Reviews

Serling performs a refining act on the "Tales from the Crypt"-brand of horror with this grim triptych. Each story is a little morality tale in the style of "The Twilight Zone," but instead of that series' sense of surreal wonder, the focus is now firmly on the macabre. The plotlines follow the model of the 1950s horror pulp comics, with characters spoiling for their comeuppance: a black-sheep nephew suffers a revenge beyond the grave after murdering his rich uncle; a ruthless blind woman blackmails a surgeon into performing a transplant using the eyes of a desperate bum; a war criminal finds what he thinks is respite from his pursuers when he is miraculously transported into a museum painting. The rest is pure Serling, though, with sharply drawn characters, stylish dialogue, and his characteristic final twist of irony. The execution is first rate, with a terrific cast, good production values (music, editing, photography), and inventive visuals from directors Boris ("The Omega Man") Sagal, Barry ("Across 110th Street") Shear, and Steven Spielberg (in his maiden effort).

Often lost in the shadow of Rod Serling's first series, "The Twilight Zone," "Night Gallery" was a fascinating experiment in the anthology format. Instead of one story per episode, the hour was splintered into two, three, or four different stories of varying length. Some were quite brief, lasting no more than a minute; others lasted over 40 minutes. The quality often varied, too. A few of the little vignettes were quite bad. Some stories were quite good. And on more than a few occasions, this little mini-film festival on Wednesday nights produced segments that were as good as anything else on TV at the time. Classic episodes included "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar," "Pickman's Model" (both nominated for Emmys), "The Caterpillar," "Class of '99," "Green Fingers," "The Messiah on Mott Street," "The Sins of the Fathers," "The Doll," "Cool Air," "Silent Snow, Secret Snow," "A Question of Fear," "The Little Black Bag," and "The Dead Man." Because one of these classics could often be followed or preceded by a story of lesser quality, the series got a reputation for being wildly uneven. It was universally lambasted during its network run by near-sighted critics who were thrown off by its inconsistency, and missed the quality elements: intelligent, stylish writing by Serling and others, top-notch production values (particularly in cinematography and music), and innovative directorial touches. For its syndication run, the series segments were butchered to fit into a half-hour time slot, some losing half their length in the editing, and is a travesty, a mere shadow of its former self. Episodes of a boring ESP potboiler, "The Sixth Sense," were annexed into the syndie package with terrible results. Stick to the uncut version.