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the top of the stairs, or the things that go bump in the night,
the name of the place that you would come in, your actually deventally
out of the rank. There's the night Gay. Welcome back art lovers to
Midnight Viewing the Night Gallery podcast, where we discussed Night Gallery, Rod Serlings
follow up to The Twilight Zone. I'm father alone in here with me in
the gallery are the Colchack tapes. Chris Dash You I'll think of something at
some point, and also the coal Jack tapes. Mike White, have you
single little Boy? It's about five foot five, very dark hair. I
have, I have, I think we all have. Anyway, we are
here to discuss episode number season number two, episode number ten, which aired
on November the twenty fourth, nineteen seventy one. The episode is split into
two segments. Those are the Dark Boy and keep in Touch. Will think
of something now. Before we get to that first segment, I've been highlighting
talent behind the camera and in front of the camera here on Night Gallery,
and this one is no exceptional though. It's in front of the camera here
and it's going to appear in this next segment twice here it is right,
that is single owl hooting. This one was created by Thomas Valentino back in
the nineteen thirties for his Valentino Sound Effects Library for the Major Records label.
It was eventually included in the Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House record
from nineteen seventy eight, which is an album I buy instinctively every time I
see it. I have like five copies of it. Here. The effect
that you heard the single hooting owl every Effects Library has their very creation on
it. It's all the horned owl, interestingly enough, which is uh,
the most sort of common owl liveler ever kind of run into. Incidentally,
this is a digression, but in Boston growing up, we at the Museum
of Science. They had an owl named Spooky. It was on i think
the second floor and kind of a nocturnal section, and that owl hated me.
Kids would like crowd around the plexiglass cage and it would be fine with
them, and it would see me and it would just start screeching and staring
wildly. Anyway, Single owl hooting, it knew something they did not.
Yeah, there's something right about that, boy. The owls know. The
owls the owls now are not what they see. The owls are not what
they seem fatom alone, that's right. The owls are still sleeping anyway,
Uh, Single owl Hooting. We're adding you to the Night Gallery Hall of
Fame. All right. Anyway, you're about to join a rush of students
and the learning experience quite without the president. The painting is called Dark Boy,
and this particular repository is called the Night Gallery. Our first segment is
called the Dark Boy. This one was written by Halsted Wells from a short
story by August Derlett. His second adaptation here on Night Gallery this season and
directed by mister John Aston. This is his third directorial segment on the Twilight
Zone, A Twilight Zone Night Gallery. This one stars Elizabeth Hartman, Abigail
Moore, and Michael Basilon. It's the story of an old West teacher who
has an unusual student, or maybe she doesn't. Would you think of this
one? Mike? Well, before we even start to talk about that,
you kind of gave me a little bit of a segue there talking about the
Twilight Zone. Did Serling screw up somehow because they adyard his line of the
night Gallery as he was introducing the painting of the Dark Boy? Did you
did you guys pick that up? I did notice that? Yeah? Yeah,
so bizarre did he say in the Twilight Zone? And it was a
lot smoke in the opening segment for some reason in the in this thing?
But yeah, ordinary was it? I think his back is turned when he
says night gallery eventually, right, yeah, might be? Yeah, that
was just bizarre. I was like, yeah, I hope you enjoyed this
episode up, so what I think of the Night Gallery? No? Yeah,
go ahead? So what I thought of this. I thought this had
a lot of promise. I like this whole idea of the teacher who has
seventeen students but no, dear, you're only supposed to have sixteen. And
she's kind of getting gas lit by these old biddies who just seemed like they
would have been Samantha's relatives, but I don't think either of them were.
And I'm just like, okay, yeah, that's cool, Okay, Right,
Eventually we find out that this kid died and that they're thinking, now,
well, maybe we should move the schoolhouse or rebuild the schoolhouse because he's
going to be haunting these grounds. But it is so weird the way that
the information has told out to us, especially like what halfway three quarters of
the way through this story where the old farmer shows up, old as in
like forty years old shows up, and it's like, oh, here's my
son. He can barely be in class, you know, I use him
for work on the farm, you know, kids five fricking years old,
and keep him away from ladders. And I'm like, what a weird non
sequitur. And so I guess our main characters are real Sherlock Holmes because she
figures out that the Dark Boy must have been killed falling from a ladder.
Yeah, it felt a little long in the tooth. I thought there was
a lot of promise here though. That's that's my opinion anyway, how about
you, Chris Well, you gotta love the title first, This is great
The Dark Boy just boy. It really rolls off the tongue right into a
you know, into a into a into an area of where we just know
where this is going. Immediately, I'm joking, this episode is fine.
It's fine, Like, it's inoffensive, and the story that it's telling is
cutesye, and it's a little it's a little melancholy, it's a little heart
string pulley like. It's fine. I just don't as an audience member sitting
here watching this segment, I'm wondering what the director and the screenwriter or the
teleplay writer, because he gets based on a short story. I'm wondering what
they were hoping we would take away from this. And I'm not sure by
the end of it that even those who lost can be found again. Maybe,
but they spend two thirds of the episode, like her, like Mike
said, being like a Sherlock Holmes trying to figure out what's going on.
It's like, what what do you mean, what's going on? Like it's
pretty obvious what's going on here? Like, I don't know, it was
fine, it was okay. I think my favorite thing about this show right
now is we're in this weird spot where it's like, on this week's episode,
five people who you've never heard of, like Gael saunderguard Like, okay,
fine, I don't know, Like it's weird all of a sudden,
Like the show for a while is having like people who are very bigger names,
and all of a sudden, it's like a couple of people that are
just like clearly mainstays of television at the time, or part of Serling's troop
of people that he normally works with. I mean, it's not a surprise
that this episode is directed by John Aston. He's been a he has been
as part of as big a part of this show as anybody has. Frankly,
I think we're spending an entire season with a lot of ghosts to the
frontier, like gentle love stories in both cases werewolves then just straight up ghosts
here. I can't wait for our vampire Old West story. This one is
incredible. Is that a thing? No? Okay, God, thank God
to say, I'll just you know, I just won't be on that one.
But just what you guys could do that, you guys, it'll be
fine. Oh and the yeah, and the Sterling one that there was that
was another Old West ghost one too, because we had we had the Phantom
Farmhouse with the with the Old West family that were a bunch of werewolves.
So yeah, oh boy. Yeah. This season of of of Nike Gallery
is a is a pretty good document of the hills outside Los Angeles and the
changing of the seasons because it's much more bottom now here than we got just
a couple of weeks ago with big surprise. You know, I'm echoing what
both of you guys said because I was very intrigued going into the episode,
and I like those two gossipy women that she's that that she has to deal
with who are keeping secrets from her, and you know, I like the
doling out of the clues and everything. But in the end, what did
we get which is I'm not sure, but ultimately what we do get is
this ghost is befriended by the new school teacher, who is then befriended by
her by the ghost's father who doesn't have a wife, and they have a
romance, and then together they coaxed the child out of the schoolhouse too,
I guess, to go home with them. I don't know. I'm so
glad that the trauma that this child endured, that was so jarring that he
can't find his way out of our plane of existence, brought these two crazy
kids together, you know. That's what I took her way from the end,
like this was supposed to be kind of sweet, and I was just
horrified by the entire affair. I didn't get that they were becoming a couple.
So congratulations to you. I just did not pick up on that at
all. Congratulations to you. I mean, for serious, you definitely picked
up something that I did not at all. I think the episode wanted them
to be a couple, but I don't think it earned it remote. I
mean, look, it's like the same issue we're gonna have with the next
segment. It's like, what the fuck are you trying to earn here?
Because none of this is earned. It's very strange, like it's worse here
than it is in the next episode, because really they're like there's no chemistry
between either one of them at all. Michael Basilon doesn't look like he could
be bothered. It's just he just he's like, hey, my son,
come back to me. I love you. Please don't go away. And
it's like turn in a performance, Please don't just mumble through your lines.
That's funny. In my notes, I wrote, Michael Basilon not great the
emotion excommented and on hands on plate, like but that scene is supposed to
be their courting scene. As twisted as that is, but like once she
sees him in that sort of light that she's kind of falls for him,
and and then the end she takes his hand to like lead the kid out
of there. And the kid who who doesn't even realize that he's dead.
I guess it is trapped in this schoolhouse, has no memory of his mother.
Isn't he going to be confused by this new relationship? I don't know.
There are lots of questions that this thing brings up that it's not interested
in or remotely capable of answering. But it but by the end of it,
I guarantee you the showrunners thought they had in a satisfying way, it's
like far from it. Guys far from it. Yeah, they thought they
tied up everything in a nice bow. And really I was just horrified by
the entire ideal, Like what are the rules here for ghosts, Like,
yeah, the broad sterling rules. They don't know that they're alive, but
they can go to the other side as in heavens somehow. Did the other
kids see him? Yeah, no, the kids don't, because that's a
point in it where like on the first day, she's talking to the child
and all the kids kind of like stare at her and then immediately like flooed
away to go back home, and then the old ladies later on in the
episode say like, oh, well, we knew when the kids said that
they saw you talking to nobody there. So the kid, the ghost I
mean, is appearing just to her like he knows. I don't know that
there's no we all heard you talking to a little boy, and that's how
they all know you're fucking crazy. Now what wait the fucking what? Like
it's it's almost like there's two separate ideas here at play, one where it's
like we were having this character try to figure out what's going on, and
then the other part where it's like this weird love story that does not work
because it's not given enough time to work. And I don't think it would
have worked anyways, because they have no there's no chemistry between the two of
them, and Michael Basilon has no charisma. So I don't know how Elizabeth
Hartman could remotely find him attractive or enticing because he seems so flat. It's
like he's not even real. It's like he's a character in a poorly written
TV show. Right. The reason why I called him the old man earlier
is because even though he is a younger man, he seems like the old,
crotchety, firm hand, just like a bunch of strangers coming to town.
I don't trust anybody, but he is the devil. He's not person,
but he acts that way. Also, stay off ladders, keep everyone,
Keep the kids off the ladders. Get there's a kid off, if
there's a ladder in this room, getting him out. I'm just very superstitious.
Yeah, first they want to teach a CRT and now they want our
kids on ladders. Why was a child on a ladder is my question?
But was doing on a ladder in that one room schoolhouse? I just couldn't
see it. We just couldn't see it. It's like, what the fuck,
it's like one It's like a box. It's a literal box. Yeah,
hanging a drawing or something. Who knows. Speaking of drawings, she's
encouraging that one kid. He drew a six legged horse. That drawing was
terrible. The teachers are supposed to be encouraging the youth of tomorrow, both
alive and undead. Not these kids. They're all going to be dead.
But by the next planting season. I'm sorry to tell you, children,
but we don't have enough food for all of you, so we're taking half
of you down to the orphanage. It is the field out pay. We've
had a severe case of choluma. Sorry. The one other thing I noticed,
at least in the copies of the show that I'm watching, instead of
fading the black for commercials, they've been using the paintings. Yes, yeah,
very effect very it's very jarring a lot. It was jarring to see
it for the first couple times because I wasn't expecting it, But now I
like they did it, and I noticed it more in the next segment because
I again I must have caught it immediately as opposed to like maybe looking away
for a second, I was like, oh, is that is it over?
I was like, oh, okay, no it's not. Or it's
still going like it fooled me into thinking it was over, and now I'm
like, okay, now I get it. I think it does work.
I think it works better than just fading out and fading back in. Eases
you back into your into your spot instead of just coming back from the latest
bar axe ad, snap, crackle and pop. Rod Sterling only smokes morrow
Borough reds. They give you that smooth flavor that's not Chesterfield. Oh really,
I don't know what Rod Sterling smoke, but I'm sure the answer is
out there. He seems like a Chesterfield guy. I mean he does.
Yeah, I'm trying to remember. Was that Chesterfield really satisfies? Was that
their slogan? Whatever it is, it puts out a lot of smoke.
It's assumed that most of you, in moments of weakness or in spasms of
compassion, that picked up a hitchhiker. The story behind this item here has
to do with a man who stops his car and invites a stranger in,
and such a stranger the kind that makes you wish you'd taking the buzzer stayed
in bed. It's title keep in Touch Will Think or Something. Our next
segment is called keep in Touch Will Think of Something. This was written and
directed by Gene Kearney. He's an autour now. This one stars Alex core
Joanna Pettitt is their second appearance. Last time. She was directed by John
Aston actually and Richard O'Brien. No, not that one, rocky horror fans.
I find this one kind of hard to describe. It's a guy who
like, here's a guy is dreaming of a girl like keeps getting I uh,
somebody helped me here somebody described as the thing this was. This is
one of the most bizarre segments of television I've ever A guy dreams of a
woman and then invents her stealing his car, and then she actually exists,
but it turns out she's hoping that he murders her husband because she's been dreaming
of him too, and so she essentially causes it to happen by the end
of the segment, right, I just summarizing. You don't even need to
watch it. Does that sound interesting to you? It wasn't interesting in the
execution, so in explanation. It's just about as bad. I was interested
for a while. I was interested when I had fucking concept of what anything
that was going on, and then when I realized that it wasn't interested,
it wasn't interested in giving us anything concrete, then it kind of fell apart.
But as far as um on the baffling meter, oh it's a ten,
it's a real success in that way. Yeah. I'm glad Chris that
you broke it down because I was just like, what is happening in this
because it starts off very interesting. I was very intrigued by this whole idea
of Alex McCord. Who, my god, he talks a lot in this
episode, and I kind of like it, you know, I like his
voice, and I just kept thinking of him as what was he in Air
Airwolf? Was he Hawk and Airwolf? I think it was. That's where
I know him from. Yeah, he didn't have the eye patch, so
he was he was out of disguise. But yeah, he talks a lot
and he comes in. He's just like, hey, this woman is she's
still in my car? Comes back? Oh, she's my car again.
I'm like, okay, this is really business? Are who is a strange
woman that's stealing his car and then you find out it's all a ruse.
I'm like, okay, well that was the most interesting part of the episode.
I'm totally tuned out now. Yeah, and then what's the name of
the name of the episode? Keep in touch? Will think of something?
I could think of that Mooring amsterdamn Like, don't worry, we'll think of
a title. You know. It's like, yeah, what is this thing?
I was hoping. I was hoping we had just talk about are Wolf
because as earns boarding nine and it. Can we just do that instead for
five minutes and call it good? This is like beyond unintelligible. I wait
what By the end of this, I was genuinely concerned for the people making
this show that they were confused by what they were doing too, Like,
I don't think anyone making this episode had any idea what the fuck they were
doing, from Alex Cord to the people who wrote it, to the people
who filmed it. I mean, like, when you're sitting on set and
you read this, here's the thing. The people who were in and this
read the script, and they read it just like we watched it and or
could read it what the fuck do you think they were thinking, like,
oh, this is really good. No, it's fucking not. Like they
got to speak to Jim Kearney, who probably explained what his intention was,
and then they went, oh, okay, and then they went with the
rest of us are less foundering because he didn't deliver it to us, or
they went okay, Jean walked away and rolled their eyes and made a jerk
off symbol like I don't know, Like again, what could what could someone
explain about this that this doesn't already spend twenty minutes trying to explain that entire
scene in the bar is beyond unintelligible, Like they're oh, I am,
I imagined you and you imagined me, and well, it's like, what
the fucking what? Like what are the rules here? What is going on
here? Who are you people? You have a star on your hand and
you don't have one now, so let me stab you with these scissors.
Yeah, it's you won't be able to go on tour and you'll have to
stay home with me. It's it's like a twenty two minute segment, and
it's like eleven minutes of one story and eleven minutes of another story. It's
it's about a guy who keeps getting conked on the head by some sultry blonde
and she keeps stealing his car. And then it's a story about two people
who have been dreaming of each other and she's going to force to force his
hand quite literally to kill her husband. Like, those are two good stories.
I would have liked to have seen either of them played out in their
full potential, but that's not what we got here. I will say that
I really liked his leather pea coat. It was really good. No,
yeah, yeah, man, I mean he looks good. I mean Alex
Cord looks good, he looks proper nineteen seventy one. Well, he looks
good. And the drawing of her looks amazing. I was just like,
oh wow, that's a great piece of art, Like, and it's so
funny because I don't think that that's the art that starts this episode. Correct,
No, it's not at all, but probably probably Robert Wright did it.
What I wrote about the police sketches be on the lookout for a sultry
blonde on the streets of say Francisco, Like, yeah, really gorgeous piece
of artwork. Like, I mean, it's it's her obviously, but like
I just thought that would be like if they did a drawing of him from
her, be like look out for a man with long hair and a mustache
in nineteen seventy one right away. Yeah, they were very distinctive, and
they were both married at the time. By the way, this is another
night gallery sort of. Yeah, they did that once before. It was
really good. Remember the one with the witches and the witch taking over the
woman's body. Wasn't that Weren't those two people married in real life as well?
We're as well as imaging Coca and King Donovan and the bricking him up
us of a Manteado the merciful. That's the best one a right as well?
Yeah, that's the best, best one over because it's like a minute,
yeah, look this. You know what's surprising. Rod Sterling's name isn't
on this anywhere like this. This is even worse than he has done.
This is probably the worst thing we've seen so far in terms of like being
able to follow what's going along, Like what's happening in the episode is hard
to follow because the episode does not seem like it understands the story it's trying
to tell It feels like there's things that the characters know that they're not telling
us that we're never gonna find out. It's not worse than Tim Riley's bar.
Yeah, there's no one's singing for He's a jolly good fellow. Yeah.
But at least I, at least we all understood what that was trying
to do. That is true. At least I was like, I get,
I get what the point is. It's super saccharin and bullshit, but
at least you, at least you nailed that this. I couldn't tell you
what they're trying to What are they trying to tell us? I mean,
this is up there with the David Carradine one that we talked about as far
as nons. Oh, they're all hanging out at this weird mushroom tree stand
thing at the beginning, like wow, this will be cool, just kidding.
This is like, oh, this has an interesting ten minutes setup,
and then eleven minutes of two people just going I dreamt about you, and
I dreamt about you interesting. Yeah, and John Aston dreamt about that lady
in the house or whatever that one or no, the late be dreamt about
the knock at the door. That was a John Aston directed episode that I'm
thinking of and Joanna Pettit was so yeah, Jesus, you know it's funny,
like, just like logistically, they the police haul her in based on
the fact that a cop recognized her from that sketch and they put her on
a lineup, and at the end when the police say to her basically like,
you know you, he's obviously filing false complaints. You can pursue a
civil action against him. But it's like they pulled her in based on a
sketch. He didn't do any anybody. He came in and told him a
couple of stories, and then they went out and arrested her. She's got
no civil case against this guy. And then she just shows up at the
bar, smiling and happy, ready to spend time with him. It's like,
why are you actively ending time with this person who might be unwell?
Yeah? Who brought who had me dragged down to a police station and make
me stand in a lineup? Yeah? Like I would be far away from
this person, not engaging with them any further, not happily going and sharing
a drink with them. But again, then you have this secondary story of
I guess she was dreaming about him, but wasn't as crazy as he is,
to the point of, again, he's nuts. He's fabricating a story
to try to meet a woman that he doesn't know if she exists or not.
What is the mental stability of that character. He's our main character and
that's why we're following him. But like, that's not something a Staine person
does. She's been dreaming too, see, but she hasn't been doing the
crazy shit he has unless she Again, was she clubbing him over the head?
No, I don't know. I think so he should have been,
though, right, that would have been like that conversation would have been totally
different, Like, you know, look, I rescinded the police order for
you, but like you gotta stop talking me on that. What you want?
You really want that bad? You seem to have money. My nickname
for you is little Bunny Foo foo oh no op. And somehow these two
segments deserve one another. They kind of do. They're both They're both more
or less unintelligible as to the overall theme that both segments are trying to get
us to understand, or that the filmmakers trying to impress upon the audience I
don't know what it is. And the second one's even worse than the first
one. First one's just very melancholy and sacharin, but this one was just
like, Okay, sure, whatever, whatever story you think you're telling,
I bet you think you told it. But this one does have an excellent
leather shirt that he's wearing at one and that mustache can't be beat. No,
no, which episode, which segments better? You know what? You
got me? There, you win. I'll let they both suck as that
they both we lose. We are the losers here by having to engage with
this segment any longer than anyone else has to. Kearney wins again. All
right, we're going to play a preview of the next episode and we'll be
right back to wrap things up. HP Lovecraft, known to the affecsionados of
the occult demonology Witchcraft as a master storyteller, is responsible for our first selection
in this Museum of the frequently Morbid. Do you connoisseurs of the Black Arts,
you will probably recognize it. It's a painting that tells the story of
a young artist who recruits his models from odd places, and the models are
very odd. Indeed, the painter's name is assently is Pickman. The title
is Pickman Model who all familiar? I suppose with mediums and seances, a
slightly curdling nocturnal event in which the dead come back to visit through the good
off is of a middleman or a woman. It's a sport that lends itself
to table tappings, some ghostly manifestations that float transparently across the room, and
a few distant supplical voices. This painting offers a new side of the familiar
seance because it tells what happens when a seance is successful, but the appearing
dead isn't the one expected offer to you. Now on the Night Gallery,
the Deer Departed, and now Night Gallery is slightly distorted version of history,
an act of chivalry that's right on the next midnight viewing, we'll be taking
a look at season two, episode eleven that's broken into three segments, Pickman's
Model, the Deer Departed, and an act of Chivalry. Until next time?
What are you working on? Where can people find at Chris Stashu.
You can find me at weirdingweightmedia dot com where you can find this show and
so many other shows that follow them alone, I and Mike White all put
together on a weekly, bi weekly or monthly. As how about you,
Mike stole my thunder, I'm gonna say the same thing, the exact same
I had all written out. I think Chris stole my notes. He does
that a lot. As for me, what they said, my audio content
is can all be found over at weird ingawaymedia dot com. Thank you all
for joining us here at midnight viewing. The gallery is now closed.