Night Gallery S02E01 (The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes - Miss Lovecraft Sent Me - The Hand of Borgus Weems - Phantom of What Opera)

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Fuck yeah, yeah, who is it? You're gonna hear a lot about that. Oh yeah. Clint Howard's Great towards as Chris just mentioned, is featured here in our Midnight Viewing The Night Gallery podcast we're doing here this year. It's uh.

This episode marks a moment where the Night Gallery is under new management, and I'm actually really happy about that. I'm Father Malone joining me here in the gallery as always are the Podcast of Powers own Chris Statue. Yes, I'm here and ready to talk about the Twilight Zones adjacent Listen. Then you leave that Twilight Zone stuff back in the last season brand Oh, I'm right, sorry, I forgot Rod Sterlings no longer involved with Rod Serling's Night Gallery. Also joining us straight from Rankin on Bass is mister Mike White.

I so wanted to do Clint Howard's laugh from Star Trek, but I'm going to avoid doing that. No, do it when we're talking about the second Oh okay, we'll do. This is season two, episode one we're discussing, which aired on September fifth, nineteen seventy one, making this fifty two years old. Just a couple of days ago. We get in addition to the opening credits here in the season two that's Mike Road introducing all of the guest stars for some weird reason.

Wow. Yeah, so straight this very special episode of Night Yeah, but that's Clint how from William Wyndham and more like what you know what? It reminded me of unfunny Naked. I mean, that's the only show that I could think of where it's like on tonight's episode, a very special guest. Yeah, yeah, exactly, it's a sea change here at night Gallery and now at this particular episode was broken into four segments.

The boy who predicted earthquakes, Miss Lovecraft sent me the hand of Borgos Weems and a Phantom of what Opera. As I mentioned, I just wanted to give a brief history of the new showrunner here. This was the producer of last season's episodes. Yeah, he produced the entirety of last season. He's now asserted a bit of creative control.

This management named Jack Laird. He was a child actor. He's like, couldn't be more different than Rod Serling. He grew up in Monrovia, California. His mother taught theater.

His father was a physicist or something. He was a child actor, was a pilot during the war, came back and acted primarily on television through the forties, and then he kind of fell into writing and producing. By the time that The Twilight Zone came on the air in nineteen fifty nine, Jack Laird had written episodes of over forty different television series. That's a staggering amount in like eight or nine years, forty different sits. I wasn't even aware that there were that mini series on the air at the time.

But anyway, his big success, Laird's success in television really came in sixty four when he started Ben Casey. He ran that show for three or four or five years. At the same time, he was producing a number of feature films, most of them starring Leslie Nielsen, who shows up in this episode, and most of them were written by a fellow named Alvin Sappensley, who also shows up in this episode. And once Night Gallery folded, Jack Laird went off and created Coachack, or even create it, but that was his show. He produced that for the entire thing.

So anyway, that's who we're dealing with, a guy who actually seems interested in horror as opposed to mister Serling. And this is his first offering. Now, the first episode, or the first segment of this episode is called The Boy who Predicted Earthquakes. The night's first painting. Small boy encased in the crystal ball, born with a very special gift.

He can prophesy, but you'll wonder as we look behind that picture if a prophecy is always a gift or canon an occasion take the form of a nightmare. The paintings title is The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes. This was written by Rod Serling, based on a short story by Margaret Saint Clair and directed by John Badham or John M. Badham here, which he's a big time filmmaker. You all know who he is.

He did. He ended up doing six episodes of Night Gallery. He had that kind of a weird career where he was a television director, became a feature director, and then ended up back on television, which I think is where he is today. This one starts Clint Howard, Michael Constantine, Bernie Cappelle, Ellen Weston, and Rance Howard for two seconds as a cameraman named Rance and I would be remissed. This episode also has special appearances by Bella Llegosti and Charles Latton in a scene from an Island of Blas Souls which comes in in the middle and is really shocking and scary and doesn't feel out of place and doesn't make me think I want to go watch that instead.

How about Mike, what do you think it was? I really enjoyed this. I had a lot of fun it was. I'm just amazed. What so this is September fifteen, nineteen seventy one, this comes out.

We just saw Clint Howard, you know, a couple of years prior to drinking tronya and having laughs with Captain Kirk. And then just a few years after this, he's going to be this shit eating the guy with the custom van running the entire rock and roll high school in selling favors. When does puberty hit this guy? Like just in that little tiny window, he just overnight. It feels like overnight, because like I was not expecting to see this young of a Clinton.

He's still a child. Yeah, he looks super young in this, And yeah, you're absolutely right, Mike. We're talking about an eight year period. Now, that's a long time growing up, but not what we next him in. I mean he does stuff in between, but like you're right, like rock and roll high school, that's a man.

Yeah, this is a child, Like there's no in between. It's a small child too. Like he's like his feet don't touch the ground type thing. He's shopping in the kiddy section of Sears buying his little suit that he's wearing, which is ill fitting. By the way, he bothered me.

He looked like David Byrne. Kids in suits man like kids in suits just either yeah, either they're ill fitting or they look like Damien from The Omen, and you know what they say, do what you want, but don't forget the Omen. I'm a recent devote about Yeah, right, I know that's a meme, but I'm not. It's a it's a it's it's a it's a weird song that I randomly brought up on an episode of Culture Cast that we did, but Father Malone and Heather did not believe that it was a real thing until I played it for them. It is a real song, evident through what you want, but don't forget the Omen.

It's a dance trag baby. As I saw a headline that referenced that today and I'm just like, why, God, really, have you forgotten the Anti Christ? I don't know how you could. Maybe that song was a warning, don't forget the Omen. Really it's going.

I really appreciate the cast in this, I really I love you, know, Bernie Copele not in here nearly enough. But Michael Constantine, I don't think people sing his praise as much as maybe they should. Of course, he's a little bit let's see extra when he's talking about the kid and how terrible this is and YadA, YadA, YadA, I just really lay it on. Think but you know, we're getting his character, and yeah, I appreciated where the story went, and I really appreciated the twist at the end, and it's so nice to have a twist that actually kind of makes sense, makes sense and plays in And it really sucks too, because it's like the worst kind of twist. The characters saddled.

I mean, you know, it's it's the it's the old it's the old problem of being the person who can see into the future, right like, at some point that stops being a thing you can see past, and who knows when that will be, you know, Cassandra, you know it's that. It's that kind of same story and I like it. I mean, it's really good, but the fucking twist is pretty brutal. It's pretty brutal. Not as bad as the sound design, but otherwise, rabble rabble, a lot of theremin and weirdo sort of we're kind of like sci fi sounds which are absolutely not necessary.

There at the end, like they Battom throws this like red process over all of the all of the shots past the prediction that that we haven't discovered yet and we did absolutely did not need it. The revelation is going to be powerful enough once once the kid reveals it. Other things, I did not like Grandpa's speech with the UCLA thing, like it's just like, certainly just can't help. He has to tell us exactly what he wants us to know, and it's just terrible expositional, no one certain terms as they would say. Yeah, I wish that was out of this episode entirely.

Also Missing Girl, Glendall and Fox. Early in the episode, Young Herbie makes a prediction that a girl is going to be found who's been lost out in the mountains, and sure enough, fifteen minutes later, they do find her. She's basically sitting in the middle of a road, like the most traveled road I've ever seen it, Like, was she really that lost or was anyone even looking for her? Because that didn't make much sense to me. And weirdly, the helicopter pilot was Mike Road.

The voice of the on tonight's episode. I'm that took me out of it. But maybe that's just because I, you know, I deal too much in sound or something. It's because you knew Chris. Speaking of Clint Howard now early in the episode, it's basically in his introductory scene, I wrote in my notebook, I fucking love Clint Howard, and then I underlined it every time I thought that.

I ended up with seven underlines. So that's seven times, actually eight because I wrote it once. That's eight times in twenty two minutes. Where I was like, this kid is fucking awesome, and he is like that breed of child actor is so rare where he doesn't come off his precocious he comes off his understanding. Every concept that's coming out of his mouth, it's a little adult.

Maybe that's it. Maybe he's got that orphan syndrome or something. Maybe he's already twenty three here and like we just don't know it yet, but like he startles me every time I see him, and he continues to start. Clint Howard is great, Like where's his big starring role? Would somebody just give it to him already?

Come on? Yeah, I mean this dear Mironovsky gonna do for him like he just did for Brendan. Fraser and Mickey worked a few you know that. Kids. It's like, come on, yeah, Tarantino used to do that.

Come on, yeah, this guy's more worthy than them. He was on The Enterprise exactly. I think. I think it's interesting because both Ron and Clint Howard were very good child actors. Yeah, which is like doubly as rare because normally you get one out of a family, but both of them, and then both of them immensely talented, both still working in the industry, one as a OSCAR winning multi nominated director and then another one.

As you know, he has a fucking credit list as as long as my arm. I mean I Clint Howard's credit list has got to be over double digits, probably closer to triple digits. He's the modern Dick Miller, don't you think. Yeah, Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Both of those guys.

You know, I'm always happy to see them. They never give a bad performance, and I wish they had more success. Hey, Clint Howard was in one of my favorite comedies. He was in Little Nikki putting wax on his nipples. I mean again, like what if that ain't successful?

The range. I'm just talking about the range alone and the willingness to work on weird things because he's also he's in a ton of Adam Sandler's latent nineties stuff. He's in water Boy, He's in Little NICKI again, like he's in I think he's probably in Big Daddy or Mister Deed's. Like again, like the range to go from Star Trek as a child actor to this to that he works with Rob Zombie recently, I mean words, worked like everybody at this point. In other words, we love Clint Howard.

Yeah, and this this I really like this segment a lot. I remember seeing this way too young and being absolutely fucking haunted by this ending for me Night Gallery like kind of begins in season two, Like this is the kind of offering I'm talking about. And and I know Serling wrote this, but it is. It's an adaptation, which he was always best in speculative fiction when he was adapting something, and the story is a fucking corker. There was evidently a short film made in twenty eighteen in Mexico called The Boy who Predicted Earthquakes, which I was not able to get my hands on, but I really want to.

It is like a gut punch of a story and it makes sense and it's I don't know, I really loved it. I know the way the story ends, so we can haven't talked about the twist. We've kind of mentioned how Brutal is, but the twist is he doesn't want to predict the future for the next day because the next day the world ends. Just like again, like, that's the whole debacle. The dilemma of being able to see the future is.

There are people who can see the future in many ways, but I think everybody who can see the future probably knows that at some point they will stop being able to see the future. And what does that mean, right, And what does that mean either their death or everyone's right? Right? So again, like that's an interesting direction to go, Father Malone. You and I earlier this year on Scary Stories we Tell talked about nostradamis.

I mean this feeds directly into that. I mean, that's that's that same prognostication sight seeing, you know, seeing into the future, whether or not it's real or not, because we're never told whether or not the world ends the next day. Either, which I think is even the better part of this episode is it's left open at the end. It just focuses in on that shot of the sun because it's going to be a solar flare and that's it. But like, I'm glad that they don't show it getting you know, destroyed, or show everybody dying, like it's you don't know what happens, who knows?

See, I was waiting for a twist, but I thought it might have come from because I like that they set up the rules of what he can know and what he doesn't know. He knows about the missing girl because he heard the news story. He knows about this because he read in a book, so I knew what a tsunami was or whatever. And it's just like okay. So like I was waiting for him to read about something that he didn't know about and be like, Oh, that's what that is, and then suddenly be like, you know, Holocaust two point zero happening next week, something like that.

But I didn't mind the way that this went. And you could be like, well, he read about that in the science book because he is trying to think of the word nova, and I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. But yeah, I was. I was expecting a twist, but I wasn't expecting something as brutal as this. No, the only thing about the ending that bothered me is that when we first meet him, which is presumably months, if not a year ago, in his screen test, he's talking about astronomy specifically, and the kid is so bright that there's no way he didn't know what a nova or a supernova was by by that, you know what I mean?

Like, like, I just wish they hadn't mentioned astronomy at all in the opening, because to me, it would have made sense because as soon as he started saying, like, what's the word, I'm like, you know what the word is? Kid? This kid would know the way. Yeah, I agreed, it's great, but I think the ending, I think it just misss. I don't know, like it's good, but I feel like you're right, Like not giving it away so early would have been a benefit.

They had already stacked the deck kind of with where he tells her the rules, which I agree with you, Mike. I love like I'm I like when they give me some parameters to bounce off a hair, And it reminded me actually of a new twilights on TWENTLS eighty five, The Toys of Caliban, the George R. Martin story, where where that kid like he could make something happen if he saw it like that same sort of psychic connection. It's a pretty good way to start the first season, sands Rod Sterling. That's for sure.

Yeah, I was like, where have you been on my life? This is what I was hoping for with this show. Yeah, and this is written by Rod Sterling too, Like, holy shit, He's well aware at this point this is no longer his show. Right, He's submitting scripts just like everybody else. He's actually getting scripts rejected and others he's getting notes on.

So it's got to be pretty humiliating, right, Rod, Why didn't you put this? This is a story you knew you were going to adapt. Why didn't you put it in the last season? It might have helped for real? For real?

Now, every time he redeems himself from here on out, I'm just gonna think, like, God, what, why? Man? Why didn't you you let this happen? Because you're capable of better? And it's right here and that's and that is like that's now like a thing that I have I've been thinking about, is like, why if every episode of this season is good that he's written because these were lying around.

There's no way he like wrote these in the in between interim time, like right, this story had to have been sitting on his desk and waiting to be adapted. He thought, Oh wait till next season. Next season, I'm gonna really really give it to them, Like dude, dude, the bus has left the station. Yeah, without you on it. At this point they still should have taken his name up.

But anyway, all right, on to our next segment. This is a This is a This is basically a blackout sketch. I don't know there's anyway other way to describe it. It's called Miss Lovecraft sent me this one. Who's written by producer Jack Laird, directed by Jane R.

Kearney. He would end up directing seven segments on Night most of them just blackout sketches like this one. He also wrote Knight of the leibis that giant funny movie Oh boy. He wrote that in back in sixty four, he made a short home Silent Snow, Secret Snow, which actually ends up as an episode of Night Gallery. Further along, he remakes it with and Orson Wells ends up narrating it's pretty good, but miss Lovecraft sent me.

Stars Joseph Campanella, who we already saw last season on Night Gallery, Sue lyon Lda herself, and look, it's like I said, this is a blackout sketch. It's a babysitter gets sent to basically Dracula's house to babysit a kid. There's nothing to it and doesn't know it's Dracula's house. It's so charming and quaint, and it was over in a heart. Was his son supposed to be a werewolf something that walked on four legs, because it's like put this chain on and this chain on and then this chain on.

It's like, oh, I'm out of here. Like yeah, it was overcast. Yeah, I like Joseph Kempernella as the Dracula character and just that kind of dime store look that it was rocking. I mean this was Yeah. He might have come in like second or third place at the Halloween Costume contest or hey, Children's Zoo worked for this exact reason.

Yeah, that's the thing, Like, I can't be mad at this thing. It just sort of shows up it's a dumb joke. It's basically like a Playboy magazine joke, like you know, like Gayan Wilson would have written something like this, you know, like it was just a word balloon in the next room. You know, nothing wrong with that at all. Like this is okay because we haven't gotten anything like this yet in the show now.

And that's what I really actually like about this. It's nothing much. It's actually kind of dumb. But the fact that he opens the door and Sue Lion walks in with a transistor radio and suddenly it feels like nineteen seventy one was startling. Yes, yeah, I mean that's the part that works the best is it's clearly set in seventy one, and so it's like there's that weird like just like people out of place, Like why would you go to this house to begin with?

What type of the fact that miss Lovecraft sent you. Miss Lovecraft sent you That name doesn't sound weird to you, even if you don't know who HP Lovecraft is. I wouldn't go to anybody's house whose last name is Lovecraft works Miss, I know, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't take orders from people named Lovecraft wouldn't go to their house, wouldn't interact with them, you know what I mean, Like if you're in a fictional story, like it's just it's funny miss Lovecraft sent me. She sure did.

What I love is that she shows up. It's clearly Dracula. But yeah, not even a ques It's not like it's Chris Randon and bright Night. It's a dude in white face makeup, like Dracula lets her into a castle, right clearly in the suburbs of like Willamet or something like in Illinois's looking at the books, the books are all like horrifying nightmare titles like and it's still not processing. And after the fourth leg goes into the chain by the way, one chain was like, what, Yeah, it wasn't even that she couldn't see his reflection in the mirror.

Yeah, what a party trick that is? Yeah, right, because that's a hell of a party trick. I mean it's again, it's like you said, it's like a playboy joke. It's stupid. And don't think too long about it, because the moment you start thinking about how dumb it is is when you realize how really idiotic it is.

Sterling in one of those lectures that I said specifically was commenting about Night Gallery while it was on the air. In fact, the speech I saw him give was before the premiere of the second season, but now already they had taken it away. In that situation, he was saying, the show no longer works because you can't slap comedy up against horror. What he specifically said was you can't do Edgar Allen Poe and then have thirty four seconds of Flip Wilson and contain maintain any consistency, which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Genre purist Rod Sterling.

If if in the middle of Boy who Predicted earthquakes there was this sketch this miss Lovecraft sent me, then he would have a point. But he told his story and it's done. This is a stupid Appartif it's just like a you know, like an amooz boosh and that now we're onto another story. Jack Leard is doing the series of favor by putting these in, even if it's dumb, even if it's whatever, like it just shakes you up a little bit and gets you onto the next thing. And I think that's really necessary in horror.

For those of you that couldn't see the subtitles, when Father Malone said, amos boosh, he's talking about a palette cleanser. Yeah, a fine citrus jalais exactly what I meant. But in monster form, this is exactly what this is. In the nineteen eighty five show, I mean, I mentioned Children's Zoo like that was the exact same thing there. This is the first time the show's broken up at the four segments.

Yeah, it's like a big segment of a small segment, a big Smeg mud Jesus Smeg smegments, two big segments and two small segments, and that works. It breaks up the show. It actually, like even but not even talking about what we're talking about specifically, that format I think works in the show's favor. It's like Mad Magazine with the little cartoons in the in the margins. You know.

Yeah, it's it's it's as it's as impactful as that. Like, it doesn't take anything away from the rest of this show, and it didn't in nineteen eighty five either. No, the A and the B story in each of these episodes ought to be strong enough that they don't need this. But like It's good that they're there because this is an anthology series and the it's catch as can as far as quality no matter how good the show is, and children Zoo has stuck with me since we watched it. It was solid and same with I of Newton.

Another quick, breezy little segment, one of the better segments from that entire show, with our friend from the Barney Miller Show, mister Ron Glass. Damn straight so good. Did you guys notice not this episode the previou one the UCLA professor who comes to visit Clint Howard. That was Ellen Weston. She was in Colchack.

She was on the Devil's Platform. Oh is that the Tom Scarrett episode? Yeah, yeah, yeah, where he becomes a dog at the end? Yes, yes, yeah, apparently becomes a dog at the end, so they say, yeah, who No. Concept of medical transplants is exciting, indeed, But the story behind this painting takes the concept of step further, or if you will, step over into a different kind of world, one in which a gentleman named Lackland finds a hand that is not his own, and he finds it at the end of his wrist.

Are painting the hand of Bourgus wims Is when it was written by Al Sappins Lee. Yeah, I mentioned earlier that he wrote most of Jack Laird's movies. He also ended up writing Five Night Galleries. He also worked in the same spheres as Sterling. Early on in television he did a lot of Philco Theater and Chrysler Theater.

Unlike Sterling, he actually leaned towards science fiction, like Tales of Tomorrow, and like those kind of it was mainly tense, murdery or wacky science fiction with this guy, and that continues here. He's adapting a short story The Other Hand by George Langelan, who's the creator of The Fly. All right, I was about to say that name sounds awfully from Bill here. Yeah, and directed by Gene R. Kearney.

That Gene R. Kearney was also the one who directed the last segment we watched. This one is about a man. Oh actually, it stars George Maharris, Ray Milland and Patricia Donahoe. And it tells the tale of a man who's no longer his hand is no longer his own, and it's not a nice hand.

And Mike quins are think of this one. I mean, the idea of the possessed hand. I mean, how long have we had that? I mean even before Hands of Warlock. I'm sure that that was a trope way back in the day and probably probably since horror stories were being written.

And of course we've seen it played out in a lot of different ways, things like Idle Hands, the amazing hand sequence from Evil Dead Too, so many good things, a hand with Michael Caine, the idea of the close ups of the hand. It gets a little wrote after a while, but god damn did I enjoy this segment, especially that we were jumping back and forth in time so many times. I thought they were going to do it once, and then they ended up doing it again, and I was just like, wow, this is actually a very well put together segment to tell pretty wrote story. But I enjoyed it quite a bit. About you, Chris, I like the name Burgess.

Weems damn straight Burgus. I think that's the name of my first child, Borgus Burgess Statue. No, I think you're right. It's it's about as wrote as wrote can be. Really like this is again, like this is a time time honored story, time honored horror story from time Immemorium, like Evil Dead is the most famous one.

But this is pretty good, which is weird to be saying because it has this show has not been good for a while. Yes, yes, I know. I kept waiting for it to shit the bed, right, It's like, come on, you've got to screw this up somehow. I feel like the ending is kind of dinky. Yeah, it's expected.

Yeah, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's it's fine. Other than the kind of cheeseball ending, it's fun. Yeah, this is the journey, not the destination kind of stuff. It is the way that they, as you pointed out, like the way they tell the story, which is fractured time, jumping back and for people aren't willing to do that in a feature film, never mind a twenty two segment thing of a television series. Right.

Yeah, what's funny is while watching this I went and looked up the names of the editors for the series because I thought the editing in this one was spectacular. The opening sequence is the moment where our character, who is possessed of borgas weems driving a car nearly hitting a pedestrian. Like, that's as simple as the sequence is, but they shot it on the back lot. Jane jer very smartly shot everything and close up, so it doesn't feel like we're back on the universal fucking lot like every episode from the first season, and it's edited so tensely that this super simple thing becomes really tense. Like.

So, I looked up the names of the editors here, and there are two editors listed. They're listed on every fucking episode, so it's almost impossible to determine who edited why. But in this episode there were two editors, Dave Rawlins and Jean Jay Bertholo. Dave Rollins ends up editing most of John Badam's films, so I'm gonna say that this one was edited by John Jay Bertholow. And it's again just really the the cutaway shots that you mentioned, Mike of the hand, So they keep cutting to the guy's hand and then it's a quick shot of a hand in red gesticulating crazily.

Yes, and that is so effective. If they do it too much, they keep coming back to it. I don't know why, but for that scene, it is so freaky and weird and unnerving. This is an incredibly well directed episode. Like production overall feels like a movie, feels like a modern movie in nineteen seventy one movie which I really appreciate it.

I think the plot is Bonker's cuckoo crazy. There is no way, and I know people who have actually attempted to have parts of their body removed. There is no way on God's green Earth that you can go into a doctor's office spill this absolutely psychotic tale and then when he turns you down, you smash the shit out of your hand with a fucking paperweight, and then they're like, Okay, now we'll do it for you. No. I just assumed he annihilated his hand to the point of like they have to cut it off.

I was hoping that he would hit it over and over right, which is like, which is what like I went to, which is filling in a gap that the episode didn't do, which it should have done, because then it would make you wouldn't even have to try to explain it away. The problem is the next scene is the third are seen and they show the hand and there's nothing wrong, right, got a little blood on it, maybe a little bit of sit dressing, but it's just a hand, right, And they didn't have shown the hand at all. They should have just shown the surgery, and they could shown the scalpel going on a wrist and we would have filled in that the hand is completely mutilated, because it would have had to be mutilated. There's no way if you just hit it, they would they would have just said, you broke your hand, you dummy.

Now put on this rubber outfit and get in this cell. You're telling me that you can't just request to have limbs hacked off. You can, but they don't let you do it right, right, Yeah, you have to do all kinds of things. You get like your dry ice and you put your leg on there. You just started sawing away.

I mean, I'm trying to remember what documentary that was that I watched all about people with limb dysphoria, and then like two weeks later there was a CSI about it. So it can be done, and the way he does it is the stupidest way possible he could have just you know, it made me think of the Vault of Horror, the Amicust film, where like a character chops his hand off like that he has a paper cutter and it's the most dangerous looking thing and you know it's real and like you have to wind it up like a guillotine and it drops down Like this guy just needs to go find that thing. I'm sure there was something in New York. Well that's my point. Like it's goofy because like he could just go and like get it cut off in any industrial accident.

Yeah, take a shotgun to it. Yeah, blow your hand off like you really want it, Like, just take the gun and shoot the hand a bunch of times, the gun that you had that you were threatening your wife. By the way, if if anyone is ever struggling with themselves with a pistol and they're pointing it out of you and there, you don't know which way it's gonna go, get out of the way. That guy stood there the entire time with the gun like basically at her head. That was weird.

Yeah, with all this being said, this is a good episode. By the way, That documentary is called Whole whe by Melodie Gilbert, and I have to say it's really haunting. So I don't know if I want to watch it. At the documentary about and did they talk about phantom pain in there as well? Oh yeah, it's just like when I you know, I knew that this hand didn't belong to me, and it really had to go so and then when it's gone, they can still feel it.

Sometimes that's even fucking wilder. Yeah, but that well, you're describing Chris like any amputee will will will describe. But these people are like that. What Mike does describe this hand does not belong to me. That's so.

Yeah. Yeah, ever get high and look at your own hands too long, That's that's I mean, that's what we're talking about. But it's like you you understand and believe that you can no longer in control of it, and that's the thrust of this episode. That is why it works. I think we've all had thoughts like that.

Simpson's did this with the wig with Homer and the snake's wig in an episode. I mean, yeah, hell to pay. Yeah they did this. I mean this is this. I think the X Files did it in a in a in one of their episodes or something.

You know, there was a movie Body Parts with Jeff Fahey, I think, like where you had the serial killer's arm or something. I don't know. Yeah, I've got the eyes of a killer. Yeah, this is good, Like this is this is a fun, fun story. I think it's a little maybe too serious for its own good.

Also George Maharris, who's the lead guy in this the entire time, I had him confused with Dick Gautier, who was himy on getting smart? Yeah. Well. George Maharris is well known for his final role in the film doppelgang Or, where he plays Mike Wallace. Oh wow, I don't know who Mike Wallace is.

My name's Malone, father Malone, my father, who is this person? My middle name is Patrick, father Patrick Malone. But I do know a Mike Wallace. I'm related to him, and he found that troubling when you write it. Let me just he personally did.

I do think the way the episode ends as funny where he's like, oh my god, it's like a monster moment. We haven't even mentioned ray milland he just know just like walking gravity, that man, Like I believe everything he says. He makes. Any Outlander situation becomes real because Raymondlan tells you it is damn straight, even when he's got Rosie, when he's on Rosie Greer's shoulder, I believed in then too, O man, all right. That brings us to the final segment, where left with another blackout sketch.

This is called Phantom of What Opera? This was written and directed by Gene R. Kearney, starring Leslie Nielsen and Mary Ann Beck. This is you, guys. I don't know, it's just it's Phantom of the Opera and Leslie Nielsen.

No, yeah, come on, yeah, I'm not bagging on it, but I'm just saying, like, there's nothing to describe its Yeah, it's dumb with a capital D, but it's dumb fun. Yeah. I probably enjoyed this more than the Dracula sketch. So yeah, the production value is better. I mean, it looks like they filmed it.

It looks like they filmed it on the Universal back line. Yeah, you know what, it looks like they filmed it. It looks like they filmed it where they did like the like Makeup and Monster show. Right the corner of that that room. Everybody's looking one way.

They're like, all right, Leslie, come on there, we're gonna put you over here. Just don't film it really tight and close it. I actually like, even if the jokes aren't landing, I like that they're kind of playing in what everyone thinks of as horror, like in the nineteen seventy one if you ask somebody what constituted a horror story, they would probably say Dracula or you know, all of the universal stuff. So I like that these blackout sketches are playing on those a little bit. We got Dracula and now we got Phantom of the Opera.

I'm sure we're gonna get others down the line. I don't think this was very funny at all. I thought the makeup was pretty good for television series that you know. I get. I can't look like Leslie Nielsen, not at all, not at all his voice, but that was about it.

When I when I saw Startling talk, they asked him if he anity regrets about the show, and not as far as losing control. But he said in the first season they had like three days of rehearsal for actors, and then by halfway they had two, and then it was on set rehearsal. So these shows are being turned around at a ridiculous pace. The fact that they look as good as they do, Like John Badham is a really good filmmaker, so he's gonna make it look like a movie, which he did. That they're getting anything that looks halfway decent is really impressive, and so when some of these things work, I'm even more impressed.

I guess it is all I'm saying the zero production value here at the end of this one, it's still fun and quick and brief, and it's breathing in my mind new life into the series. I don't know how you guys felt about this one. It's it's so brief and it it's just it's not anything really, and I appreciate that actually because we saw, you know, the last time we did an episode. You know, they're closing down Tim Riley's bar, like those thirty four minutes. It's just like, fuck off with that.

You don't need to be cow towed saying it right in twenty twenty two. You don't have to cow tow to a structure from another version of someone else show. You don't. And we're seeing that here now where it's like, Okay, a segment that's like fifteen minutes, a segment that's ten minutes, and then two three minute segments and they'll continue that the rest of the season, which is exciting. That's exciting for me as a watcher of this show who really was having a hard time getting motivated and excited to watch Night Gallery in the first season.

Good. I feel a little vindicated because I was starting to feel like I led you down a dark path that we weren't expecting with with how that season went. So yeah, you had us in dreams for sales territory pretty quickly there, and I was just like, oh no, what I thought this show was supposed to be good for two seas? I know, like a fucking nightmare, like straight up, And it's not your fault. I mean, you didn't make the show, but yeah, like it that first season is just like it feels like a bad dream.

It does because like those episodes are so bizarre compared to this. If you showed this episode to someone and then showed them the last episode we watched, you would not get this. Like that person would not tell you it's the same show. No, they'd say, what did you do to this series? Have you showed them in that order?

Like this is how bad the series gets? Like yeah, but vercifully we got it out of the way. The quality of the series is always fluctuating, as I've said so, and that's going to continue into season three. But what we've been experiencing, like you said, Mike, like the Twilight Zone eighty five just like slowly dropped. I mean not slowly, it dropped pretty quickly, but then it insipidously dropped in it was awful the end.

Same with talents from the group, at least with Night Gallery. It's kind of the reverse. Like the thing everyone liked about these shows, the memories people have of the shows are we're gonna find in this season in the next I think anyway, So I guess my question to you then, is with a show like this one where the first season is bad and it vindicates itself in the second and third season, rod Serling's involved and hosts the show every time, right, because like then, like that's like that feels bad, man like but like like that's the worst saying. We didn't talk about that at all. Like Rod Serling is in the wrap arounds of the show that he's taken off of as the show runner.

Did you happen to notice that there were no Sling introductions to the blackout sketches? Right because he refused to do them. Yeah, not surprising. Well they Kennedy didn't need them, but right, and you dun't. But you don't need any of them, honestly, you just show the Painting and Off we Go.

Children's Zoo didn't have it either. Neither did the eponymous episode that our previous show is named for, with Dreams for Sale. It didn't have a you know, imagine if you will, like there was none of that. It didn't It doesn't need it, right, But the motivation here is pettiness. Oh well, that's not surprising.

I mean, I if you hadn't told me that and asked me to guess, I would have said, oh, he probably didn't want to do it because he thought that they were dumb and joking. Yeah, but you know, it's it's sort of a pattern of like like I didn't like this, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna introduce it. But what's funny is when the show eventually came up for syndication, they've repackaged the whole thing. They've repackaged the series with a whole other series and pretended it was Nike Gallery and Serling did the introductions for all of those. That was the syndication money.

Here. It was just like, well, fuck you, I'm not gonna do I'm not gonna introduce your shit. I'm gonna produce my ship and shit that I like true businessman that one. I mean, you know, you know where to go to get where you need to get and if you got to do the intros. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not I'm not saying he shouldn't have done that, but I'm saying it just seems kind of petty.

At the same time, they should have taken his name off of it. It's no longer his thing. So it was for the first season, Yeah, I mean, but he was you know, he was the creative control of the show. He was not the showrunner, he was not the producer of the show. He just, you know, was a hired hand.

And they you know, that's no longer the case. He's still a hired hand, but demoted. Now he's just an actor and the guy who happened to write the scripts for some of the episode. Hey, and you know what, if the show continues to be the quality of this episode, I'm down with that. I'm good with that.

I'm excited for that because I was not excited for everything after what we just saw that first season. Like just being bluntly honest, like that was it was. It was as bad as the last season of Tales from the Crypt at its worst. Last season. No, that's absolutely wow.

That no something. No, that thirty four minute Tim Riley episode is such. Any episode of Night Gallery, any anyone, even the worst one is better than the best episode of the final Oh that one, that one animated one with the pigs was pretty good. What I just the one, the animated Tales from the Crypt episode that ended the show with the pigs. Yeah, the perfect, perfect ending, prefabricated bullshit.

Yeah, well, hey, I mean that's the that's the way, that's the way the end of this last season felt. So it doesn't it. This is a show that feels like it's taking place in the seventies. It has the seventies humor, it has that seventies humor, and that that last season of the show felt firmly rooted in like sixty eight. Yeah, it felt firmly rooted in sixty four.

It was. Yeah, it was the Twilight Zone part two. Like he hadn't thought of anything sort of beyond did they sing for He's a jolly good fellow. In the season of the show, they're going to you know Ron Sterling scripted episode. Yes, they are going to sing.

Well, then that's the only reason that that makes sense, because otherwise there's no way it would show up in the season of the show. No way, Like that's not the sensibilities of the time. He's the he's the standard bearer of that song at this point. I think for a lot of years that song got like three, four, five times the amount of play just because you couldn't use Happy Birthday and stuff, so you would use that instead because it's like, oh, or i'm aw let's stop that. Yeah, yeaikes, I'm good.

I don't ever Yeah, No, Camptown Ladies would have been a better song, like just sing that, yeah, the Camptown Ladies, all right. On our next episode of Midnight Viewing, we're going to be appraising four new paintings for again. Those are Death in the Family, The Merciful Class of ninety nine, and which is Feast Vincent Prices. In one of them, the boy who predicted earthquakes, by the way, had an amazing painting. We should totally talk about them and mention them.

That painting is the best thing I've seen so far in the show. It's weird, man hauntingly weird, and the way I was not expecting. Oh and also yeah beautiful as well. Yeah, with the paint and the paintings have been good. They're not an overthought, they're not an oversight in this show.

They're actually spending time and making these paintings, which is impressive. Let's shout out to Tom Wright who did all of the paintings, all of the different styles. They're all incredible. But this one, you're right, Chris in particular, is gorgeous. Evidently that is his child that he painted into the painting.

But like that face in that crystal ball, it's like it's a picture of absolute innocence and loveliness, but there's something so wrong about it, like that's and Tom Writ's a genius for that, like conveying the story sometimes in better ways than the dramatic that we're gonna get. Yeah, oh no, that it's that that stood out to me just it was just haunting. There was a book out there, the Art of Darkness. I think it is called that. I think the last time I tried to look it up it's out of print, and then I might have found a really overpriced version of it.

But my god, can you imagine having an art book like one of those big oversized book of just all those night Gallery paintings let's make it happen. Father alive. I know. Look, I've been searching this entire time, Like I can't find a copy for less than two hundred dollars. And I'm like and I and I love it and I know I would treasure it, but like, I don't have two hundred dollars spending the night gallery paintings right now.

I see them enough, just doing the stupid animated conversions until then? Where can people find you? Chris stashut c stashue dot com, cstac hiw dot com. That's my link tree for all the things I work on. I work on a lot of stuff with Mike White.

We talked about seventies cops a lot, and then Hobbits, which is you know, it makes sense. You know Peter Folk short hand in hand you short like a hobbit. Can imagine that Peter Folk playing Bilbo. It would work, It would it would work. I'm not one for adventure.

Oh give me that universe please, But that's where you can find me over at c stashue dot com. What about you, Mike White? Where can people find you? Go ahead, keep your secrets. I would so watch that, Like I want to live in that universe where they've made Lord of the Riggs in the Yes please, I would love it.

You can always find me over at the Projection with podcast dot com, which is where I talk about movies and there's links to all the other stuff that we're doing. There's gonna be a link over to Midnight Viewing here pretty soon and to Podcast Power, our new Lord of the Rings Rings of Power podcast. As for me, you can find me over at fondamlone dot com. That's a link tree to all of my nonsense. Thank you for joining us here in the Night Gallery and we'll see you in the next episode.