Night Gallery Season Three - Part Three

DEATH ON A BARGE
(1973)
Dir - Leonard Nimoy
Overall: MEH

 

Leonard Nimoy makes his directorial debut with the season three Night Gallery installment "Death on a Barge", one of several vampire tales that found its way onto the program.  Unfortunately, it is one that is weighed down by melodrama, a clumsy script, and bland characters.  Halsted Welles adapted it from the 1927 short story "The Canal" by Everil Worrell, a story that has an undead women stuck on a boat unless she is not, and a young man who is infatuated with her unless he is not.  Lesley Ann Warren gets to sprout fangs in a lone blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene, one that is awkwardly handled as Lou Antonio is too preoccupied with confessing his love for her to notice.  There is plenty of fog and soft focus photography to convey atmosphere, but there is also nothing here to latch onto.

 

WHISPER
(1973)
Dir - Jeannot Szwarc
Overall: MEH

 

Arguably the most ambitious Night Gallery episode, "Whisper" takes an off-putting and nonsensical approach to its source material, the 1967 short story of the same name by Martin Waddell.  French director Jeannot Szwarc has a heavy participant in the series, being behind the lens on a whopping nineteen segments, this being his last.  Perhaps in an attempt to experiment within the tight schedules and budgets that he was allowed to work in, Szwarc gives this one an aloof presentation, having both Dean Stockwell and Sally Field speak directly into camera while the narrative barrels through itself without establishing much of what is supposed to be going on.  It all loosely hinges on Field's character being able to communicate and/or be possessed by dead people, but the fourth-wall breaking and floaty staging is distracting at best.

 

THE DOLL OF DEATH
(1973)
Dir - John Badham
Overall: MEH

 

Despite what the title may imply, Night Gallery's "The Doll of Death" does not feature an animated plaything with malevolent intents that runs amuck.  Instead, this adaptation of Vivian Meik's 1933 short story of the same name is another voodoo tale for the program, one that finds Barry Atwater playing a disgruntled and wealthy Caucasian man who is stood up on his wedding night when his bride's lover crashes the ceremony before it begins.  Naturally, Atwater turns to the ancient and evil arts to get his revenge, with a voodoo doll in his romantic rival's likeness that he utilizes for tormenting purposes.  Things move well enough along until we get to a "Huh?" finale that turns the tables in a lazy and unsatisfactory manner.

 

HATRED UNTO DEATH

(1973)
Dir - Gerald Perry Finnerman
Overall: MEH

 

A good ole man in a gorilla costume pops up in "Hatred Unto Death", a not so good season three Night Gallery segment.  Along with the same episode's blackout sketch "How to Cure the Common Vampire", this would mark the end of the program's initial run, though two more vignettes were produced for syndication purposes.  Sadly it is a subpar installment to nearly go out on, though it thematically examines the interesting concept that DNA somehow contains instinctual memory patterns that can be triggered thousands of years later.  Thus explains why Steve Forrest decides to capture a primate, both of whom immediately have an adversarial relationship and feel threatened by each other.  This could be chocked up to simple human and animal nature, but the story goes for a more dramatic interpretation of such a rivalry that leaves much to be desired.

 

HOW TO CURE THE COMMON VAMPIRE
(1973)
Dir - Jack Laird
Overall: WOOF

 

Calling the final Night Gallery vignette that was shown in the program's initial broadcast the worst and/or most pointless blackout sketch amongst a handful of them may be debatable, but what is not debatable is how clumsy and stupid it is.  Running for less than a minute, it opens with the same stock shot of a creepy castle on a cliff with crashing waves underneath it that Roger Corman utilized in his Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, all before showing a blue-skinned member of the undead sleeping in a coffin and some presumed vampire killers emerging to do their due diligence.  Just as they are about to, one of them asks if they are sure that this is indeed a blood-sucker that they are about to rid the world of, at which point the segment quickly fades out while Johnny Brown is answering that question.  Wait, what?