Dark Destinations. He's maybe end times night creature. Why would a few more
casually struggling me because their blood will join yours a radio drama anthology. You
are wrong how you figure every mark on Mango's hunting You don't not you your
partner, he said, I didn't have a ray gun polecast performances set in
the haunted corners of the globe. Darkness is coming for you. Ye,
that's the fear that haunts me. Dark Destinations by Father Belowe at weird e
Way Media dot com. Weird we do a littig light and shad realism,
surrealism, impressionism, end of a story, and interest in the out of
law, a prid of light shoot toward the bizarre. And this place is
nothing if it isn't bizarre. There's no admission, no requirement of membership,
only a strong of a biding belief in the dart at the top of the
stairs or the things that go bob in the night. The name of there
is a place that you would come in your accidentally out of the ranks the
night got Welcome back, art lovers to Midnight Viewing The Night Gallery podcast,
where we discuss night Gallery rod serlings, follow up to the Twilight Zone.
I'm father alone and with me here in the gallery are Bollywood cinema clubs.
Mister Chris Stashue, there's nothing about tomorrow in the diary. There's it's blank,
It's empty. And from the files of Police Squad Zone mister Mike White
cthulhu. Allright, Wow, you're about as convincing as Carl Reiner slightly more.
Although we'll get to it. All right. We are talking about season
two, episode eight, which aired on November the tenth, nineteen seventy one.
Now just let you know, although I intend to review this episode with
my current critical mind, that this one holds a really special place in my
heart. I saw it at the right age and the right time. Nevertheless,
we'll get to it. This episode is split into four segments, and
those segments are the Diary A matter of Semantics, Big Surprise and Professor Peabody's
last lecture subject a common enough item utilized by teenagers. And Tycoon's the daily
journal, in which we notate the happenings of our day to day existence,
but in this instance a unique periodical. It doesn't record what was, but
rather predicts what will be. It's title The Diary. It's our initial offering
in the Night Gallery. The Diary was written by Rod Serling and directed by
William Hale, starring Patty Duke, Virginia Mayo, Lindsay Wagner, and two
uncredited performances, the first being Felix Silla addressed his baby new year in cavorting
about I'm sure most people know him from his most famous I bet most people
know him from his most famous performance in Samuel Bronchowitz Catholic Schoolgirls in Trouble or
cousin It. He was actually cousin it in the original Adams Family. The
other uncredited cameo is Sean Aston, Sam Wise gamgee himself, who is inside
Patty Duke. She was pregnant with him during the filming of this particular episode,
and the episode itself the name of Shaun Aston's autobiography, Inside Patty Duke.
That's right, I really hope. Not a weird way to go for
a guy with such a long and storied career. Just inside Patty Duke,
the Shawn Aston's story. We thought he was such a sweet boy. That's
Sam. Now. This one tells the tale of a television gossip columnist played
by Patty Duke, who receives a gift from one of her targets, a
faded old screen goddess played by Virginia Mayo. A diary that has a peculiar
habit of telling not what happened, but what will would you think of this
one, Mike? I think I enjoyed this one. It felt a little
rough at times, like it felt like this was like a first draft and
they could have gone a little farther and tightened up some things. The twist.
The twist worked for me. I really thought that Virginia Mayo threw herself
off the balcony because I think we cut away before she gets to the door,
or I just kind of assumed that she threw herself off the balcony.
But when they said, oh, she got hit by a car, I
was kind of thrown out a little bit, like, Oh, okay,
that's a weird way to go. But this whole idea of having the diary
that predicts what's going to happen, and that was a pretty cool idea.
And Patti Duke, I'm not sure if she really pulled it off for me
or not. She didn't look like Patty Duke to me in this episode.
I don't know if it was the wig or what was going on, but
it took me a little bit to be like, yeah, I guess that
is Patty Duke. It's just something about her seemed a little different to me.
Maybe it's that glow of pregnancy that I just never saw before. What
about you, Chris, It's interesting. It's an interesting way to open this
episode with this segment because I like the idea. I think the twist and
kind of the outcome is interesting and fun. But okay, like a terrible
person got their come uppance, and it's because she couldn't get over the fact
that she doesn't know what tomorrow's entire day lays out for her or what will
happen. Like I guess, all right, I guess. I just the
story didn't engage me as much as I hoped it would. And Patty Duke's
character is fine. She's not so reprehensible that you want to see her get
her just desserts, but she does in the end. I guess, oh,
I think she does get what she deserves. I agree with both of
you. I think I think having her be a gossip columnist taking on a
faded screen idol was just Rod Serling writing what he knew, and he should
have somehow tied it a little her occupation and their feud should have been tied
in a little bit more with prediction or something, just because that's that's her
means of revenge. Virginia Mayo's um she by the way she bought the I
know she In dialogue, she says that she bought the Diary at a at
a local shop, a curiosity shop, and the only thing I could think
about was the Frogert, the delicious Frogert that must be on tap there.
But Simpsons is everywhere, man, It's ever present all the time. The
longer times goes on, the more pressure the Simpsons honestly feels. It's it's
it's it's astounding. A friend of mine used to call it the Bible now
because we quote it more often than the actual word of God. Homer beget
Bart, b get Lisa, begat Maggie. There's no answers in this book.
I liked this one. Actually. I know I've been kicking Rod Serling
a lot this season, but I thought this script is pretty good. A
side of the dialogue, which is is thing he always overwrites, and he
allowed himself by giving these characters the occupations that they had another opportunity to do
that. But I do think it's structured well. I do think the twist.
I think the twist is effective. I didn't see it coming, you
know, this is Mike. Thanks to you, I got to read the
script for it, and a lot of things became very good. Yeah,
a lot of things became very clear reading it, and that is Rod Serling
is an excellent writer. The dialogue is terrible, but the descriptions, oh
my god, It's like reading a novel. You can see why most of
his stuff just sailed right past anybody because it reads great, but like it's
like comic book dialogue though you like, you read it on the page and
it makes sense, but you hear it and it just sort of hits your
ear on. Having said that, like, overall, I think this is
pretty strong, certainly from him on this show. He's had a few stronger
but this season like virtually not at all. So uh yeah, I dug
this one. That's a pretty low. That's that's damning something with rather faint
praise though, because I'm just trying to has been pretty bad overall. I
just want to give the man his due, you know, like well,
and you know again like I'm I'm I'm right there with you, because like
you said, I mean, we have spent not every episode, but anytime
Rod Startling writes an episode, we have to point out that, you know,
Rod Serling made such a big deal about taking a step back from this
show and being angry that there are these blackoutbits that he won't even do intros
for because he doesn't like them and it's not in keeping tonally with what he
wanted with the show. All that aside, he hasn't done a great job
turning in scripts in a lot in this second season. He just hasn't.
And this one is pretty good. But it's pretty good for the second season
of this show. I honestly thought this was based on a short story because
it did feel so solid, and I was curious. And when I went
to look, I was like, Oh, it's not a short story.
That's interesting because it feels like somebody had taken the time and done this and
maybe it was just a little bit of a sloppy adaptation. So I was
very surprised when I was like, Oh, this is an original script.
That's very curious. Yeah, that again, like I can't help but praise
Serling over and over because I had the same thought, like it is so
tight, and like so pointed that he must have adapted it. And I
said this last season when he lost control of the show that every time he
comes up with something good, I'm going to sort of be doubly mad at
him that he was reserving these like this is you know, this is not
a new story. I know he had it in his pocket if it wasn't
written already, like in the trunk, So like why wouldn't you give us
this last season? And like four meant or you know your position. So
anyway, our next segment is called a Matter of Semantics, which seems as
likely a caption to this one panel joke. It's written by Gen R.
Kearney No surprise and directed by Jack Laird, starring Caesar Romero and his mustache
and E. J. Peeker, which is my new favorite name. It's
about Dracula dropping into a blood bank for a loan. Chris, tell me
about this one. Can I just make a noise that this episode segment was
expecting for me? Huck kuck yuck. There you know it gave me a
substantial amount of Huck's substantial amount being three and that's all it wanted, and
that's all it's gonna get. It's it's it's a Playboy Blackout. I mean,
it's just a one panel comic. Jesus. I mean, what's funny
is it? These one panel comics are are all universal monsters, it would
seem I guess that's the only thing that they could go to. I mean
it makes sense because it's again a still now even part of our pop culture
kind of quilt as it were that I think most everybody knows who Dracula and
Frankenstein's Monster and the Brida Frankenstein are, so doesn't surprise me that these blackout
sketches keep being universal monsters. But I think we've gotten Dracula once or twice
at least, Frankenstein's Monster, Phantom of the Opera. Even I would have
thought that the name of this blackout skit was a midnight visit to the neighborhood
blood Bank, and it's not. No. It's that's weird too, because
I knew of both segments, and for the entire time I've had them confused
because that's the obvious title for this one. I guess that's the that's the
only really clever thing going on here, this matter of semantics. Right,
Although the episode, this segment, this two minute nonsense, is not a
total loss, because we do get to cease Sezar Romero sort of being his
effortlessly charming self, and good to see him sporting the stash instead of hiding
it under a pancake makeup as the joker, fucking suave man. I don't
think there's anything else to say about this one. He looks he looks good
as he looks good as a vampire. That's I mean, that's the takeaway.
At least he doesn't look unbelievable as a vampire. Right, Yeah,
I think that dexter rally should have turned him into a vampire, right,
I have been a better way to treat him. Absolutely the computer wore vampire
shoes. Before we get to the next segment, is you know this season
I've been highlighting talent behind the night Gallery. This season we're getting two stories
written by this man, including the next segment. I don't think anyone even
remotely interested in speculative fiction would not know him. But if you don't,
then do yourself a favor and seek out Anything by Richard Matheson. His association
with Night Galleries obvious. He was one of the original contributors to The Twilight
Zone from the very first season, but by the time Soiling hired him in
nineteen fifty nine, Matheson had already published nearly one hundred short stories and six
novels, including The Shrinking Man, which became The Incredible Shrinking Man and I
Am Legend, just minor works like that. He ran in a circle of
writers known as The Group or the Southern California School of Writers, that consisted
of Matheson, George Clayton Johnson, William F. Nolan, Charles Beaumont,
and Ray Bradbury. During his tenure at the Twilight Zone, he panned Nick
of Time, The Invaders, and Nightmare at twenty Thousand Feet. He was
a screenwriter behind a clutch of Corman Poe movies like House of Usher and Pitt
In the Pendulum and Comedy of Terrors. Around the time that he did his
work here on Night Gallery, he transformed a rather slight novel by Jeff Price
into the greatest paranormal journalist of all time, and Carl Colejack because he wrote
Night Stalker and Knights Strangler and Trilogy of Terror. My god, it's too
much and I'm only scratching the surface. So I just want to exhort you
to go out and read Richard Matheson, and even if none of his work
interests you, you should still be thankful for him, because without him,
there'd be no Wild Stallions and no being excellent to each other because his son,
Richard Christian Mathieson as one of the co creators of Bill and Ted.
I was about to say, is Richard Matheson's greatest contribution to the Twilight Zone
is the segment that gets remade every time they do the goddamn show, is
what it feels like, And it's the segment that I, for whatever reason
in my mind, closely associate the Twilight Zone with. With Shatner and Nightmare
at twenty thousand feet, that's the Twilight Zone segment for me personally, And
so I am always thankful that Richard Matheson was the one who did it,
because, yeah, I mean, I AM Legend gets a bad rap now
because of you know, the movie that came out that more people I think
I've seen than any other I AM Legend property. But the book is so
good. We've talked about it before. I don't know if it was here
on Twilight Zone or something, But they have yet to adapt it the right
way where the actual fucking title of that book makes sense yet to make They
have yet to make the name of the book makes sense in term of the
story. But it's one. I think it's one of the great sci fi
novels period. I mean, you can't deny the power of that book and
the as you said, it's it's How have they not come up with a
decent filmed version of it? It's such a simple little story, and yet
every time they do it they either do it too small or too big or
Okay, the omega Man is great, there's no question the Omegaman is great,
but as its own thing, not necessarily as an adaptation of I Am
Legend. At least they changed the title Who is the Legend? Tell us
who the Legend is? Please? I'm sure fatheram alone. You've seen The
Last Man on Earth, the one with Vincent Price. Oh, yes,
which I like as well too. Yeah, I think, yeah, I
think that's as close as where we're going to get. Yeah, because you
know, in the book it's very small scale. It's just him in his
Pasadena house, you know, and like there's no there's no grand mansion he's
in, or no, you know, high rise in New York. I
don't know what any of the adaptations are going for, honestly, they all
seem to miss the point, which is just one man, a normal dude
who has to figure this stuff out on his own. He's not a scientist
or anything. He just has to He just has to work hard to figure
out his situation and by then it's too late. Anyway, the next time
they make eyrom legend, they should make it for two million dollars and then
they have a chance of making it as good as it can be. I
mean, it's better to just expand the scope of the source material to the
point where it's completely unrecognizable and then it didn't even matter you were adapting it
to begin with. I like that more frankly. Yeah, I want Elk
running through Times Square and some sort of video game adaptation version. Yeah,
it's a Batman v. Superman in the background. Yeah why not? Oh
my god, I forgot about that. What a nightmare in reality we actually
live in now. Our painting reminds us that there's a strange fascination of digging
holes alongside ancient oaks. You give the average man a show and an excent
of map and the fact is he's come thick and fast, pirate gold,
hidden, utter treasure, and sometimes the unexpected and sometimes the unwelcome. Hence
the title Big Surprise. Now. Our next segment is by Richard Mathison,
based in his short story. Directed by Jeno's Swark. It is called Big
Surprise, starring Vincent Van Patton, who is our second rock and roll high
school alum for this season, Mark Vehenian, who I'll always know, It's
Lolly too, and Bless the Beast. In Children, Eric Chase, and
mister John Carradine. This is a tale of three boys befriended by a crazy
old hermit who promises them a big surprise if they can dig it up.
What do you think of this one, Mike, It's short, it's pretty
simple. I'm not sure if I really got the twist at the end.
It feels like this would have freaked me out when I was a kid,
and I would have probably spent a lot of time thinking about it. Now
that I'm fifty years old, I'm just like I can't really be bothered about
you, Chris. You know how A Matter of Semantics was a one panel
comic. This is like three Yes, this is a three panel comic.
I don't know, Like John Carradine is sufficiently creepy, But the fact that
this is a short story is more surprising that Richard Matheson was able to ring
as much out of this premise as he could from it being a short story,
because there's barely anything here. It is really an old man tells a
group of kids to dig. Those kids don't want to follow the kid who's
blindly digging, and then the old man is in the box at the end,
like what what there? You go like, I'm not even sure what
the story was? How do you turn that? How is that a short
story? Let alone? How is that a ten minute segment? In this
show, a story can be like five pages, you know, I don't
know how you get five pages out of this? Is more what I'm getting
at. This is like one reasoning to measure. You get the inner dialogue
of the kids, yeah going, oh, there's probably something really valuable here,
and just everybody has their own ideas of what's going to be that buried
treasure and then when it finally happens, and describing the hot sun beating down
on them and YadA YadA YadA, like I could see this being a short
story, but yeah, it was just there wasn't a whole lot of substance
to this one. For me. There's a skeleton of a good idea here,
it's just to what end. It feels like this is a good setup
for something, but I'm not sure the punchline is as funny or as interesting
as maybe everyone else thought it was. Richard Matheson included, gentlemen, this
is my favorite segment of the entire run of Night Gallery. I set it
up at the top, right place, right time. I think I saw
this when I was maybe ten or eleven years old, And yes, I
spent many years pondering the meaning of this, still having figured it out,
but that obviously colors my judgment of it. Nevertheless, watching it like two,
three, four times I did for tonight's recording here, I still love
it. I think it's one of the best things on the show. Like
the way it's shot, this nothing feels set down. All the performances are
good, the music, which I really paid attention to music and we're gonna
have to talk about gil Malay at some point because he came up with a
lot of he like made a lot of instruments, so sometimes when you think
you're hearing a waterphone or a synth, it's actually something that he's Frankenstein together.
But I really like the music in this episode. It starts off almost
comic with like brass, but by the time they're digging, it's all bongos
and these like shrieking violins, and by the end it's just nothing but a
song cello and this waterphone synth combination. It's fantastic. I love it.
There are shots in it that I absolutely adore. Like I mean, at
the start of this this is you know, kids daring each other and you
you know, peer pressure and whatever, like they don't want to like the
old man's calling them over and they're calling each other chicken to for not going
over. And the lead kid while he's deciding if he's going to go over
and talk to old mister Hawkins, the shot is of him in the background,
but in the foreground is the other kid, the Lolli two kid,
his yo yo, just sort of dropping up and down in the frame and
it's just I don't know. It just summed it up for me. I
do need to say that if aliens are receiving television broadcast from US in deep
space, then I think they think the entirety of America looks like the hills
just outside Los Angeles. That's the only failing with me in the episode is
once again we get the same sort of Well, we can drive twenty minutes
and make it look different than the backlot, but at least they did that
because it doesn't look like the backlot to me. I think the ending works
because Carrie Dean is so fucking creepy. I want to speak to what you
said, Chris, because I thought it too when I was watching it,
Like this is effectively a blackout sketch. It does now make me wish that
all of the blackout sketches were this, you know, like I enjoy laughing
at Dracula as much as the next guy. But if you want to have
an interstitial be this, then it would have elevated the whole series up and
and that, And honestly, that's kind of where I came away from this
specific segment because we haven't gotten a lot of these kind of segments a not
a complete committal to it being half of the episode and not being you know,
a blackout sketch in between. We haven't gotten a lot of those on
the show, and I feel like that's an untapped opportunity for the show makers
and showrunners and writers to do something that's more in between, a not a
complete narrative, but also not just you know, kuck kuck, there's a
vampire sucking somebody's neck, and that this kind of occupies that interesting middle ground.
Made me appreciate this segment more than it might have if it had been
just a blackout segment, because again, the opportunity for this to be a
blackout segment is there, Like if they didn't, if they just cut some
of this out, it really is just a blackout segment. The fact that
it's not, and that it's a little bit more than that makes this one
that I can completely understand where you're coming from. Why you why it hit
just right at the right time for you. Yeah, And you know,
I was basically these kids, and there's you know, it felt it felt
at the time like it understood childhood. It still feels that way to me,
Like like cerling at the at the stop. In his intro for it,
I thought he summed it up really well. He talks about, you
know, child basically childhood being obsessed with like buried treasure and X marks a
spot, like there is a time in your life when that potential for adventure
exists in your head and like maybe if I dig, I will find some
treasure. You know, I'm just gonna keep praising it over and over again.
I did, like I said, turn the ending over and over again
in my head, Like I still don't know, Like was was he a
ghost the whole time? He was? He buried a lie and that was
his spectral form, Like is he just some crazy old man who' dug a
tunnel from his house to this thing? And I don't know it? Like
every possibility is terrible so that I don't know. I love this one.
Our final offering a study in depth of a gentleman from the Haka d see
here at the lectun delivering a most scholarly treatise this particular class. I don't
think you want to cut the paintings title Professor Peabody's Last Lecture. Our last
segment is called Professor Peabody's Last Lecture written by Jack Laird and directed by Gerald
Friedman. There's a rumor that Steven Spielberg actually directed this, but that's I
couldn't find any facts to corroborate that, so just put it aside. This
one stars Carl Reiner as the eponymous professor and Larry Watson as August Derleth,
Richard Annas as Robert Block, Louise Lawson as Hazel Held. You can see
where this is going and John Collins's HP Lovecraft. They're all students in a
lecture hall where an arrogant professor, dismissive of all superstition in all of its
forms, runs headlong into a mythos he can't deny. What do you think
about this? When Chris, I like the idea of it. I think
it's fun. I appreciate Carl Ryner like having no idea how to pronounce so
many of the names of HP lovecrafts Vegas, expansive backlog of weird nugats and
we're Cthulhu creatures and yellow Kings and Carcosa and everything else. I appreciated it.
I really don't know as to what end this is about, Like another
Blackout's sketch baking a little too. I feel like a Blackouts sketch taken too
far, and I'm like, why why this one? What was what gag
were? What gag? Did they think was so funny that they needed to
repeat it like eight times? Yeah, it goes on for a long time
before they get to that punchline of him changing, and I'm like, I
see the is coming a mile away, that something bad is going to happen.
I didn't necessarily see him with that fright mask with the eye sticking out,
but I was like, we could have got here a lot sooner.
Guys. Yeah, I agree one percent. It's overwritten. It's over long
by half. It's an eleven minute sketch. It should have been five.
If that it's eleven minutes, that's wild to me. It feels like twenty.
It feels so, it feels like it just it feels like it's it's
it's thinking, it's so clever that it's showing you these things out of context
that only a certain group of people are going to know what they're talking about
immediately, and it's like, I guess, but again to what end?
Yeah, it's it's it feels almost precious in the in the use of these
of the circle of writers, you know, the sort of Lovecrafts people you
gotta you gotta keep in mind that you know, up until nineteen seventy they
were like a virtual handful of adaptations of Lovecrafts where a counted Palace, Dime,
Monster, Dye, Crimson Cult, and Dunwich Horror. Those were at
five or four or five films, and that he Lovecraft had not appeared anywhere
on TV. In that regard, I think this is actually a good introduction
to him for the American TV viewing public. But that does not excuse this
over long script and this sort of slow grind to the conclusion. It feels
a little bit like Laird was trying was competing with Serling a little bit in
the in the sheer verbosity. I disagree a little with you on this,
Chris, about his pronunciation of most of Cthulhu, and like his his pronunciations
are actually pretty on point, which I appreciate. Also when he's when he
starts reading from his necronomicon, his pocket sized necronomicon, most of what he's
reading is actually the Dunwich Horror from from Lovecraft. It's like almost straight from
the from the source, which I thought was weird, but you know,
it still works. I was kind of confused as to what was the gag
with having Lovecraft in the audience to students. Yeah, I'm guessing like this
gave him his ideas and he was just like, oh, I got to
write this down. Oh look at the power of these old dots. A
stuttering sort of you know, spitting HB. Lovecraft's rather unusual performance. I'm
surprised, to say the least in sprised we didn't see more from Johnny Collins.
I think this is his only credit as someone who appreciates Cthulhu and the
works of Lovecraft. I like that it's getting highlighted in a segment on national
television in seventy one. But they this time and spent with this group of
characters I think is just a little long in the tooth. I don't know
where they would have put the time. It's not like matter of semantics or
big Surprise needed more time. Neither did the diary, But I don't think
it needed to be spent here continuing with Carl Reiner just going on and on
and on, and the gag not increasing in severity quick enough to really amp
up the stakes. It takes long to get to the punchline. Why is
it his last lecture? He seemed fine. Yeah, I know, he
was like it was like asking questions and stuff, and I don't know if
his lectures would be good any good afterwards. But you know, I'd be
eager to sit in on a lecture by a tentacled monstrosity. He still seemed
very polite. I'm with you on that. I would go and see his
his lecture where his like eyeballs pop out of his skull but are like flying
around in front of his face. I particularly want to see his lectures continuing
to trash superstition. He's gonna have to rethink his syllabus. Yeah. I
do like the idea of a handheld necronomicon. I think if anything, that's
that's the big takeaway from this segment is having a pocket sized necronomicon always handy
to summon. Cthulhu and friends are just so happened to have one here.
Oh really, Okay, you're looking all over the world for one, but
here it is. Yeah, the missing pages. We're going to play a
preview of the next episode and we'll be right back to wrap things up.
Painting number one out of the real estate section of a Ghost Town Weekly,
a gingerbready item quite appropriately called housing the Ghost. This, Ladies and gentlemen,
is the night galli as our third selection, and past that uniquely American
institution known as the Pitchment, the Wheeler and Dealer with magical lustrums guaranteed the
cure to palliate, to bring back the glow of health to everything that a
condever mottled dreams. If you will, Our painting is called Doctor Stringfellow's Rejuvenator.
Drink Hardy our final selection this evening, an import from that other regions
that in wind Scherno down below offerd you now in living color and with a
small set of sulfur. Our painting is called Hell's Bells. That's right on
the next midnight viewing, we'll be taking a look at season two, episode
nine that's broken into four segments, House with Ghost, Midnight, Visit to
the Neighborhood, Blood Bank again, Doctor Stringfellow's Rejuvenator, and Hell's Bells.
Until next time. What are you working on and where can people find it?
Mike White, You can find my work over at the Projection Booth podcast,
which is part of the Weirdingwaymedia Network, so you can also get at
weirdingwaymedia dot com. How about you, Chris Stash you As for everything I
work on Weirdingwaymedia dot com, I do several weekly shows and several bi weekly
shows and several monthly shows. So I'm staying busy and you should be busy
listening to everything over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. As for me, what they
said for my audio content, You're welcome to check out some of my other
idiocy at father Malone dot com, but everything else is weird Ingwaymedia dot com.
Thank you all for joining us here at midnight viewing. The gallery is now closed