A VIEWERS' GUIDE TO NIGHT GALLERY SEASON TWO (PART 1). THE RELEASE OF NIGHT GALLERY SEASON TWO ON DVD IS SOMETHING LIKE A CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION. After all, the First Season was released waaaaaaay back in 2004 and it's been a long wait; especially since Season Two is probably the meatiest of the three seasons. Season One's DVD consisted of 3 discs which contained the original feature length pilot movie and the rather truncated first season. However, oddly the box set also included episodes from seasons two and three as "bonus" episodes -- although we know they were included to pad out the third disc since there simply wasn't enough first season material. This was no debit, of course, but it does make for confusing viewing -- not to mention the fact that we get episodes twice (the stories entitled "The Diary", "A Matter of Semantics", Big Surprise" and "Professor Peabody's Last Lecture") since they appear in their rightful place on Season Two's box set as well. It truly baffles me why the entire series wasn't released as one box set. Season One was basically 2 discs of material while Season Two contains the hour episodes on 5 discs. Season Three, however, was cut from an hour to a half hour program and features less episodes so, if and when it comes out on DVD, it will probably be only 2 discs worth.

But back to Season Two: this 5 disc set is surely the most satisfying since it contains many of the best episodes in the series as well as nice special features: A half hour documentary on Night Gallery including new interviews with many actors and directors who were involved, a short documentary examining the paintings which introduced each story and an interactive tour of the paintings which, when you click on each one, features an audio discussion of each painting by the original artist Tom Wright -- right down to what medium he used to paint each one! There are also several audio commentaries by Night Gallery historians Jim Benson and Scott Shelton as well as 3 by director Guillermo Del Toro: an avowed big fan of Night Gallery. The episodes look and sound great and it's nice to have them finally in their complete, uncut condition rather than the horribly hacked-to-pieces syndicated versions.

As for the stories themselves, Night Gallery was notoriously kinda hit and miss. Especially when encountering producer Jack Laird's usually very UNFUNNY comedy vignettes which Rod Serling objected so strongly to and fought bitterly against. However, the episodes contained in Season Two's box set are surprisingly strong and even the failures are interesting and entertaining. And what are those stories? Here is an extremely cursory thumbnail look at them as well as my rating of each story using the 5 skulls system -- 5 skulls being the best and 1 skull the worst.

• THE BOY WHO PREDICTED EARTHQUAKES is a nice story that is extremely Twilight Zone-ish. An 8 year old boy (Ron Howard's brother Clint) can predict what's going to happen tomorrow. The boy gets his own TV show and becomes a sensation. Of course, like many Twilight Zones (and many Rod Serling scripts -- of which this is one), there is a twist O. Henry-like ending to this one which works fairly well as a surprise. The story was adapted by Serling from Margaret St. Clair's original story and directed by future movie director John Badham. It co-stars Michael Constantine (Room 222 & My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and Bernie Kopell (Siegfried from "Get Smart" and the ship's doctor on "The Love Boat"). My rating: 3 Skulls.
• MISS LOVECRAFT SENT ME is one of those unfunny comedy blackouts written by producer Jack Laird which only he seems to have been fond of. Joe Campanella plays Dracula. My rating: 1 skull.
• THE HAND OF BORGUS WEEMS finds a man's hand being possessed by the vengeful spirit of a murdered man. About average and sometimes silly which features Ray Milland in a supporting role. My rating: 2 skulls.
• PHANTOM OF WHAT OPERA? is yet another "funny" vignette but this time it's written as well as directed by Gene R. Kearney. However, the only real humour in it derives from actor Leslie Nielsen's ad-libbing and problems with props. Nielsen telegraphs his future comedic side in this little skit as he plays The Phantom of the Opera and is worth watching solely for how the actor deals with malfunctioning props. Nielsen's antics were so much funnier than the script that Kearney left them in. For Leslie Nielsen alone I rate this one: 2 skulls.
• A DEATH IN THE FAMILY finds escaped convict Desi Arnaz Jr. (surprisingly not too horrendous in the role) breaking into the funeral home of dotty old E. G. Marshall (who at the time was also hosting the CBS Radio Mystery Theater). Scripted by Rod Serling and directed by frequent Night Gallery contributor Jeannot Swarc (later to direct "Somewhere In Time"), this ghoulish little story is a little weak and silly at times but is carried by Swarc's direction and the performance of Marshall presiding in a party hat over a table full of corpses. My rating: 2 skulls.

• THE MERCIFUL is a short minute-or-so vignette which actually works very well and is one I vividly remember seeing at a very young age. It stuck with me. Jeannot Swarc directs real-life husband and wife Imogene Coca (from Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows") and King Donovan (whose pool table held a pod person in the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"). Coca is walling up her husband a la Poe's "A Cask of Amontillado". Or is she? My rating: 3 skulls.
• CLASS OF '99 is a stylish, futuristic, very Twilight-Zoney Rod Serling script directed by Jeannot Swarc. In fact, it was this episode that prompted Serling to request Swarc should direct all his scripts from now on. We're in some future time in some clinical-looking university during an oral final exam presided over by Vincent Price. However, the questions and answers do get a bit extreme -- and lethal. Glimpsed among the students are Brandon DeWilde (the young boy in "SHANE" as well as starring in one of the scariest episodes of Boris Karloff's "THRILLER" TV series: "PIGEONS FROM HELL") and a young Randolph Mantooth one year before his starring in TV's "EMERGENCY!". My rating: 4 skulls.
• SATISFACTION GUARANTEED is a short comedy vignette featuring Victor Buono ("WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?" and as the villain King Tut on TV's "BATMAN") as a ghoulish guy looking to hire a secretary from an employment agency. Cute but nothing special. My rating: 2 skulls.

• SINCE AUNT ADA CAME TO STAY is a nice witch story featuring one of the best "witch actresses" Jeanette Nolan as Aunt Ada; who has come to live with her niece Michelle Lee and her college professor husband James Farantino. The professor suspects Aunt Ada is a witch (he's right) and she's trying to take over the young body of her niece. Jeanette Nolan portrays witches like nobody else (witness her similar appearances in Boris Karloff's THRILLER). Farantino battles against her ably and Lee is good (if somewhat vapid) as the clueless niece. Jonathan Harris (Dr. Zachary Smith from "LOST IN SPACE") also puts in an appearance as a delightfully dotty parapsychologist. William Hale directs nicely. One of the better ones. My rating: 4 skulls.
• WITH APOLOGIES TO MR. HYDE is another comedy short starring Adam West (TV's "BATMAN) as Dr. Jekyll and producer Jack Laird himself as his hunchbacked assistant. Totally forgettable and unfunny. My rating: 1 skull.
• THE FLIP-SIDE OF SATAN is the only "one man show" of the series featuring Arte Johnson ("LAUGH-IN" and "LOVE AT FIRST BITE") as an aging hippy disc jockey transferred to an antiquated, hole-in-the-wall radio station where he's forced to play very unusual records that sound rather satanic. Johnson is actually very good in his role and the episode is better than you'd think. My rating: 3 skulls.
• A FEAR OF SPIDERS was written by Rod Serling and directed by last minute replacement director John Astin (best known as Gomez in THE ADDAMS FAMILY TV show). The original director was canned and Astin was given the job at the last minute. The episode is quite well directed and acted by Patrick O'Neal and Kim Stanley. O'Neal plays are callous food & living critic who lives downstairs from Stanley who is smitten but jilted by O'Neal. Unfortunately, O'Neal is deathly afraid of spiders and finds his flat being infiltrated by gradually bigger and BIGGER spiders -- the final arachnid is the size of a dog! He runs upstairs to Stanley's apartment but finds her understandably unsympathetic. The episode is slightly let down by the bargain basement special effects; Astin wisely confines the huge spider's on screen time to brief flashes. Stanley improvised much of her dialogue and she's truly wonderful while O'Neal, never the best of actors, is actually very good as well. Astin's direction is first rate with interesting camera angles. My rating: 4 skulls.
• JUNIOR is an abyssmal comedy short starring Wally Cox awakened in the middle of the night by his baby: The Frankenstein Monster. That's it. That's the whole joke. I can see why Serling was so insensed. My rating: 1 skull (because I can't give zero skulls).
• MARMALADE WINE is a confusing but highly interesting-looking story which ultimately fails. Director Jerrold Freedman utilized surreal, stage-like sets to heighten visual interest and the episode does look very striking. However, the script (adapted by Freedman from Joan Aiken's short story) doesn't really pull it off. Robert Morse (spectacular as Truman Capote in the play "TRU") is caught in a storm and comes under the sway of rather sinister doctor Rudy Vallee. With good performances and interesting sets, the end result is still kinda "huh?". My rating: 2 skulls.
• THE ACADEMY stars Pat Boone (yep, that's right) as a father checking out a military school in which to dump his rebellious son. Actor and frequent NIGHT GALLERY director Jeff Corey directs this Rod Serling teleplay very nicely. Boone as the wealthy businessman is actually very good and underplayed while Leif Erickson (Dad from 1953's "INVADERS FROM MARS") is suitably unnerving as the Director of the strange school. Larry Linville (later to portray Frank Burns on TV's M*A*S*H*) has a cameo. My rating: 3 skulls.
• THE PHANTOM FARMHOUSE is the werewolf story and it's quite good if betrayed by rather unconvincing "day for night" photography. Rather atmospherically directed by Jeannot Swarc and adapted from Seabury Quinn's short story by Halsted Welles, this story is rather strong. A psychiatrist (THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.'s David McCallum) falls under the spell of a mysterious woman who lives in the forest with her parents. However, their farmhouse isn't supposed to exist anymore. Is there some timeslip at work? And why are these ghostly people strangely wolf-like? David Carradine is excellent as a hippy nutcase who may be in league with the savage family. My rating: 4 skulls.
• SILENT SNOW, SECRET SNOW is probably the masterpiece of the entire NIGHT GALLERY series. Expertly narrated like a fairy tale by Orson Welles, this story was adapted (and directed) by Gene R. Kearney from the classic Conrad Aiken short story concerning a dreamy, withdrawn little boy (excellently portrayed by 10 year old Radames Pera) who is slowly retreating from reality. The boy dissolves into a world of snow throughout the story until the end when he's totally engulfed; imagining his bedroom covered in falling snow. The final shot of the boy's face, now fairly catatonic and lying in bed with a single tear on his face, is unsettling and haunting. A jewel in the series and one of the finest TV adaptions ever. My rating: 5 skulls.
• A QUESTION OF FEAR is a fun frightfest that is actually adequately directed by producer Jack Laird. Adventurer Leslie Nielsen takes a bet proposed by Fritz Weaver to spend the night in a haunted house. Nielsen is assaulted by miriad ghostly apparitions all the time suspecting they are being faked. The story concludes with a twist on a twist ending and is fairly successful. My rating: 3 skulls.
• THE DEVIL IS NOT MOCKED is a shorter story (but not really a vignette since it goes on longer than they do). The episode is adapted (and directed) by Gene Kearney from Manly Wade Wellman's short story in which the Nazi army advances into the Balkans and take over the ancestral castle of a Count. Guess who the Count is. The viewer knows almost immediately it's Dracula and that the Nazis are going to meet their match. While there is absolutely no surprise to the story, it is still fun to await the inevitable punchline. Helmut Dantine (the young husband in CASABLANCA) plays the Nazi while Francis Lederer (who also played the vampire in THE RETURN OF DRACULA) is great as the Count. My rating: 2 skulls.

• MIDNIGHT NEVER ENDS is one of my favourite episodes mainly because I vividly remember watching it spellbound as a kid. I saw it in a hotel room during a family trip to the Jersey shore and was totally absorbed into it. This episode written by Rod Serling and directed by Jeannot Swarc is extremely Twilight Zoney (not surprisingly). Susan Strasberg (TASTE OF FEAR) is driving along at night when she picks up hitchhiking soldier Robert F. Lyons and stop in at a late nite cafe. Everyone involved has the overwhelming feeling that they've done this before. Over and over again. Then there's that strange pounding noise coming from overhead out of the dark. I really like this episode (and I'm probably in the minority) and I think it works really well. My rating: 4 skulls.

• BRENDA is one of the most celebrated stories in NIGHT GALLERY as it concerns a rather willful teenage girl (Laurie Prange) who encounters moss-covered monster (similar to Marvel Comics' Man-Thing) in the forest and develops a strange bond with it. Douglas Heyes adapted the Margaret St. Clair story expertly while Allen Reisnet directs with skill. Somewhat let down again by low-budget special effects to realize the monster, BRENDA is still an extremely enjoyable and oddly unsettling experience. The final scene in which Brenda returns to visit with the monster (after being encased in a pile of rocks for a year) works on many levels: it is bizarrely touching while portending future menace and uncomfortable thoughts. My rating: 4 skulls.

• THE DIARY is also one of my favourites. Patty Duke plays a malicious hatchetwoman TV gossip columnist who likes to destroy celebrities. Especially aging former Hollywood starlet Virginia Mayo. After Duke rips the aging actress apart for a drunken arrest the previous night, Mayo crashes Duke's New Years Eve party and presents the vicious woman with a gift: a one year diary. Mayo promptly leaves the party and kills herself. Upon glancing into the diary, Duke discovers that it is filling itself in with tomorrow's entry (in Duke's own handwriting, yet) today. Each entry reveals disturbing events which will occur to Duke the following day. And each event comes true -- to her horror. Duke is a wonder is her full tilt vicious, bitchy, heartless mode; however she still manages to reveal her character's brief glimpses of humanity so that the portrayal is not a cariacature. Virginia Mayo appears only briefly but manages to invest her character with incredible pathos and heart; you really feel for her. William Hale directs Rod Serling's screenplay very efficiently. David Wayne is great as Duke's psychiatrist while future "Bionic Woman" Lindsay Wagner has a cameo as a nurse. My rating: 4 skulls.
• A MATTER OF SEMANTICS is another comedy short this time directed by Jack Laird and written by Gene Kearney. Cesar Romero (who played The Joker on TV's "BATMAN") dons the white face makeup again this time as Count Dracula dropping in to a blood bank to make a withdrawal. Totally predictable and not very funny but cute. My rating: 2 skulls.

• BIG SURPRISE is a shorter story but longer than one of those comedy vignettes. A group of young boys (led by future teen heartthrob Vincent Van Patten) encounter a scary old man (the superb John Carradine) who tells them that if they go to a lonely field and find a certain lonely tree and start digging where he indicates, they will find a big surprise. The boys take him up on it in hopes of buried treasure but, after digging all afternoon Van Patten is deserted by the other boys and left to continue on his own. As the sun goes down, he strikes a wooden box with his shovel. He does indeed get a big surprise! This is another one which stayed with me after seeing it as a kid. Richard Matheson adapts his own short story beautifully and Jeannot Swarc directs beautifully with just the right balance between suspense, horror and humour. Of course, Swarc and Matheson would team up later on the feature film "SOMEWHERE IN TIME". My rating: 4 skulls.
• PROFESSOR PEABODY'S LAST LECTURE is a lengthier comedy segment which actually works extremely well and is one of my faves. Carl Reiner portrays the impudent, disrespectful college professor of ancient folklores and religions who is attempting to teach his class about the Great Old Ones. Now, we all know these H. P. Lovecraft elder gods -- and even members of the professor's class seems familiar with their terrible vengeance -- but the professor continues to ridicule and belittle them until they wreak their revenge on him. Reiner is really excellent as Peabody; insolent and dismissive of such silly superstition. This is probably the only Jack Laird-penned comedy segment which is completely successful; it is directed beautifully by Jerrold Freedman. Another nice in joke occurs when each student called upon by the professor features the name of an actual writer who dabbled in the Cthulhu mythos: Robert Bloch, August Derleth and HPL himself. My rating: 4 skulls.
• HOUSE - WITH GHOST is a rather unfulfilling ghost story starring Bob Crane (later to be murdered after starring in HOGAN'S HEROES) and JoAnn Worley (of LAUGH-IN) as a couple who deliberately by a haunted house in the English countryside. Crane is, of course, fooling around behind Worley's back and is planning on bumping her off and blaming it on the ghost. Below average outing adapted and directed by Gene Kearney from August Derleth's story, it is nice however to see such wonderful character actors as Alan Napier, Eric Christmas and Bernard Fox in small roles. My rating: 2 skulls.
• A MIDNIGHT VISIT TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD BLOOD BANK is yet another lame comedy segment written by Jack Laird featuring Count Dracula -- this time portrayed by Victor Buono. Contrary to the title, the story doesn't even take place in a blood bank like the previous A MATTER OF SEMANTICS. Very weak joke ending. My rating: 1 skull.
• DR. STRINGFELLOW'S REJUVENATOR finds Rod Serling once again writing a screenplay combining the Western genre with the supernatural; a trope he used very successfully many times in THE TWILIGHT ZONE series. This time it's slightly less successful as a plot but it's so well-written, well-directed by Jerrold Freedman and well-acted by Forrest Tucker, Don Pedro Colley and Murray Hamilton that it puts it over nicely. In an 1880's Western town, patent medicine hawker Forrest Tucker is approached by a father with a very sick daughter. Tucker prescribes his worthless tonic fully knowing that the daughter is suffering from appendicitis and plans to high-tail it out of town. Typical Serling occurrences occur. My rating: 3 skulls.
• HELL'S BELLS is a shorter story longer than the usual comedy vignette. John Astin plays a ridiculously old-looking hippie who dies and goes to hell; only to find hell not exactly what he expected. This is actually mildly amusing; owing much to the actors involved. My rating: 2 skulls.

• THE DARK BOY is quite a nice episode which occurs in 19th century Montana where a widowed school teacher (Elizabeth Hartman) is summoned to take over a one-room school house where a mystery lurks untold. The former teacher was dismissed after reporting seeing a ghostly child and now Hartman experiences the same thing. Sensitively directed by John Astin from Halsted Welles' adaptation of an August Derleth story, this elegiac ghost story is not meant to be that frightening but more poignant. It's a huge treat to see Gale Sondergaard (The Spider Woman herself) along with perpetual biddy Hope Summers as two spinsters who know more then they're telling. My rating: 4 skulls.
• KEEP IN TOUCH - WE'LL THINK OF SOMETHING is an oddball story which can truthfully offer some surprising moments. Gene Kearney writes and directs this tale of a man (Alex Cord) who reports to the police that a beautiful woman pistol-whipped him. The police can't do much until the man returns and says the same woman has re-appeared and now stolen his car! He provides a description to a police artist and a woman is eventually brought in for questioning (the wonderful and frequent NIGHT GALLERY actress Joanna Pettet). The woman looks exactly like the drawing but protests her innocence. In a police line-up, Cord refuses to identify her, however. Then he reveals he was lying about everything. This incredibly twisting and turning story is quite diverting but nothing special. My rating: 3 skulls.

• PICKMAN'S MODEL is one of the most famous NIGHT GALLERY stories obviously because it's one of two adaptations of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. Alvin Sapinsley adapts the story while Jack Laird does a surprisingly good job directing this tale of 1890's Boston in which tormented artist Pickman (Bradford Dillman: the perfect John Wilkes Booth in "THE LINCOLN CONSPIRACY") is obsessed with painting flesh-eating demonic ghouls. An art student (Louise Sorel) tries to befriend the mad artist but finds she's gotten more than she's bargained for. A nice (if low budget) monster ghoul features prominently in the finale and there are several Tom Wright paintings featured in the episode (as the works of Pickman). A quite good Lovecraft adaptation with some flaws. My rating: 4 skulls.
• THE DEAR DEPARTED is a fairly routine Rod Serling script directed by Jeff Corey concerning a group of phony spiritualists (singer Steve Lawrence, former beach movie thug Harvey Lembeck and hoyden Maureen Arthur) who give phony seances to bilk wealthy customers. My rating: 2 skulls.
• AN ACT OF CHIVALRY is yet one more lousy comedy vignette featuring a skull-faced Death riding in an elevator. My rating: 1 skull.

We're now halfway through this incredibly chunky posting of NIGHT GALLERY's second season. The second half of the season will follow once you recover from the eyestrain and I shake off carpal tunnel! Join us then, won't you?