Night Gallery S02E16 (Lindemann's Catch - The Late Mr. Peddington - Feast of Blood)

We are in the way we deal at hate, picnic light and shadow, realism, surrealism, impressionism, end lost stories, an interest in part blow, a pre election towards the desire. And this place is nothing if it isn't a desire. There's no admission, no requirement of membership, only a strong and a plighting belief in the dark at the top of the stairs or things that go bump in the nights. The name of there is a place you you would commend your accidentally out of the range is the night Got Welcome back art lovers to Midnight Viewing the Night Gallery Podcast. I'm father alone and with me here in the gallery are the Projection Rooth Podcast.

Mister Mike White, I am the Chicken of the Sea Alsough. Joining us from the Culture cast is mister Chris Stashue. I'd like to be referred to as mister blackout Sketch from here on out, because boy, we're just swimming in them, folks, we are. We're gonna get to those and yeah, we're gonna talk a lot about blackhoutse sketches tonight, I think, and we are discussing it here on season two, episode sixteen. This aired on January the twelfth, nineteen seventy two.

It was split into three segments. Those are Lindeman's Catch, the Late Mister Pettington, and a Feast of Blood, painting Number one having to do with fisherman and what they fish for, or more specifically, in this case, a fisherman and what he wasn't fishing for? What good is that? One afternoon? Defies logic, reason and belief, But there it was Lindaman's Catch.

Lindeman's Catch was written by On Sterling, directed by Jeff Corey. Stars Stuart Whitman, Jack Aronson, Annabel Annabelle Garth and Harry Towns. This is concerns a grizzled nineteenth century New England fisherman who nets a mermaid and the lynx he'll go to keep her on land. What'd you think of this one, Chris? I love that.

Now this show is just becoming extended blackout sketches, because this is a twenty minute blackout sketch? Is it not? Is it not? Like? Oh, I want to you know, I want a mermaid and I want her to be I want her to have legs, and then of course it's the fish that has legs.

Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. Hugh Hefner would have printed that on page fifteen. But I I just don't get it. I mean, it's fine for what it is, but when it's this like Shaggy Dog story and then the punchline is it's a fish with legs and it looks like a Captain Beefheart album on the like like, I'm sorry, I just it's fine. It was fine, but it was so silly ultimately and not scary, like not like when you see what you end up seeing and the punchline is what it is, you just kind of go, I guess that there could have been nothing else.

How about you, Mike, Yeah, it felt like it went on for a long time, and we don't really get to know anybody very well. I was really hoping that we would get to know Captain Lindemann a little bit more. He's pretty enigmatic. I mean, none of these actors really get too much to do or say. It is all just hung up on that whole thing of oh, hey, here's this magic formula, this will help, and then yeah, it's a lady with pretty legs and a big fishhead.

I was so waiting. I was sitting there I was clapping in my living room. I'm just like, do it, do it? Show her she's got a fish base, She's got a fish base. And then finally they did, and I laughed uproariously.

How about you father him alone? What did you think? Boy? I think this is a short story. I think this could have been a segment.

I think the problem is, as stated, there's too many characters. We keep bouncing around from plot to plot when there's only one plot going on here. It's this guy in the Mermaid. I don't know why. I don't know.

It's the drunkard in the inn. It's the drunkard in the tavern. He's such an interesting character, and they're shooting. They're shooting Pickman's model in the next room. Oh, well, of course it's because it's like that same It's like they just put people in that space and they were like, oh, this is the tavern before it was just empty space, all right.

To be fair, this is the seaport portion of the back lot instead of the European portion of the back lot. My apologies. Look I'm making fun of that, but I think Jeff Corry actually did a really a really good job. It looks beautiful the episode it's set bound, I suppose, but it doesn't look poorly made at all. I've said this before, Jeff Corey seems to get better and better and better as a filmmaker.

The problem here is the script, which, as you stated, Mike, gives us nothing about Lindaman, who's catched. This whole story revolves around he's just a gruff as he said, enigmatic, grizzled old fisherman. And that's all he begins that he begins that way, and he ends that way with a hint that he's becoming a bit of a human being and that he's recognized how lonely he is. The drunkard character, the Soothsayer, played by Harry Towns Now. He had been on The Twilight Zone a bunch of times.

Four of us are dying in shadow play, so he was a big stling regular. So that's why he's here, and he's a really good actor. It's just that character is so gaunt damned annoying. When Lindeman is first introduced, he man handles sugs like, throws him to the ground, and the actions to show us what a miserable prick Lindaman is. But I gotta say, if some drunken psychic kept pawing after me night after night, speaking the kind of dialogue Sterling has coming out of his mouth, I'd put his head into the spittoon as well.

Well. And it's and he even says that, Lindaman goes, I come in here for one hour a day to be left alone, and here you come over here bothering me again. It's like, is are we supposed to hate this character now? Because yeah, like I'm with you. Like the last thing i'd want is some drunk asshole been like, want me to read your key leaves?

I'm good And if you come over to me again, the answer will be the same, So stop it. This guy has been out at sea all day catching nothing at all. It's a grinding, miserable life. He's cold and wet, and then he might be an heroin addict too good. Yeah, no, you see that's the thing.

This isn't Gloucester. I'm reminding me in Parrotoune of Gloucester. My apologies lost the world. I'm not saying some of the Gloucester men were heroin antics in the past. I'm not saying that at all.

But this town being portrayed is definitely not Gloucester, because they keep referring to we got to go up to Boston, which means that this is probably a like mystic Connecticut, like a Connecticut town, which makes sense given how bloodthirsty and awful the populace is. Yeah, that's right. I'm taking down Connecticut as well. Fuck you, Connecticut. They're all awful down there anyway.

Grade a second, what did Connecticut do? Connecticut is just terrible? Trust me, I grew up just north of it. Is it because it should be pronounced Connecticut? It's because they somehow have a sense of superiority when they're the worst state in the Union.

And no, that's not true. That's New Hampshire anyway. Oh could anyone even have an opinion on New Hampshire? I don't even understand. You should spend some time in New Hampshire.

You know. New Hampshire is the best way I've heard it ever described. Was that thing you have to drive through to get to Maine? Okay, all right, anyway back to the story here. So ultimately, the alternatives that the both Lindeman and the townsfolk are giving this mermaid that they've pulled not ashore, but onto the boat is she can either asphyxiate on the boat or she can be sold into servitude somewhere up in Boston as a freak for two bits a gander.

Everyone Barnum couldn't do something this good. Everyone here is awful, the worst of course being the doctor who sees how wrong everything is. And it's just like, well, whatever you guys want to do. And see the doctor or the narrator. Here's Stirling here he goes halfway through just tells us, or three quarters the way to flat out tells us, well, Lindeman cares for nothing and no one, and now he finally cares for something.

And now she's out on that boat. You can't go down there. You'll get you anyway. I was expecting you to mention the tongue clucking at the end, where it's all of the people are on the boat looking into the water and say bullshit to no end about nothing. We must feed the sea once again, and the sea is not like, where's this coming from?

What is this? What does this have to do with anything? Rod? Like anything at all? Rod?

Rod, Rod, calm down, Rod, we get it. It can just be a story about a fish. Like it doesn't have to be some grand musing on loneliness by way of Rod Surly, like it doesn't have to be. So did they blow them the entire season's makeup budget on Pickman's model? I think that's the case.

I like the tongue in the fish mask. There's clearly someone like moving their tongue like in the lips. That's the best effect. I appreciated that effort. I the the mask.

Would it have been better if it had been the gill Man, the gill Man painted like pink with a wig gil Man plus wig? Definitely? I mean it's bad. It's bad. I mentioned Jeff Courias that the director he got away with a feet here on Night Gallery and that he shot night for night.

Ah looked beautiful. I loved it. Apparently Rod Serling was also burned in anger over the fact that they had to shoot so much day for night and that was budgetary, and so was excited that they got to do this one night for night as it was the young lady Annabelle Garth playing the mermaid. She developed bronchitis from sitting around on a boat for two three days without a shirt on. She took that home with her and apparently this episode the censors it was a detailed inspection because they kept they kept claiming that nipples were seeing in fact, there was some sort of huge hubub over what turned out to be her elbow.

I was about to say, like, there was a lot of sort of nudity in this, more so than I have seen in television from seventy two. Like you. It is bare breast, no nipple. Not only that, when he finally turns into fish Lady Top regular Lady Bottom, when she jumps into the water, it's like it's almost her ass on displays. Yeah, like really pushed it in those areas.

I wish they had pushed through a little more with the fish masks, anything scary, even just gills applied to her neck and fish teeth in her mouth, something horrible other than a don post reject mass. It really is surprisingly lazy, even for this show. Speaking of lazy, So now this was an original by Ron Sterling, although was it. August Derleth has written a bunch of episode written a bunch of stories that got produced in episodes. Mattie had a book of short stories called The Sleeping in the Dead.

At least three of the stories in that book got adapted. Those are Painted Mirror, which we've already seen last Rites of a dead Druid which is coming up death on the barge was also in there. There was also a story called Cardibi's Fish, just about a real estate agent and he's tasked with selling a house beside a lake. He discovers that there's a mermaid inside the lake, and he slowly falls in love with that mermaid, and while he's trying to sell the house, in fact, he doesn't even want to sell the house because of this beautiful thing that can now end his loneliness. And when she finally emerges, she emerges as a horrible fish monster that he then slays.

That story's in that book that three other episodes of Knife Gallery were based on, but it certainly had no bearing on Ron Sterling's original Here, no, not that I could tell completely different stories, your honor allegedly tasting aspersions. Are you saying that we can't tell a story about a mermaid wanting legs? As Christian Anderson has something to say about that, well, all I can. I just wanted to end up by saying the painting promised a lot more than we got that's good, Lord, so good to do that. Thomas, Right, what are you doing?

Man? Like? That's like watching Batman as a kid, and it's the animated credit sequence starts up being like, oh my god, this is gonna be great, and then it's Adam Wester's just like, okay, all right, well, this'll do it. I was expecting cartoon a dead man splattered on a concrete watch. Not the most appetizing of scenes and not the pleasantest of stories.

But if you're interested remotely in homie homicides, this may be your bag. We call it The Late Mister Pettington, The Late Mister Pettington. This one was written by Jack Laird, based on the short story The Flatmate by Frank Sisk and directed by Jeff Corey. Stars Harry Morgan and Kim Hunter and sane human Randy Quaid. This is a second performance after Last Picture Show.

This is the story of a widow searching for a bargain funeral for a late husband or is he early? Which I think of this one? My yeah, it was nice to see Randy Quaid, you know, very young and great seeing Henry Morgan, great seeing Kim Hunter. But I don't know, it felt like we had seen this before. This felt very much like that the vampire Werner Klempler having his own funeral, almost but just a little twist on that.

So it was all right, yeah, no, you, Chris, this is two for two for blackouts catches in this episode that go on way too long. There is a blackouts. I mean, no, You're totally right, Mike, this is a I mean that's why I said at the beginning of the episode, like you can call me mister blackouts ketch, because this show now is taking things that we've seen them do in a shortened like two minute three minute version, and now they're like, oh, we need to have Kim Hunter being very weird for no reason. Mind you, I don't understand why her character is so strange. I understand that she's trying to like be coy with Harry Morgan, but she's also being a fun king weirdo, and it amounts to nothing.

It goes nowhere. It seems like maybe it's trying to direct you in one direction, and then ultimately the punchline is, Oh, she's gonna kill her husband and she was trying to figure out how to do it on the cheap, how to do the funeral on the cheap, but that doesn't need to be more than a two panel comic, like and there's like four lines of dialogue needed to explain like this entire scenario, and one of those is ah as the guy falls out the window. Yeah, that ending is so abrupt, and that they just like cut back to the picture or the painting. I'm just like, whoa, whoa, what does happened? That was my favorite part of the episode actually that it was.

It was like a slap in the face. It was hilarious. Also, remember the sound of that scream, gentlemen, not for this episode, but maybe in a future episode. I like this just fine. I agree with you, Chris.

It is a blackout sketch, no more, no lesson. But like earlier in the season, the sort of elongated blackout sketches became a thing when Big Surprise Richard Matheson's short story. That's when it's we could see that they were taking the normal blackout sketches and stretching them a little bit further than maybe needed to be. But it also showed that the blackout sketches could be a lot more than what we were getting. And right because you liked that segment a lot.

I like Big Surprise a lot. I liked this one too. The problem is it's too familiar. We've seen it's so funny. At the start of the recording of this entire series, I mentioned that we're going to see a lot of marriages on display and like lots of jealousy and murderous husband's Watson.

Then it's all Jack Laird, who I think had gone through a bitter divorce before this series has started. So this is another perfect example of that. Having said that, I loved watching Kim Hunter, I loved how weird she was in this and I was a little confused as to what was going on for a good portion of the episode. And then once it became apparent that she was planning the murder, then at all unraveled because none of that makes sense. She wouldn't be checking with this guy.

She was checking to see how much insurance money she was going to be getting, along with how cheap funeral can be. You know, how cheap the funeral can be, just to donate the body to the whatever, you don't have to pay it, like, there needed to be some better conversation where and then the twist is that she's actually been planning the murder the whole time in talking to a detective. Maybe how would I get away with it? That could be maybe a little bit more interesting. One thing I did get this is just weird.

When the episode opens, it's Harry Morgan pulling a bottle of liquor from between from aldehyde and whatever, and when he swigs it, he says, ah better better, which weirdly is the exact thing Jordy Verrel says in The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrell and creep Show after he drinks down the vodka. Ah better, that's lots better anyway. That was just something I noticed. Well, I am Morgan. The way that he's dressed, it looks like he's in the eighteen eighties.

And then Kim Hunter walks in. I'm just like, oh, okay, we're in modern times, all right, And then Randy Quay at the end, Oh, by the way, youth culture still exists too, Yeah, it's the seventies, folks. My favorite bit in the entire episode or episode segment is when she's about to flick her cigarette and he comes up underneath it with the like the manilla folder, Like again, like, what's so strange, like what they worked out some odd business, the two of them. And that's the thing. It wasn't It ends up being kind of a nothing of an episode, But I wasn't mad when I was watching it.

I enjoyed watching these two people. And this is that Kim Hunter has a long tradition with Rod Sterling. She was in Requiem for a Heavyweight, she was in The Comedian, which is another play that he had on television, and she's in Plane of the Apes, which Rod Sterling room. And what a different performance she is in this compared to we just talked about her a few months ago. Chris was suitable for framing that Columbo episode.

She's like this complete ditz than that, and here she's so like cold and calculating. Yeah, but it works in both directions. She's a fantastic actor. Oh yeah. So, I mean that's the thing, like we've all mentioned at this point, like this episode segment, it's just not much of anything, but at least it has good actors in it.

At least it's competently acted, like they've been some of the just the regular players that they sometimes stick on Night Gallery. I don't know that I would have stood for any of the other thing, I would have been particularly angry at the end when it turned out to be the twist that it was, even though that ending is pretty great. I mean the fact I do the fact that all it was unders there's Randy Quaid just chilling on screen and you can hear his voice in the beginning of the segment because it's yeah, there's somebody, and like when I rewatched it, I was like, right, that is Randy Quaid if you're like paying attention. But they don't even bill him in the episode credits, Like he's not mentioned in the It's Kim Hunter and Harry Morgan and that's it.

Yeah, right, it was just it was just like when I it was because like I would have noticed it and been on the lookout for, like where's Randy Quaid. But then it's like, oh, okay, so he's just like chilling at the end. It adds to the shocking nature of the endings. Oh my god, Randy QUI, Oh my god, we're out the window. It's the second best dummy I've ever seen since David Warner had a dummy chucked at him.

It speakings is good. Speaking of paintings in the last one, My god, what a painting here. There's just the body splattered on the I want to own this one. Yeah, I liked. Is like this is a pretty nasty painting.

Yeah. Well, she like hasn't really done. He's like, this isn't something you'd want hanging on your wall. Yeah, rock again. Rods the general generic area of costume jewelry.

Note girl and note expression. Obviously a lady much disturbed by whatever little bubbles she has recently been the recipient of. It said sentence improperly ending on a preposition. But this story ending on a which more deadly not than that. We call it a feast of blood.

All right? Our next segment is a feast of blood. This was written by Stanford Whitmore, based on the short story The Fur Brooch by Dulcie Gray and directed by Jena Zwark. This one stars Norman Lloyd, Sandra Locke and Hermione Badly. It's the story of a young woman in a rather ominous suitor in the weird Brooch he offers her as a present.

I'll start on this one half, you know, min llis Thank you all right, Norman Lloyd. I'm going to start with the good things that I like in this segment. Norman Lloyd, who I think most people of my age may be a little bit older, know him from Saint Elsewhere, which he was great on, but in the decade previous he was a producer on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which I did not know. And the weird, sort of incestuous Night Gallery connection with this guy is that Jack Leard produced a pilot for a television series called The Dark in Router that ended up getting released theatrically just the pilot got released. In that there's the villain as doctor Malachi, who's portrayed on screen by Werner Klemperer and voiced by Norman Lloyd.

That's weird. Yeah. Sandra Locke, who the year before had been nominated for an Academy Award, actually sought out a role on Night Gallery and because she was such a fan of The Twilight Zone and Ron Serling. So that's the first time I've heard of an actor trying to get on the show that they didn't have to go find other than that the performances are good somewhat. Norman Lloyd is fantastically menacing.

The brooch is creepy and weird, that he gives sort the stories that this suitor shows up and gives this girl who doesn't really care about him, this brooch. It's a little rodent, and then she spurns him, and then the brooch grows big. Oh boy, there's a girl, pig and boy, and it choose her. I guess a little bit, and then it returns to its normal size, and this guy performs the same bit again comically large, which one might say, Yeah, it's the message here that everyone is terrible, because everyone in this episode is terrible. This guy's basically a rapist and if you don't fuck him, then his magic brooch is going to kill you.

Right, that's what happens here. But was he not like stealing their like beauty too? Was that not a component to this or was that me reading in him just talking kooky talk? But like, okay, because I thought there was like a tale from the crypt thing, you know, you know what you have to know what I'm talking about bottom alone, where it's like I made the bust of your face and I stole your beauty, Like that's what I thought it was. And then no, it's just this giant goofy asked brooch, like goofy looking like it reminded me.

This episode segment reminded me of the one with Jack Cassidy and the giant spider. Oh yeah, it's like, oh, look at this giant thing that we can't make look good, but we're going with it anyways, Like god, come come on, this is Colchak fighting and invisible monster levels of fucking wild. Like, guys, it's Gilly suited Brenda Man. It's just such a that's not true. It's better than Gilly suited Brenda Man because the design is cool and even as goofy as it is that they just keeps getting larger and they keep doing wide shots of her running.

What's wrong with you, Jane? Why shots of her running with this giant Like God, I don't know, like gummy bear, It's that's all I could think. It looks like a giant gummy bear, Like what do you have to see? Or you could eat it. I think the worst thing about this episode segment is that the painting is so good.

Oh well, I'm obviously a big fan of that painting. I think it too. I'm a fan of that painting as well, and like again it like the last or I guess the first episode segment on this episode, like it makes a promise of something that is not followed through on like it's I don't want I don't understand what the point of this segment was other than like you said, father, moan, everybody's terrible. How about you and Mike what you think of this one? Yeah?

I was impressed. This might be controversial, but I've never found Sandra Lock to be that attractive, but in this I was like, oh, I can kind of see it. I can kind of see that she's attractive in this one. And then she gets attacked by a brooch the end the blackout extravaganza this episode really it is it is? And yeah, like he he is this essentially a rapist, So I was like, okay, yeah, I was waiting for him to get his come upance at the end, like somehow she survives and gives it back to him, but that's not the case.

Interesting optics for this episode segment are we are we two woke? Sorry the woster needs to leave? Sorry? Yeah, So what's with Sandra Locke in Rodents? She restricted that rat boy she was in Willard, She's got killed by a giant rodent.

In this she loves Rodents. They had some rear screen projection when they were driving. I loved it looked great and night for night again. How do you like that? Twice in one episode At the end, okay, I can.

This should have been a black out skitch. It should have been just a girl breaking up with a guy on the phone. He's like, did you get that gift I sent here? And she's like, I don't want to see you. You're an idiot.

I used you for your money and blah blah blah, and then she gets skilled. That would have been That would have been okay. At the end, we have these two bicyclists, these Englishmen. Their characters names are Frankie and Jippo, and apparently the characters were named for two characters and John Ford's the informer. Oh, that's totally inconsequential as the characters are, because why are they even there, Why are we spending any time with them at all?

They can find a dead body, that's why. And then the episode segment ends. If only the camera could have done that for us. Yeah, that is the funniest part of the segment is that camera angle where it's like set on the ground in front of her pointed at them, but you can't see any and they're just like borrow, Yeah, that's great, guys, great reactions. We got it.

We're done. Jano Swark. Jano Swark is not doing any favors for any of these segments at all. Like, I don't think I've seen one yet where I've been like Jano's work added something to this. Most of the time, Janoswark's name is tied to the worst episode segments that we're watching.

Hey, hey, don't don't don't talk about Jano that way. I want to stand for it, even if I'm sitting I you know what, Jaws two is fine. This leaves a lot to be designed. It wasn't great, but it's a blackout sketch. I mean it just it's unfortunate that we just keep getting extended blackout sketches.

Because this show is good when it is good, when they're putting effort in, that is the problem. It's just like Tales from the Crypt. It's just like Twilight's on nineteen eighty five. When it's good and the people who are doing the work are doing the work, well, it's really good and there's nothing better anthology wise. When it's bad.

It's like everybody collectively lost their fucking minds. The problem here is that Ron Sterling's way was wrong and Jack Laird's way is wrong. There was somewhere in between it had they mediated and worked it out, where this show could have been the best anthology horror anthology of all time, right, because if Ron Sterling was writing Blackout sketches, that could be something he could get his little bitter, ironic thing out in a couple of minutes. As opposed to they should have just assigned him all the twelve minute segments for this entire thing. Would have been great, would have forced him to be concise as a writer.

If he's not willing to do the introductions for the Blackout sketches, he ain't willing to fucking write them, right, Like, probably it's beneath me. I'm not saying. I'm not saying he should have been assigned them necessarily. I'm just saying, had they worked it out, then show I agree phenomenal. Yeah, I mean a twilight zone for the seventies, Like that's what the promise of this show is and could into that, right, and when it satisfies that, it really satisfies it.

But it's few and far between in this second season. But again, like there's you know what though, Like in reality, if you take a step back, every episode has multiple segments. So we're talking about by the end of the show, how many segments, like almost a hundred. Yeah, Law of Averages would denote fifty fifty percent are good, fifty percent are bad. And I think we're still right there.

There hasn't been a precipitous drop off. It's definitely better than the first season. So yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. It has ups and downs, but once you've got past the pilot of the first season, it was a love diminishing returns. There were a little pa measures to be had here and there, but certainly not like this season.

So well, and I mean again, when this season opens with the banger of bangers, the boy who predicted earthquakes, I mean again, like that, it might be the best segment on this entire show. And it opens the second season. Yeah, hard to measure up to. But at the same time, like at least it wasn't the first episode of the first season like Twice or Tales from the Crypt. Yeah, I'll take an episode like this, one of basically extended blackout sketches over one segment of They're tearing down tim Riley's Bar.

So thank you there is You know, we should start like you know how they have like a job site. It's like one day without a disaster. There should be one episode without prohesig could sell right, all our reviews would be glowing from here on it. And remember, Jents, this was not tearing down tim Riley's Bar. All right, we're gonna play a preview of our next episode and we'll be right back to wrap things up.

Fainting Number one A small item of hope and faith in despair. An excursion in the erie in which we touch base with that fraternity of the dispossessed who seek God something miraculous in the way of cures and in the way of hope. Our painting is called the Miracle at Chemiphail, and it's offering number one in this the Night Gallery. A bit of gossamer and lace as befits a beautiful woman, fragile and ephemeral, in keeping with the soft mystery of the female. But to the gentleman amongst you, who, like all your male predecessors, since the beginning of time, have been mystified and miffed by a female counterpart.

This one is for you, a beautiful lady in a strange house, also inhabited alas by the Ghost of Sore with Place. That's right. On the next midnight viewing, we'll be taking a look at season two, episode seventeen that's broken into two segments, the Miracle at Kematheo and the Ghost of sorewith Place. Until then, Where can people find you? Chris Stashu, Weirdingwaymedia dot Com is where I post everything I work on, which, like you mentioned at the beginning of this show, includes the culture Cast and a lot of other things, including the Folly would send him a club, Twilight Zone nineteen eighty five, which was called Dreams for Sale, the Cold Check Taste.

There's a lot of stuff and you can find all that at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. And how about you, Mike White end up. As for me, ditto? All right, thank you all for joining us here at midnight Viewing. The galleries now closed.