MovieChat Forums > Night Gallery (1969) Discussion > What's wrong with this show?

What's wrong with this show?


Rod Serling's Twilight Zone was one of the best or maybe even THE best TV show ever. Thought-provoking, ahead of its time, and canceled much too soon. So in 1969, Rod tried again with this new show, and where The Twilight Zone was captivating and exciting, Night Gallery fails HARD in every way TZ succeeded. It's not really scary or smart or thrilling, nine times out of ten it's nothing but a collection of WTF moments. Things that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. For example:

"Fear of Spiders", now doesn't that sound like it would be a great scary story? So this guy sees a spider in his sink, he washes it down the drain, and it keeps getting inexplicably bigger, so he locks it in his room and goes to bicker with some woman who has the hots for him, and she ends up locking him in the room where the spider may or may not be, and leaves, and then it's over. WTF was that all about? Was the spider meant to be metaphoric? If so, they sure as hell didn't elaborate on it for very long.

"Professor Peabody's Last Lecture", I mean, what were they smoking when they came up with that?

"Stop Killing Me", interesting premise, but MAN did they get crazy with that, and the ending made no freakin' sense, just like the rest of the show.

And on top of that, just WHAT is the deal with those short sketches they shoehorn in? Remember the one where this group goes to Dracula's castle, all this build-up, great environment, and then they open the coffin. Drac is in there, snoozing away. One guy raises a stake and asks something like, "should I?" and another guy says, "eh, couldn't hurt." Then it ended. WTF?! Or what about when Wally Cox plays a dad who gets up in the middle of the night to feed his little Frankenstein baby. HUH? Maybe the Raven and the Phantom ones were kind of funny, but they were sure out of place.

It's like somebody who didn't know the definition of comedy tried writing comedy. Night Gallery is just too tongue-in-cheek for its own good.

It's obvious Rod Serling had little to NO say in this show, and some mindless studio execs just did whatever they wanted, and this was the result. I don't blame Rod for disowning the show when it was canceled.

Now to be fair, there were some interesting episodes that might have made good Twilight Zone episodes. Like "Hell's Bells" or that one with the Titanic survivor. "Little Black Bag", that one was chilling, and besides, Burgess Meredith rocks the house! "The Academy", that one was quite dark, but I don't think I agree with the twist at the end. Night Gallery had potential, I'll admit it. But the fact that the producers made it so tongue-in-cheek, so limited and nonsensical, which I guess was the 1970s' view on monster movies and whatnot, that it really collapsed under its own weight. I know what I'm talking about here. I may not have been alive in the '70s, but I do know that their definition of "horror movie" was more along the lines of the world coming to an end, or the government was going to go rogue and destroy us all. The Vietnam War was in full force, and everybody was angry and terrified with the enemy, as well as our own government. That, and natural disasters were also the norm for scary movies. Fires, volcanos, earthquakes, ships sinking. In short, people were scared of reality and not fictional monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolfman anymore. They were looked upon as silly and "kids' stuff." That certainly explains the shorts, but as for the actual show, it basically just says, "this is just a silly show. Don't be afraid of THIS, be afraid of the world around you."

If you watch Night Gallery, be prepared to utter "What the F---?" every now and then.

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So did you like it?

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[deleted]

Nice meeting you.

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Unless you have something worthwhile to contribute to the topic, don't post!

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I was 9 when the show premiered and it scared me a lot more then. I'm still a fan, but there are some things that have been done to the show since its original airing. In its original incarnation, "Night Gallery" was an hour-long show with multiple stories including the short-shorts, as I called them. When the series went into syndication, they cut it to a half an hour. However, the stories weren't suited for that time slot, so they added footage to them from other Universal Studios movies to stretch them out. Sometimes, this didn't help the story.

As opposed to "Twilight Zone", Serling just wanted "NG" to be pure horror. No big messages, no lessons to be learned, no allegories. Basically, just entertainment. However, you can tell that, after a while, it just started going through the motions. For example, the "NG" episode "The Different Ones" is quite similar to the "TZ" ep "The Eye of the Beholder". "Night Gallery"'s "Ring with the Red Velvet Ropes" recalls the "Twilight Zone"'s "A Game of Pool". Serling, himself, wasn't too pleased with those two stories.



"I'm in such bad shape, I'm wearing prescription underwear." Phyllis Diller 1917-2012

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At last, a REAL response. Thank you!

"Serling just wanted "NG" to be pure horror. No big messages, no lessons to be learned, no allegories. Basically, just entertainment. However, you can tell that, after a while, it just started going through the motions."

No substance, and therefore no focus. Besides those two problems was the fact that the show made no sense at all and at the same time, made fun of itself for how bizarre and nonsensical it was. Going back to the Professor Peabody episode. The scene of him giving a lecture amidst a loud chorus of lightning and thunder goes on for a painfully long time and then all of a sudden, because he mocked the gods, he transforms into some weird alien creature. It just happens out of nowhere.
If they wanted to do a horror comedy series, they shouldn't have tried to play it so straight.

And those "short-shorts", they seem like something Monty Python would do, except with them, they would've been funny and not as out of place as they were in this show.

It is so obvious Rod Serling had little to no creative control over this show, and the producers were probably on some kind of drug when they developed it, and this is the result of a show without focus or substance and doesn't know if it wants to be serious or funny.

On the other hand, some episodes were pretty good and could have been Twilight Zone episodes.

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There were definitely some "TZ" eps that were meant to be funny too. The point of the Peabody episode is that Peabody he didn't believe that saying those names would lead to any sort of danger. I don't think his transformation came from nowhere, but I think it would appeal to Lovecraft fans like myself. It fits in with his mythology of the Old Ones like Cthulu and Yog-Soggoth. I admit to having a bizarre sense of humor, but I really liked the short-shorts. From what I've been reading on these posts, I may be the only one who feels that way!



"I'm in such bad shape, I'm wearing prescription underwear." Phyllis Diller 1917-2012

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Yeah, I know the Lance McGrew episode of TZ was meant to be funny, but it was set up that way, and besides, TZ played it straight for the most part.

"The point of the Peabody episode is that Peabody he didn't believe that saying those names would lead to any sort of danger. I don't think his transformation came from nowhere, but I think it would appeal to Lovecraft fans like myself. It fits in with his mythology of the Old Ones like Cthulu and Yog-Soggoth."

And those in the audience unfamiliar with Lovecraft and his work, like myself, will not get such references. Did Lovecraft say that if you mention the names of those gods, you'll get turned into a weird alien thing?

"I admit to having a bizarre sense of humor, but I really liked the short-shorts. From what I've been reading on these posts, I may be the only one who feels that way!"

I'd say you were too. As I said, it seemed as though the shorts were written and directed by people who don't understand comedy.

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According to Lovecraft, mentioning the Great Old Ones would do worse than turn you into an alien. It would bring them into our dimension. Also in that episode, the students' names are those of famous horror authors (even a "Mr. Lovecraft"). Like "Twilight Zone", there were also episodes that were meant to be serious on "Night Gallery". Have you seen the episodes in their unaltered form on DVD? There have been some changes made to some stories when the show went into syndication.



"I'm in such bad shape, I'm wearing prescription underwear." Phyllis Diller 1917-2012

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As a Lovecraft fan, I can tell you that I was severely disappointed with the Peabody episode. What did he turned into at the end? Moldy lettuce?

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What did he turned into at the end? Moldy lettuce?

'Fungi from Yuggoth.' 

§« https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhG6uc7fN0o »§

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you are what you is

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"I'm in such bad shape, I'm wearing prescription underwear." Phyllis Diller 1917-2012

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Just last night, I saw an episode about disappearing astronauts and a rescue team going to the moon to look for them. It was so suspenseful, it would've made a perfect Twilight Zone episode... and of course, there was a twist at the end, but instead of just cramming it into the last ten minutes of the show, it could've been the whole episode. In other words, Night Gallery has its share of great and suspenseful episodes, but at the same time, the previous night, there was a short called "A Midnight Trip to the Blood Bank" or something, where an overweight Dracula attempts to suck a woman's blood, only "she gave at the office." Another WTF moment. That COULD have been really funny had it been written, staged and casted a little better AND it was on a different show. Universal was out of their minds at this time.

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Think about it: Do you really think that a vampire would stop his attack because the victim "gave at the office"? Then again, since he was rather plump (played by Victor Buono, best remembered as King Tut on "Batman"), he may have been disappointed because he wouldn't be getting a full eight pints. As I've said, the shows have a different feel in syndication than they did when they were originally aired. "The Twilight Zone" would air only one story that lasted the full 30-minute time slot. "Night Gallery", on the other hand, was an hour show made up of several stories. For the most part, those stories ran for about twenty minutes. When they were shown in syndication like now, Universal often added footage from their old movies to pad the stories to the 30-minute slot. A good example of this is the "Big Surprise" ep (this one, I'll admit, is very weak. Even the short story by Richard Matheson that inspired it is rather silly) where John Carradine tells Vince Van Patten to dig somewhere for some treasure. This was one of "NG"'s shorter stories and, to pad it, added footage from The Birds that wasn't in the tale during its original airing.

Like I said, the humor of the show wasn't to everyone's liking. I admit to having a bizarre sense of humor.



"I'm in such bad shape, I'm wearing prescription underwear." Phyllis Diller 1917-2012

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The kid on the "surprise" dig grew up to broadcast poker tournaments?

I'm surprised.

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So did you like it?


... and the rocks it pummels.
- James Berardinelli

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Omg. Hahahaha! That was awesome.

Sorry, I know the OP wanted to have a serious discussion and i appreciate the post because I feel this show is a mess but still...that reply was really funny.



Dick, I am VERY disappointed.

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'SO DID YOU LIKE IT?' A brilliant question, BONE! BRILLIANT! gs

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I agree with you that much of NG is simply not that good, but you should ignore the little shorts, which are just comic-relief (admittedly not very funny). I agree they should leave those out, however, because they hurt the show as a whole.
I mean, what's the point of Serling coming out and pitching a scary show in his dark, alliterative tones, and then having such silliness in-between? Garbage.

I just saw "Aunt Ada", and that was pretty scary, with Jeanette Nolan. And "The Academy" was a good premise, but executed a bit poorly.
"They're tearing Down (whatzit's) Bar" was actually a very long, drawn-out boring episode, but I think they kept it that way because Serling wrote it. But it was full of awful cliches and hardly watchable. And yes, "Fear of Spiders" was
simply dreadful--it would have been different had there been some sort of spider motif between the woman and the man, but it was just pure ham-fisted resolution, locking him inside with a very FAKE unscary looking spider "the size of a dog".

I think the main problem with NG is that it undershoots the audience and is ponderous. "The Academy" is a good example--a premise that is interesting (permanent stay), but the delivery sucked. Here we have this rich guy (Pat Boone) get out and meet with the school's "general" who spends way too much time discussing the background of the boy, and showing the father around the grounds.
The story would have been creepier from the boy's perspective--father drops him off, thinking the academy is normal, and then the boy slowly finds out that older men are there, and are still cadets. Instead, NG chose to show it from the father's distanced viewpoint, and in the end, the "twist" that he wants his "rotter" son to go there indefinitely doesn't really pay off. The way the stories are told is flaccid and there needs to be tighter direction and better dialog.


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"I agree with you that much of NG is simply not that good, but you should ignore the little shorts, which are just comic-relief (admittedly not very funny). I agree they should leave those out, however, because they hurt the show as a whole.
I mean, what's the point of Serling coming out and pitching a scary show in his dark, alliterative tones, and then having such silliness in-between? Garbage."

I couldn't agree more. I saw one the other night "Miss Lovecraft Sent Me", yet another Lovecraft name drop. So this typical teenage girl shows up at Dracula's house to babysit his youngin. The build up is that junior is a ferocious monster and that this family is somewhat bizarre. There is NO pay off. What would have funny is that after the babysitter flees, Drac comes downstairs with a completely normal child. He looks at the open door and says, "you've scared off another one." Seriously, how hard was it for these people to write comedy?

"I think the main problem with NG is that it undershoots the audience and is ponderous. "The Academy" is a good example--a premise that is interesting (permanent stay), but the delivery sucked. Here we have this rich guy (Pat Boone) get out and meet with the school's "general" who spends way too much time discussing the background of the boy, and showing the father around the grounds.
The story would have been creepier from the boy's perspective--father drops him off, thinking the academy is normal, and then the boy slowly finds out that older men are there, and are still cadets. Instead, NG chose to show it from the father's distanced viewpoint, and in the end, the "twist" that he wants his "rotter" son to go there indefinitely doesn't really pay off. The way the stories are told is flaccid and there needs to be tighter direction and better dialog. "

I agree with you there too. I read that Serling didn't have half the creative control he had on Twilight Zone, so obviously people who didn't know what they were doing were handling Night Gallery.

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"So did you like it?"

More than I like you.

Perhaps you have a history with this person? If not, you came across as rather rude to someone asking you a simple question.

I can agree with you that Twilight Zone was a much more consistent show. To be fair though, TZ had a full 30 mins. of air time to flesh out a single plot. Although if you've only caught them on The Syfy channel you're getting chopped versions to fit in more commercials, which I find abhorrent.

From what I understand, Rod Serling wasn't that enthusiastic about the shorts, but Frank Laird loved them. They were time fillers and a bit of levity to fill the full hour time slot. As far as I recall all of the shorts were done for comic relief. Regardless of whether you like them or not, they were much better than the technique used in the episode 'The Painted Mirror' which had what amounted to several minutes of repeated reaction shots just to extend the episode. Horrendous editing. This episode ironically was paired with one of the series better ones 'The Messiah on Mott Street' one of Edward G. Robinson's last roles.

I do know that 'A fear of spiders' was written by Rod Serling himself. Was it editing? Directing? Or just time restraints that gave it the abrupt ending? I guess we'll never know. I liked the shorts myself, even though some fell flat.

I do want to mention, the episodes 'The Earwig' and 'Green Thumb' were as good as any TZ episodes.

It's not a tumor

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"Perhaps you have a history with this person? If not, you came across as rather rude to someone asking you a simple question."

Actually, *I* was the one asking the question, and he gave me a sarcastic response. I followed it up to let him/her know I didn't think very highly of their reply, or them.

"From what I understand, Rod Serling wasn't that enthusiastic about the shorts, but Frank Laird loved them."

I don't see how they could put Rod Serling's name on this show when his involvement was so limited. They should have just called it Universal's Night Gallery featuring Rod Serling.

"I do know that 'A fear of spiders' was written by Rod Serling himself. Was it editing? Directing? Or just time restraints that gave it the abrupt ending? I guess we'll never know. I liked the shorts myself, even though some fell flat."

Most likely time, but then for all we know some meddling studio exec could have made them change it.

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It's not Frank Laird, it's Jack.



"I'm in such bad shape, I'm wearing prescription underwear." Phyllis Diller 1917-2012

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I was thrilled to death to find that the series was back on television, via METV.
However, I was dissapointed in watching some of them again after all these years. It wasn't until I came to IMDB that I became aware that the original broadcasts were hour long episodes. That really explains alot! Many of the episodes seem to have very flat and/or predictable endings. But, the few that do still hold up, are now even better, when seen in their entirety. Unfortunately, they are very hard to find, unless you buy the DVD's, I suppose, but, i was overjoyed to watch many of the uncut episodes available here on IMDB. Now when i watch them on METV, i'll just be wondering how good or bad the stories actually are. I always liked the "shorts", when I was a kid. I'll never forget John Astin, as the hippie in hell (I used to think he was played by Sonny Bono).I see now, how the producers took full advantage of Universal's film vaults to flesh out some of the stories. Pure genius! A tv show today would go broke just trying to acquire the licensing rights for all those classic monsters and film clips, yet, there they all were, free for the asking. Night Gallery is uncomparable to anything else, ever! If you don't agree with something i've said, then that's okay. I'm merely being conversational, and not looking for a dust-up.

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So you did like it!

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I've always liked it, although the re-editing for syndication doesn't exactly help it. I, too, was a fan of the short-shorts. I just read the book "Rod Serling's Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour". The authors are not fans of them. One of their favorites is "The Academy", I like it, but I don't think it's a classic like them. They truly hate "Hatred Unto Death" (about the gorilla hunting the anthropologist couple). Other than it having a really bad gorilla costume, it's one of my faves.



"I'm in such bad shape, I'm wearing prescription underwear." Phyllis Diller 1917-2012

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Affirmative!

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Tresix
Just a note now that the boards are shutting down. Good bye. I know we agreed about a lot of things. I hope you stay well.

Jennie.

___________________________________
Never say never...

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ExplorerDS:

Saw "The Academy" a couple of years back when Night Gallery was being shown on the now-defunct Retro digital channel, and thought that, yeah, it was good, but it should have had a better ending---like you said, it would have been more interesting from the boy's perspective---it really didn't pack the punch he should have. I grew up seeing the show in the '80s in reruns, along with other creepy shows such as Tales From The Darkside and Monsters, so I always liked it----my whole family liked horror movies and TV shows, so we were always watching them, especially on weekends while hard at work cleaning up our entire home, lol. So I've always like the show, regardless of its flaws, because it's always been nice and creepy and scary to me.

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Night Gallery is one of my guilty pleasures; while I think it's fairly obvious that it's a pretty silly show, nowhere near the quality of Rod Serling's earlier work, it's still pretty good. It's just a matter of looking for diamonds in the rough. Like Stephen King said in his brilliant non-fiction book on the horror genre, Danse Macabre, if you're going to be a horror fan, you've got to have a taste for junk, since that's what a lot of horror is. It's all that junk that makes the really good stuff better; it benefits from the contrast.

Night Gallery is a good example of this trash-to-treasure ratio. While a lot of the segments are junk, a solid number of them are pretty great, like "The Caterpillar" (the infamous earwig episode), "Lindemann's Catch," "The Little Black Bag," "A Question Of Fear" (my personal favorite NG episode), "Green Fingers," "The Doll," "The Dead Man," and "Since Aunt Ada Came to Stay," among others. I've also heard that the series' two Lovecraft adaptations, "Pickman's Model" and "Cool Air," are pretty good, but I haven't seen them in a long time, so I really can't comment on them.

Of course, TZ had no shortage of turkeys, either; for every excellent episode like "Jess-Belle," "The New Exhibit," "The Rip Van Winkle Caper," or "King Nine Will Not Return," there was a "I Am The Night-Color Me Black," "A Most Unusual Camera," or "The Bewitchin' Pool."


"You wanna be worshipped? Go to India and moo."

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"I Am The Night-Color Me Black" is one of my favorite "TZ" episodes, especially the performance of George Lindsey. When I saw him, I thought he was going to be comic relief, but he turned out to be rather effective as the bigoted deputy. However, "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" leaves me cold.



"I'm in such bad shape, I'm wearing prescription underwear." Phyllis Diller 1917-2012

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Hear hear. I try to like it, being a huge TZ fan, but I just can't.

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I agree with you. As a teen, I liked the show. Now, watching it on Hulu, I wonder why. The shows are lame, some of the endings are boring and/or meaningless. There were a couple of good ones, but few and far between.

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I'm enjoying it on MeTV. Was never a huge fan of the comic bits, but even those are real "time-capsule" pleasures for me now.

But I have to say I really can't stand "The Sixth Sense" episodes packaged as part of the NG series. And I loved that show when I was a kid. Now, unwatchable.

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Very well put. I have recently tried to watch tis show and only viewed this page to see how low a rating it recieved by other users. Only to my shock that people actually enjoy this trash. I have only seen 1 or 2 episodes that I could sit through. Not sure what season they are showing on t.v. Maybe the episodes will get better as time progresses.

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... Maybe the episodes will get better as time progresses.
Time has already progressed. ;-) 1969-73 was a long time ago.

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I thought Silent Snow Secret Snow was not only a great episode but about the best thing I've seen on tv.

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Very true!! But I am watching for the very first time.. Soo it's kinda like new. Sorta like a new used car lol. I see your point though.

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I'm going to have to totally agree with you here! When I saw that NG was on Hulu, I got excited for the chance to be able to watch the complete series, since I love Twilight Zone so much! After watching a few episodes, there is no way I'm sitting through the entire series. The pacing is too slow and the payoff at the end of each episode isn't there. It's just not clicking for me. TZ is such a masterpiece...I don't get why this isn't? Who can say why a show that is older than NG has endurance, but it does.

NG feels like a product of its time. It may have been great in the 70s, but it has not aged well. It has this really hippy dippy, polyester suit, long hair on men, cigarette stained sofa feel to it. I strongly get the impression that the writers were smoking some major green in the writer's room too.

It sort of reminds me of how great the old Tom and Jerry cartoons are, but then when you watch the ones from the 60s/70s, they feel awkward, weird and out of place. Or how funny Saturday Night Live was from 75-80, but now the humor isn't as strong now.

I wanted to like it, but oh well. That ship has sailed.

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If you persevere and slog onward through the series, or if you revisit it occasionally, you might eventually discover a couple of enjoyable segments.

This past week I rewatched a segment that I hadn't seen in many years. (I won't say which one.) On the rewatch, I was surprised by the simple yet effective poignancy of the segment's final scene. (But then I wasn't surprised, after noting that the script was adapted from a story by an author whose work I like.)

If the show's shortcomings annoy you, it is probably best to drop it ... but feel free to drop back in occasionally, if ever you have "nothing else to watch" ....

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I agree with you. The Twilight Zone is one of the all-time greats. But Night Gallery, which came out when I was ten, always failed to grab me. Even today I find it too dark, doesn't make me think, and it's depressing as hell. I have ME TV on all night and it will come on after Banacek or McCloud. From time to time I'll catch a few minutes of it and will usually change the channel within a few minutes. I just can't take it. Gary Collins always seems to show his face too.

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NIGHT GALLERY is, as some might say, a product of its time. It's unfair to compare it with that other show.

Somehow I completely missed the "FOUR IN ONE" segments. I came in when it was spun off into its own full season, which aired right after the NBC MYSTERY MOVIEs.

I loved the "anthology" format. Each week, in the space of an hour, you'd get 3 or 4 stories, one of them usually being a comedy vignette, like an "intermission" between the dark, spooky stuff. The advantage of such a format is, there's a good chance you'll like at least ONE story in each hour, even if you don't care for the others. The 1980s revival of THE TWILIGHT ZONE had that same advantage for me, especially several weeks in when they started varying the lengths of the stories (instead of having them all be half-hour stories).

By comparison, when the show was moved to Sunday nights for the 3rd season and CUT down to a half-hour, I was disappointed. I don't even remember that they did any vignettes that year, but I guess they did.

The problem I have with NG, mostly, was that too often for my tastes, the stories were less "scary" or "spooky" and more "disturbing" or "depressing". Simply, too many stories were just downbeat for the sake of being downbeat, and NOT a pleasant experience to sit through in any way. This is definitely a series that should not be viewed in large doses. One hour per week was just about all I could handle.

What was done to it in syndication was a CRIME and an ABOMINATION. The show was designed (at least for its first 2 seasons) for a one-hour format. Cutting it in half DESTROYS the whole feel and structure of the intended experience.

Insanely, the SAME thing was done when the 80s TWILIGHT ZONE was put into syndication. HOW they could even do that, when some stories were LONGER than a half-hour, is beyond me.

And these days, none of this makes sense, when damn near every cable channel in existence seems to run a FULL HOUR of any given sitcom, or TWO hours or many hour-long shows, each day!!

If I ever decide I wanna sit through NIGHT GALLERY again... I'll wait until i can afford the DVD sets.

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[deleted]

more or less a take on Night Gallery, rather than the 60s TZ due to the Night Galleryish opening. ALso, many if not most of the stories are pure horror, and being darker in tone, and, very similar to some NG stories. For example, the futuristic story about the smart boy in the 80s TZ resembled NIght Gallery's "You can't get help like that anymore". I could be wrong.

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