Art comes to life. So run for your life!
Rod Serling short stories--the classic TV movie that launched the series. Roddy McDowell is excellent in story in which graveyard paintings come to life!

Welcome To The Night Gallery
Those opening words by writer, host and all round creative genius Rod Serling paved the way for viewers to enjoy many intriguing stories of mystery, mayhem and the supernatural during the three year run of the classic series "Night Gallery". A brain child of Serling who had earlier been responsible for the creation of one of televisions most innovative and best remembered series in the classic "The Twilight Zone","Night Gallery was a regular anthology series on NBC that told stories of macabre happenings with surreal characters in often out of this world situations. This particular TV movie was the original pilot for the series and aired in 1969. It contains three individual stories and was adapted by Rod Serling from his own short story collection titled "The Season to be Wary". While varying in quality with the third story by far the weakest, all are rich in suspense and detail with stories one and two boasting top flight guest stars in engrossing teleplays.

All three episodes are linked by the presence in each story of a painting that literally guides the course of events, hence the title "Night Gallery". Rod Serling introduces each of the segments by the unveiling of each painting in turn and the viewer is then drawn into the story it has to tell.

Episode One which is the real gem of the trio is titled "The Cemetary", and stars a superb Roddy McDowall as a devilish young man called Jeremy Evans who has latched on to his previously unknown wealthy uncle. To hasten the time when he will recieve the old man's inheritance Jeremy deliberatly exposes him to cold winds upon which the old man dies of pheumonia. However Jeremy finds that life is not all plain sailing now as a mysterious painting on the staircase keeps changing and shows his uncle slowly rising from the dead in the nearby family graveyard. Slowly driven to insanity by the thought of his uncle coming after him from the grave Jeremy falls down the stairs in terror and breaks his neck upon which the real twist in the story reveals itself. But is that really the end of the story?

Episode Two is the justly famous episode "Eyes",that stars none other than veteran Hollywood actress Joan Crawford in what was without doubt her most memorable television apearance. Here she was directed by a rookie director at the time, the now famous Steven Speilberg in his first directing opportunity. Joan plays Claudia Menlo an extremely wealthy Park Avenue Socialite who has been blind since birth. Hearing of an innovative approach to eye surgery whereby with a willing donor vision can be returned for roughly twelve hours, Claudia sets out to secure this opportunity for herself no matter what the cost. Totally ruthless in her dealings with others Claudia blackmails with incriminating evidence Surgeon Frank Hetherton to perform the surgery when a donor Sidney Resnick (Tom Bosley) is found. Resnick has gambling debts and is willing to sacrifice his eyes to get mob members off his back. The surgery is performed but just as Claudia removes her bandages New York experiences a total blackout leaving her as much in the dark as before. As ordinary daylight begins to break and Claudia sees not only the painting of herself she had commissioned but also her first sunrise she finds however that she has paid a very big price for little return resulting in tragedy.

Episode Three, "Escape", is the weakest of the stories and tells of a former Nazi Officer Herme Arndt (Richard Kiley) now going by the name of Josef Strobe who has fled to South America to avoid detection for his war crimes. While visting a museum he becomes intrigued by a painting of a fisherman and the tranquil setting in the painting makes him keep coming back to the painting each day secretly wishing he was that fisherman. He encounters a former Concentration Camp survivor in the museum who is aware of his former identity. Repeatedly seeking to become that fisherman in the painting however his wish is unfortunately granted but not in the way he expected when he becomes a part of a much more sinister painting moved to where the earlier painting used to hang. In this new painting Strobe will more than pay for his war crimes for all eternity.

Superbly linked together by an appropriately eerie narration by Rod Serling much like he did in his "Twilight Zone", series, "Night Gallery", makes wonderful viewing for those that grew up with the great anthology series of the 50's, and 60's decades. "Night Gallery", the TV movie was really Serling's last significant work for television and it was responsible for giving the green light to the successful series that followed over the next three seasons. Episodes One and Two are the really great stories here, thanks to the tense writing by Serling and the top notch performances by Roddy McDowall and Joan Crawford. The musical score employed throughout the segments also is highly evocative and adds tremendously to the eerie atmosphere employed here. I highly recommend "Night Gallery", for its great storytelling and as the last chapter in the career of one of television's most innovative pioneers, the legendary Rod Serling.

Flashforward: 1969-1972
Midnight never ends in a private showing dedicated to you, the viewer.

Rod Serling, with his perfect stage voice and brilliant mind has been missed since his death years ago.

These pilot episodes are very good, very unusual, and very, what's the word...nostalgic. You'll see. :)

The first offering is one where a black sheep nephew with an itch plots to do away with his uncle so as to reap his inheritance early. In this he was successful, until he begins notice odd little changes on a painting of the family graveyard which rests just outside the walls of the familiy mansion...

I won't touch the other two, they are great in their own right, but the first is the best of the three.

This strange gallery may show you the Flip-Side of Satan.

Classic Serling with Mod Roddy and Mommy Dearest Joan.
Here's some classic 1960s TV; the movie debut of Rod Serling's "Night Gallery". Though the series lapsed quickly into B-TV oblivion, this film stands out as fresh, original, and even profound on some level. Serling introduces his 3 original stories as 3 art gallery paintings and we start off with Roddy McDowell, all Modded up and with a Southern accent. He kills his uncle for the inheritance, but the painting by the stairs is scaring the daylights out of him. Ozzie Davis does a convincing (Mr.) Portifoy who's after some inheritance of his own.

Next we are on New York's 5th Ave. where Joan Crawford is blind and rich. She blackmails a doctor to do an operation allowing her 12 hours of sight...the catch is Tom Bosley has to donate his eyes for her. The moment she takes off her bandage for her 1st glimpse of sight a citywide blackout occurs. This is classic Serling (Beware of consequences) and even more profound and trippy than many Twilight Zone episodes. Not to mention this was Steven Spielberg's directorial debut. The final scene with Crawford getting a first and last glimpse of the sun has some profundity to it. Really the second the blackout hits we enter a surreal dimension, and we hear her thoughts "I want the sun", the window breaks, and we come back to Serling's gallery.

These first 2 stories I remember vividly from seeing them on early '70s TV as a kid. So it's really got the nostalgia factor going on. The 3rd story is a bit of a throwaway about a Nazi war criminal in South America.

Get this for the 1st 2.

Spookier than most made-for-TV films
This pilot film for Rod Serling's final TV endeavor NIGHT GALLERY is a three-part omnibus that is far spookier than most made-for-television projects. Serling's own morality tracts are here bought together in a delicious mix of suspense, terror, and melodrama.

The first story concerns a greedy nephew (Roddy McDowall) who deliberately leaves his uncle exposed (George Macready) open to the cold, so that his death will result in McDowall grabbing onto the family fortune. But there is a painting in his uncle's vast collection that, bit by little bit, proceeds to drive McDowall to utter madness because of what it depicts--Macready coming back from the grave!

Story #2 concerns a blind woman (Joan Crawford, in one of her last roles) who blackmails her doctor (Barry Sullivan) in giving her an occular transplant so that she may see, even if it is only for twelve hours. The operation is in actuality a success, but when her 5th Avenue penthouse is thrown into darkness because of the great 1965 New York blackout, she's led to believe it was a disaster.

Story #3 focuses on a Nazi fugitive (Richard Kiley) eking out an existence in Buenos Aires who becomes entranced by a painting of a fisherman in an art gallery, and who longs for Escape. But his past is about to catch up to him; and the twist ending is not quite what he had in mind.

Superbly scripted by Serling, from his collection of short stories entitled "The Season To Be Wary", NIGHT GALLERY is superior suspense entertainment. Boris Sagal and Barry Shear do effective jobs in the direction of the first and third stories, but it is the Crawford segment that gets the most attention--and for good reason. This marked the maiden directorial effort of a young man from Phoenix, Arizona named Steven Spielberg.

Billy Goldenberg's eerie, Herrmann-influenced score puts the capper on this one-of-a-kind TV movie. With Halloween fast approaching, NIGHT GALLERY is well worth searching for.