Dir - Jeff Corey
Overall: GOOD
Despite the grisly and serpentine sea-beast that the Night Gallery painting portrays, its accompanying story "Lindermann's Catch" actually reveals itself to be about a mermaid, one that is captured by Stuart Whitman's embittered small-scale sea captain. Whitman is a man who is slave to such a sea, but not in any kind of romantic sense. Instead, he feels that it is his lot in life after so many decades to brave the winds and merciless waters every day just to earn his keep, taking small mercies in the bottle when he can, and suffering no fools in the process. Thus when an enchanting ocean creature winds up helpless on his deck, it warms the old salty dog's heart as much as anything can. The story has a tragic finish which could have also easily come off as ridiculous, but director Jeff Corey manages to make it unsettling if not still foreseeable.
Overall: GOOD
Despite the grisly and serpentine sea-beast that the Night Gallery painting portrays, its accompanying story "Lindermann's Catch" actually reveals itself to be about a mermaid, one that is captured by Stuart Whitman's embittered small-scale sea captain. Whitman is a man who is slave to such a sea, but not in any kind of romantic sense. Instead, he feels that it is his lot in life after so many decades to brave the winds and merciless waters every day just to earn his keep, taking small mercies in the bottle when he can, and suffering no fools in the process. Thus when an enchanting ocean creature winds up helpless on his deck, it warms the old salty dog's heart as much as anything can. The story has a tragic finish which could have also easily come off as ridiculous, but director Jeff Corey manages to make it unsettling if not still foreseeable.
(1972)
Dir - Jeff Corey
Overall: MEH
Jack Laird cuts out his nyuck nyuck shtick by adapting the 1965 short story "The Flat Male" by Frank Sisk, a presentation that still has a humorous air to it, yet is hardly as idiotic as the blackout sketches that the Night Gallery producer/occasional writer/occasional director frequently authored. Kim Hunter plays a woman who is shopping mortuaries for the best deal on her husband's funeral, said husband being a tight-walleted businessman who has gone out of his way to make sure that his spouse will not be able to afford to financially survive long enough to gain her inheritance. Of course a loophole is in place that allows for it all to end on a fitting punchline, and both Harry Morgan and a young Randy Quaid appear, but it is overall just a mediocre installment worthy of a slight chuckle.
(1972)
Dir - Jeannot Szwarc
Overall: MEH
Sondra Locke gets to do a proper British accent in "A Feast of Blood", a Night Gallery segment that falls short of successfully pulling off its deadly monster reveal. The 1966 source material "The Fur Brooch" by Dulcie Gray is a more accurate title since such a brooch ends up being the culprit, a sort of taxidermied bat-rat thing that no woman alive would willing put on any of their jacket's lapels. Norman Lloyd's boastful and wealthy sleazebag seems to make a habit of gifting these decorative creatures to women that are physically eons out of his league, women who rightfully scoff at his advances yet fall victim to whatever black magik mojo Lloyd has acquired. Locke's demise is a silly one, exclusively because the thing that attacks her looks absurd. Otherwise though, this is a fine if moderate vignette.
(1972)
Dir - Ralph Senensky
Overall: GOOD
While there is a supernatural element at play in the C. B. Gilford adaptation "The Miracle of Camafeo" in the form of seemingly divine intervention, this still qualifies as one of the Night Gallery installment with no horror elements. No matter as it also adheres to host/creator Rod Serling's usual high caliber of thought-provoking screenwriting, another tale where a person severely lacking in integrity gets their comeuppance in a fantastical scenario. Here it is a shrine in Mexico that allegedly grants miracles to those who pray there, something that draws in both Ray Danton's conman and a benevolent insurance agent that has tracked him down. Julie Adams also shows up as the woman who is torn between doing what she knows is right and her devotion to her odious husband. A miracle does appear to occur in the finale, (or two of them to be precise), showcasing that Serling wanted to present a world where both faith and justice can join together to right wrongs.
(1972)
Dir - Ralph Senensky
Overall: MEH
As the title would suggest, "The Ghost of Sorworth Place" is a proper supernatural tale that takes place in a haunted abode, but all of its elements do not successfully come together. The source material itself provides enough to work with though, where the spirit of a wealthy and sadistic scoundrel comes back from the dead on he and his still-living wife Jill Ireland's anniversary, presumably to engage in the same kind of nefarious activity that he did in life. It is a good thing that American Richard Kiley shows up on the scene to offer Ireland his protection, but the finale serves up a twist that seems half-corked at best. Also, Ireland's performance is detrimentally flat. Being a woman in peril throughout the entire story, one would think that she would at least exhibit more than one emotion besides blankly staring at people, but alas, Ireland is here to prove us wrong.
(1972)
Dir - Jeannot Szwarc
Overall: GOOD
This unsettling Night Gallery Western may not offer up any surprises as far as its narrative is concerned, but "The Waiting Room" still excels as an atmospheric musing on a man's dastardly deeds catching up with him. The waiting room in question is an uncrowded saloon which a rugged and tanned Steve Forrest wanders into late at night, the only other occupants being a stoic bartender and four men who are playing cards and looking all the more forlorn for it. Forrest's protagonist is the last horse to cross the finish line as far as deducing the scenario that he is in, but frequent series director Jeannot Szwarc brings Rod Serling's tale of gunslinger reckoning to eerie unreality, creating a doomed afterlife aura that is fitting for such men's crimes.
(1972)
Dir - Jeannot Szwarc
Overall: GOOD
Bill Bixby, Carol Lynley, and Donna Douglas head the recognizable cast in Night Gallery's "Last Rites of a Dead Druid", a fun installment where a mysterious statue grabs diabolical hold of the man that it looks nothing like yet it supposed to look like. Both Lynley and Douglas being convinced that said statue is the spitting image of the former's husband provides a flimsy enough reason for them to purchase the unappealing thing, but this merely serves as a plot device to get it to work its ancient druid magik. Nightmare, hallucination, and possession scenes are a plenty, many of which are done with some Mario Bava-esque gel lighting to give them a campy and ghoulish flare. It is pure macabre storytelling for the sake of it, offering up no moral conundrums to ponder, just presenting a long-antiquated and forgotten form of supernatural mayhem being unleashed on modern and unassuming man.
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