(1970)
Dir - Douglas Heyes
Overall: MEH
Season one of Night Gallery kicks off proper with "The Dead Man", an adaption of Fritz Lieber's 1950 short story of the same name. The teleplay for both this and the proceeding "The Housekeeper" which made up the first episode were written by Douglas Heyes, who also was behind the lens here. It has a pseudoscience premise where a doctor's patient is able to manifest the symptoms of any disease under hypnosis. How this will lead to being able to cure other diseases or prolong life indefinitely is never convincingly explained, but it leads to a preordained outcome where a scientist who plays god is given a devastating blow to his ego. The final set piece is creepy at least, with howling winds and an unearthed tomb providing some proper macabre atmosphere.
(1970)
Dir - John Meredyth Lucas
Overall: GOOD
Another implausible scenario that can only exist in genre screenplays gets some fine usage in "The Housekeeper", which sees Larry Hagman with a glued-on beard utilizing black magic to transport the soul and personality of one person into another, by way of frogs because of course. Written by Douglas Heyes under the pseudonym Matthew Howard, Jeanette Nolan turns in a delightful performance in silly old crone makeup as the sweet, Irish, and naive title character who thinks that she is being offered a job, only to discover that she is merely a conduit for Hagman's desperate scheme to rid himself of his rich and unlikable wife who fully intends on kicking him to the curb without so much as a penny to his name. Aside from the already amusing premise, the outcome is unique in that comeuppance fails to be served, Hagman taking a "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" approach to his predicament.
(1970)
Dir - Jerrold Freedman
Overall: GOOD
Featuring a young Diane Keaton as a delightful nurse who proves to be trigger happy when it comes to her shirtless fiance with a wandering eye, Night Gallery's "Room with a View" adapts the 1962 short story of the same name by Hal Dresner. The second episode of the program had three segments instead of two, and this one gets in and gets out as a single vignette inside of a bedridden Joseph Wiseman's room. Hal Dresner's teleplay is compact, giving us all of the information that we need concerning Keaton, Wiseman, and his up to no good trophy wife Angel Tompkins. It leads to a predictable conclusion, but it is a well written and well performed bit of macabre comedy.
(1970)
Dir - Jeannot Szwarc
Overall: GOOD
For the middle and longest segment of Night Gallery's second post-pilot episode, host Rod Serling adapts the 1950 short story "The Little Black Bag" by C.M. Kornbluth. Burgess Meredith had previously popped up in four episodes of Serling's The Twilight Zone, (season one's "Time Enough to Last" of course being the most famous), and this one has a similar outcome of cruel fate intervening on an otherwise ideal scenario. It is also sci-fi in nature, where a medical bag from the year 2098 accidentally gets transported back nearly a century and a half to where Meredith, (now a disgraced doctor living out his days as a hobo), stumbles upon it and is able to seemingly cure any ailment. His oafish/fellow homeless pal Chill Wills has other intentions though, and ultimately man's shortsighted greed gets the better of them. The story would have fit right at home and better in the aforementioned Twilight Zone, but even though it may not have any of the Gothic horror trappings from the program that it ended up in, it still represents a textbook example of Serling's cautionary sensibilities.
(1970)
Dir - Allen Reisner
Overall: MEH
A forgettable place holder to fulfill the episode's roughly fifty minute running time, "The Nature of the Enemy" closes out the second Night Gallery episode and offers little to the overall high standards of the program during its first season. Authored by Rod Serling, it concerns a NASA-monitored rescue mission on the moon where they are investigating the disappearance and presumed distress transmission from an earlier vessel. What they find is more silly and head-scratching than terrifying or thought-provoking, but director Allen Reisner, (who would only be behind the lens on two stories in the show's run), at least elevates the material by filming it as a white-knuckled thriller with atmospheric lighting and the like. It also only lasts between lone commercial breaks, detrimentally perhaps since it could have used more fleshing out to make its reveal less abrupt and unsatisfying.
(1970)
Dir - John Astin
Overall: MEH
The first television directorial credit for actor John Astin, "The House" is an adaptation of André Maurois's 1931 short story "La maison". Though it has an ethereal set up where a whispery Joanna Pettet regales her psychiatrist for the first time with a reoccurring dream that she has had throughout most of her life, (even though she does so as she is heading out the door of a mental home, leading one to think that this dream would have come up earlier in her stay), the story unfortunately never goes anywhere interesting with its haunting premonition set up. Pettet of course stumbles upon the abode of her dreams immediately upon hitting the road, runs into the realtor for the place who conveniently just seems to be hanging around there, and then even more inexplicably buys the place and moves in that very day after filling out a few pieces of paperwork. It all follows a loose logic that is fitting for the hazy material, but nothing spooky happens and there is no sense of menace despite what is alluded to.
(1970)
Dir - Jeff Corey
Overall: MEH
Another quasi-ghost story that fails to fulfill its eerie potential, "Certain Shadows on the Wall" is an adaptation of Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman's 1903 short story "The Shadows on the Wall". Written for the small scream by host Rod Serling, (as was the same episode's "The House"), it features a group of siblings who are bitter over their invalid sister Agnes Moorehead being the only one who was granted their wealthy parent's inheritance. Nothing that a little bit of gradual poisoning cannot fix, but said sister's shadow being permanently fixated on the wall post-death causes some psychological duress, well at least that is what the narrative explains even though we never see much of it. None of the characters are likeable by design, but their meager squabbles with each other coupled with a supernatural event that is not explored leaves the story nowhere to go. In effect, the segment is only unsettling on paper.
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