matter the cost via an eye transplant—and doubtless the biggest reason for that is that it marked the professional directorial debut of Steven Spielberg. But the other two segments are equally strong, backed by Serling’s florid writing and the directors’ determination to make the segments as strong visually as they are verbally.

The TV movie opens with “The Cemetery,” the first of many segments to express Serling’s love for the grim twist endings that he found in lurid E.C. Comics like Tales from the Crypt. Director Boris Sagal and cinematographer William Margulies imbue the story with a wonderfully gothic atmosphere, replete with shadowy corridors and an uncannily altered painting that portends doom. This tale, in fact, has a double twist in the tail, rendered indelible by the bravura performances of Roddy McDowall and Ossie Davis. “Escape Route” features a former Nazi officer (Richard Kiley) living incognito in South America, until a chance encounter with one of the men he tortured (Sam Jaffe) leads to some ghastly poetic justice. Interestingly, Serling’s stories allow even the worst offenders their own slight glimmer of humanity.

One of the biggest differences between the pilot movie and the series that followed the next year is that, in the former, the paintings play a more or less prominent role in the unfolding of their respective narratives. For the series, they simply stand as an objective visual correlative and aesthetic encapsulation of the segment. Since each of the six episodes from Night Gallery’s first season, which ran from 1969 to 1971, contains two or three story segments of varying length, let alone tone, and each segment was considered to be its own separate short film, it’s probably best to discuss the series not by episode but, by individual segments.

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Two of the strongest segments, “Little Black Bag” and “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar,” could easily have been leftover scripts from The Twilight Zone. Set amid the down-and-out milieu of winos and hobos, “Little Black Bag” contrasts empathy and idealism in the figure of Burgess Meredith with slack-jawed greed and idiocy exemplified masterfully by Chill Wills. Given Serling’s dour outlook at the time, it isn’t hard to guess who comes out on top, save for the satisfyingly grotesque twist. At least “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar” offers a tentative sort of reprieve to its aging corporate punching bag (William Windom), even if further thought reveals how short-lasting said relief likely is.

Following in the gothic footsteps of “The Cemetery” are “The Dead Man” and “The Doll,” two of the most generically effective of the remaining segments. The first builds to a truly gruesome final shot through the expert use of off-kilter shot compositions, frenzied performances (especially from Louise Sorel as the bereaved Velia), and Robert Prince’s spine-chilling score. The titular figure of “The Doll” is the scariest plaything on view since The Twilight Zone’s Talking Tina, albeit silent; all it has to do is turn up in the most unexpected places for a quick jolt. Serling also packs a nifty anticolonial punch into the storyline, then compounds that with another one of his patented one-two double twists.

While not among the top-tier segments, mention should be made of “The House” and “Certain Shadows on the Wall,” which comprise a single episode linked by the theme of spectral appearances. “The House” slowly turns itself into an intriguing, if ultimately unresolved, Moebius strip of dream and reality, where the dwelling in question doubles for the headspace of a formerly institutionalized woman (Joanna Pettet). The latter segment riffs on family dynamics, anchored by fine performances from Rachel Roberts, Grayson Hall, and Louis Hayward. Once again, the final shot depicts an ironic dose of richly deserved comeuppance.

It’s been said that an anthology is only as strong as its weakest part, and admittedly there’s a clunker or two to found among these 17 segments collected in this set. (Here’s looking at you, “The Nature of the Enemy.”) But at least Night Gallery’s first season lacks the dreadful, supposedly comedic blackout sketches that unpleasantly pepper season two. About the rest of the segments, you can say that there are things that work and things that don’t. Sometimes this is down to ropey special effects (“The Last Laurel”), or the occasional miscasting (“Make Me Laugh,” also directed by Spielberg), combined with the slightness of the episodes in which they’re found. (These segments mostly run around 10 minutes.) At its best, Night Gallery truly rivals its predecessor for thought-provoking impact, and, on the average, it provides the viewer with a feast of strong performances, affecting storytelling, and rich atmospherics.

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Image/Sound

Kino Lorber presents the pilot and six first-season episodes of Night Gallery in a 2K restoration sourced from an interpositive that looks fantastic. Colors are exceptionally dense and vibrant, fine details of fashion and décor really stand out, and black levels appear totally uncrushed. For a series that relies so heavily on atmosphere, this restoration should really give it a new lease on life. Audio comes in Master Audio two-channel mono, sounding strong and clean, and doing justice to the wonderfully atmospheric scores by Billy Goldenberg and Robert Prince, not to mention that eerie electronic theme from Gil Mellé.

Extras

Kino provide audio commentaries for every episode, even two for the pairing of “The House” and “Certain Shadows on the Wall,” and from a variety of film and television experts, including Jim Benson and Scott Skelton, who literally wrote the book on this series. The commentaries are all highly informative, delving into production details, providing information on the careers of cast and crew, and hazarding interpretations of the more ambiguous segments. The featurette on the series’s troubled history in syndication is enlightening, and it gives you the chance to compare broadcast and syndication versions of “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar” via split-screen. Finally, there’s an enclosed booklet with a handy episode guide.

Overall

Rod Serling’s pivotal horror and fantasy anthology series Night Gallery gets a stunning 2K makeover, backed by a roster of informative supplements.

Score: 
 Cast: Roddy McDowall, Ossie Davis, Joan Crawford, Richard Kiley, Diane Keaton, Burgess Meredith, Agnes Moorehead, John Astin, Diane Baker, Martine Beswick, Tom Bosley, Jack Cassidy, Godfrey Cambridge, Bert Convy, Phyllis Diller, Louis Hayward, George Macready, Raymond Massey, Joanna Pettet, John Randolph, Barry Sullivan, Torin Thatcher, William Windom  Director: Boris Sagal, Steven Spielberg, Barry Shear, Douglas Heyes, John Meredyth Lucas, Jerrold Fredman, Jeff Corey, Jeannot Szwarc, John Astin, Walter Doniger, Richard Benedict, Rudi Dorn, Don Taylor, Daryl Duke  Screenwriter: Rod Serling, Douglas Heyes, Matthew Howard, Hal Dresner  Distributor: Kino Lorber  Running Time: 523 min  Rating: NR  Year: 1969 - 1971  Release Date: November 23, 2021  Buy: Video

Budd Wilkins

Budd Wilkins's writing has appeared in Film Journal International and Video Watchdog. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

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