Speaker 1: Will you wait, Miss.
Speaker 2: School.
Speaker 3: Welcome back Midnight viewers to part two of our Look
Speaker 3: at the Late Great.
Speaker 4: Jenno'swark, in a twelve dollars and fifty cent pine box,
Speaker 4: reposes the body of a frontier of Frankie, armed but disarmy,
Speaker 4: a victim of an old West philosophy that any man
Speaker 4: with a good eye, a limber finger, and a well
Speaker 4: known trigger skirts the pastures of immortality. But this chap
Speaker 4: found out the hard way that immortality is a wish,
Speaker 4: a word, but infrequently your reality.
Speaker 5: You wait your pleasure in a painting we call the
Speaker 5: Waiting Room.
Speaker 3: The Waiting Room was written by Rod Serling, directed by Jeno'swark,
Speaker 3: and stars Thieve Forrest, Albert Salmi, Jim Davis, Buddy Ebsen,
Speaker 3: and Gilbert Rowland. They're throwing out some blank as blank
Speaker 3: credits all of a sudden in the opening credits, which
Speaker 3: I don't understand. This is the story of a gunslinger
Speaker 3: named Dictor who stops into a saloon and encounters a
Speaker 3: literal murderer's row of fellow outlaws. The problem is they're
Speaker 3: all dead. They are not Dictor. Oh no, anyone but Dictor.
Speaker 3: It would be hard to figure that thing out, wouldn't it.
Speaker 3: What do you think of this one, Chris? You take
Speaker 3: us back to that wholy original episode of Tales from
Speaker 3: the Crypt.
Speaker 6: So what was funny is Season four, episode eight of
Speaker 6: Tales from the Crypt Showdown aired in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 6: That was not even an episode of Tales from the Crypt.
Speaker 6: Father Malone, correct me if I'm wrong, but that was
Speaker 6: actually a two fisted Tales segment that had been repurposed
Speaker 6: into a Tales from the Crypt episode, which would explain
Speaker 6: why the theme almost doesn't match that show and almost
Speaker 6: more matches this show, and as much as this show's
Speaker 6: theme is whatever the hell it wants to be. Yeah,
Speaker 6: that segment is about a gunslinger who wanders into a
Speaker 6: town where he's wait, I remember you. You were Dusty Bill,
Speaker 6: you were dead on the I saw you get gunned down,
Speaker 6: and I swear to god, Buddy Edson's doing the exact same.
Speaker 6: This whole thing is just that just ah, oh, I
Speaker 6: remember where am I in Hell? Yes? You are in hell?
Speaker 6: And so am I for having to watch this segment
Speaker 6: because it was just it was like I was having
Speaker 6: a flashback to like nom where I was like, oh,
Speaker 6: I've seen this before, and it was just as bad
Speaker 6: last time.
Speaker 3: Wow, Tales from the Crypt is the equivalent of the
Speaker 3: Southeastern Asian Conflict of the late nineteen sixties. Okay, Mike,
Speaker 3: what do you think of this one?
Speaker 7: I don't know if it's a badest nom, but it
Speaker 7: definitely felt like it went on as long as the
Speaker 7: Korean War did. In mash it was a very long
Speaker 7: long segment. I literally I looked down at one point,
Speaker 7: I looked back up and I said, this is still
Speaker 7: going on? What's going on?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 7: How can this be happening?
Speaker 6: You were dictor all of a sudden, Yes.
Speaker 7: Twenty eight minutes, twenty eight breaking minutes, and you feel
Speaker 7: every single one of them.
Speaker 3: But you know what, Rob no longer had control at
Speaker 3: this point, and they were doctoring his scripts when he
Speaker 3: wasn't looking.
Speaker 6: Oh right, sure, it's too bad that they took step
Speaker 6: in additional minutes of them reminiscing out because boy, I
Speaker 6: really miss that, Oh boy, good lord. It's just it's
Speaker 6: you know what it is. It's almost a blackout sketch again.
Speaker 6: And even the Tales from the Crypt episode is the
Speaker 6: same way. If an old Western guy wanders into town
Speaker 6: and the town looks deserted and there's a bunch of
Speaker 6: guys around the table. I think everybody in their mother
Speaker 6: who has at least a inkling of an idea of
Speaker 6: the tropes here would understand what's going on here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like most of Serling's loop episodes, which we've gotten
Speaker 3: quite a we've got a lot back in the Twilight Zone,
Speaker 3: but we certainly have had some here as well, just recently.
Speaker 3: What is that clacking sound in the heavens? To be
Speaker 3: honest with you, the first twenty minutes or so of this,
Speaker 3: not twenty, but like ten, I was actually totally intrigued.
Speaker 3: I'm a sucker for the supernatural. I'm a sucker for
Speaker 3: the Old West. Put them together. I'm on board. And
Speaker 3: the performances are solid uniformly.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Buddy Epsen's fucking great. He's awesome. He's so good
Speaker 6: he can't even salvage how bad this segment is.
Speaker 3: And it's shot beautifully. The problem is, as soon as
Speaker 3: the first gunfighter steps outside, all lingering out of what's
Speaker 3: going on here dissipates. And that's within seven or so
Speaker 3: minutes of the episode beginning, and now we've got twenty
Speaker 3: one to go. It should have remained as oblique as possible,
Speaker 3: because when it was oblique, when it was unclear what
Speaker 3: was happening, I was really into it. I was intrigued.
Speaker 3: I want it to be I wanted it to be
Speaker 3: really mysterious and not, oh my god, they're not just
Speaker 3: going to go to the most obvious place possible. At
Speaker 3: the same time, if I had the unfortunate luck of
Speaker 3: living in pioneer times in the Old West, I hope
Speaker 3: that I would at least have Steve Forres's sense of style.
Speaker 3: That fucking stripes suit and that really tasteful kerchief just
Speaker 3: read just around the throat in a wide brim chapeau,
Speaker 3: but not too overstated. I liked it. There is a
Speaker 3: recent movie, The Coen Brothers Ballad of Buster Scruggs. They
Speaker 3: have the final segment in that it called the Mortal Remains.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, first time, Yeah, that exactly that. That's what
Speaker 3: this should have been and could have been. Unfortunately, all
Speaker 3: we're saddled with is a moron of the lead character
Speaker 3: who everyone keeps telling him their story.
Speaker 6: This is how I die.
Speaker 3: He already knows. He mentions it himself like, oh, I
Speaker 3: heard you got gunned down by so and so and
Speaker 3: such and such, Yes, that did happen. I'm that guy.
Speaker 6: And here you don't understand though, how did it happen?
Speaker 6: I don't get it. How are you here now? It's like, dude,
Speaker 6: put one, one and two or next to each other.
Speaker 6: There is nothing else in between it. It's you're dead.
Speaker 6: You're dead, you're dead.
Speaker 3: Tell me what has happened?
Speaker 6: And I love that. It even does the thing where
Speaker 6: it's like, well, do you remember how you got here?
Speaker 6: I don't even remember how it got here. Did we
Speaker 6: never leave? We never left, We're still there. It's like that,
Speaker 6: it's so again, this is seventy two, so we're not
Speaker 6: It's still It was used then, but it's overused now.
Speaker 6: Maybe it's our twenty twenty three sensibilities peeking through. But
Speaker 6: it doesn't even feel. It feels so rote it The
Speaker 6: rotness of it gets in the way of it even
Speaker 6: attempting to be entertaining. And then you saddle that with
Speaker 6: it being four times as long as it needs.
Speaker 7: To be, just that they kept doing it over And
Speaker 7: I love a good groundhog Day type story. A time
Speaker 7: loop story is great, but not this way, not that
Speaker 7: we get to hear every single person every time, just
Speaker 7: over and I'm like, please just figure it out.
Speaker 3: Other thing I liked quite a bit it was the
Speaker 3: second gunfighter, the gun the gunfighter who's sitting closest to
Speaker 3: Buddy Ebson. He's the second one to get up and go.
Speaker 3: That guy's performance was fantastic. That's Albert Selmi. I knew
Speaker 3: I knew him from somewhere. He's Noonan's dad in Caddy Shack.
Speaker 3: Whose child is this?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 3: How many Kochs did you have? That guy was that
Speaker 3: fucking fantastic Western character here in the winter.
Speaker 6: He really sticks it to Steve Forest too. He's like,
Speaker 6: I don't want to be your brother, and I would
Speaker 6: never be related to some vulture like you. It's like
Speaker 6: geez Christ, Him and Buddy Ebsen are turning in real,
Speaker 6: like blistering performances in this. I appreciate that they showed
Speaker 6: up and they were like, we know what you're asking
Speaker 6: us to do. Lean into this really hard and they do.
Speaker 6: Like I appreciate the commitment to what they're needed. It's
Speaker 6: just like, you don't need it this much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because the tone demands the performances those guys are
Speaker 3: giving that first opening sequence when we're unsure as to
Speaker 3: what's happening here. It's it needs a level of seriousness
Speaker 3: bolster everything else. And that's what's good about the episode.
Speaker 3: That can I just ask you, guys, because I was
Speaker 3: unclear on this the opening and closing shot of him
Speaker 3: riding up to the hanged man which turns out to
Speaker 3: be him, was that day for night or was that night?
Speaker 3: And they just had a really hard light on the
Speaker 3: hanging man and Steve forrest or his stunt up.
Speaker 7: It looked like a hard light to me anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in the opening the first time I said, I went,
Speaker 3: that's gotta be day for night, and then at the
Speaker 3: end I was like, no, it really looks like a light.
Speaker 3: So I'm with you.
Speaker 7: By the way, when it comes to horror mixed with Westerns,
Speaker 7: I'm a sucker from Brett Hart. And yeah, this had
Speaker 7: so much promise of oh cool, an Old West segment.
Speaker 7: We haven't had one of those before. Even what was
Speaker 7: it what was the Star Trek episode like Day of
Speaker 7: the Gun or whatever that was shot? So yeah, just
Speaker 7: the amazing like big red backgrounds and just that kind
Speaker 7: of like symbolism rather than sets type of.
Speaker 6: Thing set fronts obviouslyzy saddle set fronts right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, obviously they didn't have that much money or anything,
Speaker 7: but it worked out really well. So and this one,
Speaker 7: like you guys said, shot very well, looks really good.
Speaker 7: But just the storytelling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I've said this before, like the hamdbone purple
Speaker 3: prose that I usually accuse Sirling of, if you put
Speaker 3: it into a period piece that it alleviates a whole lot.
Speaker 3: Suddenly it sounds like sparkling dialogue. And I have very
Speaker 3: little to complain about. The problem is it just never ends,
Speaker 3: and it goes nowhere, and we're all in on it,
Speaker 3: like the guys who were sitting in the fucking saloon
Speaker 3: from the scene one, and we're just waiting for the
Speaker 3: dummy to wake up. And I work twenty eight minutes
Speaker 3: for that.
Speaker 6: But I guess the other thing that I wonder is,
Speaker 6: obviously you have the story of a guy who's died,
Speaker 6: and then is this the first time he's gone through this?
Speaker 6: Are they like at the point, Like the way that
Speaker 6: they're acting, it's like this motherfucker is not remembering time
Speaker 6: to time. So is this like ten loops into this?
Speaker 6: Which is that would have been a more interesting conversation
Speaker 6: to go towards as what does it mean to be here?
Speaker 6: Is there any way to leave? Or are we doomed
Speaker 6: forever by our bad choices? No, it's instead it's this
Speaker 6: guy's dumb and doesn't know that he's dead, buh like.
Speaker 6: But the audience picked up on it immediately. I don't
Speaker 6: see any way you as an audience member couldn't pick
Speaker 6: up on it in this episode. The show has done
Speaker 6: good twists in the past. I'm sure it will do
Speaker 6: good twists in the future that are not telegraphed, but
Speaker 6: this is telegraphed from shot one. We can't be smarter
Speaker 6: than the character on screen because then we're just like,
Speaker 6: this guy's just an idiot.
Speaker 3: I do think that this is this character's first time
Speaker 3: because he rides up and he looks at the hanged
Speaker 3: man and doesn't bother to figure out who he is,
Speaker 3: and then the next time he comes he changes that.
Speaker 3: So I think this was his first time at the
Speaker 3: After Life rodeo.
Speaker 6: Maybe, but Steve for seems pretty dumb.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would think at least the Buddy Ebsent character
Speaker 3: would be like this guy again.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm saying that's why they're so frustrated with him.
Speaker 6: It's like this guy just keeps coming back asking the
Speaker 6: same stupid goddamn questions, and we keep telling him the
Speaker 6: same shit over and over again, and he's just not listening.
Speaker 6: Fuck this guy.
Speaker 3: The Albert Salmi character would have said, how many times
Speaker 3: do we have to tell you this? You idiot?
Speaker 6: That would have been what I would have written, because
Speaker 6: it would have been more interesting as opposed to just okay,
Speaker 6: like he's here for the first time, but he doesn't
Speaker 6: realize it. Maybe it's okay, maybe I understand why you
Speaker 6: don't realize it.
Speaker 3: Then no, but and it would let the character off
Speaker 3: the hook, maybe like we know he's an idiot from
Speaker 3: the opening. We would then view this scenario through the
Speaker 3: ghosts who are already participating his eyes, and it's kind
Speaker 3: of a tragedy could have that could have worked.
Speaker 4: They're much more interesting to those amongst you with a
Speaker 4: predilection toward antique collection or the occasional bargain hunting that
Speaker 4: takes place in out of the way nooks and stalls.
Speaker 4: This painting suggests a certain required wariness when it comes
Speaker 4: to your shopping. There are moments when behind some dusty
Speaker 4: book or in a cobwebbed corner of an ancient vestibule,
Speaker 4: you'll uncover a little object duart which can horrify the
Speaker 4: heck out of you, such being the case in this painting,
Speaker 4: when a lady goes junking about and uncovers a mythological
Speaker 4: statue that has lived past its time and intrudes on hers.
Speaker 5: We call the painting the Last Rights for a Dead Druid?
Speaker 3: All right, Last Rites of a Dead Druid? Written by
Speaker 3: Alvin T. Sappinsley, directed by Jenno Zwark or should I
Speaker 3: say Jeno Zoom. The segment is a zoom fest. More
Speaker 3: on that in a minute. And also you didn't see
Speaker 3: it at home, but Ron's introduction was very atmospheric. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of camera moves this episode. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of zooming in and out for bumpers. I dig where
Speaker 3: it's going anyway. Druid stars Bill Bixby first. This is
Speaker 3: his first of two appearances on Night Gallery. Carol Linley
Speaker 3: the Knightstalker's own and man, she's adorable?
Speaker 7: Is that reactive?
Speaker 3: I don't care? And Donna Douglas as Mildrick as Mildred mcvain.
Speaker 3: She gets the and as credit that that trend has
Speaker 3: continued into the next segment. It also starts ned Glass.
Speaker 3: He's in two Cold Check episodes Spanish Moss Murders and
Speaker 3: Horror in the Heights, which I did with you guys
Speaker 3: on the On the Kill Jack daves.
Speaker 6: Over There almost a decade to go down the first.
Speaker 3: Time I met you, mister Michael. But the unseen performer
Speaker 3: in this segment is Gerald Penny, Gerald Perry Finnerman. He
Speaker 3: was the cinematographer. I mentioned the zooms and the focus pulling.
Speaker 3: Here he's doing muscular work and it's delicate and elegant.
Speaker 3: The focus pulling, like I said, is out of hand.
Speaker 3: He was a lifelong TV camera guy with occasional for
Speaker 3: rays into features. But there were some interesting TV shows
Speaker 3: he worked on, like Cork the Richard Benjamin Sifo written
Speaker 3: Button by Buck Henry. He did that entire series. He
Speaker 3: did The Planet of the Apes entire TV series. He
Speaker 3: did one of my favorite TV movies, Devil Dog, Hound
Speaker 3: of Hell and oh yeah, sixty episodes of Star Trek.
Speaker 3: Speaking of Star Trek, but anyway, hey guys, do you
Speaker 3: remember when Steven Moffatt created the weeping angels on Doctor
Speaker 3: who Ah? Thank you? Those statues that move when you're
Speaker 3: not looking. Yeah, terrifying and holy original creation. Anyway, this
Speaker 3: is the story. It all looked like Bill Bixby, a
Speaker 3: young lawyer whose wife gives him an ancient statue that
Speaker 3: may not have started out as stone. Chris, what'd you
Speaker 3: think of this one?
Speaker 6: Similarly to the last segment, it was a tadlong, but
Speaker 6: it was goofy if that was what they were going for.
Speaker 6: I had a chortal or two throughout, and I'll tell
Speaker 6: you why, because that statue doesn't look like Bill Bixby
Speaker 6: at all, no matter how hard they try to convince you.
Speaker 6: They could have had him rip his own face off
Speaker 6: and put it on there, and then it would have
Speaker 6: been like, yes, now it looks like Bill Bixby, only
Speaker 6: because Bill Bixby's actual face is on it. It doesn't
Speaker 6: look like him. So it makes every time they show
Speaker 6: its face really funny because it looks funny. And then
Speaker 6: the premise is I was gonna say the omen kind
Speaker 6: of I don't know. It's like there's all these like
Speaker 6: weird like premontory premonition things. If you were going to
Speaker 6: do this and you're being possessed by this, and it's
Speaker 6: it's goofy and for that I can appreciate it. It
Speaker 6: didn't need to be thirty minutes. But again, I feel
Speaker 6: like maybe that's like our we should stop saying that
Speaker 6: at this point, because holy shit, we've said it a lot,
Speaker 6: and this episode obviously is a candidate for that because
Speaker 6: there's only two segments. So I think it was fun
Speaker 6: and goofy, but if they were trying to be serious,
Speaker 6: they failed real hard.
Speaker 7: I thought this was a lot of fun. I had
Speaker 7: a great time. First off. I think that the Night
Speaker 7: Gallery should expand just from posters or sorry paintings into
Speaker 7: satuary as well. I think that they really need to
Speaker 7: expand their business, and having this in the gallery I
Speaker 7: think would be a great conversation piece and it could
Speaker 7: be sold fairly easily. I'm not sure who's in the
Speaker 7: market for life size statues of people screaming with crowbars
Speaker 7: in their hands.
Speaker 3: An ancient crowbar, by the way, an ancient crowbar.
Speaker 8: Yes.
Speaker 6: And to your point, Mike, I thought that they were
Speaker 6: going to do something with a statue because Rod is
Speaker 6: standing in front of a weird dragon statue at the
Speaker 6: beginning of this episode, and I was like, oh, hold on,
Speaker 6: are like there are things in the background in the
Speaker 6: night gallery that aren't paintings. They just never go up
Speaker 6: to them. And it's like, why wasn't this that time,
Speaker 6: of all times you could have your Bill Bixby statue
Speaker 6: just standing there.
Speaker 3: I actually have an answer for that, which is the
Speaker 3: sculptures were all purchased all at once, make us weird
Speaker 3: objects to Pepper the background and Tom Wright did all
Speaker 3: of the individual paintings for the episodes because they even
Speaker 3: if they're going to have statues show up, it's still
Speaker 3: a painting gallery. I agree wholeheartedly with you. They should
Speaker 3: have just had the goddamn statue sitting in the night.
Speaker 3: Gawn already goes this thing.
Speaker 6: Isn't it weird looking? Won't you like to know what
Speaker 6: the story behind this is? Yes, we would, Rod, but
Speaker 6: I get but again, like I get why they had
Speaker 6: to stick with the consistency of the paintings. The paintings
Speaker 6: ultimately are more successful, but that you could have made
Speaker 6: it feel more tailored to each story, like you know,
Speaker 6: a specific item like look at this item.
Speaker 3: Here, A narrow view of what a gallery can hold,
Speaker 3: even when they're displaying what a gallery can hold right
Speaker 3: all around him.
Speaker 7: I really was hoping that the statue would change as
Speaker 7: it was going through. I did like that this episode
Speaker 7: has what the last episode didn't, or a segment I
Speaker 7: should say, which is actually things happening and changing so
Speaker 7: it's not just the same thing over and over again.
Speaker 7: I was afraid the first time the statue showed up
Speaker 7: in his bedroom that it would only terrorize him at
Speaker 7: night and that it would just keep doing the whole
Speaker 7: creep up thing. But I was really happy to see
Speaker 7: the way it progresses, in the way that Bill Bixby
Speaker 7: is changing, and especially when he tries to sacrifice the cat,
Speaker 7: which just so funny. I gotta say, Donna Douglas, this
Speaker 7: is a competition between who is the more attractive blonde.
Speaker 7: These ladies are both just incredible.
Speaker 3: It's really a fistfight. Yes, yeah, I totally agree, because
Speaker 3: here's the wife who is one thousand percent adorable, Carolynley,
Speaker 3: and then here's the temptress. It's like, what could they
Speaker 3: possibly owe her? Oh yeah, okay, I got it.
Speaker 7: I got yeah, yeah, And I honestly it took me
Speaker 7: a minute to realize that that was Donna Douglas. I
Speaker 7: and she even had the Southern accent, so I'm like,
Speaker 7: why did I not just immediately think Ellie May when
Speaker 7: I saw her, and I guess it might have been
Speaker 7: the outfits or something, but man, oh man, she's a knockout.
Speaker 6: Of Beverly Hillbilly's alumni in this episode too, right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, and yeah, Buddy wasn't looking too bad either.
Speaker 6: No, yeah, she's no, she's great, she's great. I don't
Speaker 6: know if the segment needed another like her character, like,
Speaker 6: she's not in cahoots with the Sorcerer, She's just she's
Speaker 6: just tempting him. So it feels like these things happening
Speaker 6: at the same time. I wish they had maybe given
Speaker 6: us a little bit more of a through line as
Speaker 6: to maybe she has some sort of ulterior motive, because
Speaker 6: again that we've seen that before in this show as well,
Speaker 6: where they're like, oh, she's she just seems to be
Speaker 6: into Bill Bixby, which you know what with those turtlenecks
Speaker 6: and stuff, Like, I get it, she's a good looking guy,
Speaker 6: but that statue with that facial hair, on the other hand,
Speaker 6: he's looking like a real dork.
Speaker 3: We've got a triangle here, and it's a pretty good one.
Speaker 3: But to your point, Chris, what we needed is more
Speaker 3: of Mildred's character to get her point of view from
Speaker 3: what was going on here. Having said that this is
Speaker 3: one of my favorites from this season, like, I had
Speaker 3: a blast watching this one. I thought Swark's direction is
Speaker 3: on point. I thought the story was good. Even if
Speaker 3: I knew where it was going. Nobody could predicted that moment, Mike,
Speaker 3: where Eddie's father holds a cat over a barbecue with
Speaker 3: the full intention of frying and alive, and I fully
Speaker 3: believed he was going to do it.
Speaker 7: Oh, just the maid that comes up. I'm just putting
Speaker 7: in my notice.
Speaker 6: The poor maid that's just like a guest. She's have
Speaker 6: to leave. Now. This man's trying to cook his cat. Oh,
Speaker 6: it's so good.
Speaker 7: It's just the adr of all the cats sound effects.
Speaker 7: The poor cat's just like, what are you doing? And
Speaker 7: then the sound effects.
Speaker 3: As a callback to an earlier Night Gallery episode, Bill
Speaker 3: Bixby struck me this time round as a perfect analog
Speaker 3: of Roddy McDowell, because when he's endearing, he's very endearing,
Speaker 3: and when he's smarmy, oh, I just want to drown him.
Speaker 3: And he gets both here and now added layer here
Speaker 3: the sort of fierce character the fierce Bill Bixby. We
Speaker 3: get here as the Sorcerer was actually pretty great too.
Speaker 3: I mentioned the all the zoom's going on here when
Speaker 3: Bill Bixby lays out the statue's origins, This is before
Speaker 3: he starts to get possessed. It starts on a close
Speaker 3: up of the statue, which turns out to be a photograph,
Speaker 3: which pans tilts up to Carolynley, which turns out she's
Speaker 3: in a mirror. It then zooms back to include the
Speaker 3: entire room. It's slick and economical coverage. Geno's wark ladies
Speaker 3: and gentlemen. I just I can't anyway. Also during that scene,
Speaker 3: Bill Bixby's laying out the history, as I said, and
Speaker 3: he's being very ariutite in it. And then when he
Speaker 3: gets to the word raping, he says rapin. There's no
Speaker 3: g at the end like I could rape.
Speaker 6: He sure does say is it twice? Actually? Which is
Speaker 6: hume there.
Speaker 3: Just a little odd to hear it so casual, you know.
Speaker 7: I also laughed like crazy when they said the statue's
Speaker 7: eyes have changed, and then they cut to it and
Speaker 7: it looks like a whole different head on the statue, this.
Speaker 6: Orange red eyes though these red eyes or head.
Speaker 7: I'm like, what did they do refurbish its head?
Speaker 6: I actually loved the shop owner who's just had this
Speaker 6: thing sitting around for years, Like, this is the freakiest
Speaker 6: fucking thing. I would get that thing out of my
Speaker 6: shop and take it away, you know, after a while,
Speaker 6: if it's sitting in your shop, he's like, I think
Speaker 6: it's time to just get rid of this nightmare of
Speaker 6: a piece of artwork because it looks like a human
Speaker 6: being stuck in concrete.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, oh wait. He's only getting rid of it
Speaker 3: to make room for a dinette, so otherwise he wanted
Speaker 3: to have it around some more. I guess he takes
Speaker 3: it back at the end, he doesn't get that one back,
Speaker 3: and he's very mad. He wants it back.
Speaker 7: Had a set.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so Bill Bixby murders his wife. Then at the end,
Speaker 6: like after he turns, he just kills her and then
Speaker 6: just becoming Anton Levey of the seventies.
Speaker 3: Gets their Yeah, she's right, Yeah, I kind of like
Speaker 3: it doesn't mind at all.
Speaker 6: Hey, that's a fun bad ending, like a bum it's
Speaker 6: a bummer of an ending, right. I guess if you
Speaker 6: perceive the Bill Bixby character as the hero of the piece.
Speaker 6: He gets frozen, but you know, the bad guy wins
Speaker 6: in the end. Ain't nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 3: Oh, speaking of zooms, that second scene, the scene where
Speaker 3: Mildred gets confronted by him that she doesn't mind at
Speaker 3: all things talk about the first of all, they're subtle
Speaker 3: like hints with lighting, and then they got that circular
Speaker 3: fucking barbecue that explodes into flame. But the scene where,
Speaker 3: like I said that, there is this very subtle lighting
Speaker 3: shift on Bill Binksby and then he's possessed. So it's
Speaker 3: mostly Bill Bixby's performance that sounds. But that whole scene
Speaker 3: is fantastic. I'm just gonna keep praising this. To this segment,
Speaker 3: I will disagree with one. Yeah, yeah, it's mostly work
Speaker 3: his work here. But the performances are just as on point,
Speaker 3: as is the script by Alvin Sappinsley, who is our
Speaker 3: only hope these days.
Speaker 6: These are originals too. These aren't based I mean, that's
Speaker 6: the other thing. A lot of these are like you
Speaker 6: go and Look and it's based on a short story
Speaker 6: by X Y and Z. And these two segments have
Speaker 6: both been a Serling original and a Sapinsley original, and
Speaker 6: Serling is what he is.
Speaker 3: But this is way better, way better.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, this one. I think if I had seen
Speaker 7: this when I was a kid, it would really stick
Speaker 7: with me. I could see, Oh, don't you remember that
Speaker 7: episode with Bill Bixby where he turns it to a
Speaker 7: statue because at the end when he's going to beat
Speaker 7: it with that with his own crowbar, I thought that
Speaker 7: was very effective.
Speaker 3: And remember we had an episode with James Farantino earlier
Speaker 3: in this season. It's basically the same story as this one,
Speaker 3: so they can keep telling the same stories over and
Speaker 3: over again as long as they're eventually going to get
Speaker 3: it right. Because they got it right here.
Speaker 6: And this was better than that segment two, that one
Speaker 6: that you're referencing.
Speaker 3: I think way better, That's what I'm saying. A thousand
Speaker 3: yeah better. But it's the same idea. It's the same
Speaker 3: plot effectively, but reworked and shot well and written well
Speaker 3: and performed well and here we go.
Speaker 6: And it was also smart to switch the main character
Speaker 6: as opposed to like the secondary character, because in that one,
Speaker 6: wasn't it his wife is the one that's right, And
Speaker 6: this gives it, like, yeah, this gives it like a
Speaker 6: lot more steaks and also like, it just gives it
Speaker 6: a lot more weight that he's the one and he's
Speaker 6: doing it, but the story is being presented effectively by
Speaker 6: his point of view. It just gives it some more
Speaker 6: weight because it's I'm with that character the whole time,
Speaker 6: and that one it was like it it's his wife
Speaker 6: and he has to prevent it. And again we're in
Speaker 6: as invested as he is. But here it's okay it
Speaker 6: he's the one who's in trouble. And yeah, he swings
Speaker 6: at the statue and because he throws the same way,
Speaker 6: the exact same way is convenient with his own chrowbar.
Speaker 6: It was fun. It was fun, and that's all it
Speaker 6: needed to be. And I'm with you, Mike, if I
Speaker 6: had seen this as a kid and we're like, that's
Speaker 6: some freaky shit. Because the statue sticks with you. It
Speaker 6: is such a choice.
Speaker 7: The last one does look like Bixby, though, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: And I love that when he becomes the monk that
Speaker 7: he then gets like the little fake beard.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's so wonderful. Yeah, seeing fixed beied
Speaker 3: any attempt at sinister is welcome, very welcome.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, and when his eyes change, I'm just like, oh,
Speaker 7: don't make him angry?
Speaker 3: Here we go, Yeah. Check the end credits leaf forragno
Speaker 3: in here.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Painting number two in the Night Gallery addressing itself to
Speaker 8: the strains and stresses of the married, having to do
Speaker 8: with the fact that there is more than one way
Speaker 8: to kill a cat and more than one way to
Speaker 8: dispose of a wife.
Speaker 5: Our painting is called Stop Killing Me.
Speaker 3: Stop Killing Me was written by Jack Laird from a
Speaker 3: short story by Hal Dresner Kuhan Luke's Hal Dresner Zorro
Speaker 3: the Gay Blades Hal Dresner. Kind of a slide whistle
Speaker 3: situation there. This one was also directed by Jenno Zwark,
Speaker 3: starring Geraldine Page first of three appearances in the Night Gallery,
Speaker 3: and James Gregory only. This is about a wife enlisting
Speaker 3: the aid of a police officer because she believes her
Speaker 3: husband is slowly ordering her through worry. What'd you think
Speaker 3: of this one, Chris.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is a lot of fun. I mean it
Speaker 6: does go on a little long too, but the length
Speaker 6: of this one is to sell. What's the length is
Speaker 6: selling what they're going for? And like it works here,
Speaker 6: so she is so haired with him that he is
Speaker 6: just fuck Yeah. I see why this is the way
Speaker 6: that it is like that works here, and I enjoyed
Speaker 6: this episode. But I'm gonna be biased because I love
Speaker 6: James Gregory now again when we started the Barney Miller Show,
Speaker 6: not so much the case, but his characterization has grown
Speaker 6: over time and grown on me. But seeing him here
Speaker 6: is great. He's fun. She plays that character great. He
Speaker 6: plays that character great. And I love that they keep
Speaker 6: focusing on the photo of his wife uh at fucking
Speaker 6: desk because it is the funniest thing reasoning Yeah, you're right,
Speaker 6: I see there's you know, one would ever think divorce.
Speaker 6: It's oh my god, this guy is just so pent
Speaker 6: up and angry all day. Huh. He's just been waiting
Speaker 6: for someone like her to walk through his door. And
Speaker 6: I love that kind of storytelling where it's like these
Speaker 6: two people were faded to be in this room together
Speaker 6: for ten minutes and it totally works.
Speaker 7: I wish that the well Jane's wark does something interesting
Speaker 7: in this episode where Gerald and Page will basically imitate
Speaker 7: her husband and repeat the lines that he keeps saying
Speaker 7: to her, and when she does that, we get these
Speaker 7: interesting cuts to almost like from the side. All of
Speaker 7: a sudden and she will turn to the side and
Speaker 7: start doing her husband's voice, not like literally saying what
Speaker 7: he's saying, and then cut back and she'll move back.
Speaker 7: And they did that a few times, but then they
Speaker 7: just started doing it kind of willy nilly. As far
Speaker 7: as where she was going to turn to the left,
Speaker 7: to the right, to the straight to wherever. I wish
Speaker 7: she had been a little bit more consistent with that,
Speaker 7: because I thought it was a good device. The way
Speaker 7: it ended up overall, I still liked it, but it
Speaker 7: just I thought it could have been a little bit
Speaker 7: more powerful as far as that went. But I thought
Speaker 7: that was nice, and I also like that to your point, Chris,
Speaker 7: we have to spend this time. We have to take
Speaker 7: this time to hear the basically psychological warfare that this
Speaker 7: guy has been waging on his wife, letting her know
Speaker 7: that she has very little time to live, and when
Speaker 7: the payoff happens. I complain a lot about, Oh, we
Speaker 7: know where this is going to go. I was really
Speaker 7: looking forward to this going where it went to.
Speaker 3: This one is a flip side not of Satan but
Speaker 3: of the late mister Pettington from two episodes ago, except here,
Speaker 3: instead of a woman talking herself into murder. She convinces
Speaker 3: another of the ease of which he can dispatch his
Speaker 3: own spouse starts with a great b roll of the
Speaker 3: New York City skyline, dingy kind of nineteen seventies. Look
Speaker 3: at the show, which I always love. I think, I
Speaker 3: think Geraldine Page is so electric here in that scene
Speaker 3: that those moments killer Michael. She's pantomiming her husband, and
Speaker 3: we keep cutting to this unknown point of view. It's
Speaker 3: ultimately the viewer's point of view, or her point of view,
Speaker 3: because it's the husband talking to her and being servered.
Speaker 3: The cuts are so jarring, but she's so funny. This
Speaker 3: is a horrible situation, and the things that this husband
Speaker 3: is doing to her is really beyond the pale when
Speaker 3: you really think about it, and the way her performance
Speaker 3: just I don't know, I thought it was hilarious, if
Speaker 3: only he could stop with the killing me, killing me,
Speaker 3: killing me.
Speaker 7: When I really thought I knew what way this episode
Speaker 7: was going to go with that title, I thought that
Speaker 7: she was going to come in and it was going
Speaker 7: to be a d OA situation. I want to report
Speaker 7: a murder who's mind. But then I actually thought that
Speaker 7: she was dead and was coming in. When she said,
Speaker 7: my husband's killing me right now, I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 7: that's interesting, Like she's astral projecting or something. So I
Speaker 7: took this in a whole different way, but I ended
Speaker 7: up liking where it went, which was not supernatural whatsoever.
Speaker 6: I thought that too. I thought that too when she
Speaker 6: said that. It was like, oh, like, cause again, like
Speaker 6: that's what it seems like, there's some angle here and
Speaker 6: it's just no, he's just he's almost like Pusher from
Speaker 6: the X Files, where it's.
Speaker 3: Like that's.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's this weird, like just suggesting over and over
Speaker 6: again that it's putting her on edge constantly. I can't
Speaker 6: even imagine what that would be like.
Speaker 3: But good lord, I don't think we needed the sound
Speaker 3: effect of her getting run over in traffic. That wasn't necessary.
Speaker 3: Like the plot, the plan of it was obviously working.
Speaker 3: She left that police station feeling really no better than
Speaker 3: when she came in. There's certainly no less safe, So
Speaker 3: just having the police officer talking to his wife would
Speaker 3: would have been sufficient. I do think we hold a
Speaker 3: little too long at the end, a little too long
Speaker 3: on the picture of his wife, Like a minute feels.
Speaker 6: Like I was I mean, to your point with the
Speaker 6: sound effect, it almost seems like it was added after
Speaker 6: the fact, and I know it obviously was, but more
Speaker 6: like they didn't ask James Gregory to react to anything,
Speaker 6: because I watched it a couple times and he doesn't
Speaker 6: react at all, but we hear it as the audience.
Speaker 6: It's like he would have heard it. He should have reacted.
Speaker 6: There should have been like a sly little smirk or
Speaker 6: a grin or something, and there's nothing. So it almost
Speaker 6: it feels like they gilded the lily just a little.
Speaker 6: I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's a pretty good
Speaker 6: segment that is just too on the nose.
Speaker 3: I think it's twice as long as it probably should
Speaker 3: have been. But I'm not in any way angry at it,
Speaker 3: because I would watch Geraldine Pages do just about anything.
Speaker 3: I think she's great here anything else about this one, though,
Speaker 3: I think it's just really solid and I'm glad we're
Speaker 3: getting them. Yeah, peaks and valleys with this show, gentlemen,
Speaker 3: Peaks and funtin all right.
Speaker 6: I like the idea that James Gregory is at one point,
Speaker 6: he's like she asked him, is your wife still as
Speaker 6: beautiful as the day you married her and he just
Speaker 6: like stares at that photo just a moment too long,
Speaker 6: just a no, you're right, it's just again like James
Speaker 6: Gregory was the perfect person for this role.
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny perfect. While watching it, I was like,
Speaker 3: I know this guy from somewhere. He's so good. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna look him up so we can discuss him
Speaker 3: on the show. And then I saw the credits of
Speaker 3: Barney Miller and I'm not gonna just close my notebook,
Speaker 3: Like these guys can supply all the information we need
Speaker 3: to know about James Gregory.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, this is almost a prequel. But
Speaker 7: I don't think Luger took this career path. Plus I
Speaker 7: don't think he would be married according to Chris's theory.
Speaker 6: I am my theory hashtag Luger big gay.
Speaker 3: Well maybe that's why he's got to kill the wife.
Speaker 3: He's come out, you know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, bottom alone. Just two highlights off of mister Gregory's career.
Speaker 7: Won the role that he played in Manchurion Candidate. He
Speaker 7: was the husband what's her name, Angela Lanceberry? Really good role, yes,
Speaker 7: And then the other one is General Ursus. I believe
Speaker 7: is his name from Planet of the Apes, Planet of
Speaker 7: the Apes.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, that voice, man, he's so good. He's great
Speaker 3: in this As a two person segment, yeah, bottle thing.
Speaker 3: We got here for fourteen straight minutes. These two could
Speaker 3: have taken another fourteen. Honestly, if they could have had
Speaker 3: some machinations added to this would have been perfectly satisfied.
Speaker 4: Now this one here, unabashed and unashamed, I submit to
Speaker 4: you as a dandy. It does into an ancient funeral
Speaker 4: rite having to do with a person. It's called a
Speaker 4: sin eator, one who attends awake and partakes of the
Speaker 4: funeral food, and in the process digests all the transgressions
Speaker 4: of the deceased, so that he departs the earth a
Speaker 4: much cleaner and sweeter little item. Proving that we've become
Speaker 4: a bit more sophisticated in our tribal rites, but we
Speaker 4: are much the poorer for our twentieth century chromium intellect.
Speaker 4: You might agree with me after you've seen Sins of
Speaker 4: the Fathers.
Speaker 3: The Sins of the father written by Halsted Wells from
Speaker 3: a short story by Christiana Brand and directed by Jenno
Speaker 3: Zwark or Jean Zwark. He's Jean Zuark Now. It stars
Speaker 3: Geraldine Page, Richard Thomas, Michael Dunn, Alexander the Star Trek.
Speaker 3: People will recognize him from Plato's step children. He was
Speaker 3: also in eure A Big Boy Now, the Copolas first film,
Speaker 3: but I will always know him as doctor Migolito Loveless.
Speaker 3: For so many seasons, he was Jamee West, central antagonist
Speaker 3: on The Wild Wild West. Rounding out this massive caster,
Speaker 3: Alan Napier, Cyril de Levante, John Barclay, and Barbara fucking Steele.
Speaker 3: This is okay this tale. It tells one of my
Speaker 3: absolute favorite Old World rituals. This is a Wells tale.
Speaker 3: We had in our last episode, we had a Wells tale.
Speaker 3: This one is also from Wales and the Men. The
Speaker 3: myth is the sin Eater, which we'll see it play
Speaker 3: out dramatically here. But the actual tradition was there would
Speaker 3: be an outcast in a village and he would be
Speaker 3: given a feast every time somebody died, so that he
Speaker 3: would take on their sins of the deceased, and the
Speaker 3: deceased would go to heaven and he'd be given the
Speaker 3: feest no matter how much food that village had. If
Speaker 3: there was a famine, there it didn't matter. Every morsel
Speaker 3: needed to go to the sin eater. He always was
Speaker 3: eating like royalty. The downside, of course, was he was
Speaker 3: going to burn in hell for eating all of those sins.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 3: I heard about this tradition long before I saw this,
Speaker 3: and it's always fascinated me. And recently I was talking
Speaker 3: to a friend of mine named Janisman, who is Welsh
Speaker 3: and lives in Wales. I asked her about this tradition
Speaker 3: and she had no fucking idea what I was talking about. Anyway,
Speaker 3: this is the tale of the sin Eater, or the
Speaker 3: son of a sin Eator. Richard Thomas has prodded into
Speaker 3: a sin eating con game where he's to spirit away
Speaker 3: all the food from the corpse and thus sidestemped the
Speaker 3: whole damnation thing and feed his family, which actually sounds
Speaker 3: like a pretty good idea, except it's a double cross. Chris,
Speaker 3: what did you think of this one?
Speaker 6: You forgot to mention the most important sin eating piece
Speaker 6: of media, the two thousand and three classic The Order
Speaker 6: starring Heath Ledger, as a sin eat in there. I
Speaker 6: think investigating sin eating in the Vatican.
Speaker 7: Wow, actually not bad, not.
Speaker 6: A bad movie, But I digress. I'm with you. I
Speaker 6: like the whole sin Eating angle, which is why I
Speaker 6: mentioned the order if anyone else is interested in seeing
Speaker 6: something not this old world like. That's the thing I
Speaker 6: appreciate about this is that it is an old world
Speaker 6: tale that feels proper disgusting and griming and weird. I
Speaker 6: think again, I go back to the well of the
Speaker 6: things that I've said before, the well of brevity. Here
Speaker 6: they just don't want to tell three stories anymore. They
Speaker 6: just want to tell two. And it's I can see
Speaker 6: in these episode segments where they just needed to chill
Speaker 6: out and maybe maybe take your story through two or
Speaker 6: three more passes, because it's just there's just too much
Speaker 6: going on here again, and I don't think all the
Speaker 6: pieces that are moving around the main moving pieces needed
Speaker 6: to be there to get the main moving piece. His
Speaker 6: story told in an interesting way.
Speaker 3: How about you, Mike?
Speaker 7: I prefer the sin Eater enemy of I believe he
Speaker 7: was the enemy of both ghost Rider and Spider Man,
Speaker 7: but I mostly remember him from Spider Man comics, so
Speaker 7: that was my familiarity with Sin Eating. I love Michael Dunn,
Speaker 7: he was great in this. Richard Thomas, Wow, what a performance.
Speaker 7: Rereally screamy throughout this whole thing. I was so confused
Speaker 7: at parts because they were talking about eating the food
Speaker 7: out of the guy's chest.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 7: They said that like two or three times, right, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 7: there's no food on the chest, it's just around. It's
Speaker 7: a bunch of plates around. I didn't get that.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and even further the way they kept saying it,
Speaker 3: I thought he was they had hollowed out his chest, right,
Speaker 3: put the food inside it, and then when it wasn't that,
Speaker 3: I thought that if it's on his chest and he
Speaker 3: has to take it all off of it, that would
Speaker 3: be something. But you're right, it's just ringed around body.
Speaker 7: Very nice plates. I mean, the presentation could have been better.
Speaker 7: I don't know about the taste myself, but yeah, definitely
Speaker 7: the plating needed some work.
Speaker 3: I tried to find out what else was filming on
Speaker 3: the Universal lot around this time, because in this episode,
Speaker 3: in the previous episode as well, they're clearly using an
Speaker 3: amazing set, this old the Old World set that's an
Speaker 3: interior set, interior for ext year. It looks fantastic. It
Speaker 3: looks better here than it looked in the previous episode
Speaker 3: where that it was directed very clumsily, but you know,
Speaker 3: Sark makes this one look great. I love Barbara Steele,
Speaker 3: always glad to see her. Wish she was in the
Speaker 3: episode more quite frankly, she's got like maybe two lines
Speaker 3: in the whole thing, the mom in it, Geraldine Page.
Speaker 3: This is a very recent return here. She was in
Speaker 3: a previous episode stopped killing me here on Night Gallery,
Speaker 3: and I thought she was really good here. I speaking
Speaker 3: to what you were saying, Mike. I can't tell if
Speaker 3: Richard Thomas is good or bad here. It's a thankless role.
Speaker 3: This like muling petulant child. So he's nailing that part
Speaker 3: of it. Should Is it good?
Speaker 6: Though? I don't know.
Speaker 3: Also, I don't need to see his saliva, does anyone
Speaker 3: Richard Thomas's saliva A.
Speaker 7: Lot of saliva.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the tongue just lolling around in that mouth of
Speaker 3: God Almighty.
Speaker 7: It did portray hunger very well.
Speaker 3: But well, I believed he was hungry, but he made
Speaker 3: me completely disgusted.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Well, I don't think that he needed to ride that
Speaker 7: horse sall twelve miles and have poor little Michael Dunn
Speaker 7: who looks like every step he takes hurts him. I mean,
Speaker 7: it was painful to watch Michael Dunn walk because you know,
Speaker 7: he's got the dwarf legs and it's just not very
Speaker 7: easy for him to do that. And I was like, now,
Speaker 7: let this guy ride on the horse with you. He
Speaker 7: doesn't need to walk twelve miles with you over hill
Speaker 7: and dale and through this mountainous, treacherous pass. Just give
Speaker 7: the guy a lift.
Speaker 6: Man conboy doesn't share no horse.
Speaker 3: No, that's true. That negotiation occurred when we were talking
Speaker 3: about her an a husband. It made sense that he
Speaker 3: was probably going to be sprawled out on the horse,
Speaker 3: so I agree. I kept wondering why you wouldn't just
Speaker 3: reach down and go, come on, let's go, just so
Speaker 3: he can get there quicker, like what slowly can't beside
Speaker 3: this dwarf? Like it's a bit cruel.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 6: It is.
Speaker 7: The makeup on both the corpses. Oh, spoilers looked pretty good.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I saw that twist coming a mile away.
Speaker 7: So I was just like, okay, yeah, why aren't you
Speaker 7: eating the food? Why are you saying I won't eat
Speaker 7: a morsel? Why are you saying that your son will
Speaker 7: eat all of this food? Because there's another sin eater.
Speaker 7: And now you have to eat the sins of the
Speaker 7: sin eater.
Speaker 3: I like that tis honestly, it's a good twist, but it.
Speaker 6: Is a good question.
Speaker 3: It was just a little telegraphed, Yeah, but it posed
Speaker 3: an interesting solution to the sin eating lifestyle. You just
Speaker 3: have to have a relative that'll eat yours and then
Speaker 3: you got to keep that thing going.
Speaker 7: Right, and someday you'll have a son I love, and
Speaker 7: she says.
Speaker 3: Horrible, horrible. I did wonder a little bit how long
Speaker 3: has he been living there with them, this Richard Thomas's character,
Speaker 3: and have no interest in the family business, Like he
Speaker 3: doesn't know the words, he doesn't know anything about it, Like,
Speaker 3: how can you not?
Speaker 6: It's all they do.
Speaker 3: Should be the first thing they taught you was that
Speaker 3: prayer you're supposed to scream out when you're about to
Speaker 3: eat the sin. You would think, right, you just pick
Speaker 3: it up just by osmosis, right right, Yeah, I agree
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 7: That Geraldine Page was very fun in this. She with
Speaker 7: that head thing around her head. I was just like,
Speaker 7: she looked very much like a tale from Canterbury Tales
Speaker 7: or something like from the story from the artwork. I
Speaker 7: should say. Yeah, I thought she gave a great performance.
Speaker 7: As well, and I agree with you that I wish
Speaker 7: there had been a lot more Barbara Steele because it
Speaker 7: was just like a tease at the beginning of the
Speaker 7: end once again, the end with Geraldine Page, where she
Speaker 7: has effectively tricked her son into eternal damnation, all the
Speaker 7: while assuring him of all these different ways that you
Speaker 7: will prevent him from being damned.
Speaker 3: I just loved it. I thought it was so good
Speaker 3: that she did it to him.
Speaker 6: And you know what, Yes, it is twenty nine minutes,
Speaker 6: but I think even if it went a little long,
Speaker 6: as weird as Richard Thomas's performance is, I think it's
Speaker 6: an interesting performance, even if it is just get overde
Speaker 6: he's overacting. I feel like he's slabbering, yeah, and a
Speaker 6: lot of just like big decisions. But I like it
Speaker 6: in this because it feels a little different than all
Speaker 6: these other episode segments we've seen in the Old World,
Speaker 6: where there's not like one kind of big performance. He's
Speaker 6: just going for it, which I appreciate. Again, I just
Speaker 6: it is a thankless, completely thankless role for someone having
Speaker 6: to just lick their tongue constantly for half an.
Speaker 3: Hour, and a thankless role for us having to watch it.
Speaker 4: There are horror stories and horror stories elements terror that
Speaker 4: take myriad forms, but this item has a built in
Speaker 4: terror which can refrigerate even the most dispassionate amongst us.
Speaker 4: It has to do with a little beastie known as
Speaker 4: an earwig, a small bug that crawls into the human
Speaker 4: ear and while inside it doesn't whisper sweet nothings, it
Speaker 4: performs quite another function.
Speaker 5: Over do you now?
Speaker 4: On Night Gallery a brand new nightmare which we call
Speaker 4: the Caterpillar.
Speaker 3: The Caterpillar was written by Rod Serling from a short
Speaker 3: story called Boomerang by Oscar Cook, which is a better title,
Speaker 3: and it was directed by Jean Zwarc who I think
Speaker 3: this might be his best direction of the entire series,
Speaker 3: maybe his career. This one stars Lawrence Harvey, Joanna Pettitt.
Speaker 3: This is her third of four appearances on Night Gallery,
Speaker 3: Tom Hellmore, John Williams this is his second appearance, and
Speaker 3: Don Knight as a He's a professional English scumbag. This
Speaker 3: guy was on every television show including Banichick, including Colombo
Speaker 3: in Swamp Thing. The Trader is pricked, That Australian traders prick.
Speaker 3: That's him, but I mainly know him from abandoning three
Speaker 3: adorable children, and then, just when Bill Bixby and Susan
Speaker 3: Clark have them settled into a comfortable life, he thinks
Speaker 3: he can swoop in and rip them away for what money?
Speaker 3: How dare you separate the Apple Dumpling Gang? Anyway, this
Speaker 3: is a tale of jealousy and borneo and a most
Speaker 3: elaborate and simple plan with which to woo a prospective mate, Mike,
Speaker 3: what do you think of this one?
Speaker 7: Shouldn't it really be called the Earwig?
Speaker 6: Can we?
Speaker 7: That was really bothering me now all.
Speaker 3: The problems in the episode, that's the dumbest one. Like
Speaker 3: like boomerang is a perfect title for it. It means
Speaker 3: just as much as a caterpillar, because neither feature in
Speaker 3: the episode at all.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, it would have been nice if something. But yeah,
Speaker 7: I I must have either seen this or seen one
Speaker 7: of the countless adaptations of this story or this feels
Speaker 7: like a It's like a campfire tale, right, this whole thing.
Speaker 7: We took out the thing, but the thing laid babies.
Speaker 7: And I think I heard spider when I first heard
Speaker 7: this story. Okay, cool, but that was well done. I
Speaker 7: really like the Lawrence Harvey. I find it very funny
Speaker 7: because Chris, we're gonna be talking about Lawrence Harvey again
Speaker 7: this week, so like Lawrence Harveying all over the place
Speaker 7: right now, which is great. Yeah, but it was just
Speaker 7: like a black out skit that was stretched very long, again,
Speaker 7: but better than most of these ones that we've talked
Speaker 7: about lately. They're going out on a high note.
Speaker 3: How about you, Chris, You know Father Malone.
Speaker 6: You and I used to do a show about Tales
Speaker 6: from the Crypt, and I think that this is in
Speaker 6: that wheelhouse. There are a couple episodes of that show
Speaker 6: that I can remember back. I want to say one
Speaker 6: there's a woman with her hit and she's a zombie,
Speaker 6: and then there's a guy's head on a plate and
Speaker 6: they're in like Jamaica or something, and it's to be
Speaker 6: careful what you wish for type thing where he's a
Speaker 6: jilted lover or something. So I'm I love it. I
Speaker 6: love the bunch of these studgy British Dickens in Bonio,
Speaker 6: like I love that. It's fantastic. The setting is great.
Speaker 6: I don't think they take too much advantage of it
Speaker 6: because it feels rather set bound. Unfortunately, because it takes
Speaker 6: place inside of this plantation house with Lawrence Harvey just
Speaker 6: being horned up big time, like an erection popping through
Speaker 6: his fucking pants, like the moment he sees her, and
Speaker 6: it's just like she, to her credit, she is like
Speaker 6: hell no. Johanna Pettitt is like hell no from moment one,
Speaker 6: which is interesting because normally in these kinds of stories,
Speaker 6: there's like this in the air up in the airness
Speaker 6: about the female character's feelings towards the unrequited male love.
Speaker 6: In this, she's like, go take a cold shower, an
Speaker 6: ice your dick.
Speaker 3: I wrote in my notes, finally a love triangle story
Speaker 3: where there aren't two people who are wrong.
Speaker 6: Right, And I absolutely loved that aspect of this because this, honestly,
Speaker 6: father Blah, feels like the crescendo moment of having spent
Speaker 6: all those years watching Tales from the Crypt and they
Speaker 6: just kept doing that shit over and over again. You
Speaker 6: have to have one of the people on the love
Speaker 6: triangle say no at some point, and it totally works here.
Speaker 3: It was very fresh, It was fresh, and the title
Speaker 3: is terrible. Yes, both things we can agree on. Oscar Cook,
Speaker 3: the author of the short story, apparently was in the
Speaker 3: military in Borneo wrote a lot of stories that took
Speaker 3: place there, which is why it's set here. And and
Speaker 3: himself said that this is a parable for rich white entitlement,
Speaker 3: that Lawrence Harvey's character is just this wealthy guy who
Speaker 3: just wants what he wants and he's gonna take it
Speaker 3: no matter what I do. Like that. Lawrence Harvey is
Speaker 3: one year away from death here. He has stomach cancer.
Speaker 3: He's in the throes of it here, and evidently during
Speaker 3: the scenes when the earwig is eating his brain, did
Speaker 3: not take his pain medication for that day of filming.
Speaker 3: So what you're seeing is actual genuine torment of Lawrence
Speaker 3: Harvey that coupled with the makeup is fantastic. Here, if
Speaker 3: you look at his ear, you can see that the
Speaker 3: hair all around the area has been scratched off. You
Speaker 3: can see where his nails have gouged at his own ears,
Speaker 3: thus necessitating him being tied to that bed. I thought
Speaker 3: that was really hard to watch and therefore really good. Also,
Speaker 3: he's wearing some fantastic button up boots when we first
Speaker 3: meet him. They were beautiful. The music in this episode
Speaker 3: was handled by a new composer to Night Gallery. His
Speaker 3: name's Eddie Sauter. If you listen close in the background,
Speaker 3: there's an electric sitar and a marimba and these electronic squeaks.
Speaker 3: It's fantastic. Eddie Saunter used to be an arranger for
Speaker 3: Artie Shaw and Tommy Dorsey and the Benny Goodman Orchestra,
Speaker 3: and he will be provided the new theme for Night
Speaker 3: Gallery that we have with season three. In fact, Eddie
Speaker 3: Saunter will compose all of the music from here on
Speaker 3: out for Night Gallery.
Speaker 7: Yeah right.
Speaker 3: I mentioned that I think this is Juark's best segment,
Speaker 3: is best directed segment. I agree, Chris. This is a
Speaker 3: bottle episode. It is definitely a one location episode, but
Speaker 3: I don't think it's set bound at all. I think
Speaker 3: it's beautifully shot, very carefully lit and photographed. There's a
Speaker 3: shot where there's a wooden scrim on the left side
Speaker 3: of the screen and Lawrence Harvey and the husband's heads
Speaker 3: are both floating above it, and Joanna Pettitt steps into
Speaker 3: the frame on the right full frame, So these two
Speaker 3: floating heads of these two characters who want her, and
Speaker 3: then Harvey has that super creepy line that his appetite
Speaker 3: is increasing while he's staring at her. The camera slides
Speaker 3: to the left. The husband is now gone. It's now
Speaker 3: Joanna Pennitt and Harvey in the frame together and in
Speaker 3: the background behind them are rifles and pistols. It's a
Speaker 3: beautiful shit. It's he should have been nominated for an
Speaker 3: Emmy for this thing. The day after the earwig has
Speaker 3: been inserted into the wrong ear or was it the
Speaker 3: right ear, everyone at breakfast is dressed like George Ramia.
Speaker 3: They're all wearing the Safari jackets. It was so distracting
Speaker 3: for me because I know George Ramia is just kind
Speaker 3: of wear that as a uniform, and I know that's
Speaker 3: exactly what everyone would be wearing in Borneo at this
Speaker 3: time period. But it was still a bit unsettling. Okay,
Speaker 3: the Don Williams character, I said, was it the wrong
Speaker 3: ear of the right ear? Because do you think it's
Speaker 3: possible that character intentionally had the earput heard the earwig
Speaker 3: put into Lawrence Harvey's ear, like hearing his plan and
Speaker 3: what he was doing.
Speaker 7: I thought that for a little.
Speaker 3: Bit, but I wondered that too.
Speaker 6: But that scene where he's like, oh sorry, they put
Speaker 6: it in the wrong I paid some times, like fucking
Speaker 6: the most British guy around everybody. He had a fucking
Speaker 6: eel pie hanging out of his mouth for fos sake.
Speaker 6: I love that scene. You get that out?
Speaker 7: Yeah you figured out am Britain.
Speaker 6: I am him like but I but there's like in
Speaker 6: that scene Shirk's conventions too, because I'm expecting him to
Speaker 6: show up at the window and be like, you know,
Speaker 6: tough shit, asshole, but he's like, I'm sorry. So I
Speaker 6: don't know. I don't think. I think he was genuinely
Speaker 6: an accident and he feels bad because that scenems like now,
Speaker 6: I say, it's moving, but a couple that with Lawrence
Speaker 6: Harvey just going and like making the noises like you
Speaker 6: feel for both of the characters in the scene, which
Speaker 6: is not something I can say for a lot of
Speaker 6: the segments in Night Gallery. So I kind of feel
Speaker 6: like it was an accident just based on that one
Speaker 6: scene alone.
Speaker 3: What's funny is I hadn't considered that it was intentionally
Speaker 3: put into Laurence Harvey's here until he comes up to apologize,
Speaker 3: and then I thought, he's really contrite about this. Did
Speaker 3: he do this? And now he feels bad because he's
Speaker 3: seeing the results of it. I don't know, maybe I
Speaker 3: was working overtime on this one, but at least this
Speaker 3: particular segment begs these kind of questions and are conversation's
Speaker 3: worth having.
Speaker 6: Also, you mentioned the lighting in some of the scenes.
Speaker 6: The scene where they're in the bar and it's the
Speaker 6: first time that Lawrence Harvey and mister Britton meet with
Speaker 6: his hat and it's lit really darkly except for Lawrence
Speaker 6: Harvey's eyes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's called the halo eyelight, which Jean Jean zik
Speaker 3: here like he uses on Lawrence Harvey at every opportunity.
Speaker 3: And why wouldn't you Lawrence Harvey's faces. Look, I know
Speaker 3: he's sick here, but what a face, man. He always
Speaker 3: had those cheekbones and that gaunt, stony kind of stare.
Speaker 3: This is a guy who too often, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: got cast as a hero in movies, and that's what
Speaker 3: kept him from getting further, I think, because if you
Speaker 3: cast him as a villain, he's fucking aces man, just
Speaker 3: like you see him here.
Speaker 7: That's why he was perfect in the mentoring candidate because
Speaker 7: you didn't know is he this or is he bad?
Speaker 7: Everybody's fawning over him, but you know something's that right?
Speaker 6: I love his eyebrow raises. It's the eyebrow raises. I
Speaker 6: mean it's his eyeline. Really, it's that tease zone area.
Speaker 6: But those eyebrows.
Speaker 7: Man, he's like he can do like a John Philip
Speaker 7: Law eyebrow raise like he he would be the American diabolic.
Speaker 3: That's exactly. I could not put my finger on who
Speaker 3: he was reminding me of. But yes, John Philip Law.
Speaker 3: Holy lord. Here's here's a fun fact that ruins the
Speaker 3: entire episode. There are no pain receptors in the brain.
Speaker 3: But other than that, I really really liked it, which
Speaker 3: is a fact. This is an episode I knew about
Speaker 3: long before I had ever seen it, because Stephen King
Speaker 3: chronicles it in his book Dance Macabre, his his fiction
Speaker 3: book of horror from nineteen seventy nine or so, where
Speaker 3: he kind of he kind of lays into the series
Speaker 3: as not being anything very good, but he singles this
Speaker 3: particular episode out as achieving the highest level of horror
Speaker 3: that he thought the series would ever get to.
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, I can see, I would agree. Well, we
Speaker 6: haven't seen the rest of the season so or the series,
Speaker 6: so that doesn't boat will. But the Master of Horror.
Speaker 6: There's so many books at half price books with ks
Speaker 6: on them that are just even King and no other
Speaker 6: horror writer. So he must be right. I hope not.
Speaker 6: But at the same time, I mean, this is I
Speaker 6: guess this is scary. I don't know. I don't to
Speaker 6: sit and think about. The ending is the ending of
Speaker 6: this scary ending? He's just gonna die, That's it. Like
Speaker 6: he's just gonna his head's gonna explode and he's gonna die.
Speaker 7: Oh is that all?
Speaker 3: We watched him with one in his ear, writhing and
Speaker 3: not being able to vocalize at all from the horrendous
Speaker 3: amount of pain he was enduring. And now he's going
Speaker 3: to have at least a dozen or so more of
Speaker 3: them in there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and they'll kill him, right.
Speaker 3: The only ending for him is a pistol, right, just
Speaker 3: take it off of the wall.
Speaker 6: That'd be too good for you, mate. You'll have to
Speaker 6: say and endure the pain.
Speaker 3: Here's what I really liked, go through this entire ordeal.
Speaker 3: It's a miracle. John Williams shows up to tell us
Speaker 3: that the ear came out to the other ear, and
Speaker 3: then Laurence Harvey immediately reverts to being a cocksucker in
Speaker 3: the face. Miracle. Yes, Oh, so this this come up
Speaker 3: and absolutely genuinely earned.
Speaker 6: You're gonna have me arrested at the dock, aren't you? No,
Speaker 6: We're not.
Speaker 3: Oh so good.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Yeah, there were some good bits to this definitely,
Speaker 7: but like I said, it just felt a little long.
Speaker 7: I guess it was those writhing and pain scenes, Like
Speaker 7: it felt like it just went on for a long time.
Speaker 3: If you've watched the recent one, this is probably the
Speaker 3: one off of the DVD that the episode is thirty
Speaker 3: three minutes, but that's technically like a director's cut because
Speaker 3: when it was originally aired, I think like six minutes
Speaker 3: were cut out of it, So we definitely got to
Speaker 3: see the full length version. Maybe had we seen the
Speaker 3: original and what ended up on syndication version, like a
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of our problems might have gone
Speaker 3: away with the episode.
Speaker 4: In the area of the old cult, it's customary to
Speaker 4: preoccupy ourselves with witchets, and too infrequently we dabble on
Speaker 4: the male side of that time honored profession, the sorcerer.
Speaker 4: On display here is a painting showing the natural habitat
Speaker 4: of this species of black art practitioner Dark Alley, murky light,
Speaker 4: A few sundry skulls, and the gentleman himself on the
Speaker 4: right of the picture with the upraised hand and the
Speaker 4: funny little goat horns. Yes, indeed this is a sorcerer,
Speaker 4: and for those of you who disbelieve his existence, we
Speaker 4: invite you to check this out for a little while.
Speaker 4: Our painting is called the Return of the Sorcerer, and
Speaker 4: we're a better place for him to return than right
Speaker 4: here in the night gallery.
Speaker 3: Rod wants us check this out. It's Return of the Sorcerer.
Speaker 3: This was season three, episode one, released on September the
Speaker 3: twenty fourth, nineteen seventy two. It was written by Holston Wells,
Speaker 3: based on a Clark in Smith's short story, and directed
Speaker 3: by Jenno Zwark or jenzwark I noticed that Yeah, he'll
Speaker 3: be known by the more sophisticated and way easier to
Speaker 3: say Jen Zwark for the rest of the season. This
Speaker 3: one stars Vincent Price. This is his second appearance on
Speaker 3: That Guy, Tia Sterling her first, and Bill Bixby special
Speaker 3: appearance by Bill Bixby and his second appearance. In this one,
Speaker 3: Bill Bixby is hired to translate an ancient text by
Speaker 3: a sorcerer.
Speaker 6: What could go on?
Speaker 3: What did you think of this one, Mike, I was very.
Speaker 7: Confused, but the one I kept trying to figure out
Speaker 7: the power dynamics between Tisia Sterling and Vincent Price. And
Speaker 7: then there's this whole talk about Vincent Price is a
Speaker 7: twin and he cut off his twins head and the
Speaker 7: head is someplace, and I'm just like, this sounds far
Speaker 7: more interesting than a translation story. And then this goat
Speaker 7: keeps showing up, and I'm like, Bill Bixby's okay with this.
Speaker 7: I mean, seven hundred and fifty dollars a week as
Speaker 7: somebody's making. Yes, I'd be okay with that as well,
Speaker 7: because that's.
Speaker 3: I'd be okay with that. Now in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 3: that was the equivalent of fifty five hundred dollars.
Speaker 7: Holy cow wow. I mean, I guess he's not going
Speaker 7: to be around to spend it. Is The thing is
Speaker 7: because the person who translates the stuff is supposed to
Speaker 7: have all these horrible things done to him.
Speaker 6: Or is he.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nice hand off there at the end?
Speaker 7: I mean, is it just me or is it very confusing?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all over the place.
Speaker 7: It's okay.
Speaker 3: It's Clark Ashton Smith who's just trying to emulate his
Speaker 3: idol HP Lovecraft, but not really understanding what HP Lovecraft
Speaker 3: was doing.
Speaker 7: Right, That's what it felt like. It felt like Lovecraft light.
Speaker 6: To me, Lovecraft light or Lovecraft two words love Craft,
Speaker 6: you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Oh, he went there?
Speaker 7: He went there?
Speaker 6: Can he say that?
Speaker 7: Pull his license?
Speaker 5: For me?
Speaker 6: It ultimately comes down to, once again, we have a
Speaker 6: story of a man with a secret who brings someone
Speaker 6: else in to help him solve that secret. I feel
Speaker 6: like we've seen this story in the end of season
Speaker 6: two a lot, and now it's like their opening season
Speaker 6: three with it. And the biggest shame is that it's
Speaker 6: Vincent Price more than anything else. Let's just get Vincent
Speaker 6: Price to mug for thirty minutes. That's what this feels like.
Speaker 6: A lot of close up shots of Vincent Price mugging
Speaker 6: for the camera, which is fine, but that's there's not
Speaker 6: a story there per se. It's just a lot of
Speaker 6: I don't know, it's a lot of gothic looking settings
Speaker 6: and not a lot of story to go along with it.
Speaker 3: I think there are quite a lot of problems with
Speaker 3: this episode, and yet I fucking loved it. I really
Speaker 3: had a good time with it. Wow. Yeah, just beginning
Speaker 3: to end. I know this is a setup we've seen
Speaker 3: one billion times, but I think I think as Jean
Speaker 3: Swarz is doing fucking great work here for the opening shot,
Speaker 3: not the opening shop, but the first time he steps
Speaker 3: into that house. It's all drenched in red and Bixby
Speaker 3: is framed in the jons of a crocodile that you
Speaker 3: know he would have used a split diyopter if they
Speaker 3: could have afford. When Vincent Price mentions he was a twin,
Speaker 3: I was so excited. I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: we're getting two prices for the price of one. This
Speaker 3: is going to be freaking fantastic. Fern is the female
Speaker 3: character in the Sterling character and when we meet her,
Speaker 3: she's wearing a thermal shirt with a star on it.
Speaker 3: Right star is obviously added by wardrobe. It's a slate
Speaker 3: thermal shirt with a blue star, and I think it's
Speaker 3: there to clue the audience into the fact that she
Speaker 3: has more than a passing familiarity with magic. But it
Speaker 3: also kind of subtly clued me into that famous shot
Speaker 3: of Sharon Tate from Esquire magazine back in sixty seven.
Speaker 3: She's wearing a white shirt with a Red Star. It
Speaker 3: got talked about a lot a decade ago because on
Speaker 3: mad Men, Megan Draper's character wore the same shirt as
Speaker 3: Sharon Tate and it was on purpose and people were
Speaker 3: thinking she was going to be murdered. It turned out
Speaker 3: to be nothing. But it's probably a coincidence here. But
Speaker 3: I hope it's my design because they've inverted the Sharon
Speaker 3: Tate shirt and that's but this is because we end
Speaker 3: up with this character doing the sacrificing. Anyway, that might
Speaker 3: be more ominous than the episode deserved. But it was
Speaker 3: on my mind the moment she opened the door. As
Speaker 3: much as I am praising Geno or Jean Swark for
Speaker 3: that opening scene, the second scene's fucking atrocious. The lighting
Speaker 3: is the most garish lighting I've seen on any episode
Speaker 3: of Night Gallery ever. It looked like the crew from
Speaker 3: The Price Is right lit the scene. You can see
Speaker 3: all the flaws in all of the set decoration behind
Speaker 3: Bixby and Price. By the way, Bixby and Price is
Speaker 3: my ya detective novels.
Speaker 7: Oh I like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love a plot where there's an unseen force like
Speaker 3: slowly approaching, and they do that here with the sort
Speaker 3: of sliding the scraping sound that's slowly approaching, which my
Speaker 3: favorite thing is the Fern's character tries to explain it
Speaker 3: away by saying it's just rats, as if that's preferable
Speaker 3: to whatever else is there. Oh, it's just a wall
Speaker 3: full of rats. Bixby is hired to translate this book
Speaker 3: and he has to do so in this main like
Speaker 3: sacrificial chamber on the altar with seven candles burned. Could
Speaker 3: I take the book to my room? Would that be okay?
Speaker 3: They explained that other translators have come and they've done
Speaker 3: the translation, and they've fled. To prevent that, Vincent Price
Speaker 3: has armed himself with a revolver. Right, there's going to
Speaker 3: make this guy speak the thing but.
Speaker 6: Makes sense. Yeah, but logically follows. You're a rich guy.
Speaker 6: You can get away with it, right.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, you could shoot somebody in the middle of
Speaker 7: Fifth Avenue. He'd get away with him.
Speaker 6: Wouldn't lose any you wouldn't lose any demons involved.
Speaker 3: Now there's magic involved here. But the thing is Bixby
Speaker 3: has written the translation down. I'm assuming the other translators
Speaker 3: did as well, unless they were keeping the entire quad
Speaker 3: train or whatever the fuck it is in their heads,
Speaker 3: So why don't they just why doesn't he just say,
Speaker 3: hand me that and I'll read it. I don't okay anyway.
Speaker 6: But that, But there's not an invocation if he just
Speaker 6: hands them a telefax and goes read it, bub you know,
Speaker 6: like that, there's there's none of there's none of the
Speaker 6: horseshit of Bill Bicks feeling. You know, I'm I'm confused
Speaker 6: as to what's going on, and wait, what does it say?
Speaker 6: It's like, there's none of that. If he just goes here,
Speaker 6: you go like, yeah, it's so a lot of this
Speaker 6: requires one party to know what's going on and the
Speaker 6: other to have literally no idea. It just normally isn't
Speaker 6: the audience. We're not normally supposed to be the ones
Speaker 6: that have no idea, That's true, It's supposed to be
Speaker 6: the characters. Like, yeah, the characters. I feel like the
Speaker 6: characters know about more, what's more about what's going on
Speaker 6: than we do, and they never get that across to
Speaker 6: the rest of us. There's a lack of exposition in
Speaker 6: this episode.
Speaker 3: Shockingly, I like how specific the curse is, like it
Speaker 3: has a pre cursing the reader of it, and then
Speaker 3: it has a clause that seems to relate directly to
Speaker 3: Price the situation. It's like he thinks he's scott free
Speaker 3: until he reads the dismemberment conicil. You know, like, oh no,
Speaker 3: even if I cut him up.
Speaker 6: God damn and laid up play alive across hot coals
Speaker 6: or something like that.
Speaker 7: God, it goes hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean at the end of the scene before
Speaker 3: the brother shows up, Vincent Price goes catatonic and he's
Speaker 3: just sitting there, and all I thought was, like, what
Speaker 3: a wonderful piece of furniture. I'd love to have a
Speaker 3: Vincent Price in like the corner of the corner.
Speaker 7: I think.
Speaker 6: My speaking of furniture, my favorite piece of furniture was
Speaker 6: the hands with the candle sticking out.
Speaker 7: Of the walls.
Speaker 6: That was a nice piece of set dressing. Though though again,
Speaker 6: if they were trying to go for the interchamber of
Speaker 6: Anton Levy, I don't know how well they managed, because
Speaker 6: I'm sure his room was very red. But yeah, I
Speaker 6: don't know. It looks I like the main chamber, but
Speaker 6: it is a little on the nose. I feel like
Speaker 6: that felt a little wonka e to me, right, Like
Speaker 6: it's over the top.
Speaker 3: Here's the kids' version of Satanism maybe or as a
Speaker 3: top maybe or any number of names we're gonna We're
Speaker 3: gonna speer out during the during this episode that when
Speaker 3: Bixby and Fern first get together, now before we figure
Speaker 3: out what Fern's intentions are here, he says to her
Speaker 3: at the end of the scena, I depend on you
Speaker 3: as a friend. And I thought, like, are those words magic?
Speaker 3: Because it's the easiest pickup line I've ever seen. She
Speaker 3: immediately like falls into his arms. I'm like, WHOA, Okay,
Speaker 3: I guess friendship means a little something different in their house.
Speaker 7: A friendship is magic.
Speaker 3: I can't not love this and recommend this segment this
Speaker 3: episode because it has one of my favorite exchanges in
Speaker 3: the entire exchange and transition in the series, where Bixby
Speaker 3: says what makes you think I'll stay and Vincent Price's
Speaker 3: dinner and then it cuts to a closeup of a
Speaker 3: black goat eating from a plate, sitting in a carved
Speaker 3: wooding chair at a table that wouldn't be out of
Speaker 3: place at like Wayne manor Oh, by the way, Falling Tower,
Speaker 3: I called it a goat, forgive me his name is
Speaker 3: Falling Tower. And he's Vincent Price's father. And then that's
Speaker 3: the last mention of that fact.
Speaker 6: That's the best part of the entire episode is the
Speaker 6: goat eating at the table, Like that alone is a visual,
Speaker 6: you will, that's worth seeing, especially that transition, but it
Speaker 6: never lives up to the lofty goals of a goat
Speaker 6: eating at the table, you know, the heights of a
Speaker 6: goat consuming whatever, like fucking Risotto is never reached again.
Speaker 3: Evil Vincent Price shows up. Now they got to sacrifice good,
Speaker 3: Vincent Price, good being a relative term. And I noticed
Speaker 3: that they cut to an above shot of the altar,
Speaker 3: and there's a disco floor. The altar had a disco
Speaker 3: floor underneath it, lights and red and blue and yellow
Speaker 3: just flashing away like wow, some nights at a disco,
Speaker 3: Some nights sacrificial chamber. If Vincent Price knew Fern was
Speaker 3: the culprit, knew she was pulling the strings, what was
Speaker 3: all this charade about? That's the confusion, Mike, Like the
Speaker 3: power ends up being like, what is happening here? And
Speaker 3: here's a fun fact. If you read the original short story,
Speaker 3: Fern isn't in it?
Speaker 7: Oh really?
Speaker 3: And the Vincent Price character and then the Vincent Price
Speaker 3: brother shows up and then that's it. You don't suppose
Speaker 3: there's anything in that preamble about the reader dismembered. You
Speaker 3: don't think there's anything to that, do you? No, Bill,
Speaker 3: You're going to be fine with her.
Speaker 6: Hey, she knows that that actress knows how to hold
Speaker 6: a frog though, or toad. I guess walking around with
Speaker 6: that toad in her hand that whole scene.
Speaker 3: Last season we had Richard Thomas, and I mentioned like
Speaker 3: I couldn't tell if he was giving a good performance
Speaker 3: or not. I feel the same way about her.
Speaker 7: She reminded me a lot of Life Dianner for some reason,
Speaker 7: while she was talking.
Speaker 3: Like facially and that sort of that yeah, that airy demeanor.
Speaker 3: But I couldn't Sometimes I thought she was really good,
Speaker 3: and then sometimes I was like, God, she's awful.
Speaker 7: I mean, yeah, I can't imagine how much they spent
Speaker 7: on candles for this episode.
Speaker 3: Where's any of this money coming from?
Speaker 6: I got well, I was going to say they spent
Speaker 6: all the money on candles, that they didn't spend on
Speaker 6: the sound effects because no owls and hooting, no were
Speaker 6: wolves know nothing in this episode. Lack of fun sound
Speaker 6: effects even they weren't.
Speaker 3: He did get Castle Thunder briefly at the beginning.
Speaker 6: Oh right, once.
Speaker 3: That's just because that's a Union thing. Castle Thunder has
Speaker 3: to appear at these once.
Speaker 6: I was just waiting for like a hooting owl or
Speaker 6: something just in the background incessantly, because you know the
Speaker 6: show likes to do that too.
Speaker 3: So we did get that scraping slurpity. I'm coming to
Speaker 3: get you. My feet and hand are coming to get you.
Speaker 3: That was a good effect. By the way, those the
Speaker 3: dismembered hands, and they.
Speaker 6: Looked pretty good, like crawling and stuff.
Speaker 3: It looked great. The foot looked fantastic.
Speaker 7: And when he's there at the end and apparently the
Speaker 7: dismembered head is now back attached to the body and
Speaker 7: his face is all like corpse like, I thought that
Speaker 7: looked really good. I thought it's a Vincent Price. He
Speaker 7: knows how to hold his head and all that to
Speaker 7: really up the creep factor.
Speaker 3: To me, this is a redemption for Vincent Price, because
Speaker 3: the last time we saw him was in that Class
Speaker 3: of ninety nine episode where he was just a moderator
Speaker 3: for the robots.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was a waste of Vincent Price. I liked
Speaker 7: that story. Like, thinking back about it. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: why him, of all the people to have in that episode,
Speaker 7: why Vincent Price.
Speaker 3: I think that was a studio thing where they were
Speaker 3: really pushing the guest stars for that the only thing
Speaker 3: they could think to help the show that they did
Speaker 3: never understood to begin with.
Speaker 6: Toe out of the three here are pretty big stars.
Speaker 6: I mean, Bill Becksy and Vincent Price. So yeah, starting
Speaker 6: out the third season at least in terms of like
Speaker 6: visibility of who it is pretty strong.
Speaker 4: So our artists and artisans take a rather pardonable pride
Speaker 4: in their work that you see hanging here.
Speaker 5: An example is this item here.
Speaker 4: It's called Rare Objects and represents that potpourri of collector's
Speaker 4: items that some men are prone to acquire. But there
Speaker 4: are collectors' items and collector's.
Speaker 5: Items, aliver, do you know? An excursion into the very
Speaker 5: strange Tonight's offering in the Night Gallery.
Speaker 3: Rare Objects is from season three, episode three. It aired
Speaker 3: on October the twenty second, nineteen seventy two. This was
Speaker 3: written by Ron Serling and directed by Jean Zoik, starring
Speaker 3: Mickey Rooney, Raymond Massey, Fay Spain, David Fresco, Victor Senjung.
Speaker 3: He was hop Sing on Bonanza, but they've reduced him
Speaker 3: to a virtually non speaking servant role here. Also Regis Kordick.
Speaker 3: He was doctor Peel in Primal Scream Night Stalker season two, guys,
Speaker 3: and he's in two of episodes of Colombo. And he's
Speaker 3: in two of my favorite episodes of the Monkeys Christmas
Speaker 3: episode and fairy Tale. This one's about a gangster on
Speaker 3: the Lamb seeking asylum with a man with a pension
Speaker 3: for collecting interesting people or not so interesting. What do
Speaker 3: you think, Chris?
Speaker 6: It is so goofy and the reveal is so oh
Speaker 6: my god. You know when they start going down the
Speaker 6: list of people and the first one that they start
Speaker 6: with is, hey, look they come out swinging. They don't
Speaker 6: have Hitler immediately, but they have anastasias, so you know
Speaker 6: where this is going. And then it's Judge Crater and
Speaker 6: stuff like this story is. It is a black out
Speaker 6: sketch once again played for a thirty minute episode, and
Speaker 6: it could have been. This is almost in a lot
Speaker 6: of ways, the essentially a different version of what was
Speaker 6: the one with the not Kevin Spacey, Bobby Darren and
Speaker 6: the old man from will Wana Boy. Yeah, Jack Albert Simley,
Speaker 6: is that not this? But just oh, here's another iteration.
Speaker 6: Instead of him being turned into dog food, he's just
Speaker 6: kept in a cage somewhere. It's that, it's that and that,
Speaker 6: And I think we all agreed dead Weight was a
Speaker 6: blackout sketch, and I think that this is a blackout sketch.
Speaker 6: I do think the I've Got a Hitler thing is
Speaker 6: pretty funny, but it was bizarre through and through. But hey,
Speaker 6: Mickey Rooney sure knows how to disgustingly eat a plate
Speaker 6: apasta just like a real fucking just ugh.
Speaker 7: Who ever thought that Mickey Rooney could play a tough
Speaker 7: guy that? I just don't understand that at all.
Speaker 6: Wait, wait a second. It's the same people who asked,
Speaker 6: could man play Japanese?
Speaker 7: Oh Man, oh Man. I just the whole time. I
Speaker 7: was just like, he's a gangster. He's supposed to be
Speaker 7: a gangster.
Speaker 6: That's what he always wanted to be my whole life.
Speaker 3: I wrote in my notes, I love tough guy Rooney.
Speaker 3: He's four foot nothing with a marble bar between him
Speaker 3: and a six foot guy who looks like he could
Speaker 3: tear him apart. Later on, where with him and his
Speaker 3: gangster mall and I thought she could tear him apart.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, Dwayne Grey, Oh okay, write that post off
Speaker 6: your face first.
Speaker 7: It was a rough This was a rough one. I mean,
Speaker 7: I love Raymond Massey, but I think I was better
Speaker 7: off with Raymond Massey the last time he was on
Speaker 7: the show.
Speaker 3: He was more appropriate in that one. Speaking of the
Speaker 3: last one, it's the same set. He's in the same house.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 6: I was about to ask because it looked like and
Speaker 6: I was like, man, it's too bad they didn't show
Speaker 6: the top of the mantle and his head was there,
Speaker 6: Like that'd be a little weird. What's the continuity of
Speaker 6: that one?
Speaker 3: That would have been great, Actually, that would have been fantastic. Yeah,
Speaker 3: nobody needs to see Mickey Rooney's mouth close up with
Speaker 3: sloppy Feticini. Oh my god. Also Fetuccini in a red
Speaker 3: sauce chick his papers.
Speaker 6: Wait a second, you're saying the si of thing.
Speaker 3: It shouldn't be no joke by the way. Okay, his
Speaker 3: name's Collodney and he's played by a tiny irishman, but
Speaker 3: he's clearly Italian. He's eating pasta in an Italian restaurant.
Speaker 3: His right hand man is named Tony He's clearly supposed
Speaker 3: to be Capone or somebody like Capone, But why wouldn't
Speaker 3: they just lean into the irishness of him, Like there
Speaker 3: aren't any Irish gangsters. I'll name some Dean O'Banion, bugs,
Speaker 3: Moran Onny Madden, come on man, Buddy McClean, Mickey Mean
Speaker 3: Machine Murphy. He was a Boston Weddy Bulcher. Yeah, there
Speaker 3: you go, there's a Boston boys. How about Sean Irish
Speaker 3: carbon McKenna. That to me was a mess in the episode.
Speaker 3: Either just make him straight Italian or make him Irish.
Speaker 3: I don't know why this interim Collodney. It feels like
Speaker 3: the stuff that certainly used to come plain about when
Speaker 3: he was writing for like Playhouse whatever. Oh, they made
Speaker 3: me change the character's ethnicity, so that wouldn't offend anybody.
Speaker 3: But that's what he's doing here. Okay, was this the fifties.
Speaker 3: I'm guessing it's the nineteen fifties. Oh until there was
Speaker 3: a wah wah guitar and synth playing, so then I
Speaker 3: assumed we're in the seventies. But then Mickey Rooney gets
Speaker 3: in a Model t Ford, so now I guess it's
Speaker 3: the thirties. But then Hitler so forty six afterwards, I
Speaker 3: don't know, this was the weirdest time episode of all
Speaker 3: time and I have no idea whatever we were in.
Speaker 6: I was disappointed that at the end it wasn't like
Speaker 6: d D begin and then there's an alien. There's just
Speaker 6: an alien. So that's what That's what I wanted. I
Speaker 6: wanted to fully just embrace the dumb because this is
Speaker 6: like the reveal in this episode is a really like
Speaker 6: just again at some dumb sounds derrogatory, but it is
Speaker 6: very not well thought out. It makes very little sense,
Speaker 6: like it is a gag. It is a visual gag
Speaker 6: that once you start thinking about logistically, it makes no sense.
Speaker 6: But it's not being played purely as a visual gag,
Speaker 6: like this is the climax of the episode. This is
Speaker 6: how the episode ends. We are led to believe the
Speaker 6: episode wraps up with him being placed in a cell
Speaker 6: the end, like it's I laughed. I thought it was funny,
Speaker 6: But I'm not going to sit here and defend it
Speaker 6: his quality, like I can appreciate for something for how
Speaker 6: absolutely just ridiculous it is, which I think this episode
Speaker 6: is is firmly in that camp.
Speaker 7: I think I could have enjoyed this one if it
Speaker 7: were a blackout skit, but it just takes so long
Speaker 7: to get there, and Raymond Massey just chewing it up everybody.
Speaker 7: Rooney and Massy are both chewing up the scenery, but
Speaker 7: it takes Massy a long time to get where he's
Speaker 7: going with his soliloquy. And I can only think that
Speaker 7: that's thanks to Rod where it's just like, oh cool,
Speaker 7: I get to write for this guy, and I'm just
Speaker 7: gonna write overwrite it.
Speaker 3: So much, overwrites something I know. Evan for fenned Ron
Speaker 3: for some reason, designs that we need to know how
Speaker 3: he's keeping these people here, that there's a wonder drug
Speaker 3: involved that makes them docile and also gives them longevity.
Speaker 3: So he's going to be yeah forever, Okay if we
Speaker 3: didn't need it, because you mentioned the episode dead Weight
Speaker 3: with Bobby Darren and Jack Albertson, and while we were
Speaker 3: watching that episode, I think we all theorized that it
Speaker 3: was going to go to some weird supernatural place, like
Speaker 3: all of the potential lame avenues that that episode could
Speaker 3: have gone in this one did. Yes, he's going to
Speaker 3: hold him and keep him prisoner forever and there's going
Speaker 3: to be some so bad and then oh, let me
Speaker 3: say this. I mentioned I would start doing this hooray
Speaker 3: for day for night. It looks so good, looks so
Speaker 3: fantastic in this episode. Congratulations yet again, night Gallory for
Speaker 3: a glorious day for Night. The other thing I want
Speaker 3: to say is they feature it a lot. Mickey Vernie's
Speaker 3: trembling lower lip. All I could think every time he
Speaker 3: did it was some studio handler not beating him on
Speaker 3: the day that he was able to do that, where
Speaker 3: they instructed him that he needed to look scared. It
Speaker 3: just it was such a roade thing like, oh, I'm
Speaker 3: scared now I will do the lower lip thing that
Speaker 3: they taught me or they beat into me when I
Speaker 3: was a child. I know that's terrible, but kept thinking
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 6: The question that I have is what does one do
Speaker 6: with a Hitler? Yeah, what does one do with an
Speaker 6: Amelia Earhart or a Judge creator?
Speaker 8: What?
Speaker 6: You just have them in a cell and they just
Speaker 6: sit there like it's again like the stakes of the episode.
Speaker 6: All of a sudden, Yeah, like you mentioned, they go
Speaker 6: from feeling realistic too, and then there's a door that
Speaker 6: opens and Hitler's there.
Speaker 7: And It's very similar to that Star Trek episode, well
Speaker 7: many Star Trek episodes, but especially that one with Saul
Speaker 7: Rubinstein where he is kidnapps data and hashim there he
Speaker 7: wants these unique items.
Speaker 6: Oh, he's the collector from Marvel.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly, so rold Emondson, Sure, yeah, why not? I
Speaker 7: love Norwegian Polar Explorers.
Speaker 6: Let's get this guy in here, Judge greater of great
Speaker 6: they are just a couple of years away from Haffa.
Speaker 6: That's the one that we don't have here. But yeah, again,
Speaker 6: like the logistics and everything aside, like the twist is
Speaker 6: just okay, and his explanation is just very strange. And
Speaker 6: for all the posturing that he does essentially before we
Speaker 6: find out what the reveal is, for that to be
Speaker 6: the reveal, it's like and that's what all the posturing
Speaker 6: was for Hitler in a cage like okay.
Speaker 3: Also, it's Amelia Earhart and Anastasia and blah blah blah
Speaker 3: blah blah and Kalodney and Hitler.
Speaker 6: Colodney and Hitler are of this. It's the way that
Speaker 6: they ate Pasta.
Speaker 3: Just make it about al Capone. This is what an
Speaker 3: al capone.
Speaker 6: Everybody, thank you for Haffa again like or Haffa, Like,
Speaker 6: that's what I equated this too, but they hadn't gotten
Speaker 6: there yet. And again, this dude was just some schmuck criminal.
Speaker 6: He wasn't anything like right, Oh, but.
Speaker 7: I think you under sell yourself well, sir, I think
Speaker 7: you are much more than just that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I would say Bobby Darren was worth more of
Speaker 6: a rare object worth keeping because he killed kids and
Speaker 6: that it said it was okay. Most gangsters aren't okay
Speaker 6: with that. He was a real scumbag gangster. This guy's
Speaker 6: just you know, this.
Speaker 3: Guy's a loser obviously, like guys want.
Speaker 6: To kill him, like his own people want to kill him.
Speaker 6: I don't understand you're not good at the job, sir.
Speaker 6: You're going into hiding because you're a bad gangster. It's
Speaker 6: a just the conceit of the episode is bizarre. And
Speaker 6: then yeah, it feels like it's a joke because it's
Speaker 6: Mickey Rooney.
Speaker 3: Oh you know, when he paints the waiter, he pulls
Speaker 3: out this huge wad of cash. I am one hundred
Speaker 3: percent convinced that that's actually was just Mickey Roney's wad
Speaker 3: of cash. He's renowned first walking with a wad big
Speaker 3: enough to choke a horse.
Speaker 7: Wow, I forgot that Rooney played a gangster once before.
Speaker 7: At least he was a blue Chips packer and Scud
Speaker 7: Do the classic Auto premature.
Speaker 3: Film, a movie I have never gotten through.
Speaker 7: Oh boy, Yeah it's tough, and yeah I think he
Speaker 7: does acid with Jackie Gleason and Jail.
Speaker 3: See that makes me want to watch it. And I'm
Speaker 3: gonna get fucking twenty minutes into it again and I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna go, what am I doing? Don't do it.
Speaker 7: It's not worth it. It's not worth it.
Speaker 3: Maybe there's a clip on YouTube.
Speaker 6: At least Mickey Rooney wasn't doing yellow face. At least
Speaker 6: there's that.
Speaker 3: Thank Heavens for small favors. Aha, make a very tiny.
Speaker 4: This item here a commentative on what aj Leebling referred
Speaker 4: to as the sweet science, obviously having something to do
Speaker 4: with the manly art of self defense boxing. But if
Speaker 4: the Marcus of Queensburry Mayhem doesn't particularly turn you on,
Speaker 4: don't turn this off.
Speaker 5: This painting tells the story infinitely more intriguing than a
Speaker 5: couple of fast boys mixing it up.
Speaker 4: It's called the Ring with the Red Velvet ropes, and
Speaker 4: it tells you the tale of precisely who is the real.
Speaker 5: Heavyweight boxing champion of the world. And I think you'll
Speaker 5: be surprised.
Speaker 4: Surprised it happens to be our stocking trade because this
Speaker 4: is the night Gallery.
Speaker 3: All right, ring with the red velvet ropes. It is
Speaker 3: season three, episode ten, originally aired on January the seventh,
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy three. This one was written by Robert Malcolm
Speaker 3: Young from a short story by Edward D. Hawk and
Speaker 3: directed by Jean Zwark. This one stars Gary Lockwood, Chuck Conners,
Speaker 3: Joan van Ark, and Ralph Manza playing Gary Lockwood's manager.
Speaker 3: In the opening scene for once, he's not playing a
Speaker 3: show for. He is Banichik's major domo in the entirety
Speaker 3: of the of that series, and every other time I've
Speaker 3: seen him pop up on a show, he's played a
Speaker 3: show for.
Speaker 6: You're not watching enough, Barney Miller, Baby, he plays a
Speaker 6: blind guy most of the time, or someone who doesn't
Speaker 6: understand a lick of English, or my favorite Ralph mans
Speaker 6: Roll nineteen ninety nine Fishermen running Away from Godzilla on
Speaker 6: the Pier, which is my favorite Ralph Manze.
Speaker 3: Now I'm gonna have to look that up.
Speaker 2: Geez.
Speaker 6: That's from the trailer where like Godzilla's coming through the wall.
Speaker 6: The person who's fishing is Ralph Mannish. Yeah, there's like
Speaker 6: an older guy fishing at the end of the year.
Speaker 6: That's Ralph Manze. Wow, you're welcome world and Ralph Manze,
Speaker 6: who I think passed long past time.
Speaker 3: This one is about a boxing champ who learns hees
Speaker 3: not the champ. Maybe supernatural could be. I don't know,
Speaker 3: what do you think, Chris.
Speaker 6: I like this idea, but we've seen it better when
Speaker 6: we did Dreams for Sale, we did in that pool
Speaker 6: episode or was this no? Was this show? Oh, we've
Speaker 6: done it. Every time we've done an anthology show, there's
Speaker 6: one of these kinds of things where it's you're fighting
Speaker 6: the opportunity, and most of the time the setup makes
Speaker 6: more sense. The setup here doesn't make any fucking sense
Speaker 6: at all. Normally it's you're dead and you're going to
Speaker 6: face the person and you get something out of it,
Speaker 6: or you're alive and you're facing the person and you
Speaker 6: end up being damned because of it. I like the setup,
Speaker 6: but boy, it's like they jumped from the ground onto
Speaker 6: the pond and then broke their back immediately. I just
Speaker 6: do not understand how they fucked up. What is again,
Speaker 6: in my opinion, an easy concept. The ex champion is
Speaker 6: facing the current people, but he's dead or I don't
Speaker 6: even know. They don't even seem to know here, so
Speaker 6: it's rather unintelligible. But it's at least again an idea
Speaker 6: that I can understand where they were going with this,
Speaker 6: but they really fucked it up.
Speaker 3: I think you're thinking of Game of Pool over on
Speaker 3: the Twilight Zone, the same setup. I'm the champ, all
Speaker 3: the spectral champ to come play me in a game
Speaker 3: of Pool anyway, Mike.
Speaker 7: Good makeup effects. I really like the effects on these
Speaker 7: guys's faces when they get the shit kicked out of them.
Speaker 7: That's pretty good, especially the African American gentleman who visits
Speaker 7: him as a I guess a specter after he beats
Speaker 7: them at boxing.
Speaker 3: But they too. Kombuka.
Speaker 7: Yes, and I did watch an interview with him earlier
Speaker 7: today which was very interesting. Yeah, he has been in
Speaker 7: a bunch of stuff that I really like, and it
Speaker 7: was great seeing him show up, but he was in
Speaker 7: here for so short and then Gary Lockwood, I'm pretty
Speaker 7: unfamiliar with him other than I want to say he
Speaker 7: was in a Jacques de Mei film of course, two
Speaker 7: thousand and one, a Space Odyssey. He looks so shaggy here,
Speaker 7: it's kind of wild. He almost was unrecognizable because I
Speaker 7: used to seeing him with the tighter haircut. Chuck Connors
Speaker 7: always amazing. But yeah, I also don't really understand everything
Speaker 7: that's going on. I'm so surprised that Rod didn't write
Speaker 7: this screenplay because I know he likes boxing. So it
Speaker 7: reminded me too of what was that called the was
Speaker 7: it the Way of the Gun or The Day of
Speaker 7: the Gun? The Star Trek episode where they ran out
Speaker 7: of money so they were using like big like colors
Speaker 7: behind them and things. That's very similar to this boxing
Speaker 7: ring at the end.
Speaker 6: I actually expected Frank Driven to walk in at the
Speaker 6: beginning of the episode because it looked like that same
Speaker 6: boxing sete from one of those police squad no before
Speaker 6: the fight. Yeah, it was that was universal too as well,
Speaker 6: So there's a distinct possibility that could be the case.
Speaker 6: But you know, we kind of mentioned it on the
Speaker 6: last episode. I want to mention it here. The set
Speaker 6: design we can commented every now and then, but not often.
Speaker 6: Set design is in these two episodes is fantastic, like
Speaker 6: genuinely feels like they went out of their way to
Speaker 6: do something different. Story doesn't live up though.
Speaker 3: Oh I disagree. I fucking loved this one.
Speaker 7: I feel that it would have been really good if
Speaker 7: it was a lot shorter. I think half an hour
Speaker 7: was way too much for this. I like the idea
Speaker 7: of I guess it's the very first. It feels like
Speaker 7: the very first champ is still kind of boxing. It
Speaker 7: feels like after Garia Lockwood, after somebody else becomes the Champ,
Speaker 7: Gary Lockwood's going to have to face him and then
Speaker 7: he'll die in the ring or something. I'm not exactly
Speaker 7: sure what's going on. So, Father Malone, since you do
Speaker 7: like this one a little bit more than us, what
Speaker 7: is going on with that?
Speaker 3: Okay, it is exactly that it's now he's no longer
Speaker 3: he's some supernatural being at this point who has to
Speaker 3: be the champ, and he will be the champ until
Speaker 3: he loses, and then he will die because he will
Speaker 3: have aged however, you know, however long So it's not
Speaker 3: necessarily that he was beaten and Chuck Hunters was beaten
Speaker 3: to death. It was that he was beaten. They could
Speaker 3: have been a little bit more clear, certainly about what
Speaker 3: was actually happening here at the end. Nevertheless, there was
Speaker 3: a lot that I liked about it. I liked that
Speaker 3: teleportation shower he got into with this game, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: And then when he stepped out for a moment, I
Speaker 3: was like, wait, is this a time travel episode? It
Speaker 3: was like a throwback, or is he changed bodies with somebody.
Speaker 6: He's in for say?
Speaker 7: Is what it looks like?
Speaker 6: It's a very It's strange and unexplained.
Speaker 7: Literally, never thought he was going to visit Dave Bowman
Speaker 7: in the two thousand.
Speaker 3: And one, you know, Lockwood. I agree. I don't think
Speaker 3: I've seen him this shaggy, but I liked it, and
Speaker 3: I liked him here. I thought he was really great.
Speaker 3: I thought he was so good because when he finds
Speaker 3: himself suddenly trapped in this mansion and he knows he
Speaker 3: can't get out, he gets rather amused by the whole thing,
Speaker 3: Whereas I think any one of us would have started
Speaker 3: punching everybody out and trying to knock down doors. And
Speaker 3: I believed it. I think he carried that off. I
Speaker 3: like that this season, We've had a lot of we're
Speaker 3: waiting for characters to arrive. Roderick is coming. I remember
Speaker 3: they had that kid with the horrible haircut coming to
Speaker 3: kill Ross Martin, like he's on his way. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: and then the Sorcerer of the same thing. I hear
Speaker 3: my brother, my brother is coming. This is a year
Speaker 3: for a watch out. I love that crazy highlight Chuck
Speaker 3: Connors gets right before we go out to that weirdo room.
Speaker 3: Was that a room where the statue is with the
Speaker 3: ring of fire on the ground, And speaking of rings
Speaker 3: of fire? Why didn't they box in a ring of fire?
Speaker 3: But anyway back to the other thing. Was that an
Speaker 3: outside area or was that in the house?
Speaker 7: Yeah? When that ring of fire started, I was like, ooh,
Speaker 7: this is the boxing ring. Oh cool, that'll be awesome.
Speaker 3: No, I don't want no. Unfortunately sad where they box
Speaker 3: is pretty good though that it is true. I do
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 6: And there's a great shot of like Chuck Connors staring
Speaker 6: down and he just looks proper fucking menacing. I mean,
Speaker 6: having spent a fair amount of time watching that Werewolf
Speaker 6: TV show that featured Chuck Connors where he has to
Speaker 6: be menacing for like the two episodes he's in, but
Speaker 6: then his body doubles in the rest. He's great. I
Speaker 6: loved him here. I don't not sure if I believe
Speaker 6: Gary Lockwood could actually beat a big dude got Chuck
Speaker 6: Connors looks gigantic next to Gary Lockwood. He's fucking gigantic
Speaker 6: as a human being, obviously, but Gary lock would obviously.
Speaker 6: The disparity in height between the two is a parent
Speaker 6: When you kind of get those wide shots of the ring, well.
Speaker 3: You see him standing next to Joan van Ark when
Speaker 3: he walks into the scene, he's like twice her size.
Speaker 3: She's like at his past.
Speaker 7: I was like, Gary Luckwood is dead.
Speaker 6: I don't know, but I do like how his makeup
Speaker 6: starts out really good and then he starts looking more
Speaker 6: and more Neanderthal. As the match goes on, he gets
Speaker 6: a little Neanderthaly right at a little too much on
Speaker 6: the upper brow. I like the idea of the story,
Speaker 6: and just I wish I understood the steaks.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The thing is, I love a setup where he
Speaker 3: sees a ghost and it's because that person has just
Speaker 3: died in another location and they're appearing to them. That's
Speaker 3: such a great setup. And when Kombuka appears and it's
Speaker 3: really accusatory. It seems like the champ has been up
Speaker 3: to no good or something and like, I know from
Speaker 3: beyond the grave what you've done.
Speaker 6: In fact, it was a warning, which is what I
Speaker 6: don't get. And did he have a fucking aneurysm in
Speaker 6: the shower? And dug why And that's what's going on here.
Speaker 6: I need. I would like just a little clarification as
Speaker 6: to why this is happening, other than the fact that
Speaker 6: does everybody who becomes the champion have to go fight
Speaker 6: this guy?
Speaker 3: So then there's this moral conundrum. You are the champ, right,
Speaker 3: nobody can beat you. The only way you can continue
Speaker 3: to live is to throw a fight and then go
Speaker 3: on living a lie that you're the champ. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 3: guy you're fighting probably can't beat you. It's actually a
Speaker 3: really great setup.
Speaker 7: I'd be curious to read the short story for this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah I did not, but yeah, it bears investigating red
Speaker 3: velvet ropes, red velvet ring, red velvet everything there in
Speaker 3: the last scene. My god, even Chuck Connors is red
Speaker 3: velvet draped. It's the good stuff. I like the warped
Speaker 3: bell for the round changes, the sort of slightly off
Speaker 3: kilter bell. There is one fucking spectacular transition Jean Zoark,
Speaker 3: I love You, where it's Chuck Connor's training and he's
Speaker 3: boxing and it's just his silhouette and the whole thing
Speaker 3: washes out red and then we zoom in on the
Speaker 3: speed bag a silhouette, and then now we're in the
Speaker 3: into the actual match at the end. I love that.
Speaker 3: Anything else that I love, I don't know. I just
Speaker 3: really enjoyed this one. I know it wasn't as it
Speaker 3: wasn't enough explanation as to what was going on, But
Speaker 3: for this one, I was able to fill in enough
Speaker 3: myself where it didn't feel like I was it was
Speaker 3: a cheat.
Speaker 6: I get. I understand that. I genuinely just it wasn't
Speaker 6: explanation as much as I think the episode needed a
Speaker 6: clearer direction of where it was going because at the end, yes,
Speaker 6: I understand the conundrum that he's in, but does her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there needs to be that conversation maybe.
Speaker 6: Right like do you understand what's about to happen here?
Speaker 2: Dude?
Speaker 3: Like, well, no, because he's such a bulldog. He's just like,
Speaker 3: I'm not throwing I've never thrown a fight. I don't care.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to go in and box that guy.
Speaker 3: And then he does, and he wins, and he doesn't
Speaker 3: seem that upset about it, honestly.
Speaker 6: No, and I don't. Are we supposed to root against
Speaker 6: his characters? That's what I didn't understand, Like we're.
Speaker 3: Rooting for him to win, and he does, but it
Speaker 3: comes with a price.
Speaker 7: Yelling at the guys like why didn't you stop the fight?
Speaker 7: When did you stop the fight? I'm like, you could
Speaker 7: have stopped beating up on the guy too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Here the wait staff as audience but central casting.
Speaker 3: Here's the chef, here's the chauffeur, here's the maid. They're
Speaker 3: all just watching the match. What like, what's their story?
Speaker 3: How are they so condemned to eternity that they have
Speaker 3: to wait on the fake chat?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Again, I'd love to know more of this stuff.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's interesting, Like, there's a lot of interesting stuff
Speaker 6: going on here that just is not Again, it's not
Speaker 6: that it's not explained, it's it's not even hinted at.
Speaker 6: What's going on? This could this Once he transitions from
Speaker 6: the shower to the villa or whatever it is, it's
Speaker 6: like he just goes from a real place to a
Speaker 6: set is what it feels like. He's removed from everything
Speaker 6: and it feels like on reality and they never explain
Speaker 6: what it is. So I have no fucking clue where
Speaker 6: anything takes place. Beyond the beginning of.
Speaker 3: The episode, he has a lot of conversations with Joan
Speaker 3: van Ark and one of them might have been what
Speaker 3: is this place? Right?
Speaker 6: Right? That would be a first fucking question, like why
Speaker 6: can't I use the phone? Why can't I leave? Are
Speaker 6: people looking for me? Did? I just dislike? That's the
Speaker 6: other question. If all these champions are going and fighting,
Speaker 6: this guy or this champions just must be disappearing, like
Speaker 6: just it's yeah, it's a strange setup. I do like
Speaker 6: the guy that they got to play dead Old Chuck Connors, though,
Speaker 6: slam that fucker with some pancake makeer. He's a white.
Speaker 3: That was another man, right, That was not Chuck Connors himself.
Speaker 2: That was no.
Speaker 6: I would assume it was someone else entirely.
Speaker 7: I think he would have been gone back to Jack
Speaker 7: Johnson Days or something, the Marquis of Queens Bear, Queensberry
Speaker 7: or whatever that is.
Speaker 6: And you can tell it's not written by Rod because
Speaker 6: it doesn't have some sort of like tongue clucking morality
Speaker 6: horseshit that he likes to do. He would have had
Speaker 6: that scene where he's like, oh, you know, you should
Speaker 6: know better. You don't do it, you know better. There's
Speaker 6: none of that, so it's not.
Speaker 3: Written by Rod. That's the price you get with the
Speaker 3: over explanation. Rod also would have told you exactly what
Speaker 3: that place was, right, everyone's motivations were, but it comes
Speaker 3: with everything else.
Speaker 4: Whisper strips of ethereal night clouds are seen from the
Speaker 4: vantage point of a square, a group of tombstones, and
Speaker 4: the face of a neutral onlooker who surveys the silence, well,
Speaker 4: perhaps not quite total silence, because the name of our
Speaker 4: painting is Whisper, and it tells the story of one
Speaker 4: body inhabited by two people.
Speaker 5: And at a point, as you can well imagine, this
Speaker 5: gets crowded. And if this one doesn't ice up.
Speaker 4: The old spine, we'll send you one of our official
Speaker 4: apologies along with the body.
Speaker 5: That's the kind of guarantee you get in the night Gallery.
Speaker 3: This is season three, episode thirteen. It aired on May thirteenth,
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy three. The previous episode aired in March. They
Speaker 3: skipped the entire month of April. I wonder why that is,
Speaker 3: because they couldn't handle the awesomeness of April of nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy three Anyway by David Orrayfield from a short story
Speaker 3: by Martin Waddell, directed by Jean Zuark. It stars Tony Hey,
Speaker 3: Tony no Phony, Baloney, Tony the Tiger, LaRusso, Dean Stockwell,
Speaker 3: Ladies and Gentlemen, also Sally Field. It is about it.
Speaker 3: It is the story of a young wife who's getting
Speaker 3: high on ghosts and her husband is the dealer. Mike,
Speaker 3: what do you think about this one? Don't nobody can
Speaker 3: see you? Whisper?
Speaker 7: You couldn't hear me? Whisper that vague that I could.
Speaker 7: I didn't really like this one all, especially the way
Speaker 7: that it ended. I had no freaking idea what was
Speaker 7: going on for so much of this one and then
Speaker 7: it just ended?
Speaker 6: What the fuck?
Speaker 7: So what did I miss? What did I miss with it?
Speaker 7: That seems to be my thing for the shows, And
Speaker 7: somebody please explain this to me?
Speaker 3: Okay, very simple young couple Stockwell and Sally Field. Sally
Speaker 3: Field is touched. She and communicate with the dead or
Speaker 3: she's like a conduit for the dead. They can take
Speaker 3: her over and they can solve their problems, their unfinished
Speaker 3: business on earth through her. And Stockwell has always known
Speaker 3: this and known it's true, and is attracted to that
Speaker 3: aspect of it, even though it's frightening, and he's a
Speaker 3: little worried she which one time she won't be able
Speaker 3: to get back. They she feels a poll across the country,
Speaker 3: and so they end up stopping the small town where
Speaker 3: they've been living for about three months, and she keeps
Speaker 3: looking for this house over and over again, and then
Speaker 3: Stockwell goes, see, here's the thing. Stockwell goes to a
Speaker 3: doctor to get her sleeping pills. At that point, the
Speaker 3: doctor said, doctor is categorizing it as hallucinations, and he's
Speaker 3: basically blaming Stockwell for enabling these things. And he says,
Speaker 3: I've seen cases like this. The subject wants to go further,
Speaker 3: they don't want to come back. That's the setup for
Speaker 3: the end, because eventually the main ghost that's been haunting
Speaker 3: her trying to find the summer how it's another young
Speaker 3: bride whose child had died and their baby was interred incorrectly,
Speaker 3: and that has to be corrected. And that's been the
Speaker 3: task the whole time.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 3: So Dean Stockwell plays the part of the husband and
Speaker 3: he buries the baby, the proxy for the baby. But
Speaker 3: it's been happening for so long that what Sally feel,
Speaker 3: what Dean Stockwell was worried about, and what the doctor
Speaker 3: warned about comes to pass and she can't get back
Speaker 3: to her body.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Wow, So I was so confused because Sally Field through
Speaker 7: this whole episode is talking I guess with the ghosts.
Speaker 7: She but yes, but she is the ghost at times,
Speaker 7: but she's talking with the ghost and then Dean Stockwell,
Speaker 7: I guess he's talking to us the audience. Yes, okay.
Speaker 7: See that's the most confusing thing. You can't have one
Speaker 7: character talking to nobody and then have another character talking
Speaker 7: to nobody. But one character's talking to another character and
Speaker 7: another character's talking to us. That was really fucked up.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, but I just like, I'm with you. It's
Speaker 6: fucking bizarre. Look hy like, are you like it's my
Speaker 6: thing on this show? It's not yet? Things like fucking win?
Speaker 3: Are you that?
Speaker 6: That's what I feel like?
Speaker 7: I mean, how many times have I asked that on
Speaker 7: this show? I'm not high while I'm.
Speaker 9: Watching these episodes, I swear I'm straight, but to be fair,
Speaker 9: I was gonna say I did get what was going on,
Speaker 9: and I can tell you with absolute certainty, this is
Speaker 9: just a god.
Speaker 6: This is just a spinning of wheels and a treading
Speaker 6: of water for twenty minutes, just and you know what,
Speaker 6: Dean Stock's fine, Sally Field's fine. Sally Field doesn't play
Speaker 6: crazy very well. She's just too goddamn and daring as
Speaker 6: an actress. And yeah, the ending is just.
Speaker 7: Oh, you need to see Sybil, she's as.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I haven't seen that, so barring not having not
Speaker 6: seen that, this is not a very good representation of
Speaker 6: that is probably a better way of putting it. And
Speaker 6: the ending is laughably bad. I mean it's it's it's yeah,
Speaker 6: it's it's Asaines. Oh my god. But what so the
Speaker 6: question then becomes, if you can't get back to your body,
Speaker 6: what does that mean? What the what does that mean?
Speaker 6: Does that mean she's just a catatonic shell, eyes rolled
Speaker 6: back into her head, can't do anything, or is the
Speaker 6: ghost still in her body? Again? This isn't Oh, they
Speaker 6: don't explain it because they don't need to. They don't
Speaker 6: explain it, because I don't think they have a way
Speaker 6: to explain it, because they spend twenty minutes doing everything
Speaker 6: in their power to try to show, not tell, what's
Speaker 6: going on, and they somehow fail remarkably.
Speaker 7: You just wait, Father Malone's gonna love this episode. I
Speaker 7: fucking loved this episode.
Speaker 6: It boy, that is the theme here. It's too hot,
Speaker 6: too cold, just right right.
Speaker 3: It's the magic of Jehan's work. No, I'm not that's
Speaker 3: not the case. I'm not liking it to the John's.
Speaker 6: The magic OF's Wark should be the name of your
Speaker 6: next podcast, because I think at this point you have
Speaker 6: been You have defended no director more ever in the
Speaker 6: history of anything we've worked on than Jean's Wark.
Speaker 3: He's really good and he does fucking really good work here, Man,
Speaker 3: what can I tell you?
Speaker 7: He's no John Batham.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you that he's at least Batham's equal. Love sir. Okay,
Speaker 3: here's what I liked about it. I liked the confusion
Speaker 3: at the beginning where okay, first of all, it starts
Speaker 3: in it It's typical of Night Gallery the entire run
Speaker 3: of the series, where I think we've all been baffled
Speaker 3: for a good portion of every segment as to what
Speaker 3: time period this is. But this episode actually embraces that.
Speaker 3: It makes us think that we're in some sort of
Speaker 3: like little little house on the prairie time. And then
Speaker 3: suddenly she's burning a plane ticket in the thing. I
Speaker 3: thought that was great, I do understand what you're saying, like,
Speaker 3: because she's talking to what I thought was her. I
Speaker 3: thought she was breaking the fourth wall. I thought she
Speaker 3: was talking to us initially, but then she's just talking
Speaker 3: to nobody. And then when we get outside, it's this
Speaker 3: slow pan of her and we get this voiceover. I thought,
Speaker 3: I like, oh, we're getting a voice over from Dean Stockhold.
Speaker 3: We're gonna pan over and see what he's up to.
Speaker 3: And then we realize he's speaking out loud, and then
Speaker 3: is he narrating to himself? And then he turns to us,
Speaker 3: and it's so unnerving. Every time they've done it, and
Speaker 3: they've done it a lot this season, it works like Gangbusters, man.
Speaker 3: And not only that, in this he basically says to us,
Speaker 3: you're dead. That was extra uneasy, thinking I'm now supposed
Speaker 3: to be viewing this in the guise of a ghost.
Speaker 3: I'm just one of these floating spirits around her, and
Speaker 3: he keeps looking to us. Over and over again, he'll
Speaker 3: notice us peering at them. I liked that a lot.
Speaker 3: I think, honestly, is the this is an episode that
Speaker 3: Rod envisioned. I know he had nothing to do with
Speaker 3: this episode, but this is what he wanted Night Gallery
Speaker 3: to be beginning to end. I think these gentle character
Speaker 3: pieces with supernatural overtones. That's what I took away from
Speaker 3: a Navy. I do want to point out one thing.
Speaker 3: I haven't done this in some time, but there is
Speaker 3: another performer in this episode who deserves a bit of
Speaker 3: a spotlight.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 3: Oh that stormy wind from the Hannah bar Era library
Speaker 3: so good.
Speaker 6: I'm glad I had to hear it again.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna play it again because it comes up again later.
Speaker 1: Oh. I know.
Speaker 6: It really to the point where when I was watching
Speaker 6: it with my wife, she goes, can you turn it down?
Speaker 6: It's really obnoxious? And then I go of all the
Speaker 6: times to be watching this in the even as opposed
Speaker 6: to early in the more.
Speaker 3: So, here's something cool. When William, Hannah and Joseph Barbera
Speaker 3: left MGM to start Hannah Barbera animation, they took their
Speaker 3: sound editor from MGM, who in turn took with him
Speaker 3: a massive amount of sounds from the MGM library, which
Speaker 3: had made available to all the studios in nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: five when Hannah Barbara released it as their own soundtrack
Speaker 3: library that includes Stormy Wind. Here it plays a prominent role. Here,
Speaker 3: it's been played too often, too long. It is no
Speaker 3: longer in use, thank god, but it has appeared a
Speaker 3: lot in nike Gar gallery. It just was so prominently displayed.
Speaker 3: I had to had to point it out here.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I am shocked that you like this, But to
Speaker 6: Mike's point, it is kind of on brand. But that's
Speaker 6: not a bad thing. Like I think my issue is
Speaker 6: more in tune with where Mike is coming from, which
Speaker 6: is I really had a hard time understanding what the
Speaker 6: fuck who the buck was being talked to and that
Speaker 6: I mean again understand I ended up understanding what was
Speaker 6: going on. I just I don't know, coupling the weird
Speaker 6: storytelling with a very weak ending, Like again, I'm really
Speaker 6: struggling to understand what the what the the meaning of
Speaker 6: the story is.
Speaker 3: Can I say about the ending? I actually found it
Speaker 3: horrified that the concept, Like I know they don't explain
Speaker 3: to us what it means. But in my mind, she's
Speaker 3: just floating in the ether now and her body is
Speaker 3: a vegetable, like.
Speaker 6: Right, so it's like get out there, like okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and now not even that. But Dean Stockwell now
Speaker 3: is stuck with the notion that everyone has said to him,
Speaker 3: you shouldn't be encouraging this in her, and like the
Speaker 3: docu even says to him, she's got all these things.
Speaker 5: What do you have?
Speaker 3: I've got her. So the horror here is that now
Speaker 3: he's caused this thing and this crisis of supernatural conscience.
Speaker 2: This I don't know.
Speaker 3: It bothered me. It worked on me. This ending what
Speaker 3: can I tell you?
Speaker 6: I get it you and passionately describing it I think
Speaker 6: made me appreciate it a little bit more just now
Speaker 6: because it did a very poor job in expressing.
Speaker 3: It's Dean Stockwell man. He's just so goddamned expressive.
Speaker 6: The best part of this episode.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, he's amazing. I enjoy any chance to
Speaker 3: see him, and he elevates everything and I don't think
Speaker 3: I don't think the script does him in the service.
Speaker 3: Too often on this show, we've had really like Powerhouse
Speaker 3: guest stars who have been ill served by the script.
Speaker 3: I don't think the script will served anybody here.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 3: I understand the problems you guys had with it, and
Speaker 3: I understand them. I don't know it just this one
Speaker 3: just vibrated on a different frequency with me for some reason.
Speaker 6: It's okay. I feel like while we might disagree about
Speaker 6: this one, I feel like the longer we go on
Speaker 6: in this episode, the less we're gonna disagree, probably to
Speaker 6: the point of complete and total agreement.
Speaker 3: And something gonna be a high five at the end.
Speaker 3: We don't need to say a word.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it'll be a freeze frame. Yeah, it'll be good.
Speaker 3: Anything else about the whispering? All right? Then?
Speaker 6: Dally Field is cute in this She's very adorable.
Speaker 3: I know it's been adorable, I know.
Speaker 6: But it's like extra adorable, like extra adorable, Like they
Speaker 6: shoot her in such a way and she's just sent
Speaker 6: her free in the whole time, talking into the distance,
Speaker 6: like just something about it, Like they just went adorable
Speaker 6: twenty five.
Speaker 3: And they were lucky to get its
Speaker 2: Sis sist