Speaker 1: Will you wait, Miss.
Speaker 2: School Sill.
Speaker 3: Welcome back midnight viewers. Father alone here with a rather
Speaker 3: somber couple of episodes at the time of this recording.
Speaker 3: Today the cinematic world lost a massive figure in that
Speaker 3: of David Lynch, maybe not so well known, but also
Speaker 3: expiring on this same day, which is kind of poetic
Speaker 3: when you look at his career. Was mister Jeno Zwark.
Speaker 3: He is a favorite of mine. He directed some nineteen
Speaker 3: segments of Night Gallery. He made the only decent adaptation
Speaker 3: of a Richard Matheson novel in Somewhere in Time. Yes
Speaker 3: he directed Supergirl. Yes he directed Santa Clause the movie.
Speaker 3: But he also directed Jaws two, which I like equally
Speaker 3: to the first film. That's right, it's the b movie
Speaker 3: that the first film was pretending it's not. He was
Speaker 3: a prolific TV director, having worked on Heroes and Smallville
Speaker 3: and Supernatural and Scandal and Castle and Oh my God.
Speaker 3: Jeno Zwark hard to spell, easy to watch. I've gone
Speaker 3: ahead and compiled all of his appearances on Night Gallery
Speaker 3: into this special Zwarkathon, a tribute to a beloved man
Speaker 3: who gave us some great entertainment over the years. The
Speaker 3: episode ended up being way too long, so I'm breaking
Speaker 3: it into two parts, and I'm making them both available immediately.
Speaker 3: The next segment of the show is called Little Black Bag.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: This was written by Rod Sterling, adapted from a short
Speaker 3: story by Cyril M. Cornblue. And this is actually not
Speaker 3: the first time it had been adapted. It had been
Speaker 3: adapted back in nineteen fifty two for a science fiction
Speaker 3: show called Tales of Tomorrow. It stars Burgess, Meredith Chillwills
Speaker 3: and George Firth. It was, as I said, written by
Speaker 3: Ron Sterling, but it was directed by Jeno'swark. Hope, I'm
Speaker 3: pronouncing it right. I'm a fan of his, and I'm
Speaker 3: sure I just made a fool of myself, but I
Speaker 3: don't understand French. It's a crazy moon language to me anyway.
Speaker 4: For your approval, now, a painting which has to do
Speaker 4: with time, not the brief moments left to our culprits
Speaker 4: in the previous story. Their years of imprisonment were minute,
Speaker 4: little fragments compared to the time we talk of in
Speaker 4: this picture. We talk centuries now, and what happens when
Speaker 4: men from one century send back items quite unbidden to
Speaker 4: men of another.
Speaker 5: We call this painting the Little Black Bag.
Speaker 3: Did you guys happen to read the story or see
Speaker 3: the original Tales of Tomorrow?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 3: Okay, well I managed to do all three. The original
Speaker 3: short story takes place in the year twenty ninety eight.
Speaker 3: Society is split into two factions, super Geniuses and the Dimwits.
Speaker 3: Two super geniuses have a bet that they can create
Speaker 3: time travel, and one of them does it so just
Speaker 3: to see if it works, they send a medical bag
Speaker 3: back back in time, where it is picked up by
Speaker 3: an alcoholic but not hobo.
Speaker 6: Alcoholic but not not hobo.
Speaker 3: Yes, so he was a surgeon. He was kicked out
Speaker 3: of the medical industry for practicing surgery while drunk. He
Speaker 3: has nothing. He does have a little house, like I said,
Speaker 3: he's not homeless, and he has a sister named Agnes.
Speaker 3: Now he finds the bag. He finds it and shows
Speaker 3: it to her, figures out what it does, which is
Speaker 3: from the future, and then Agnes becomes more and more greedy,
Speaker 3: and he creates a clinic. It's very long for what
Speaker 3: we ended up getting. He makes a clinic where he's
Speaker 3: helping everyone for free, and he has all of the
Speaker 3: patients blindfolded so they won't see the futuristic equipment, and
Speaker 3: then he decides that he can't keep this information to himself.
Speaker 3: He's going to share it with the rest of the world,
Speaker 3: at which point his sister kills him, dissolves his body,
Speaker 3: and then you know, it's like the end of the episode.
Speaker 3: She goes to demonstrate what one of the instruments and
Speaker 3: then and the instruments get turned off. She ends up
Speaker 3: killing herself. When they adapted it it for Tales from Tomorrow,
Speaker 3: it became a husband and wife team followed the story
Speaker 3: basically the same, except the woman kills him and then
Speaker 3: all of the instruments disappear. In a voice says, no
Speaker 3: one will be able to use as instruments if they've
Speaker 3: committed murder with them, even though they haven't set up
Speaker 3: at the beginning of the episode that they're from the
Speaker 3: future at all. I don't know. It's weird. So what
Speaker 3: we end up getting for Night Gallery is sort of
Speaker 3: a combination of the two stories, except they've given him
Speaker 3: instead of a sister or a wife, they've given him
Speaker 3: this chill Wills as this way too overbearing guy you
Speaker 3: just met on the street, who you're letting follow you
Speaker 3: everywhere and help make decisions for you, Mike, what do
Speaker 3: you think of this second boy?
Speaker 6: Oh boy?
Speaker 5: I mean, as soon as I see poor Burgess Meredith,
Speaker 5: I'm just like, Oh, he's going to get fucked over
Speaker 5: by fate, isn't he. Rod Serling just wanted him to suffer. Suffer, suffer,
Speaker 5: little man. I have talked many times on various podcasts
Speaker 5: about how I dislike when people played drunk. It takes
Speaker 5: a lot to play drunk very well, and man, when
Speaker 5: these two hobos just start going at it at the beginning,
Speaker 5: I'm just like, oh boy, I just was not a
Speaker 5: big fan. I was more of a fan of the
Speaker 5: twenty ninety nine guy, kind of enjoying that. I was
Speaker 5: surprised that not, because so many of these stories that
Speaker 5: we've dealt with have felt like almost some turn of
Speaker 5: the century or like did century kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, you know, I think a lot of
Speaker 3: it has to do with the you know, I hate
Speaker 3: to keep hammering on Rod Sterling, but like the level
Speaker 3: of writing tends to be like nineteen thirties, Like he
Speaker 3: just sort of never particularly when it comes to someone
Speaker 3: on the outliers or it was an outlier of society,
Speaker 3: like like a homeless man or something like like Rod
Speaker 3: Serling has a pattern in his head that that's what
Speaker 3: that type of character sounds like, and so we end
Speaker 3: up feeling like it's from another time itself. So I
Speaker 3: don't know if that's what you were saying, Mike, but
Speaker 3: that that's the feeling I get as far as like
Speaker 3: this episode feels like it's much like it shouldn't be
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy and we're watching this.
Speaker 5: Oh, this is what this is whatbo sound like. And
Speaker 5: you know they're probably on that tool Hoover Bill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm surprised they didn't have vindals on sticks.
Speaker 5: With like the threell broths of beard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's in like a cigar on a toothpick. There
Speaker 3: you go, found this cannabeans Chris.
Speaker 6: What you think, Hey, weird reality together? It couldn't be
Speaker 6: who've had Okay.
Speaker 3: And there are so many times when he could have
Speaker 3: gotten away from Chilwell. It's like, you know, yeah, I
Speaker 3: know he was fascinated by the bag to the point
Speaker 3: where he was sort of like distracted by uh or
Speaker 3: didn't recognize everything going on around him. Maybe, but like
Speaker 3: at a certain point, like this guy's means you harm dude, run.
Speaker 6: Has that thing that they can only do in movies
Speaker 6: where it's like one character is themselves and then the
Speaker 6: other character is standing behind them saying they're plent loud
Speaker 6: sharpens knife off screen. There's no subtlety to it, dare
Speaker 6: I say, even inches in earshot.
Speaker 3: It was great to see George Firth in this episode.
Speaker 3: He's the technician running the future teleportation machine. I guess
Speaker 3: he's alwayshilarious, and of course he was great in Blazing
Speaker 3: Saddles the Fool's going.
Speaker 6: He's great. I mean, he's not given much to do here,
Speaker 6: but I recognized him from Blazing Sat.
Speaker 3: He's not only not given much to do here, but
Speaker 3: like I found myself thinking back to that guy and
Speaker 3: wondering what he was up to during the rest of
Speaker 3: this episode. Right, it's good lord, and like you know there.
Speaker 3: I thought Serling innovated a lot of a lot of
Speaker 3: things in the episode, as far as like keeping it
Speaker 3: on a clock as opposed to you know, the short
Speaker 3: story he like eventually makes a clinic and he gets
Speaker 3: a clientele and everything, and then the original adaptation was garbage.
Speaker 3: So I liked the immediacy of having him treating the
Speaker 3: other like homeless people at the shelter, like and figuring
Speaker 3: out what everything was all in one location. I thought
Speaker 3: that was really good, but nothing really happens there and
Speaker 3: I hated everybody.
Speaker 6: I think for me, it just goes back to the
Speaker 6: idea that Burgess Meredith could have left it at a point.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, oh yeah. Ultimately, when you have a character
Speaker 3: doing stupid things continuously, how are we supposed to follow
Speaker 3: you at after a certain point?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 3: As I said, clearly Chilwell's meant him harm and I
Speaker 3: don't know how he wasn't able to recognize it the
Speaker 3: all time.
Speaker 5: So I was happy to see Arthur is A Mallett
Speaker 5: who I mostly know him as is that mister Brisbee
Speaker 5: from Secret of Nim And I think, yes, yeh, he
Speaker 5: was in and other things, but I mostly know him
Speaker 5: for his voice work. So as soon as he started
Speaker 5: to speak, I was like, whoa, Okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I don't think this episode really brought
Speaker 3: anything to the time traveling genre or anything. And like,
Speaker 3: when I think about Rod Serling sometimes I think, like,
Speaker 3: I don't understand how he had time in the day
Speaker 3: to do anything, considering how many scripts he was writing,
Speaker 3: and like how many stories he had to even read
Speaker 3: to get to the point where he wanted to adapt one,
Speaker 3: so they all can't be winners. This one definitely isn't
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 6: Not the last time we'll see Arthur Mallett, because he
Speaker 6: will come back.
Speaker 3: This episode. We're talking about Season two, episode two, which
Speaker 3: aired on September the twenty second, nineteen seventy one, and
Speaker 3: was broken into four segments, Death in the Family, the
Speaker 3: Merciful Class of ninety nine, and which's Feast.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 3: Since the creative team is pretty much in place for
Speaker 3: Night Gallery, it's the one that is going to be
Speaker 3: rotating around. I want to take a moment to highlight
Speaker 3: a couple of people behind and in front of the
Speaker 3: scenes here that we're going to be dealing with in
Speaker 3: this case. This episode's MVP is a guy named Jeno Juark,
Speaker 3: who is the director. He basically directed the entire episode
Speaker 3: except for one little blackout sketch at the end. He
Speaker 3: directed a bunch last season. He's going to direct a
Speaker 3: bunch more. If anything works in this episode, it's because
Speaker 3: of this guy. He came up at the sort of
Speaker 3: the same time as Spielberg, and Spielberg obviously shot past
Speaker 3: him and took over the world. But when it was
Speaker 3: time to make Jaws two, which I think is a
Speaker 3: really good movie. That movie get shpped on a lot,
Speaker 3: but I think it's fantastic. I think it's like Aliens
Speaker 3: to Alien and Jeno. Swark did that. He did the
Speaker 3: only decent adaptation of a Richard Matheson novel as far
Speaker 3: as I'm concerned, which is a movie called Somewhere in
Speaker 3: Time with Christopher Reed. And then he ended up on
Speaker 3: mainly on television, and I adored him, and we get
Speaker 3: to see him here, and he's really creative. So I
Speaker 3: just wanted a one of the and he.
Speaker 6: Did Red Snow and The Last Offender of Camelot on
Speaker 6: nineteen eighty five, twilight Zone.
Speaker 3: Listen, yeah, every piece of enter Why.
Speaker 6: You just like you left it out. I just wanted
Speaker 6: to make sure we didn't forget. Since we've already mentioned
Speaker 6: twilight Zone nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3: I'm not pointing out that he made Supergirl either, but
Speaker 3: you know, I.
Speaker 6: Think you just you just Barbarstriis and him right there.
Speaker 6: Oh boy, don't look at my house, don't do it.
Speaker 6: You know what this is.
Speaker 3: This is a creative guy. And given this year's deadlines,
Speaker 3: which we're gonna have to talk about a little bit more.
Speaker 3: I think he did an amazing.
Speaker 6: Job here, and he directed an episode of Colombo. I'm
Speaker 6: sure he did lovely but lethal, which we have not
Speaker 6: gotten to.
Speaker 5: Yet, not yet. No, Now, I've reached out to him
Speaker 5: several times, have yet to hear back from him. So
Speaker 5: hopefully fingers crossed one of these days.
Speaker 3: Let him know.
Speaker 4: A little American Gothic here, with the accustomed accouterman's toll,
Speaker 4: mourning tombstones and tears, and the somber look of the bereathed.
Speaker 4: We generally cry at funerals out of a sense of loss.
Speaker 4: A poor, unfortunate loved one will no longer walk the earth.
Speaker 4: He or she will simply occupy six feet of it,
Speaker 4: never to be seen or heard from again. Or at
Speaker 4: least we make an assumption that that's natural law, and
Speaker 4: we subscribe to it. But this painting here, and we
Speaker 4: admit this up front, breaks that law. It's called a
Speaker 4: death in the family. It offers up a new view
Speaker 4: of death, and it introduces you to quite a family
Speaker 4: who lives here in the.
Speaker 3: Night gallery anyway. Death in the Family was written by
Speaker 3: Ron Serling based on a short story by Miriam Ellen
Speaker 3: de Ford and directed by jeanau Juark. This one stars E. G.
Speaker 3: Marshall and Desi Arnezz j.
Speaker 6: We just saw him last month in Marco the The
Speaker 6: Rankin and Bass Musical featuring Desi Arnez Junior as Marco pol.
Speaker 3: I must have missed that one.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't say you're missing it, Bob.
Speaker 3: This one is the tale of an escaped convict who
Speaker 3: takes refuge in a lively funeral home. And this also
Speaker 3: continues our longest running segment here in the show, which
Speaker 3: is please Rod Serling no more, for he's a jolly
Speaker 3: good fellow. We fucking.
Speaker 5: Even my wife picked up on that. She's like, oh God,
Speaker 5: not again.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 6: They're tearing down Tim Riley's God.
Speaker 3: That's and I've only started counting at Tim Riley's Bar.
Speaker 3: But I guarantee you, if if I dug back again,
Speaker 3: there would have been another episode. And I guarantee you
Speaker 3: there's another one on the way, So anyway, I'm keeping
Speaker 3: count now. Mike, what'd you think of this one?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, uh yeah yeah.
Speaker 6: Was this the one that you told me, Mike to
Speaker 6: watch for the ending because you didn't understand what was
Speaker 6: going on or was it another one? This was the one?
Speaker 6: This was the Okay, I'm just making sure. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 6: I was really hoping that E. G.
Speaker 5: Marshall was going to be like threatened by cock broaches
Speaker 5: or something. But yeah, I I like the first part
Speaker 5: of it. I like when it's, you know, lonely funeral
Speaker 5: home guy and this poor guy has died alone, and
Speaker 5: then they're bearing what feels like a very light coffin.
Speaker 5: So I'm like, oh, well, he kept the body, Okay,
Speaker 5: that makes sense. Then we find out that he has
Speaker 5: preserved him incredibly well, to the point where it almost
Speaker 5: looks like it's just an actor staying still rather than
Speaker 5: an actual corpse. I know that sounds weird, but I
Speaker 5: mean especial it's fantastic, not.
Speaker 3: Like we see that a lot in this episode.
Speaker 6: Now, oh boy, Yeah, when they were at the end
Speaker 6: of the episode and everybody had to not blink, it
Speaker 6: was great.
Speaker 5: And does Aerz Junior shows up and he's a wanted criminal.
Speaker 1: On the run.
Speaker 5: We don't really find out anything about him or what
Speaker 5: his whole motivation is. He just he finds that EJ.
Speaker 5: Marshall has the corpse there and he doesn't freak out
Speaker 5: appropriately enough for me. I think I would be much
Speaker 5: more freaked if I came into a funeral home and
Speaker 5: the funeral director just had a corpse sitting around with
Speaker 5: a party hat on and stuff. So yeah, and and
Speaker 5: then it just kind of goes on. It feels very
Speaker 5: rambly to me, even though it's not that long of
Speaker 5: a segment.
Speaker 3: Very loose in structure. Chris, what'd you think?
Speaker 6: I think, Yeah, it would echo everything that Mike just said.
Speaker 6: You know, you have Desi Ernes Junior not given much
Speaker 6: to do. E. G. Marshall, who, like Mike mentioned, I
Speaker 6: know him from all of one thing, which is my problem,
Speaker 6: not the show's problem, But I know him from Creep Show,
Speaker 6: which I mean that segment in Creep Show. I know
Speaker 6: how much you like that movie Father Malone. I enjoyed
Speaker 6: as well. That's my favorite segment in the movie. It's
Speaker 6: a good segment, and it's a great segment. And Eg
Speaker 6: Marshall's acting is one of the main reasons it's so
Speaker 6: good because he plays that character so well. All of
Speaker 6: that aside, man, what like what was the what what? What?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 6: What were they going for here?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 6: Okay, so he has a bunch of people that he's
Speaker 6: created a family of It's like office killer but not good.
Speaker 6: I was like, it's like the same thing. I'm making
Speaker 6: a family of corpses to what end?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And at first I was like, is that really
Speaker 5: his father? I was like, no, that's gotta be the
Speaker 5: dude that he was preserving. So yeah, how so how
Speaker 5: does it that is? Does the arnas junior part of
Speaker 5: the family.
Speaker 3: Now he is?
Speaker 2: Now he is?
Speaker 3: Okay, they both die in that ensuing gun fight because
Speaker 3: he goes bang and then he's like, oha, I gotta
Speaker 3: shoot myself too. I think they the gun was fired
Speaker 3: while that well, there was a wrestling match going around
Speaker 3: and shot and then shot our man E. G. Marshall,
Speaker 3: and then Marshall was still alive enough to drag Arnez
Speaker 3: to his spot and before taking his own and then collapse.
Speaker 3: Oh there is in a nutshell.
Speaker 6: Long enough to talk to the cops and like, let
Speaker 6: the cops know what's going on, and and to have
Speaker 6: a moment where he's my son.
Speaker 3: I like that moment. I don't like that he died.
Speaker 3: Actually when it when I was not convinced that he
Speaker 3: was shot and sort of jabbering away and looking crazy.
Speaker 3: I thought, oh, this is good. I I appreciate an
Speaker 3: ending where someone has completely lost their mind, but now
Speaker 3: they had to throw it away and you know, punish
Speaker 3: him because Rod Serling wrote this script.
Speaker 6: But but you don't understand the ultimate punishment is deaf.
Speaker 6: You don't get like, you don't get that.
Speaker 3: No, the ultimate punishment is everyone respecting Rod enough to
Speaker 3: not touch his scripts that he got through, which is
Speaker 3: what I happened here with with mister Joir obviously didn't
Speaker 3: change a line and you know, followed the directions. The
Speaker 3: only sort of subversion to Serling's regular nonsense here is
Speaker 3: the music, which is Bonker's crazy cool and completely counterpoint
Speaker 3: to everything we're seeing on screen. It's like xylophones and
Speaker 3: flutes and it's really jaunty. It kind of it points
Speaker 3: to what this story actually wanted to be, which was
Speaker 3: a daylight horror story. Like Sirling can't help wrapping it
Speaker 3: in a fucking crumbling old mansion and there's a goddamn
Speaker 3: thunderstorm going on at night. Oh, by the way, I
Speaker 3: mentioned I want to mention a couple of like someone
Speaker 3: behind the scenes and someone in front of the scenes,
Speaker 3: someone in front of the scenes is in this segment.
Speaker 3: They've been a bunch of segments. We've already seen gonna
Speaker 3: be in a bunch of segments. It's one of the
Speaker 3: most famou things of all time. It's this that's called
Speaker 3: Castle Thunder, that was first hit the scene in nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty one. That sound effect was created for Frankenstein and
Speaker 3: has appeared in virtually every horror and science fiction story
Speaker 3: ever since. A lot in Scooby Doo and Gilligan's Island
Speaker 3: and everything all.
Speaker 6: Right to Frankenstein.
Speaker 3: I just heard it in that this thing pops up forever,
Speaker 3: So shout out, Castle Thunder. You don't get enough respect.
Speaker 3: And we all grew up listening to you.
Speaker 6: And I was waiting for Roddy mcdonwell to come into
Speaker 6: this episode, given that where it's set, like there's just
Speaker 6: one set on the universal back up that they shoot
Speaker 6: all these gothic oh boy, more episodes in Like that's
Speaker 6: what this feels like. So goddamn set bound again again
Speaker 6: again again again.
Speaker 5: So what's up with the stairwell? I mean, this stairwell
Speaker 5: shows up in the next segment, but then this stairwell
Speaker 5: is dressed with all of these empty frames. I mean
Speaker 5: you're right. I mean I'm waiting for to be like, oh,
Speaker 5: let me switch these out with another photo or something,
Speaker 5: but they're empty, and I'm just like, what are we
Speaker 5: going for here with the sect decoration?
Speaker 6: Do you remember father belowe that episode of Tales from
Speaker 6: the Crypt where it was like the writer in the
Speaker 6: apartment building and then the like he was like, I
Speaker 6: want this woman to fall in love with me, and
Speaker 6: so she does. And I remember you straight up saying
Speaker 6: when we did that episode, like, man, this show is
Speaker 6: so fucking set bound.
Speaker 3: So is this show now?
Speaker 6: Like this show needs to just like find another shoot
Speaker 6: it from another angle. Doesn't work anymore because it's like
Speaker 6: we're seeing literally the same set in two segments.
Speaker 3: Like what right now, that's us watching this show and
Speaker 3: noticing these things, and you know whatever, I'm being a
Speaker 3: jeno apologist right now because I think the shot it's
Speaker 3: actually beautifully shot. The guy knows where to put a camera,
Speaker 3: he knows how to light it. It felt as close
Speaker 3: to a film as you could get on a set
Speaker 3: and still match it with sort of the outside stuff.
Speaker 3: Speaking of the outside stuff, funeral scene. Okay, there's an
Speaker 3: opening sequence I'm gonna skip talking about like when we
Speaker 3: cut to EG Marshall at the burial of this corpse,
Speaker 3: these fakes putting into the ground, That's where this episode
Speaker 3: should have be gone and carried us from there. And
Speaker 3: then this should have been between Desiernez and him, like
Speaker 3: talking about their situation and these corpses around, because it
Speaker 3: turns into this, Like, first of all, it's another debate
Speaker 3: of surlings. At the beginning in the form of E. G.
Speaker 3: Marshall's character seems at least close to retirement. We can
Speaker 3: agree on that, right, not his first funeral, when would
Speaker 3: he ask anybody the questions he's asking them? But what
Speaker 3: about the flowers?
Speaker 6: Who will come in?
Speaker 2: More?
Speaker 3: Someone must pick music?
Speaker 6: Who will care?
Speaker 3: Like that's day one at the job at the funeral parlor, right,
Speaker 3: and then thirty forty years later you're just like, give
Speaker 3: me the corpse, thank you, goodbye. This crisis that he's
Speaker 3: having is just doesn't make any sense sort of character wise.
Speaker 5: No, he would be so jaded by this point.
Speaker 6: Right, very desensitized. He would be like speaking of tales
Speaker 6: from the crypt, he'd be like the punishment fits the crime.
Speaker 6: You remember that episode Bought Them Alone, where it's the
Speaker 6: funeral home, and it's the guy who's like swapping out
Speaker 6: legs and doing all kinds of terrible shit with the sneak,
Speaker 6: with the sneakers walking down the stairs. Oh my god,
Speaker 6: that's the way the character should be, like super disillusioned
Speaker 6: with all this. But then, but then you can't stell
Speaker 6: tell an empathetic story about a crazy person who has corpses.
Speaker 3: In his basement, Like what I could have gone with
Speaker 3: an empathetic e g. Marshall who also has bodies around
Speaker 3: because he's a lonely old man and like you know,
Speaker 3: thought they didn't get a fair shake in life, and
Speaker 3: he's gonna give him another one. That's not the story
Speaker 3: we got here. What we got was okay. I just
Speaker 3: want to say when Desion has first comes through the
Speaker 3: window and he's sopping wet and he looks like the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies, like was starring on this show now, like
Speaker 3: you know, as much as Duark is sort of pushing
Speaker 3: against Serling's need to keep everything nineteen fifty five, which
Speaker 3: the episode, I mean, until Arnez pops through. If you
Speaker 3: told me it was fifty five, I believe you, because
Speaker 3: nothing else tells us that we're in the modern age.
Speaker 3: The speech Arnez gives them the couch. It's like the
Speaker 3: perfect distillation of everything I know. I keep kicking Rod
Speaker 3: Sterling guys, but he keeps doing it, so I'm going
Speaker 3: to keep hitting back. It's the perfect distillation of Sterling's
Speaker 3: sort of dialogue, which is the character recounts everything we've
Speaker 3: just seen and then tells us what it means. Right.
Speaker 3: It's like to asking the audience to be wistful about
Speaker 3: something we just saw thirty seconds ago. So it's like
Speaker 3: a imagine a guy like me, a convict on the
Speaker 3: run for murder, and I end up here at a
Speaker 3: funeral home and it's run by this cuckoo old man
Speaker 3: who loves life more than anything. Like, you know, I
Speaker 3: gotta throw a little hip lingo for the kids because
Speaker 3: Rod's connected still. But like like all that's and by
Speaker 3: the way, speaking of Arnez and at the risk of
Speaker 3: offending the guy who has Automan's number, Arnz Doinger is
Speaker 3: like the perfect distillation of what you expect the child
Speaker 3: of actors to be like when they're actually performing. There
Speaker 3: are exceptions, right, but you know, for every Michael Douglas,
Speaker 3: there like twenty Eric Douglas's right, they're like and it's
Speaker 3: it's they're so earnest, you know, and you don't want
Speaker 3: to fault them. But like, like acting is like mimicry
Speaker 3: of life, and the way actors kids act is like
Speaker 3: mimicry of acting. Does that make sense?
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's the I mean it, mister, get out of the
Speaker 3: way I made it.
Speaker 6: We weren't. We weren't singing the praises of desi Arnez
Speaker 6: Junior on the Marco podcast on the Rank and on
Speaker 6: Bass show that Mike and I host with our dear
Speaker 6: friend Richard HadAM. We were not singing his praises. He
Speaker 6: was the worst part of that movie.
Speaker 3: He's real bad here.
Speaker 2: It's there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, had he flown on a kite, that might have
Speaker 5: been something else.
Speaker 6: The whole time, might just in the.
Speaker 5: Like hello, old man, you crazy. Ruh, I'm gonna get you.
Speaker 5: I I hear everything that you're saying. For them alone,
Speaker 5: But I have to say, Classic Nice nine is worse.
Speaker 3: Oh it's worse.
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 5: I think it is all right, I mean, but that's like,
Speaker 5: you know, Chris always talks about the world's tallest dwarf.
Speaker 5: It's like, whoa, yeah six the one happy Yeah right,
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 6: I get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just uh, I think there was something maybe
Speaker 3: this Look, this was ultimately just a tail from the
Speaker 3: crypt like blackout, Like you know, this is what Rod
Speaker 3: thinks is really shocking and like and I'm sure that
Speaker 3: there was some problem with standards. You know, you want
Speaker 3: to show like a house full of corpses all setting
Speaker 3: up happily, like they couldn't go too far with it,
Speaker 3: but they didn't go at all far like you said,
Speaker 3: It's like it's clearly just a bunch of actors holding still,
Speaker 3: so there's no real scare there either. Anyway. Oh, also,
Speaker 3: did anyone noticed the last shout was reversed? Yes? Right,
Speaker 3: it was really unusual and off putting, but in a
Speaker 3: good way. Like I I've rewounded back and was like,
Speaker 3: what the what what was that like to look if
Speaker 3: the candles were flickering backwards? But I was right. The
Speaker 3: first time the comps backed out of the room, I went, wow,
Speaker 3: they I guess they were really shocked.
Speaker 6: But Grimboji.
Speaker 5: I was happy to see James be sicking in this.
Speaker 5: I always enjoy him even though he was so young
Speaker 5: in this. It's wild can you imagine. I mean, this
Speaker 5: was when did this one come out?
Speaker 3: Again? This was in nineteen seventy one, September.
Speaker 5: Wow, just three years later the Texas Chainsaw massacre would
Speaker 5: just copy this so much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Tobe Hooper is on record as saying, yeah, Night Gallery.
Speaker 5: I was very inspired by the Death in the Family
Speaker 5: episode for Night Gallery. I knew it. It sounded like
Speaker 5: Toby Hooper was here, but no, he's still dead. That
Speaker 5: was just me doing a spot on Toby Hooper impersonation.
Speaker 6: It was pretty good, man, You really invoked him. It
Speaker 6: was an evocation of him.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, all right. Our next segment it is uh segment.
Speaker 3: It's The Merciful.
Speaker 6: It's a minute and a half long.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: It's written by Jack Lair, based on a short story
Speaker 3: by Charles L. Sweeney Junior. Indirected again by Jeno Joirk.
Speaker 3: This one is stars imaging Coca and King Donovan. It's
Speaker 3: basically just a twist on pose cask of Mantiato with
Speaker 3: a y or a wife, you know, breaking her husband
Speaker 3: in maybe.
Speaker 5: I mean yeah, And I mean they telegraphed this so
Speaker 5: early on. I was just like, Oh, he's not in
Speaker 5: the room.
Speaker 7: She is.
Speaker 5: She's bricking herself in. Yeah, and then it just goes
Speaker 5: on forever like oh god on and yeah.
Speaker 6: Phantom of what rantom of what opera?
Speaker 3: This is not?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, As she puts the final brick in and it
Speaker 5: just becomes completely sound proof. I was like, is that
Speaker 5: really how bricks work?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 6: Also, doesn't the whole idea of the cask of a
Speaker 6: teato completely hinge on the idea that in the story
Speaker 6: he's tied up to the wall too, Because I don't
Speaker 6: know how much carpentry and brick lay y'all have done,
Speaker 6: but you can knock a wall over pretty easily, especially
Speaker 6: if now I'm just putting this out here. It's not
Speaker 6: dry yet.
Speaker 5: Unusual, but she's pretty willing.
Speaker 6: Well yeah, but in this, in this, in this story,
Speaker 6: like my point is, you get it?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I actually felt a little weird watching it, like
Speaker 3: like imagining myself in the situation. But that's just nothing
Speaker 3: that that they did on screen. I just started to remember.
Speaker 6: Bricking yourself into it?
Speaker 3: How good it is the last line of that that
Speaker 3: s there is one of my favorite interactions of all time,
Speaker 3: because uh uh, Montressori is the one being while and
Speaker 3: he says, I for the love of God, and he
Speaker 3: says back very calmly, yes, for the love of God,
Speaker 3: and then he puts the last brick in. It's It's
Speaker 3: such a good line, and any time they film it,
Speaker 3: they always shout the line and I'm always like, no,
Speaker 3: just saying anyway, that was the mercy of Imaging Coca
Speaker 3: and King Donovan husband and wife.
Speaker 5: By the way, I mean ging Coca very very familiar
Speaker 5: to me, but not through regular channels. I think for me,
Speaker 5: it's her role as Shad or Shag and It's About
Speaker 5: Time was my entree into imaging Coca.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 3: I grew up knowing her only from National Lampoon's Vacation
Speaker 3: and then later got to see a bunch of Sid
Speaker 3: Caesar Show of shows.
Speaker 5: Oh she's amazing. Yeah, but uh, It's about Time probably
Speaker 5: one of the best TV theme songs. I mean it
Speaker 5: puts uh the other Sherwood Shorts film Sorry series to shame.
Speaker 3: Really, I know nothing of this show.
Speaker 5: It's about Time, but it's about space. Yeah, it's pretty great.
Speaker 6: I was just disappointed they didn't say rec we asim
Speaker 6: Pache at the end. I was waiting for it. Come on,
Speaker 6: give the give the goddamn source material a little bit
Speaker 6: more credit because it's good, because it's good. This isn't Yeah.
Speaker 3: What I think is funny is that this is based
Speaker 3: on a short story by somebody else.
Speaker 6: Like okay, like yeah, yeah, right, yeah, it's just I
Speaker 6: read guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what if? What if it's a husband and wife
Speaker 3: and she's doing it voluntarily? There, I wrote it. I
Speaker 3: wrote the story. Now onto Mike's favorite segment of this episode.
Speaker 3: This is Class of ninety.
Speaker 4: Nine, almost unusual graduation exercise. Now it's titled the Class
Speaker 4: of ninety nine. A set of numbers and the pearl eyes.
Speaker 4: We'll move behind them now to give you an idea
Speaker 4: why we call the place you are in the night Gallery.
Speaker 3: This is an original script by Rod Sarling. Can You Imagine?
Speaker 6: Oh I Can?
Speaker 3: Was directed directed by Janno Swark, starring Vincent Price, Brandon Wild,
Speaker 3: Hilly Hicks, and Randolph Mantooth. This concerns a graduating class's
Speaker 3: final examination and plumbs the depths of what it means
Speaker 3: to be human.
Speaker 6: Oh, it's plumbing something, it's plumbing it all right? Wow?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I had no idea what they were going for
Speaker 5: through most of this skit, and I'm just like, what
Speaker 5: is happening here.
Speaker 7: Just this.
Speaker 5: Vincent Price as this proctor for the final examination and
Speaker 5: asking all of these very bizarre questions. And I mean,
Speaker 5: I mean it was pure sirling when it became all
Speaker 5: about race for a few minutes. I mean it really
Speaker 5: was about race for I'd say two thirds of it.
Speaker 5: Once they start talking about this black gentleman that's in
Speaker 5: class and they start slapping each other, and I'm just like,
Speaker 5: what am I watching? What in the world is happening here?
Speaker 5: I was very happy. My wife was all about mister Mantooth.
Speaker 5: She's just, oh, is that is that Raymond Mantooth. I'm like,
Speaker 5: what the hell's Raymond man tooth? Like he was in
Speaker 5: emergency And I was like, wow, okay, I can really
Speaker 5: tell our age difference right now.
Speaker 6: Honey, Mike, please tell me you caught one for that.
Speaker 6: Honeyk it's because you're older than me.
Speaker 5: That's what you get from the cougar.
Speaker 6: An actual cougar. You're married to an.
Speaker 5: H Yeah, how do you think I got these scars?
Speaker 5: My Randolph man Tooth, not Raymond My bad.
Speaker 6: Fantastic. I felt like I could hear Rod Serling clucking
Speaker 6: his tongue at me while I was watching the episode.
Speaker 6: I'm glad he didn't use any ortis. I mean, that
Speaker 6: was my concern was he was gonna say something offensive
Speaker 6: or have one of the characters say something offensive, because
Speaker 6: it like verges on it, right.
Speaker 3: He wanted to.
Speaker 6: I want to say the I want to say it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the what you're saying, Mike like that, it seems
Speaker 3: like heavily freighted towards the racism side, because when all
Speaker 3: I said and done, what we're dealing with here is
Speaker 3: a bunch of robots who are going to be sent
Speaker 3: out into Earth, but that has been devastated by some
Speaker 3: sort of apocalypse. This is the year nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 3: and they're going to repopulate the Earth just the way
Speaker 3: humans would. So they're being taught to hate irrational and
Speaker 3: so when we get the first hate thing, it like
Speaker 3: the first example of it, it is it's like it's
Speaker 3: a sort of black and white thing, like give me
Speaker 3: a ridiculous reason to hate this guy, like, well he's
Speaker 3: black and I don't like him for these reasons. Then
Speaker 3: the second one it becomes about monetary or just sort
Speaker 3: of a little more aloof and then the last one
Speaker 3: is supposed to be the this makes no sense at all,
Speaker 3: like reason to hate somebody, And he just just folds
Speaker 3: back to racism because he picks an Asian kid. He
Speaker 3: picks Chang and like he says, well, there's no reason
Speaker 3: I hit him, but I hate him sort of specifically.
Speaker 3: So it what we're getting is a parable about race,
Speaker 3: and we're being told by Rod that racism is in
Speaker 3: hatred is taught. Like, oh my Rob, we get it, Rod,
Speaker 3: we get it.
Speaker 6: I don't feel like the meetings were just like, Rod,
Speaker 6: you can't do what you used to do, man, Like
Speaker 6: it doesn't work anymore. It hasn't worked since the last
Speaker 6: time the show worked, and the show worked, but it
Speaker 6: didn't work all the time either. And it's shocking to
Speaker 6: watch Rod Serling fall and continue to fall. It's not
Speaker 6: Rod Serling's Midnight Gallery anymore or night Gallery, but he's
Speaker 6: still involved heavily, and I wish he wasn't. Like I
Speaker 6: wish he wasn't. That's where I'm coming at. When I
Speaker 6: watch a segment like this, it's like, what the fuck
Speaker 6: is the.
Speaker 3: Point this script gone through? Two of his scripts got
Speaker 3: through here. He complained that like a lot of his
Speaker 3: script's being rejected or rewritten here. By the way, that's
Speaker 3: also a fallacy I've come to find out in further reading,
Speaker 3: like two of his scripts were rewritten like sort of
Speaker 3: ground up right like and everything else it's minor change.
Speaker 3: It's always sort of like dialogue or an actor improvised
Speaker 3: on the set, and they allowed it to sort of
Speaker 3: go through. So basically what he's dealing with here is
Speaker 3: his script either gets through and gets made or gets rejected.
Speaker 3: This is getting through what's getting rejected, right.
Speaker 5: I would question were the professors Were they robots?
Speaker 3: I think Vincent Price, Yeah, no, they have to be
Speaker 3: right because the whole I no, no, no, no, Vincent
Speaker 3: Price is a human and then they turn off the class.
Speaker 3: So I think they were human because they they mentioned
Speaker 3: in the really clumsy giant exposition dump of a finale
Speaker 3: at the fucking graduation ceremony. God man, like if he
Speaker 3: had just you know what, if they had left this
Speaker 3: ending iniguous and not had the finale thing it left,
Speaker 3: we were left going like what the fuck was that?
Speaker 3: It might have been something, but anyway, No, he has
Speaker 3: to hit the nail on the head. So he says
Speaker 3: that these androids or machines have been remade in humans
Speaker 3: image to repopulate the earth for them by that. Like,
Speaker 3: so I think there are still humans teaching them how
Speaker 3: to be properly human like in this you know, vicious
Speaker 3: and horrifying manner. So I think Vincent Price at least
Speaker 3: was human there.
Speaker 6: I was so glad they had Vincent Price in an
Speaker 6: episode of this show. And he did nothing. And this
Speaker 6: is the only episode segment he's in in the entire show.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's good to waste him. It's really good to.
Speaker 6: Waste Vincent fucking Price. Yeah, not Randolph Mantu, No, no,
Speaker 6: no Vincent. Like, why why cast Vincent Price? Like why
Speaker 6: anybody could have played that role? It doesn't lean on
Speaker 6: his strengths as a as an actor. It actually is
Speaker 6: strong and completely devoid the charisma that he normally has.
Speaker 5: I am shocked that just as the first segment was
Speaker 5: ripped off here, we have a reverse of this with
Speaker 5: Mark L. Lester's Class of nineteen ninety nine, which came
Speaker 5: out in nineteen ninety where it's the teachers who are
Speaker 5: robots and the students are all people. Oh my god,
Speaker 5: on where's the outrage about this? People?
Speaker 3: Come on, Reparations are necessary.
Speaker 5: Intellectual property has been stolen.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, Rod, Rod, Oh, I will say if there
Speaker 3: is anything impressive about this episode, like I thought, all
Speaker 3: the performance is really good. I think it's shot really well.
Speaker 3: It also should be noted that this entire episode, beginning
Speaker 3: to end rehearsal to final take, was half a day
Speaker 3: of filming. Oh wow, that's how much they take the
Speaker 3: time they gave shocking shocking, So that means they spent
Speaker 3: like a couple hours maybe rehearsing, and then another two
Speaker 3: and a half to three filming, And this is what
Speaker 3: we got in that regard. This is fucking incredible. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: If you were to turn the sound off and not
Speaker 3: have to listen to anything they were saying and you
Speaker 3: will be like, yeah, that's pretty good. Anyway, anything else
Speaker 3: on this one, gents.
Speaker 5: Oh, I did really quickly want to go back for
Speaker 5: a second. I apologize about this severely. Chris, our good
Speaker 5: friend Nome Pilick is in the Death and the Family episode,
Speaker 5: the man who has given us so many hours of
Speaker 5: entertainment as the director of Barney Miller episodes and also
Speaker 5: the director of Taxi episodes their father alone, so he
Speaker 5: is the driver in the Death in the Family segment.
Speaker 3: At the one at the beginning, the one dropping off
Speaker 3: the corpse. Yeah, oh wow, the one who I went,
Speaker 3: oh my god, is that Frank stillone? And then he
Speaker 3: started acting really well and I went, oh no, it's
Speaker 3: not friend.
Speaker 6: Sty snapping his fingers. Take it back.
Speaker 5: Sixteen.
Speaker 6: Yeah, even an acting powerhouse then yeah, of course, thank
Speaker 6: god he wasn't.
Speaker 3: All right. Off to our next segment, which, again, you're
Speaker 3: not gonna hear a an introduction on this. You're not
Speaker 3: gonna hear an introduction on most of them. Why because
Speaker 3: Rod didn't want to. But this was called with apologies
Speaker 3: to mister Hyde, written by Jack Laird, directed by the
Speaker 3: Senator Jena Schwark. It's really hard to say, but it's
Speaker 3: worth saying. This one stars Adam West and Jack Laird.
Speaker 3: This is the play a Playboy magazine cartoon from the
Speaker 3: October issue.
Speaker 5: It's oh boy, Yeah.
Speaker 6: You guys want to I love Adam West, just not
Speaker 6: in this.
Speaker 3: He doesn't do a bad job.
Speaker 6: Could have been anybody. It feels like he was there
Speaker 6: so they could go this week's episode. Yeah, Adam West
Speaker 6: for two. So he's in that on this episode of
Speaker 6: the Twilight Zone or Night Gallery. He's on that longer
Speaker 6: than he's in.
Speaker 3: The actual episode.
Speaker 6: You over promise than under delivered, and yeah, it's a gag.
Speaker 6: It's fine. It comes and it goes as quickly as
Speaker 6: I wanted it to, which is to say it was
Speaker 6: like thirty seconds effectively, is what it felt like. So good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't stay mad at these things because they're
Speaker 3: not around long enough for that to for them really registered.
Speaker 3: And Plus in this case, it seems like Jack Laird
Speaker 3: and Adam Western just drinking buddies and they probably had
Speaker 3: the right conversation and when come to work tomorrow, we'll
Speaker 3: do this.
Speaker 6: You want to make segmentimum, Sign me up.
Speaker 3: I watched an interview with Jeno Schwark and he was
Speaker 3: saying how the Class of ninety nine episode, like the
Speaker 3: half a day he got to film that that wasn't
Speaker 3: that common. But if you were getting an assigned a
Speaker 3: blackout sketch, you had two hours.
Speaker 6: That's so you should start these Eneau Swark cast. I'm
Speaker 6: gonna a deep dive into the career of Jeneau Swark.
Speaker 3: You know, you can admire somebody and not be a
Speaker 3: fanatic about them. I don't have to talk about him
Speaker 3: every week. He knows I love him.
Speaker 6: The fan club of one.
Speaker 3: He doesn't, he will, because I'm going to forward the
Speaker 3: to him. We're gonna work. We're gonna get in touch
Speaker 3: with you now.
Speaker 6: As long as if you can, if you can somehow
Speaker 6: manage to get Mike White to talk to you know,
Speaker 6: swark along with yourself as a success.
Speaker 3: Listen, Mike can speak for me as my proxy, just
Speaker 3: as long as he knows that there's a fucking lunatic
Speaker 3: out there, nam Father Malone who's one of his biggest fans.
Speaker 3: And like Annie Wilkes, now that's.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, like Annie Wilkes, I'm your number one fan.
Speaker 6: The wife didn't drink the cock of duty tea, right,
Speaker 6: which I now know what that is in reference to,
Speaker 6: so all those times before eyes sat and didn't say anything.
Speaker 6: Now I get it.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a good movie.
Speaker 6: He's very good. You know.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna encourage beyond you. I'm gonna encourage our listeners
Speaker 3: to watch Misery.
Speaker 6: If you have HBO Max, you should watch it on
Speaker 6: there because they have a TCM intro with Rob Reiner,
Speaker 6: Oh nice, where he talks about like ten minutes about
Speaker 6: the movie Wow on Zoom Essentially.
Speaker 3: Just like in his office if we contacted him now,
Speaker 3: I bet he would tell us some stories. Hey, Ron God,
Speaker 3: I just looked at him and I thought, let's put
Speaker 3: him in a bed, like, let's take all the physicality
Speaker 3: out of him.
Speaker 4: Anyway, from this picture, one wouldn't necessarily conjure up the
Speaker 4: story of love. But that's precisely what it tell us about.
Speaker 4: The emotion as old as man, but the object of
Speaker 4: the emotion this is not quite as familiar. It's titled
Speaker 4: Phantom Farmhouse, offering number one in the Night Gallery.
Speaker 3: Now, the first segment is called the Phantom Farmhouse. This
Speaker 3: is written by Halston Wells, based on a short story
Speaker 3: by Seabury Quinn and directed by Jeno Jouirk starts David McCallum,
Speaker 3: David Carrodine, Linda Marsh, Trina Parks, and Bill Quinn. I
Speaker 3: just want to point him out because the entire are
Speaker 3: you guys at all familiar with the ventriloquis by the
Speaker 3: name of Jeff Dunham. He's got this old man character
Speaker 3: named Walter, who Bill Quinn just looks like the living
Speaker 3: embodiment of it.
Speaker 6: Was very odd. Thanks for reminding me that Jef Dunham exists.
Speaker 3: I know. Look, I didn't want to bring him up
Speaker 3: or promotion anyway.
Speaker 6: But Las Vegas is own Jeff Dunham.
Speaker 3: You mean that's ready the hometown boy. Now, this story
Speaker 3: concerns an unorthodox psychiatrist who investigates the mysterious murders plaguing
Speaker 3: his patients, and there are wolves involved. What do you
Speaker 3: think of this one, Mike?
Speaker 5: I felt this this segment made me feel stupid because
Speaker 5: I could not figure out what the heck was going on.
Speaker 5: All these people in this tree and David Kearndy maybe
Speaker 5: he's a Satanist. I don't know, like what, Please just
Speaker 5: please explain this one to me, because I just was
Speaker 5: not getting this one at all.
Speaker 3: It's very confused, but.
Speaker 6: Of itself is confused.
Speaker 3: But here's what happened.
Speaker 2: Bear with me.
Speaker 5: I'm ready.
Speaker 3: I'm ready for this, listeners. I didn't come up with this,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 6: So no, somebody by the name of Seabury Quinn did.
Speaker 6: And then somebody named Halsted Wells adapted it. Then somebody
Speaker 6: named Jeno Swark directed it. Those three names together should
Speaker 6: give you an idea of the well where we're going
Speaker 6: with this. It's pretty all over the pace.
Speaker 3: You know what, though, if you read the original short story,
Speaker 3: Seabury Quinn who was not like he was a writer,
Speaker 3: Like all of his contemporaries were the weird Tales guy.
Speaker 3: So it's like Roberty Howard and you know he Lovecraft
Speaker 3: and yeah, like all all of the sort of the
Speaker 3: giants as it were. And he created a character named
Speaker 3: like Jules de Granden, who is like a paranormal investigator,
Speaker 3: and he's got like a whole series of these stories
Speaker 3: that they're all great. In addition to that, Seabury Quinn
Speaker 3: was like a mortuary like law lawyer, like that was
Speaker 3: his primary function. Like he published a magazine called Caskets
Speaker 3: and Sunshine or something.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 3: And if you read the original story, it's much more simplified.
Speaker 3: I'll give you the short story version and that'll and
Speaker 3: you'll understand exactly what it is. This guy checks into
Speaker 3: a checks himself into an asylum in Maine in this
Speaker 3: case right, which is right across the border from Canada,
Speaker 3: which is why there are French speaking characters in the story.
Speaker 6: I had a lot of questions, why the hell everybody's
Speaker 6: speaking French?
Speaker 5: All, thank you, thank you?
Speaker 3: That helps hold over for no good reason. Wow, he's
Speaker 3: allowed to walk the grounds, and he walks and finds
Speaker 3: a house with a family, a mother and a father,
Speaker 3: and a beautiful girl who seems dressed from another age,
Speaker 3: and they have an instant connection, but she's very odd
Speaker 3: and like kind of keeps him at a distance. Nevertheless,
Speaker 3: when he comes back to the asylum and tells the
Speaker 3: people about it, they're like, you must really be crazy
Speaker 3: because there's no house out there just to ruin. And
Speaker 3: then he continues going visiting with the girl and her family,
Speaker 3: and then there's this business with people being attacked by
Speaker 3: wolves in the thing, like talk of it, but none
Speaker 3: of that is sort of put together forthrightly. It's basically
Speaker 3: is he insane or not? Is the thing? Back and
Speaker 3: forth because he going to the asylum and they're crazy,
Speaker 3: but they're telling him he's crazy, but he's actually seeing
Speaker 3: the people. So they are a family of were wolves
Speaker 3: and they are dead, so they're ghost wolves or where
Speaker 3: ghosts or something. It ends basically the same way. So
Speaker 3: there's no there's no character like feeding these people or
Speaker 3: like luring them, or there's no warlocks and all this
Speaker 3: other shit. It's they kind of like let him know
Speaker 3: that that family who lived there were sort of renowned
Speaker 3: as potential where wolves stay away from there and they
Speaker 3: are and she's It's so it's more of a like
Speaker 3: Romeo and Juliet with the two warring factions, where her
Speaker 3: parents want to eat him and the rest of them
Speaker 3: think he's crazy and trying to keep them apart, and
Speaker 3: then she makes the sacrifice just exercise me and my
Speaker 3: family will go away and the countryside will be fine,
Speaker 3: but I'll lose you. But if I stay with you,
Speaker 3: I'm going to murder you because I'm a wolf the end.
Speaker 3: Now how that turned into tree pads and groovy talk
Speaker 3: and moccasins and thumper from Goddamn you only live twice?
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I did enjoy it.
Speaker 6: I'm glad you did. The only note I have is
Speaker 6: crow noises and two random French dudes. I mean that
Speaker 6: there are crow noises up the wazoo in this episode.
Speaker 3: Perfect segue there, Chris Mike Card. He knows where we're
Speaker 3: going with this. Another thing I like to point out
Speaker 3: in these episodes the second season, our performers who probably
Speaker 3: don't have the spotlight shine on them enough in this case,
Speaker 3: featured only once in this episode. But I think we
Speaker 3: all know it. It's about twenty five years old at
Speaker 3: this point. Here it is ladies and gentlemen. You probably
Speaker 3: know that from everything. Most of these sound effects ended
Speaker 3: up being used on Sesame Street a lot. That's a
Speaker 3: count von count if I've ever I've heard one. Its
Speaker 3: actual name is Single Classic Wolf, although sometimes it's called
Speaker 3: single Coyote, which I think is racist. The first appearance
Speaker 3: of it, this was created by the Disney sound folks.
Speaker 3: This it appeared in a segment called Bongo, which was
Speaker 3: part of a Fun and Fancy free in nineteen forty six.
Speaker 3: So there you go. We love you, Single Classic Wolf.
Speaker 3: You're joining Castle Thunder in the pantheon of sound effects here.
Speaker 3: I like this episode a little bit, like I did
Speaker 3: like how off off kilter it seems and I don't
Speaker 3: know what's going on for so long, Like it had
Speaker 3: the feeling of the sort of abstract set at the
Speaker 3: beginning when they're all on these pads. We find ourselves
Speaker 3: in it at an asylum kind of, but everyone's outside
Speaker 3: and they're all groovy, and they're on these pads that
Speaker 3: are wrapped around these trees, and it's really weird. All
Speaker 3: that stuff was disconcerting and I was like really enjoying it.
Speaker 3: And then when we go meet the girl who in
Speaker 3: this one, David Chardine is telling everyone that they have
Speaker 3: to go there. He's like trying to lure them out
Speaker 3: there to be killed. And he tells everyone who sees
Speaker 3: this girl is gonna fall in love with her. And
Speaker 3: when we see her, it's like this red a limb
Speaker 3: wig that's been bottle blonded, and like.
Speaker 6: Oh, her bangs are great. The bangs on that wig
Speaker 6: are just chef's kiss specttaga.
Speaker 3: And the dress itself this like voluminous, like ball gown looking.
Speaker 6: I don't understand it. Where you people are from what
Speaker 6: time and place? That's all David McCallum needs to say.
Speaker 6: It's like, who the fuck are you? Like, I don't
Speaker 6: understand how anyone in the right mind would be like, oh,
Speaker 6: you clearly belong here. You are so out of time
Speaker 6: and out of place, it's beyond obvious. They don't even try.
Speaker 3: The weird thing about that is it's like they could have,
Speaker 3: you know, her parents are dressed. It could have been faked.
Speaker 3: It could be nineteen seventy one. They're dressed basically in coveralls.
Speaker 3: They just look like poor farmers. Why if that's what
Speaker 3: they were wearing in like eighteen seventy one, why was
Speaker 3: she dressed not like them, Like she's not she's not
Speaker 3: at a cotillion or anything.
Speaker 6: She's like dirt poor like her parents.
Speaker 3: And she's a werewolf. Why does she even have the dress.
Speaker 6: It doesn't make sense she werewolf for she had dog.
Speaker 3: Well, they couldn't afford the wolves.
Speaker 6: They could afford dogs though.
Speaker 5: I was wondering about that too, because when they showed
Speaker 5: the dog, I was like, Oh, the dog must be
Speaker 5: running away from the wolf, because I kept hearing the
Speaker 5: wolf and I was just like, why is this dog
Speaker 5: running away?
Speaker 3: That's not a problem. You know, this is like a
Speaker 3: two day shoot. Yeah, And according toition, I've swarked like
Speaker 3: the dogs were like the nicest dogs in the world
Speaker 3: and they wouldn't even want to chase anything anyway. So
Speaker 3: it's kind of impressive that they've got any shots at all.
Speaker 3: But obviously they're where dog ghosts. I guess they're wolfy
Speaker 3: ghoster tins.
Speaker 6: I don't know where dog ghosts are. You asking us
Speaker 6: a question?
Speaker 2: You know what?
Speaker 3: It's you know what it reminds me of. There's a
Speaker 3: quote from Big trouble Little China Eggshen is like talking
Speaker 3: about all the different disciplines that they're all drawing from,
Speaker 3: and he's like, you know, Buddhism and Confucianism, and we
Speaker 3: take what we want to leave the rest like a
Speaker 3: salad bar. That's what this felt like to me. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: they are werewolves, so we'll put you know, you have
Speaker 3: the pentagram on the hand, but they're also ghosts.
Speaker 6: But like I, it is titled the Phantom Farmhouse, so
Speaker 6: there must be phantoms involved.
Speaker 3: A phantom reasoning, the phantom logic.
Speaker 6: Like it felt like a really somehow poorly done. It
Speaker 6: feels like a poorly done episode of Tales from the Crypt,
Speaker 6: like an easy comics story. That's what it feels like.
Speaker 5: When they had all those people in the tree, I
Speaker 5: kept thinking, these are aspects of his personality and they
Speaker 5: are fighting within his mind.
Speaker 3: That would have been good.
Speaker 5: And then it just when David Karenine came out of
Speaker 5: the tree, I was like, well, there goes that theory.
Speaker 6: You were you were doing the episode's job for it,
Speaker 6: trying to make it more interesting than it ended up being.
Speaker 3: Did you notice that when David Karenine homps down off
Speaker 3: of the thing. He tries to and then they kind
Speaker 3: of cut down. He does he not say cocaine anyone,
Speaker 3: I swear to god. He says it twice like he
Speaker 3: said it, and I was like, you couldn't have heard that.
Speaker 3: They wouldn't have put that on television. And then at
Speaker 3: the end of the sea he's like, cocaine anyone and
Speaker 3: then leaves, Maybe I'm wrong, I should read the script,
Speaker 3: but that's what I heard. Maybe that's what I wanted
Speaker 3: to hear.
Speaker 6: That's what you wanted David Carrodine to say.
Speaker 5: It feels like he would share.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, he seemed like a groovy guy. By
Speaker 3: the way, hippy slang seems so natural coming out of
Speaker 3: David Charrody, Like all of that dialogue could have been
Speaker 3: the worst if it weren't him, and like he it
Speaker 3: was effortless, and I was like, oh, so that's how
Speaker 3: people talk instead of the awkward way people try to
Speaker 3: reproduce it.
Speaker 6: Well, because David Carrody is a great actor.
Speaker 3: Yeah it was. Was he still in sorry damn It?
Speaker 3: And speaking of damn it, stop doing day for night
Speaker 3: everybody stop.
Speaker 5: Oh that was real rough.
Speaker 3: You can't do a were wolf story and do day
Speaker 3: for night. Just don't even do it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, how long did you say they had for this?
Speaker 5: Five days?
Speaker 6: I don't know why they even tried two days?
Speaker 5: Two days Jesus, Yeah, no, wonder it looks so bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they're not going to get a big
Speaker 3: lighting package out there at like, you know, I.
Speaker 6: Think it's more impressive that it only took two days
Speaker 6: and that it it's not a complete mess.
Speaker 3: I think it's well shot. I think there's there's some
Speaker 3: poetical looking shots in there like that.
Speaker 6: It's a nice looking it's a nice looking episode.
Speaker 3: When McCallum's first like venturing into the forest, like there's
Speaker 3: a there's a scene of this lamb like running through
Speaker 3: the forest being pursued by the wolves, and it all
Speaker 3: looks gorgeous. It looks like a fairy tale. And then
Speaker 3: unfortunately we're right back to like you know, the universal
Speaker 3: lot with most obvious lighting in the world, the sun,
Speaker 3: just because they need needed for speed. But like he
Speaker 3: managed to get a couple of like cool shots. There's
Speaker 3: another one sort of at the midpoint where they're on
Speaker 3: top of a hill where all the sheep, where mcallum
Speaker 3: walks down and sort of scares the sheep, which another
Speaker 3: gorgeous shot that there are little moments of beauty in
Speaker 3: these episodes, and at least this one did not in
Speaker 3: any way feel set bound.
Speaker 6: If they had just turned the camera around, they probably
Speaker 6: would have seen the Baits Motel like behind them. That's
Speaker 6: what it looked like to me. It looked like where
Speaker 6: they like the older pictures of the Universal back Loot Tour,
Speaker 6: That's what it looked like. The set, like the set
Speaker 6: that they were on. It looked like just out there
Speaker 6: in the Universal, like where they shoot stuff like this.
Speaker 3: It's I mean, you know, it's like, where are you
Speaker 3: guys gonna shoot over there? Look, this is not the
Speaker 3: best part of this one. It's it's it's okay, you know.
Speaker 3: It didn't it didn't insult me. I was more confused,
Speaker 3: and then by the end I didn't care.
Speaker 6: Well, it just it kind of just ends. It just
Speaker 6: kind of ends, and that's fine. But this is now
Speaker 6: I think. I want to say. There was an episode
Speaker 6: segment in the last episode that just kind of ended too,
Speaker 6: but it worked better than it just kind of ended.
Speaker 6: This one just goes and that's it. It's like, okay,
Speaker 6: all right, I guess it's over now, moving.
Speaker 3: On, why even use wolves? Just make it a ghost
Speaker 3: eats people, you.
Speaker 1: Know what I mean?
Speaker 3: How about we're all vampires. Let's do vampires there, that's
Speaker 3: a ghost in a wolf together.
Speaker 6: Stop and vampire myers are what like five cents. You
Speaker 6: just get the little teeth, that's it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you even need the teeth, I mean you
Speaker 5: just cover up the face or you know, Catherine Deneuve
Speaker 5: and the hunger, we didn't mention the finger. What's that?
Speaker 3: The finger, the index finger that we got to see
Speaker 3: one hundred thousand times. That was a bit of a failure.
Speaker 3: I didn't like that at all.
Speaker 6: She has a really long finger, just a really long finger.
Speaker 6: Only wear wolves have long fingers.
Speaker 3: It's the index fingers as long or longer than the
Speaker 3: rest of the fingers, just the traditional lore. But like
Speaker 3: I guys, we get it. We're not going to get
Speaker 3: a transformation sequence and we only have dogs instead of wolves.
Speaker 3: But like, we don't need to feature the one thing
Speaker 3: you could have ford stop.
Speaker 6: They did it better on Coalshack with Tom Scarett. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's very similar, Like they couldn't do wear wolves in
Speaker 6: that episode. So he's a dog, So They're dogs here,
Speaker 6: all right?
Speaker 5: Sure, much more, way better episode though the cole Check
Speaker 5: episode agreed.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, mister scares alone.
Speaker 8: Astounding Tales of the Public Domain with Father Malone, Enhanced
Speaker 8: audio performances from the Golden Age of science fiction, featuring
Speaker 8: tales by Ray Radberry, Miriam Allen, DeFord, Robert E. Howard,
Speaker 8: Paul Anderson, H. P. Lovecraft, and Moore. You're at twice
Speaker 8: monthly at weirding Way Media. Astounding Tales of the Public
Speaker 8: Domain with Father Malone.
Speaker 1: Weirding Way Media. We deal the pet.
Speaker 7: Pigment, light and shots, surreal impression as a movie end
Speaker 7: or stories, an interest in not fall a pretty much
Speaker 7: toward the bizarre.
Speaker 4: And this place is.
Speaker 9: Nothing if it isn't bizarre.
Speaker 4: There's no admission, no requirement of membership, only a stronger
Speaker 4: abided belief than the dark at the top of the
Speaker 4: stairs or things that go bump.
Speaker 2: In the night.
Speaker 4: The name of this place that you would commend your
Speaker 4: accidentally out of the rank is the Night Guy.
Speaker 3: All right, Welcome back, our lovers to Midnight Viewing the
Speaker 3: Night Gallery Podcast. I'm Father Malone, and with me here
Speaker 3: in the gallery are from Dreams for Sale, The Twilight
Speaker 3: Zone eighty five podcasts mister.
Speaker 5: Mike White, have we met them beforeer?
Speaker 3: Sure? And from Chronicles from the Crypt the former casualty
Speaker 3: mister Chris statue.
Speaker 6: But what if we don't know? If the doors you could,
Speaker 6: if we could be good at bad Oh, We're gonna
Speaker 6: get to that.
Speaker 3: Here we are discussing season episode seven. This one aired
Speaker 3: on November third, nineteen seventy one, broken into two segments,
Speaker 3: Midnight Never Ends and Brenda.
Speaker 4: Tonight's first selection. A painting suggesting solitude or at least
Speaker 4: solemnity as viewed during the midnight Holler. It tells a
Speaker 4: tale of two young people caught in extorably in a
Speaker 4: recurring nightmare, with a finale on the dueling side. Our painting,
Speaker 4: with the somewhat familiar face is called Midnight Never Ends
Speaker 4: and this is the Night Gallery now.
Speaker 3: Midnight Never Ends was written by Rod Serling, based on
Speaker 3: a half dozen or so earlier teleplays by Rod Serling,
Speaker 3: like five Characters in Search of an Exit and a
Speaker 3: World of his Own, and it was directed by A.
Speaker 3: Jena Swart and stars Robert f Lyons Chris He Was
Speaker 3: in Transylvania six five thousand.
Speaker 6: You know, Mike hate's that movie too, right, It's not
Speaker 6: just me this time around. Then you get to get
Speaker 6: to waggle your Translvania six five thousand weener.
Speaker 3: He realized I'm outnumbered.
Speaker 6: You are outnumbered this time, Heather Train ain't here to
Speaker 6: help you, pal, and Trevor isn't I help me?
Speaker 3: It also starts stud Susan Strasburg, daughter of Lee Strasburg,
Speaker 3: who starred in my favorite TV movie of all time,
Speaker 3: Mazes and Monsters with Tom Hanks, and also starts Joseph Perry.
Speaker 3: It is the story of a motorist and a hitchhiker
Speaker 3: with a strange feeling that they've done all this before,
Speaker 3: and what is that strange clacking in the heavens? Mike?
Speaker 3: Could you think of this one?
Speaker 5: Oh man? I I could see that twist coming a
Speaker 5: mile away, and boy, oh boy, did I really wanted
Speaker 5: to not be that twist? But it was and I
Speaker 5: sat through it and I'm Matt.
Speaker 3: How about you, Chris?
Speaker 6: You know Father Malone.
Speaker 3: God, he's winding up.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm winding up, all right, I'm gonna I've been
Speaker 6: doing this for eight years now, going on nine. It'll
Speaker 6: be nine at the end of twenty twenty three. This
Speaker 6: may be one of the worst hours of anything I
Speaker 6: have ever had to watch for anything I've ever podcasted about.
Speaker 6: And you have been privy to a lot of bad
Speaker 6: stuff that we've talked about together, Father Malone, and we've
Speaker 6: been privy to bad stuff that we've all talked about
Speaker 6: together on the aforementioned Dreams for Sale. This is, without
Speaker 6: a doubt, one half of the worst episode of TV
Speaker 6: I may have ever seen. At least up until this point.
Speaker 6: This episode's twist is so foreshadowed. It's literally the painting.
Speaker 6: It's so fucking infantile in what the expectations are from
Speaker 6: you as an audience that they they can't even be
Speaker 6: bothered with giving it an interesting twist. It is exactly
Speaker 6: what they say it's going to be. They don't even
Speaker 6: care about you as an audience enough to do something
Speaker 6: different other than exactly what you're expecting as an audience member.
Speaker 6: And the fact that it's Rod Serling, yeah makes sense
Speaker 6: because at this point, Rod, I wish you would just
Speaker 6: go away.
Speaker 3: That's mean.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, this episode segment is fucking awful. It's minimalist
Speaker 6: in a way that marmalade Wine was, but it is
Speaker 6: as unsuccessful as the worst segment on the show, which
Speaker 6: is the you know, the next episode segment we're gonna.
Speaker 5: Be talking about just the central premise.
Speaker 6: Okay, Rod Serling's writing a script and we're watching it
Speaker 6: in real time.
Speaker 5: Cool, but you wouldn't have your characters say, oh, he's
Speaker 5: going to open that door now, or like try to
Speaker 5: predict the future.
Speaker 6: It just is that. Why he's confused in the painting
Speaker 6: is because the characters in the thing are getting autonomy
Speaker 6: of their own. Father moan, tell us, tell us what
Speaker 6: you think, because you you haven't weighed in on this
Speaker 6: Nightmary yet I liked it. No you did not. You
Speaker 6: didn't your your fucking joke.
Speaker 3: No, I kind of did. I'll tell you why You're.
Speaker 6: Gonna have to because I wouldn't believe you otherwise.
Speaker 3: Okay, I mentioned two Surling scripts he wrote before that
Speaker 3: are basically the same thing. It's five characters search of
Speaker 3: a next which is great. It's a great episode, There's
Speaker 3: no question, which is kind.
Speaker 5: Of based on earlier play. Correct, I have five actors
Speaker 5: in search of an author or something.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, and and the other one was a world
Speaker 3: of his own where an author can create anything he wants.
Speaker 3: You know, and I records it on the piece of tape,
Speaker 3: remember that. And at the end they had that little
Speaker 3: bit where Rod Serling comes in He's like, this is
Speaker 3: att just a joke. He's like, well, you shouldn't say that,
Speaker 3: and he burns it up. Keenan Wynn burns up the
Speaker 3: piece of tape that in Rod Serling disappears. I knew
Speaker 3: where it was going and what it was going, but
Speaker 3: I just liked watching these people, and I liked those
Speaker 3: minimalist sets, Like I thought it made more sense because
Speaker 3: these are it's a fragmentary world that these characters are
Speaker 3: living in because the writer sucks and like just keeps
Speaker 3: rewriting them and he's only ever rewriting them based on
Speaker 3: previous stories he had already included them in, so they
Speaker 3: their confusion is like I think I was a spot,
Speaker 3: but then she was just in an earlier story that
Speaker 3: he also discarded. In that aspect, I really liked it
Speaker 3: because I understood why the characters.
Speaker 6: Look.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make sense why they're suddenly conscious because clearly
Speaker 3: somebody's writing them to say these things. So that's a
Speaker 3: conflict that doesn't make any sense at all. But the
Speaker 3: idea of characters kind of becoming sentient to the point
Speaker 3: where they know how poor they are because of how
Speaker 3: poor their author is. I like that idea a lot.
Speaker 3: I don't think it works overall. I think there are
Speaker 3: some shots that are kind of cool.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It didn't bother me as much as to bother you guys.
Speaker 3: I certainly would not put I wouldn't say anything in
Speaker 3: the last season, the season seven of Tails from the
Speaker 3: Crypt is better than this thing. This, like, you know,
Speaker 3: twenty minutes of whatever you got, give me that, Chris, No.
Speaker 5: I will.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm not even going to pretend like what
Speaker 6: you said is wrong, Like you're completely right. It's just
Speaker 6: this what in anyone's mind, you know, specific Rod Serling,
Speaker 6: would it lead you to believe that this is a
Speaker 6: story worth telling?
Speaker 3: Though?
Speaker 6: That's what I don't understand. What is the point of
Speaker 6: this story for us to go? So when a writer
Speaker 6: is writing things, the characters have autonomy and remember no,
Speaker 6: because that's just in this story. That's the case. This
Speaker 6: is not making some sort of grand ruling on fictional
Speaker 6: characters written large. It's just this story. So it's just
Speaker 6: it seemed kind of like the twist was what they
Speaker 6: were trying to get to and they worked backwards from
Speaker 6: the twist, which is not a great way to write
Speaker 6: a script, right, you got to the twist maybe is organic.
Speaker 6: If there is one at all, there doesn't have to
Speaker 6: be one.
Speaker 5: I mean, I love time loop stories, and at first
Speaker 5: I was hoping that this was a time loop story.
Speaker 5: I was like, oh cool, you know, like, oh, something
Speaker 5: different is happening this time, okay, and so what's the
Speaker 5: Trick's what's going on with this? And then when it
Speaker 5: was the character thing. One of my favorite movies of
Speaker 5: all time is John Pays's nineteen eighty five Crime Wave,
Speaker 5: which was released on video as The Big Crime Wave,
Speaker 5: and it's very much an author writing scripts. You get
Speaker 5: to see what's inside of like little snippets of scripts.
Speaker 5: He can write beginnings and he can write endings, but
Speaker 5: he can never come up with the middle. So he's
Speaker 5: very frustrated and he comes up with like three or
Speaker 5: four different sets of characters and they are recast into
Speaker 5: different things and you get to see, like Ronnie Boyle,
Speaker 5: the Elvis impersonator, and this story is this other character
Speaker 5: and this other story really well done. Like I said,
Speaker 5: one of my favorite things in the world and then
Speaker 5: I see this and I'm just like, I've seen this
Speaker 5: done so many times of these characters kind of becoming
Speaker 5: self aware and all these things that I'm just like,
Speaker 5: it's not handled well here, Like I've seen it handled
Speaker 5: really well, and I've seen it handled and like I
Speaker 5: mean even like like a Carl Burnett skit where I'm
Speaker 5: just like, Okay, yeah, they are in control of the
Speaker 5: narrative type of thing. Interesting but not good. And then
Speaker 5: I mean, usually I love Carol Burnett. I just want
Speaker 5: to put that out there, but then you get something
Speaker 5: like this, I'm just like, you're not doing it right.
Speaker 5: You're not doing it the right way, you know, like
Speaker 5: make it one or the other. He is he controlling
Speaker 5: them or are they controlling him? Are they send him?
Speaker 5: Just it was I wasn't happy with this one.
Speaker 6: You know, even that Will Ferrell movie is better than this,
Speaker 6: and it is. It's strange, stranger. Yeah, it's the same premise,
Speaker 6: like you this character exists separate from stories or in
Speaker 6: tandem with stories, or he's trying to figure that out
Speaker 6: and how he exisited. That's again and there's something to
Speaker 6: be mined there, and it's not like this is like
Speaker 6: a blackout segment, and it's Oh, they didn't give him
Speaker 6: enough time. Half of the goddamn episode. It's twenty minutes,
Speaker 6: so they had plenty of time. I just they they
Speaker 6: paired the time looping thing with something else, and I
Speaker 6: think it's one high concept thing or the other, and
Speaker 6: together they just don't work very well.
Speaker 3: I don't disagree with any of that. If you're taking
Speaker 3: this on face value as the segment that it is,
Speaker 3: then you know it is kind of it is a failure. Okay,
Speaker 3: I enjoyed it, but that doesn't mean it's it is
Speaker 3: good and I would recommend it. I'm just saying I
Speaker 3: enjoyed it. But if you view it through the prism
Speaker 3: of where Ron Serling is right now, it's kind of
Speaker 3: great because it seems like he's almost commenting on the
Speaker 3: fact that he keeps doing this, doesn't even know where
Speaker 3: these characters are from anymore. He's just rewriting the same shit,
Speaker 3: and none of it's good. And where is his place
Speaker 3: in any of this, like where he is in his
Speaker 3: career and in this series, And if this is him
Speaker 3: working out his demons about where he has found himself
Speaker 3: in the Night Gallery, that makes me like it a lot.
Speaker 3: It doesn't work as a segment, but as sort of
Speaker 3: a sociopolitical examination of broad Sling.
Speaker 6: I like it. Hey, Like, I appreciate writing things as Catharsis,
Speaker 6: but like, what Catharsis is there here? What are you
Speaker 6: getting at here? You can't write a coherent episode of
Speaker 6: your own show anymore? Yeah, we know we're watching your show, dude,
Speaker 6: Like we're watching your show, like we know it's not coherent.
Speaker 6: I just I like you said, like, what is he
Speaker 6: commenting on other than himself?
Speaker 3: Right? Look? Yeah, it's indefensible as drama or as you know, entertainment,
Speaker 3: right as a mettextural comment in his own state of confusion? Though,
Speaker 3: I think it's sores.
Speaker 6: But then we'll probably get an episode from him next
Speaker 6: time we talk about episode eight that may or may
Speaker 6: not be good. So what is he commenting on other
Speaker 6: than he can't do it? And he keeps not being
Speaker 6: able to do it. So what are you really commenting on?
Speaker 6: Rod Serling? I don't understand. I can't do it, but
Speaker 6: I'm gonna keep not doing it and wasting your time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if this were in this last episode, though, it
Speaker 3: would be great, right, Oh, for sure.
Speaker 6: You know, we kind of ran into a similar thing
Speaker 6: on Barney Miller where they had Jack Sue kind of
Speaker 6: they had an opportunity for him to be done with
Speaker 6: the show and they didn't take it. And this would
Speaker 6: be if this were Rod Serling's final moment on the show,
Speaker 6: like then that would be a masters stroke, but it's not.
Speaker 6: So it's about as far from it it being his
Speaker 6: last thing with the show as possible.
Speaker 3: This just shift that shuffled this down to the end
Speaker 3: of season three and then could question.
Speaker 6: Could this have worked as a Twilight Zone episode.
Speaker 3: It did, It worked a couple of times.
Speaker 6: So there you go.
Speaker 3: Before we get to the next segment, this is you know,
Speaker 3: this season, I've been highlighting talent behind the Night Gallery.
Speaker 3: This season we're getting two stories written by this man,
Speaker 3: including the next segment. I don't think anyone even remotely
Speaker 3: interested in speculative fiction would not know him. But if
Speaker 3: you don't, then do yourself a favor and seek out
Speaker 3: anything by Richard Matheson. His association with Night Galleries obvious.
Speaker 3: He was one of the original contributors to The Twilight
Speaker 3: Zone from the very first season, but by the time
Speaker 3: Soiling hired him in nineteen fifty nine, Matheson had already
Speaker 3: published nearly one hundred short stories and six novels, including
Speaker 3: The Shrinking Man, which became The Incredible Shrinking Man and
Speaker 3: I Am Legend, just minor works like that. He ran
Speaker 3: in a circle of writers known as the Group or
Speaker 3: the Southern California School of Writers, that consisted of Matheson,
Speaker 3: George Clayton Johnson, William F. Nolan, Charles Beaumont, and Ray Bradbury.
Speaker 3: During his tenure at the Twilight Zone, he penned Nick
Speaker 3: of Time, The Invaders, and Nightmare at twenty thousand Feet.
Speaker 3: He was a screenwriter behind a clutch of Corman Poe
Speaker 3: movies like House of Usher and pitt In the Pendulum
Speaker 3: and Comedy of Terrors. Around the time that he did
Speaker 3: his work here on Night Gallery, he one per transformed
Speaker 3: a rather slight novel by Jeff Price into the greatest
Speaker 3: paranormal journalist of all time, and Carl Kolejack because he
Speaker 3: wrote Night Stalker and knight Strangler and Trilogy of Terror.
Speaker 3: My god, it's too much and I'm only scratching the surface.
Speaker 3: So I just want to exhort you to go out
Speaker 3: and read Richard Matheson and even if none of his
Speaker 3: work interest you, you should still be thankful for him,
Speaker 3: because without him, there'd be no wild Stallions and no
Speaker 3: being excellent to each other. Because his son, Richard Christian Matheson,
Speaker 3: is one of the co crew cret of Bill and Ted.
Speaker 6: I was about to say, is Richard Matheson's greatest contribution
Speaker 6: to the Twilight Zone is the segment that gets remade
Speaker 6: every time they do the goddamn show, is what it
Speaker 6: feels like, And it's the segment that I, for whatever
Speaker 6: reason in my mind, closely associate the Twilight Zone with
Speaker 6: with Shatner and Nightmare at twenty thousand feet. That's the
Speaker 6: Twilight Zone segment for me personally, And so I am
Speaker 6: always thankful that Richard Matheson was the one who did it, because, yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean, I AM Legend gets a bad rap now
Speaker 6: because of you know, the movie that came out that
Speaker 6: more people I think have seen than any other I
Speaker 6: AM Legend property. But the book is so good. We've
Speaker 6: talked about it before. I don't know if it was
Speaker 6: here on Twilight Zone or something, but they have yet
Speaker 6: to adapt it the right way where the actual fucking
Speaker 6: title of that book makes sense yet to make the
Speaker 6: They have yet to make the name of the book
Speaker 6: make sense in terms of the story. But it's one.
Speaker 6: I think it's one of the great sci fi novels period.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can't deny the power of that book
Speaker 3: and and the as you said, it's it's how have
Speaker 3: they not come up with a decent filmed version of it?
Speaker 3: It's such a simple little story, and yet every time
Speaker 3: they do it, they either do it too small or
Speaker 3: too big or Okay, the Omega Man is great, there's
Speaker 3: no question the Omega Man is great, but as its
Speaker 3: own thing, not necessarily as an adaptation of I Am Legend.
Speaker 3: At least they change the title.
Speaker 6: Who is the Legend? Tell us who the legend is? Please?
Speaker 5: I'm sure, Father Malone, you've seen The Last Man on Earth,
Speaker 5: the one with Vincent Price.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, which I like as well too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that's as close as
Speaker 5: where we're going to get.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you know, in the book, it's very small scale.
Speaker 3: It's just him and his Pasadena house, you know, and
Speaker 3: like there's no there's no grand mansion he's in, or no,
Speaker 3: you know, high rise in New York. I don't know
Speaker 3: what any of the adaptations are going for. Honestly, they
Speaker 3: all seem to miss the point, which is just one man,
Speaker 3: a normal dude who has to figure this out on
Speaker 3: his own. He's not a scientist or anything. He just
Speaker 3: has to He just has to work hard to figure
Speaker 3: out his situation, and by then it's too late. Anyway,
Speaker 3: the next time they make im legend, they should make
Speaker 3: it for two million dollars, and then they have a
Speaker 3: chance of making it as good as it can be.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's better to just expand the scope of
Speaker 6: the source material to the point where it's completely unrecognizable,
Speaker 6: and then it didn't even matter you were adapting it
Speaker 6: to begin with. I like that more frankly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want Elk running through Times Square and some
Speaker 3: sort of video game adaptation version.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well to Batman v. Superman in the background.
Speaker 6: Yeah, why, oh my god, I forgot about that. What
Speaker 6: a nightmare In reality we actually live in now.
Speaker 4: Our painting reminds us that there's a strange fascination of
Speaker 4: digging holes alongside ancient oaks. You give the average amunt
Speaker 4: of shovel and an xuum map, and the fantasy's come
Speaker 4: thick and fast. Pirate gold hidden Confederate treasure and sometimes
Speaker 4: the unexpected and sometimes the unwelcome, hence the title Big Surprise.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 3: Our next segment is written by Richard Matheson, based in
Speaker 3: a short story directed by Jenno's Swark. It is called
Speaker 3: Big Surprise, starring Vincent Van Patten, who is our second
Speaker 3: rock and roll high school alum for this season, Mark Vehanian,
Speaker 3: who I'll alwayst know is Lolly Too and Bless the
Speaker 3: Beast and children, Eric Chase and mister John Carradine. This
Speaker 3: is the tale of three boys befriended by a crazy
Speaker 3: old hermit who promises them a big surprise if they
Speaker 3: can dig it up. What'd you think of this one, Mike.
Speaker 5: It's short, it's pretty simple. I'm not sure if I
Speaker 5: really got the twist at the end. It feels like
Speaker 5: this would have freaked me out when I was a kid,
Speaker 5: and I would have probably spent a lot of time
Speaker 5: thinking about it. Now that I'm fifty years old, I'm
Speaker 5: just like, yeah, I can't really be.
Speaker 3: What about you, Chris?
Speaker 6: You know how A Matter of Semantics was a one
Speaker 6: panel comic. This is like three Yes, this is a
Speaker 6: three panel comic. I don't know like John Kerodine is
Speaker 6: sufficiently creepy, but the fact that this is a short
Speaker 6: story is more surprising. That Richard Matheson was able to
Speaker 6: ring as much out of this premise as he could
Speaker 6: from it being a short story, because there's barely anything here.
Speaker 6: It is really an old man tells a group of
Speaker 6: kids to dig. Those kids don't want to follow the
Speaker 6: kid who's blindly digging, and then the old man is
Speaker 6: in the box at the end, like what what it there?
Speaker 6: You go like, I'm not even sure what the story was.
Speaker 6: How do you turn that? How is that a short story?
Speaker 6: Let alone? How is that a ten minute segment?
Speaker 3: In this show, a short story can be like five pages,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know how.
Speaker 6: You get five pages out of this is more what
Speaker 6: I'm getting at.
Speaker 3: This is like one reason.
Speaker 5: Log of the kids going, oh, there's probably something really
Speaker 5: valuable here, and just everybody has their own ideas of
Speaker 5: what's going to be that buried treasure, and then when
Speaker 5: it finally happens, and describing the hot sun beating down
Speaker 5: on them and YadA YadA, YadA, Like I could see
Speaker 5: this being a short story, but yeah, it was just
Speaker 5: there wasn't a whole lot of substance to this one.
Speaker 6: For me, there's a skeleton of a good idea here,
Speaker 6: it's just to what end. It feels like this is
Speaker 6: a good setup for something, but I'm not sure the
Speaker 6: punchline is as funny or as interesting as maybe everyone
Speaker 6: else thought it was. Richard Matheson included.
Speaker 3: Gentlemen, this is my favorite segment of the entire run
Speaker 3: of Night Gallery. I set it up at the top,
Speaker 3: right place, right time. I think I saw this when
Speaker 3: I was maybe ten or eleven years old, And yes,
Speaker 3: I spent many years pondering the meaning of this, still
Speaker 3: having figured it out, but that obviously colors my judgment
Speaker 3: of it. Nevertheless, watching it like two, three, four times
Speaker 3: I did for tonight's recording here, I still love it.
Speaker 3: I think it's one of the best things on the show.
Speaker 3: Like the way it's shot. This nothing feels set down.
Speaker 3: All the performances are good, the music which I really
Speaker 3: paid attention to music. And we're gonna have to talk
Speaker 3: about Gil Millay at some point because he came up
Speaker 3: with a lot of He like made a lot of instruments.
Speaker 3: So sometimes when you think you're hearing a water phone
Speaker 3: or a synth that's actually some thing that he's Frankenstein together.
Speaker 3: But I really like the music in this episode. It
Speaker 3: starts off almost comic with like brass, but by the
Speaker 3: time they're digging, it's all bongos and these like shrieking violins,
Speaker 3: and by the end it's just nothing but a song
Speaker 3: cello and this water phone synth combination. It's fantastic. I
Speaker 3: love it. There are shots in it that I absolutely adore.
Speaker 3: Like I meant at the start of this, this is
Speaker 3: you know, kids daring each other and you you know,
Speaker 3: peer pressure and whatever. They don't want to like the
Speaker 3: old man's calling them over and they're calling each other
Speaker 3: chicken for not going over. And the lead kid while
Speaker 3: he's deciding if he's going to go over and talk
Speaker 3: to old mister Hawkins, the shot is of him in
Speaker 3: the in the background, but in the foreground is the
Speaker 3: other kid, the Lally two kid, his yo yo just
Speaker 3: sort of dropping up and down in the frame, and
Speaker 3: it's just I don't know, it just summed it up
Speaker 3: for me. I do need to say that if aliens
Speaker 3: are receiving television broadcasts from us in deep space, then
Speaker 3: I think they think the entirety of America looks like
Speaker 3: the hills just outside Los Angeles. That's the only failing
Speaker 3: for me in the episode is once again we get
Speaker 3: the same sort of Well's we can drive twenty minutes
Speaker 3: and make it look different than the backlot, but at
Speaker 3: least they did that because it doesn't look like the
Speaker 3: backlock backlot to me, I think the ending works because
Speaker 3: carry Dene is so fucking creepy. I want to speak
Speaker 3: to what you said, Chris, because I thought it too
Speaker 3: when I was watching it, like this is effectively a
Speaker 3: blackout sketch. It does now make me wish that all
Speaker 3: of the black backout sketches for this, you know, like
Speaker 3: I enjoy laughing at Dracula as much as the next guy,
Speaker 3: But if you want to have an interstitial be this,
Speaker 3: then it would have elevated the whole series.
Speaker 6: Up and that, And honestly, that's kind of where I
Speaker 6: came away from this specific segment because we haven't gotten
Speaker 6: a lot of these kind of segments a not a
Speaker 6: complete committal to it being half of the episode and
Speaker 6: not it being, you know, a blackout sketch in between.
Speaker 6: We haven't gotten a lot of those on the show,
Speaker 6: and I feel like that's an untapped opportunity for the
Speaker 6: show makers and showrunners and writers to do something that's
Speaker 6: more in between, not a complete narrative, but also not
Speaker 6: just you know, huck huck, there's a vampire suck in
Speaker 6: somebody's neck, and that this kind of occupies that interesting
Speaker 6: middle ground made me appreciate this segment more than it
Speaker 6: might have if it had been just a just a
Speaker 6: blackout segment, Cause again, the opportunity for this to be
Speaker 6: a blackout segment is there, Like if they didn't, if
Speaker 6: they just cut some of this out, it really is
Speaker 6: just a blackout segment. The fact that it's not, and
Speaker 6: that it's a little bit more than that makes this
Speaker 6: one that I can completely understand where you're coming from.
Speaker 6: Why you why it hit just right at the right
Speaker 6: time for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, I was basically the age of
Speaker 3: these kids, and there's you know it it felt, it
Speaker 3: felt at the time like it understood childhood. It still
Speaker 3: feels that way to me. Like like Serling at the
Speaker 3: at the stop in his intro for it, I thought
Speaker 3: he summed it up really well. He talks about you know,
Speaker 3: child basically child of being obsessed with like buried treasure
Speaker 3: and X marks a spot and like there is a
Speaker 3: time in your life when that potential for adventure exists
Speaker 3: in your head and like maybe if I dig, I
Speaker 3: will find some treasure. You know, I'm just gonna keep
Speaker 3: praising it over and over again. I did, like I said,
Speaker 3: turn the ending over and over again in my head,
Speaker 3: Like I still don't know, Like was was he a
Speaker 3: ghost the whole time?
Speaker 2: Is he? Was?
Speaker 3: He buried alive? And that was his spe Like is
Speaker 3: he just some crazy old man who's dug a tunnel
Speaker 3: from his house to this thing? And I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's like every possibility is terrible, so that I don't know.
Speaker 4: I love this one painting number one. It has to
Speaker 4: do with death, usually the last chapter in every man's
Speaker 4: book of life, the ashes in the dust, the tomb,
Speaker 4: and the engraving on the stone, death the finale. But
Speaker 4: our first painting offers up a tail with the final curtain,
Speaker 4: not quite the final curtain. There's an epilog. We offer,
Speaker 4: you know, a little item called cool Air. Tonight's first
Speaker 4: painting in the Night Gallery.
Speaker 3: Cool Air was written by Rod Serling from a short
Speaker 3: story by H. P. Lovecraft and directed by Jeno Swark
Speaker 3: twenty two segments, Gentlemen, Jeno Smart twenty two segment.
Speaker 6: At least it's not Gene Kearney.
Speaker 3: Wow, thank god it's not Jeane Kearny doing twenty two segments.
Speaker 3: I think I would lose my This one stars Henry
Speaker 3: Darrow Barbara Rush, who, by the way, appeared in a
Speaker 3: TV movie called The Man, which was about the first
Speaker 3: Black President starring James Earl Jones, written by Rod Star.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, such a great, great movie.
Speaker 3: This is the tale of a May December romance. What
Speaker 3: do you think of this one, Mike?
Speaker 5: It left me cold, o bing bang. Yes, I was
Speaker 5: waiting for that room shot there, Chris, Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 6: Late on the uptake around here. We just got the
Speaker 6: sound for.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, we're back in HP Lovecraft territory. Though again,
Speaker 5: I can tell what's going on. Why are we supposed
Speaker 5: to not figure this stuff out? Like, yeah, the guy's dead,
Speaker 5: Like I could tell you that right from the get go.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I was. I really wanted to like
Speaker 5: this one. Maybe if it was like half the length,
Speaker 5: I would have liked it a little bit more. But
Speaker 5: at the length that it was, and just that I
Speaker 5: could see the twist coming. H yeah, it did it,
Speaker 5: no joke could diddly be cold?
Speaker 6: Boy? They love HP Lovecraft, don't they? They really really
Speaker 6: do I need Look, I'm not gonna say, oh it
Speaker 6: a what a weird HP Lovecraft story to adapt, because look,
Speaker 6: HP Lovecraft in a lot of ways is like Stephen King,
Speaker 6: like he's got plenty of things to adapt, folks, and
Speaker 6: they're not all winners for a reason. Whatever the fuck.
Speaker 6: The conceit of this episode is that there is a
Speaker 6: man who has a living corps because he lives in
Speaker 6: an ice box. You know what, sure, fine, whatever, but
Speaker 6: that's like a ten minute episode segment, not a twenty
Speaker 6: minute segment like good Lord. And I'm you know, not
Speaker 6: to jump ahead, but I'm not sure that that criticism
Speaker 6: is not going to be leveled against both of these segments.
Speaker 6: I think they're both too long for what they're trying
Speaker 6: to do. I think this one is way too long
Speaker 6: for what the punchline is. And look, I'm not saying
Speaker 6: the punchline doesn't work. It's it's sufficiently campy and kind
Speaker 6: of goofy, but way too long, just way, way way
Speaker 6: to well.
Speaker 5: It also doesn't help that it feels so similar to
Speaker 5: the one we just talked about on our last episode
Speaker 5: with the woman that was well, wait.
Speaker 3: Is that the one?
Speaker 5: Was it a woman that was being menaced by that thing?
Speaker 5: Or am I completely mixing this up? In Pickman's Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's also HP Lovecraft, right, And it's like basically a
Speaker 5: woman comes in and it's just like, oh, what is
Speaker 5: this stuff? And then oh there's a big or a
Speaker 5: big twist quote unquote at the end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a shame that they they're on the
Speaker 3: heels of one another because the romance aspect is not
Speaker 3: present in the original HP Lovecraft story. And I actually
Speaker 3: think it's an improvement by Rod Sling in that regard.
Speaker 3: And if you read the original story, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of like, you know, he's supposed to be from Spain,
Speaker 3: so it's all phonetically written like oh alleal l E
Speaker 3: E T l E. It's very embarrassing. Henry Darrow. Henry
Speaker 3: Darrow here, he's five years younger than Barbara Rush playing
Speaker 3: a dashing older man. I liked him. I liked his
Speaker 3: performance a lot. I thought Barbara Rush was really good.
Speaker 3: There is another unnecessary wrap around, just like the Pickman's
Speaker 3: model in the last one, which starts in the present
Speaker 3: for no reason and then takes us back like that. That,
Speaker 3: to me is the lamest part of it, is the
Speaker 3: serling concoction that we're going to see the leaves blow
Speaker 3: off the top of the gravestone at the end and
Speaker 3: realize he's been dead twice. By the way, who put
Speaker 3: that there?
Speaker 5: She put that in there?
Speaker 3: Why would that be on there? Weirdest thing ever, by
Speaker 3: the way his name is misspelled on the grave.
Speaker 6: High production values abound at midnight at the at the
Speaker 6: Night Gallery podcast. I guess this isn't the podcast as
Speaker 6: high production values.
Speaker 3: This show doesn't.
Speaker 6: Is this the back lot?
Speaker 3: Oh? Speaking of the backlot and high production at one point,
Speaker 3: like this starts as a period piece. It's set in
Speaker 3: the nineteen twenties, and she's in the back of you
Speaker 3: know what is you know, basically a horseless carriage is
Speaker 3: like driving down the street and in the background the
Speaker 3: street is blocked off by a Universal Studios van.
Speaker 6: Oops. Oh geez, I mean, what are you what are
Speaker 6: you implying? Father alone?
Speaker 3: Maybe shoot the scene at night?
Speaker 6: I thought you were like, what are you are you
Speaker 6: implying that this fruit stand back there?
Speaker 3: Or like two guys carrying a pane of glass anything
Speaker 3: other than a vehicle from nineteen seventy one, just sitting
Speaker 3: there like, hey, folks, the tour is right right this way.
Speaker 6: Hey, who was asleep at the wheel at this point?
Speaker 6: H that's the question.
Speaker 3: I blame Jano, But Jane did do something really cool here.
Speaker 3: There's a conversation scene when they're sort of falling in love.
Speaker 3: It's a minute and a half pan around the dinner table.
Speaker 3: There's a join in it, but it's really masterful considering
Speaker 3: all the other limitations that they're sort of saddled with. Also,
Speaker 3: the music in this episode, this was a guest composer
Speaker 3: guy named Robert Bain. He's an LA session musician. Was
Speaker 3: actually Henry Mancini's guitarist and he was specifically chosen by
Speaker 3: Lair to do a Spanish flavored theme for this episode
Speaker 3: and actually works really well. As far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 3: is this episode about because Sling made it of romance?
Speaker 3: Is this now a tale of necropeelings Jesus.
Speaker 6: Necromantic? I'm just saying, I mean, if we're talking literally,
Speaker 6: then yes, well, all right, good for you. Rod HP
Speaker 6: Lovecraft was into some freaky shit.
Speaker 3: Lovecraft didn't have anything to do with that part of it.
Speaker 3: That's all surling.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I mean the concept, you know, the concept
Speaker 6: though it still lends itself in that direction.
Speaker 3: The concept of necrophilia just goes way back to the
Speaker 3: beginning of civilization. We always had it with us. It
Speaker 3: just took Rod Sterling to really popularize it. Use it
Speaker 3: in between commercials for soap.
Speaker 6: I only use ajax when I now back to necrophilia.
Speaker 3: It's the most romantic presentation of necrophilia I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: I was moved.
Speaker 6: I yeah, you know, when you think about it that way, boy,
Speaker 6: it really puts it all in perspective, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: You know what?
Speaker 6: Hey, I I wish the payoff was in an episode
Speaker 6: half the episode segment half the lenk that's really it.
Speaker 6: Like it's not a bad segment. I just don't think
Speaker 6: it gets to the point fast enough. And also like
Speaker 6: you're stalling as if we can't kind of figure out
Speaker 6: what's going on, Like, was anyone surprised at the end
Speaker 6: that he was a corpse? Like they kind of you know,
Speaker 6: hint at it a lot, like a lot, a lot,
Speaker 6: a lot, a lot a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, this episode does contain I think the single worst
Speaker 3: performance in any segment we've seen thus far, which is
Speaker 3: that handyman ice carrying guy, whoever he is. What's with
Speaker 3: the guy in there with the he's got ice in
Speaker 3: the bathroom, just pulling all these faces like he's you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know, like he's auditioning.
Speaker 6: He's late stage Leslie Nielsen.
Speaker 3: Oh, he was bad.
Speaker 4: Eight of number three in the night Gallery, you'll probably
Speaker 4: recognize as quaint figurine, the dead eyes, the sown lips,
Speaker 4: the kind of thing that usually infest nightmares, and that
Speaker 4: happens to be precisely what it is, a nightmare.
Speaker 1: Of the first order.
Speaker 4: It's titled Agoda's Heads.
Speaker 3: Indeed we are in this segment called the Lagoda's Heads,
Speaker 3: written by Robert Block, author of Psycho Robert Block, from
Speaker 3: a short story by August Derlett, directed by my favorite
Speaker 3: Jeno Zwark. All three of them should have known better.
Speaker 3: This one stars Patrick McNee, Brock Peters, Denise Nicholas and
Speaker 3: Tim Matheson and a terrible mustache. It's the tale of
Speaker 3: an explorer who escorts an American in search of his
Speaker 3: brother in the darkest jungles of Africa. I was really
Speaker 3: worried at the outset on this one, guys, But I
Speaker 3: think this was a respectful presentation as respectful a presentation
Speaker 3: as possible, while still requiring Starfleet Admiral Cartwright to speak
Speaker 3: in Pigeon English while wearing a dashiki, which I think
Speaker 3: of this one, Mike.
Speaker 5: Yeah, anything that has Brock Peters in it, I'm pretty
Speaker 5: happy with, but mostly just when he's on screen. Denise Nicholas,
Speaker 5: she looked so familiar. And then I went back and
Speaker 5: I looked at her filmography and yeah, I've seen a
Speaker 5: bunch of stuff that she was in. I want to
Speaker 5: say she was in Uptown Saturday Night, I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 5: Or yeah, let's do it again, one of those of
Speaker 5: the Cosby Portier films. But yeah again, did I see
Speaker 5: the twists coming?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I sure did. Did I want to see more
Speaker 5: of those heads? And did I want to see them
Speaker 5: talk and do other kind of cool things? I sure
Speaker 5: did it. That didn't really get to see that one,
Speaker 5: but at least I got to see a very young
Speaker 5: Roger E. Moseley with kind of a bad accent come
Speaker 5: in and tell them that that Lakota is or Lagoda
Speaker 5: has died. So it was kind of neat, and then yeah,
Speaker 5: Tim Matheson and that ridiculous mustache. I didn't even recognize
Speaker 5: him at first until.
Speaker 3: I heard his voice hotter.
Speaker 5: But yeah, it was okay again. And I feel like
Speaker 5: this one went on for a little too long. How
Speaker 5: long was this one? Was this another twin?
Speaker 3: It felt like no one was Yeah, this one was
Speaker 3: only right.
Speaker 6: This has been an episode with mediocrity. It's fine, I
Speaker 6: mean yeah, like Mike said, the twist can be seen
Speaker 6: from orbit, for fuck's sake, like I for an let
Speaker 6: me put this way for an episode segment called Logota's Heads,
Speaker 6: there is not enough head here, not enough of the
Speaker 6: heads doing stuff. The heads of Lagoda's heads are not
Speaker 6: present enough to call it Lagoda's heads. And the question
Speaker 6: then becomes, how did the heads kill him?
Speaker 3: Uh? They summoned forces or they chewed him up themselves.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Maybe they came off the mob the.
Speaker 6: Second the second answer came off the log exactly, the
Speaker 6: Tim burtonization of them. Yeah, what about you, father, blam?
Speaker 6: What did you think?
Speaker 3: I think having a shrunken head nook is important when
Speaker 3: you're buying a new home.
Speaker 6: Does it come with or without the stick is the
Speaker 6: stick included.
Speaker 3: I would assume so, otherwise it's just a nook. I
Speaker 3: like that. They go, they arrived, it's always great to
Speaker 3: see Patrick McNee by the way, you know John Steed.
Speaker 3: But they go into the hut to talk to Lagoda,
Speaker 3: and Lagota clearly speaks English, but for some reason, Tim
Speaker 3: Matheson keeps talking to Patrick mcnei as if he's a translator.
Speaker 3: Ask him about my brother, like I think he heard
Speaker 3: you just then he'll probably answer you if he so chooses.
Speaker 3: Also late in the episode, Tim Mathieson exclaims at one point,
Speaker 3: and most people would have said, my god, he says
Speaker 3: mother of Satan. It was I had to rewind it.
Speaker 5: That'd be a good.
Speaker 3: By the way, it is dumbala, just the word. I
Speaker 3: kept waiting for Chunky to come running out because they
Speaker 3: had dumb balla while. They were, you know, talking to
Speaker 3: the heads. I don't know, not enough. There weren't anough
Speaker 3: of the heads. I was intrigued by the heads. I
Speaker 3: was hoping one of the heads would come to life,
Speaker 3: just one of them, at least one.
Speaker 6: Well, you said it's called log, It's called Lota's fucking head.
Speaker 3: They show the thing Goda's Head's wind machine is what
Speaker 3: we get. Just like they'll just sort of vibrate a
Speaker 3: little and hear some sounds and.
Speaker 6: Somebody's just shaking it off screen. Just oh, they're moving.
Speaker 3: The actor you mentioned Mike earlier, who comes in to
Speaker 3: tell them that Logota is dead, you're saying, he's doing
Speaker 3: a really weird accent. Like all I could think was
Speaker 3: like you could just see him bristling against this bullshit
Speaker 3: native dialogue that they all three of our sort of
Speaker 3: principal leads have been saddled with just a rankling at it,
Speaker 3: Like can I just speak in a full sentence, like,
Speaker 3: by the way, what year was this? Was this supposed
Speaker 3: to be the two of the century, because it could
Speaker 3: have been really any time. It might have been nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy one for all we knew.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I want to say around this time, Rogerie Mosley
Speaker 5: was doing The MAC where he was a African nationalist,
Speaker 5: so much different character and something.
Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, he just seemed like uninterested and he
Speaker 3: just wanted to I'm saying the words, here are the words, right,
Speaker 3: this is what you wanted? And good for him. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I hope everyone got paid because you know, you're right, Chris,
Speaker 3: this is It's not terrible, it's just there. This entire
Speaker 3: episode was just kind of there, which I suppose is
Speaker 3: better than a bad episode. But still, this is an
Speaker 3: episode that began with the boy who predicted her earthquakes,
Speaker 3: and we need to be shooting higher folks. It's not enough.
Speaker 3: It's not enough that Sandra d is gonna die after
Speaker 3: killing her.
Speaker 6: It's just not She's gonna kill herself. Don't forget, she's
Speaker 6: straight up. They go, you gonna kill yourself, by the way,
Speaker 6: like great cool, just as the.
Speaker 3: First like sort of time travel plot i've ever seen,
Speaker 3: honestly where the characters are uninterested at all in changing
Speaker 3: their face.
Speaker 6: I know, the future.
Speaker 3: Who fuck they just see and everything's just like, well,
Speaker 3: that's weird, Like it doesn't factor. You know, he gives
Speaker 3: the message, but the message had already been given. That
Speaker 3: was faded as well.
Speaker 6: It's like this segment is so good. We're talking about
Speaker 6: the other segment while talking about this one segment is
Speaker 6: such it's a nothing burger. Like August Derlith's stories are varied,
Speaker 6: Father Malone, you know that because I know you've looked
Speaker 6: into his I mean, it's varied stuff right, like, but
Speaker 6: it's a lot of horror or horror adjacent whatever this
Speaker 6: is is not that well.
Speaker 3: It's supposed to be a supernatural tale, but we don't
Speaker 3: see anything happen at all. We don't even get to
Speaker 3: see broh.
Speaker 6: We know Denise Nicholas just killed him, like and just
Speaker 6: put his head there anyway. He's like, who knows? Oh yeah,
Speaker 6: the heads killed him or I just did it, and
Speaker 6: who gives a shit.
Speaker 3: It would have been good had she said, well, no,
Speaker 3: it was me. I can with your brother. There's nothing
Speaker 3: you can do about it because I got these heads now, babe.
Speaker 3: That would have been great.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Instead it was like, no, I know he killed why
Speaker 3: did he kill? We don't get any of that information
Speaker 3: to get those heads talking. Come on, they got mouths
Speaker 3: unstitch it.
Speaker 6: Eh man, It's fine. This episode is better than some
Speaker 6: of them this season, which is not saying much, but
Speaker 6: it's saying more than you.
Speaker 3: Would think saying enough.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I agree it is. You use the word nothing burger.
Speaker 5: I don't tend to use that too often, but I
Speaker 5: would say this is all that and no bag of chips.
Speaker 4: General generic area of costume jewelry note girl and note expression.
Speaker 4: Obviously a lady much disturbed by whatever little bubbles she
Speaker 4: has recently been the recipient of said sentence, improperly ending
Speaker 4: on a preposition. But this story ending on a much
Speaker 4: more deadly note than that. We call it a feast of.
Speaker 3: Blood, all right. Our next segment is a feast of blood.
Speaker 3: This was written by Stanford Whitmore, based on the short
Speaker 3: story The Fur Brooch by Dulcie Gray, and directed by
Speaker 3: Jeno Zwark. This one stars Norman Lloyd, Sondra Locke and
Speaker 3: Hermione Badly. It's the story of a young woman in
Speaker 3: a rather ominous suitor in the weird broch he offers
Speaker 3: her as a present. I'll start on this one here,
Speaker 3: you fellas, Thank you, all right, Norman Lloyd. I'm going
Speaker 3: to start with the good things that I like in
Speaker 3: this segment. Norman Lloyd, who I think most people of
Speaker 3: my age may be a little bit older, know him
Speaker 3: from Saint Elsewhere, which he was great on, But in
Speaker 3: the decade previous he was a producer on Alfred Hitchcock Presents,
Speaker 3: which I did not know. And the weird sort of
Speaker 3: incestuous night gallery connection with this guy is that Jack
Speaker 3: Laird produced a pilot for a television series called The
Speaker 3: Dark Intruder that ended up getting released theatrically just the
Speaker 3: pilot got released. In that there's the villainous doctor Malachi
Speaker 3: who's portrayed on screen I mean by Werner Klemperer and
Speaker 3: voiced by Norman Lloyd. That's weird. Yeah. Sondra Locke, who
Speaker 3: the year before had been nominated for an Academy Award,
Speaker 3: actually sought out a role on Night Gallery because she
Speaker 3: was such a fan of The Twilight Zone and Ron Serling.
Speaker 3: So that's the first time I've heard of an actor
Speaker 3: trying to get on the show that they didn't have
Speaker 3: to go find other than that the performances are good somewhat.
Speaker 3: Norman Lloyd is fantastically menacing. The brooch is creepy and
Speaker 3: weird that he gives sort of the story is that
Speaker 3: this suitor shows up and gives this girl who doesn't
Speaker 3: really care about him, this brooch. It's a little rodent,
Speaker 3: and then she spurns him, and then the brooch grows big.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, there's a girl pig and it chews her
Speaker 3: I guess a little bit, and then it returns to
Speaker 3: its normal size. And this guy performs the same bit.
Speaker 6: Again comically large. One might say, yeah, is.
Speaker 3: The message here that everyone is terrible? Because everyone in
Speaker 3: this episode is terrible. This guy's basically a rapist and
Speaker 3: if you don't fuck him, then his magic brooch is
Speaker 3: going to kill you, Right, that's what happens here.
Speaker 6: But was he not like stealing their like beauty too?
Speaker 6: Was that not a component to this or was that
Speaker 6: me reading it that was to him just talking kooky talk,
Speaker 6: But like, okay, because I thought there was like a
Speaker 6: Tails from the Crypt thing, you know, you know what
Speaker 6: I you know what I'm talking about bottom alone, where
Speaker 6: it's like I made the bust of your face and
Speaker 6: I stole your beauty, Like that's what I thought it was.
Speaker 6: And then no, it's just this giant goofy ass broach
Speaker 6: like goofy looking like it reminded me This episode segment
Speaker 6: reminded me of the one with Jack Cassidy and the
Speaker 6: giant spider. Oh yeah, it's like, oh, look at this
Speaker 6: giant thing that we can't make look good, but we're
Speaker 6: going with it anyways, Like God, come come on, this
Speaker 6: is Kolchak fighting an invisible monster.
Speaker 3: Levels of fucking wild like, guys, it's Gilly suited Brenda Man.
Speaker 3: It's just such a that's not true. It's better than
Speaker 3: Gilly suited Brenda Man because the design is cool and
Speaker 3: even as goofy as it is that they just keeps
Speaker 3: getting larger and they keep doing wide shots of her running.
Speaker 3: What's wrong with you, Jano? Why shots of her running
Speaker 3: with this giant like I don't know, like gummy bear,
Speaker 3: that's all I could think. It looks like a giant
Speaker 3: gummy bear, Like what do you have to see?
Speaker 6: Or you could eat it? I think the worst thing
Speaker 6: about this episode segment is that the painting is so good.
Speaker 3: Oh well, I'm obviously a big fan of that painting.
Speaker 6: I think it's me too. I'm a fan of that
Speaker 6: painting as well. And like again, it like the last
Speaker 6: I guess the first episode segment on this episode like
Speaker 6: it makes a promise of something that is not followed
Speaker 6: through a like it's I don't want I don't understand
Speaker 6: what the point of this segment was other than like
Speaker 6: you said, Father Molone, everybody's terrible.
Speaker 3: How about you, Mike, what do you think of this one? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I was impressed.
Speaker 5: So this might be controversial, but I've never found Sondra
Speaker 5: Lock to be that attractive, but in this I was like, oh,
Speaker 5: I can kind of see it. I can kind of
Speaker 5: see that she's attractive in this one. And then she
Speaker 5: gets attacked by approach the end.
Speaker 3: The blackout extravaganza.
Speaker 5: This episode really it is it is and yeah, like
Speaker 5: he he is this essentially a rapist, so I was like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 5: I was waiting for him to get his comeupence at
Speaker 5: the end, like somehow she survives and gifts it back
Speaker 5: to him, but that's not the case.
Speaker 6: Interesting optics for this episode segment are we are.
Speaker 3: We two woke?
Speaker 6: Sorry the woster needs to leave. Sorry?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what's with Sondra Lockin Rodents? She restricted that
Speaker 3: rat boy she was in Willard, She's got killed by
Speaker 3: a giant rodent. In this she loves Rodents. They had
Speaker 3: some rare screen projection when they were driving. I loved it.
Speaker 3: It looked great. And night for night again, how do
Speaker 3: you like that? Twice in one episode? At the end, Okay,
Speaker 3: I can this should have been a black out skitch.
Speaker 3: It should have been just a girl breaking up with
Speaker 3: a guy on the phone. He's like, did you get
Speaker 3: that gift? I sent you, and she's like, I don't
Speaker 3: want to see you. You're an idiot. I used you
Speaker 3: for your money and blah blah blah, and then she
Speaker 3: gets skilled that would have been that would have been okay.
Speaker 3: At the end, we have these two bicyclists, these englishmen.
Speaker 3: Their characters' names are Frankie and Jippo, and apparently the
Speaker 3: characters were named for two characters and John Ford's the Informer. Oh,
Speaker 3: that's totally inconsequentially as the characters are, because why are
Speaker 3: they even there, Why are we spending any time with
Speaker 3: them at all?
Speaker 6: They can find a dead body, that's why. And then
Speaker 6: the episode segment ends.
Speaker 3: If only the camera could have done that for us.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that is the funniest part of the segment is
Speaker 6: that camera angle where it's like set on the ground
Speaker 6: in front of her, pointed at them, but you can't
Speaker 6: see anything, and they're just like whoa, whoa. Yeah, that's great, guys,
Speaker 6: great reactions. We got it. We're done. Jano's Swark Janos
Speaker 6: Schwark is not doing any favors for any of these
Speaker 6: segments at all, Like, I don't think I've seen one
Speaker 6: yet where I've been like Geno's work added something to this.
Speaker 6: Most of the time, she know's work's name is tied
Speaker 6: to the worst episode segments that we're watching.
Speaker 3: Hey, hey, don't don't don't talk about Jenno that way.
Speaker 3: I won't stab for it, even if I'm sinning.
Speaker 6: I you know what, Jaws two is fine. This leaves
Speaker 6: a lot to be designed.
Speaker 3: It wasn't good.
Speaker 6: It's a blackout sketch. I mean it just it's unfortunate
Speaker 6: that we just keep getting extended blackout sketches. Because this
Speaker 6: show is good when it is good, when they're putting
Speaker 6: effort in, that is the problem. It's just like Tails
Speaker 6: from the Crypt. It's just like Twilight's on nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 6: When it's good and the people who are doing the
Speaker 6: work are doing the work, well, it's really good and
Speaker 6: there's nothing better anthology wise. When it's bad, it's like
Speaker 6: every what he collectively lost their fucking minds.
Speaker 3: The problem here is that Ron Starling's way was wrong
Speaker 3: and Jack Laired's way is wrong. There was somewhere in
Speaker 3: between it had they mediated and worked it out, where
Speaker 3: this show could have been the best anthology horror anthology
Speaker 3: of all time. Right, Because if rod Serling was writing
Speaker 3: blackout sketches. That could be something he could get his
Speaker 3: little bitter, ironic thing out in a couple of minutes.
Speaker 3: As opposed to they should have just assigned him all
Speaker 3: the twelve minute segments for this entire thing. It would
Speaker 3: have been great, would have forced him to be concise
Speaker 3: as a writer.
Speaker 6: If he's not willing to do the introductions for the
Speaker 6: blackout sketches, he ain't willing to fucking write them, right,
Speaker 6: So probably it's beneath me.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying. I'm not saying he should have been
Speaker 3: assigned them necessarily. I'm just saying, had they worked it out,
Speaker 3: then this show, I agree, phenomenal.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean a twilight zone for the seventies, Like
Speaker 6: that's what the promise of this show is and could
Speaker 6: have grown into that, right, and when it satisfies that,
Speaker 6: it really satisfies it. But it's few and far between
Speaker 6: in this second season. But again, like there's you know
Speaker 6: what though, Like in reality, if you take a step back,
Speaker 6: every episode has multiple segments. So we're talking about by
Speaker 6: the end of the show, how many segments like almost
Speaker 6: one hundred oh yeah, love of averages would to note
Speaker 6: fifty percent or good fifty percent or bad, and I
Speaker 6: think we're still right there.
Speaker 3: There hasn't been a precipitous drop off. It's definitely better
Speaker 3: than the first season.
Speaker 5: So yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3: It has ups and downs, but once you've got past
Speaker 3: the pilot of the first season, it was a love
Speaker 3: of diminishing returns. There were little pleasures to be had
Speaker 3: here and there, but certainly not like this season.
Speaker 6: So well, and I mean again, when this season opens
Speaker 6: with the banger of bangers, the boy who predicted earthquakes,
Speaker 6: I mean again like that, it might be the best
Speaker 6: segment on this entire show.
Speaker 3: And it opens the second season. Yeah, hard to measure
Speaker 3: up to. But at the same time, like, at least it.
Speaker 6: Wasn't the first episode of the first season like Twice
Speaker 6: or Tails from the Crypt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll take an episode like this, one of basically
Speaker 3: extended blackout sketches over one segment of their tearing down
Speaker 3: Tim Riley's bar.
Speaker 6: So thank you there is You know, we should start
Speaker 6: like a you know how they have like a job site.
Speaker 6: It's like one day without disaster. This should be one
Speaker 6: episode without for he's a golf.
Speaker 3: Right, wait, all our reviews would be glowing from here
Speaker 3: on it, and remember Jence, this was not tearing down
Speaker 3: Tim Riley's bars.
Speaker 9: Sass s S s
Speaker 1: S