Night Gallery S02E17 (The Miracle at Camafeo - The Ghost of Sorwoth Place)

We are in the way we deal in hate, pignic light and shadow, realism, surrealism, impressionism, end lost stories, an interest in art flow, a predolection 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 night. The name of there is a place that you would commend your accidentally out of the rain is the Night gall Welcome back, our lovers to Midnight Viewing the Night Gallery podcast. I'm father alone and with me here in the gallery are chronicles from the Crips.

Mister Chris Dashu. They spared no expense bringing me in for this episode, no expense at all. Second time you've used that joke. Also joining us from Dreams per Sale The Twilight Zone eighty five's podcast is mister Mike White. It's a miracle.

It is a miracle. Look to point out, though I'm allowed to use it once a season, It's not like Richard Kylie shows up all the time. This is j Richard Kylie all the time. What qualifies us all the time, and you have to be in two episodes this year. At least he's not playing a Nazi, at least anyway, we'll get to that.

We are talking about season two, episode seventeen. This aired on January the nineteenth, nineteen seventy two, and it's a Ralph Senensky special. This episode was broken into two segments, both directed by Ralph Seninsky. Those are The Miracle at Kematheo and the Ghost of Srewith Place fing number one, a small item of hope and faith and despair. An excursion into the erie, and we touch base with that fraternity of that dispossessed who seek got something miraculous in the way of cures and in the way of hope.

Our painting is called the Miracle at Camiphail and it's offering number one in this the Night Gallery. The Miracle at Camafao was written by Rod Serling, based on a short story by C. B. Guildford and directed by Ralph Senenski. This one stars Harry Gardino, Julie Adams, and Ray Danton.

It's the tale of an insurance investigator trailing a potential fraudster to a sleepy Mexican Pueblo where miracles are said to occur, saying what do you think about this one? Mike? It's a little long in the tooth. I kind of could see everything that was about to happen before it happened, like in the first five minutes. So how long as this is one?

Like half an hour, twenty five minutes, twenty seven I think? Actually it goes on for a while. Yeah, and I don't see why it needed to. It was nice scene read Danton show up. I always enjoy seeing him.

But yeah, telling about it, so father alone, you mentioned it, and I want to speak to it for a second. These two segments in this episode were so good, so just like the quality was just so immense that they never had Ralph Senensky come back and direct another episode of this show. It is shocking, isn't it? No? Because this segment is again almost like a blackout sketch.

Like a guy who's pretending to be crippled disabled not use his legs whatever term they used here. He can't do that, and so the switches made and he's able to walk, but he could walk to begain with, but he actually loses his eyes to a child who was blind do you need to tell that story over half an hour. The answer may surprise you. It's no, it's just so fucking long. Like I just there wasn't another segment that could have taken more time here, Like there wasn't any part of this that needed to be trimmed down.

We needed to have Harry Gordino tell who he is to that guy's wife, even though she had been seeing him and was aware of his presence, because she admits as much like, I just don't understand. It's such a bizarre segment. I like the idea of the scam that's being pulled here. Oh yeah, right, that a man who is pretending to be crippled and has collected a half a million dollar insurance fraud is now going to have a miracle occur and now he can return to the United States and go, oh, I can walk and I got a half a million dollars. What are you gonna do?

It was a It's a great plan, and the idea of having an insurance investigator who is no longer interested in retrieving the money, but is offended spiritually that he's using this shrine where people come to pray in the hope of a miracle occurring. He's so offended by that that he needs to expose the guy. That's all great, it's the execution, however, where the insurance investigator in a small Pueblo Cantina approaches the wife of the guy who's perpetrating the fraud, and then, like you said, Chris spills his entire life story to her. As if as soon as he started talking, she wouldn't have gotten up and walked away. I'm just talking realistically here.

As the wife of a obviously a con man, she would know this guy as soon as she saw him, would know, Oh, okay, this guy's an insurance guy. Her husband even said that I saw him. So why would she listen to any of what this guy has to say? Go tell it to the bartender if you need to have it spelled out for us, Rod Starling, because this is another radio play Ultimately, and then the twist isn't even worth it. Honestly, Oh he went blind?

Okay, Well, I guess he deserved it. I was kind of hoping that investigator would go blind. How about that throw us that out twist? It's weird morality via Rod Sterling. Yeah, like Rod Sterling's moral compass is like, well, he was a con man who was pretending to not use his legs, which again got him money.

So yeah, he scammed people. But Rod Sterling apparently thinks if you scammed people, you deserve to go fucking blind. Then it's like whoa, whoa, whoa, Like I get it, But we don't even get enough time with Ray Danton's character to understand that he's a piece of shit, Like he's just like a con man, Like, for all I know, he's a perfectly flined human being who just wanted to rip somebody off. Like, there ain't nothing wrong with that you want to rip off a company. I don't think that necessarily makes you a bad person.

Necessarily in the context of a story that we're telling. How you paint that person, how you diet, how you used to dialogue and body language, whatever, that's fine. They don't do enough here to make it seem like, oh, well, he deserved to go blind at the end, like and then they're just gonna even by the way, they're just going to leave this guy in this village to be blind. That's what you do. Well, it's a really good thing that George langeland the author of the Fly died in nineteen seventy two.

Otherwise he might have been suing this show because he wrote an episode of or he wrote a story that an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents was based on, called Strange Miracle, directed by Norman Lloyd, who we just saw in our last segment from last month or last time we talked. And this is a guy who fakes paralysis after train wreck in order to collect a huge insurance settlement. After he collects his money, he meets this girl, Maria, who's actually paralyzed. She's going to a shrine to pray. So he gets the bright idea of oh, I'll go to the shrine to pray as well for a miracle.

I'll get the miracle goal. But irony of ironies, he's actually paralyzed by the end and she gets to walk again. Mais b damn Oh night gallery. That was right off of Alfred Hitchcox Presents Strange Miracle from nineteen sixty two, ten years before the segment aired. I but when was this?

When was the short story by cbe Guilford published. That's the question. Oh, that's a good question. I don't do that much research. Guys also valid.

I'm glad you're a great I mean again, they're not putting in any effort to entertain us. So okay, So here's how this. Here's the next scene. I have five thousand American dollars to somebody who will guide me to the airport. I have because I got half a million dollars.

Still, yes, he's blind. It's really sad. He's going to have a very pampered rest of his life as a blind man. M Like, they're not getting that money back, so six to one half dozen or another yet again, I mean again, it's just it's a weird morality by way of Rod Sterling, Like he injects his own moral beliefs into the story in a way that like when Rod Sterling does it, well, it's really good. But this is not that.

This is just like, yeah, I mean, of course he goes blind at the end. How else would this end? Well, it didn't need the blind child, honestly, you know, I'm pretty sure that's a Rod Sterling invention, so that he could have that come up. And so I don't, you know, I don't know, I didn't read the short star. What am I talking about?

I mean again, I'm not sure you missed anything by not reading it. Yeah, I'm trying to find that story and all I'm finding is somebody who's writing saying I've been looking for the story for years and I've never been able to find it. And what's weird is Guilford has four credits on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Oh yeah, it might be the case that it's actually the same story that both are based on, isn't it? Well?

Is Cbe Guilford was the equalizer guest for Breakfast Bull in a China Shop and who've done it on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. So maybe it was Cbe Gilford was working on that show and was like, hey, remember that story. I'm just gonna think that's maybe it's a reverse plagiarism. In any event, it's a terrible segment and a waste of everyone's time. Well, the fact that it's twenty seven minutes is the problem.

Yeah, it's a juicy conceit that is just stretched so thin that you don't care past the initial introduction of the leads a bit of guy summer 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 Place. All right. Our next segment is called the Ghost of sorewith Place. This one was written by Alvin Sappin's lead, based on the short story Soar with Place by Russell Kirk and directed by Ralph Senensky.

This one stars Richard Kylie, Jill Ireland, Mavis Neil and Patrick O'More. It's the story of Oh. It also starts single owl hooting a couple of times, and music in this segment was by Lalo Schiffron. This is the story of an American traveling in Scotland who encounters a crumbling estate and the strange widow who is there although she's not alone. Would you think of this one, Mike, what the hell happened to this episode?

I mean, this was tough for me to follow. So there's a ghost, yeah, and the ghost so did she kill her husband? And then he's coming back for revenge or he's coming back to sleep with her again. Yes, yeah, I don't know. I thought she'd killed him.

Okay. What I wrote was if he vowed to return in a year, right first of all? And now this is him returning right. Oh, there's a lot to unpack. Okay.

The story as laid out is Richard Kylie is heading somewhere in Scotland, accidentally ends up with the sustain She sends him away to some pub and in and where the guy spills this story that she had lived there with some horrible man who used to beat her and have sex with all of their servants, right, and then he fell down some stairs and died, and they think it was her, okay, and missus Ducker, Missus Ducker, I think her name is Okay. So Missus Ducker is the servant who works at sore With place, and she too has been seeing strange things. She has to be home before sundown because there's a ghost in this place, right, Okay. So they start up some sort of quasi romance, Richard Kinley and Jill Ireland, where she invites him for tea and then she spills the story to him where she was brutalized by him, but at the same time was so tired of him that she decided to poison him.

Right, and then he fell down the stairs anyway, right, She didn't push him down the stairs, but she was happy he had fallen down the stairs. And then he vows, you've you're not You've not seen the last of me. I'll return for you in a year. Okay. So now this is the year later, and Richard Kiley has shown up, and now she's going to use Richard Kyley to protect her from this ghost who she did kill, and he has a motive for revenge.

But as you said, Mike, what does the ghost want? Does he want to have sex with her because she confesses that she only had sex with him one time because she's a cold person and can never love anything alive. So is he back to have ghost sex with her? Or is he back for revenge? And if it was one year, what has missus Ducker been seeing in the house for the past year that she's so scared of?

Right, I would like to raise my hand and tell you she was seeing the ghost of I believe Joe Anne Worley because this is the exact same fucking set as house with a ghost that is the exact same staircase. Yeah. Oh, how many more episodes are they going to shoot in this fucking location? All of them? I hope fuck because that I don't know, she must have been seeing another ghost or who knows, or maybe she was July Ireland was just being weird for year.

Yeah, fucking corpses necromantic style. I don't know. Yeah. So eventually the ghost possesses Richard Kylie. Right, no, no, no, the ghost is gone.

Richard Kylie is dead and now he's the ghost. Yeah, Richard turns into the ghost. Richard Kylie dies when he tumbles down the stairs. But I thought that the ghost then possessed his body. No, he became the ghost then obsessed with her.

I didn't get that at all. I thought that it was the husband coming back inside of Kylie's body, like, oh I killed you. Now I can possess your body. Walk up the stairs and be like, okay, baby, we're about to have some good sex. Oh you know what makes sense if that's what was going to happen, and that's what I was hoping would happen.

And like when she says when he says, you said you could never love anything, alive. Well, here I am, and I want it her to go Yeah, right on, let's do it, and then the end. That would have been great, but then it turns into this he's we know he's a ghost because he threatens the same thing the previous ghost threatened her, which I'll be back for you in a year, right, well, and ghostly looking now yeah. Well it was yeah, just so many odd things, like yeah that it happens to be another staircase fall, the weird thing about how, oh I'm just in town. Oh I'll stick around for a while, don't worry about It's like, what are you even doing here?

What are you doing in Ireland? What do you know? Like, you have no plans, you're just wandering. So when you find the hot widow you can hang out with her. That's yeah.

I was very confused, so it seems like being serious when I asked what the hell's going on in this? Had they cast a younger man, that it would have made sense, just somebody backpacking across Scotland and right him and his buddy David, and yeah, they get attacked on the moors. Here's my favorite part of the episode. Like the next day he wakes up at the end, comes downstairs where the pub owner, the inn owner tells him the story of Soar with Place and pours him a tumbler of whiskey and they both drank, and then he goes to pour him another, and he says, no, one's my limit. It's nine am.

What's your limit? You have a nine am limit? You should have a zero limit at nine am. What's going on? I mean, I guess it's the seventy one, But anyway, I just thought that was really funny.

And then like as soon as he gets to Soar with Place, she pours another drink. It's like everyone wants to get mister Burke shit faced in this episode. I wish that this Richard Kylie performance had been half as good as the one from that Nazi episode, because he's given nothing to do here. No, I liked him here. I thought he was good here.

No, no, he was good with what he was given. I thought he was I thought he was good. It was I didn't have any problem with the performances here. I mean, it's just it's not much. That's you're right, it's not much like it.

It is not much like he's fine, but he's just given nothing to do no, because he's there just to react to all of the exposition that everyone just keeps spilling out at him. I just don't understand what ultimately the punchline is here, Like, is it that, oh now he's obsessed with her for a year. Yeah, I just don't get what the point of this was. Oh, no, you got it. It's just not very good.

But what is that point to? What end that she's getting what she deserves? What that a ghost is gonna come fuck her in a year that she could even happen she has to live alone as a ghost or something. I don't know, who knows. Okay, look, here's some good things in the episode.

Get back in your grave, you lousy corpse grade line at least mean Richard Higley yeating himself down the stairs is fucking hilarious. Oh my god. Speaking of in our previous episode we mentioned that was a mister Pettington his scream when he goes out the window. There same scream here when Kylie goes down upstairs. It's a good one.

Like Richard Kylie, it's more effective in the previous episode, but it's you get to hear the full length of it here as he tumbles down those theirs. I like that also when I liked when he goes outside to scan the grounds to see if the ghost is out there, and in the background, the ghost just walks into the house and closes the door. I thought that was a great shoan. I thought that was actually really tense. And then the shot following it, when the ghost is going up the stairs, it passes the chandelier which is all lit candles and they all blow out as he passes.

I thought that was really cool. However, Okay, so Richard Kylie, she tells him the entire story, and he says, well, I'm going to help you. I'm going to help battle this ghost for you. And then she says, well, I'm I'm a cold person and you won't get anything out of me. And he's like, I don't care.

I'm just gonna do this anyway. And then he says, we've got work to do. What work? It's like, he goes around locking it's a ghost. Why are you locking the doors like it can you?

You've it's blown open windows that you've gone and locked, and you've turned around and it's been in the house. What is your plan here? Here's the plan. Leave you idiots. It's a ghost.

It's trapped there. Go to another town, Richard. Kylie just looks at the screen and he's like, they can open doors now right now. Having said that, once the ghost is in the house, Like I said that, I thought that scene was really good until they get to the bedroom and then like turned into an episode of Mannix where they just started punching each other, like even the ghost are like throwing each other around the room. This mutton chopped ghost.

Oh my god, wasn't he good? That was the best part of the episode was the design of the ghost. He looked hilarious. That yeah, that was pretty great. The reveal of him turning around and it's just like a dude in a wig with like some gray face packs at the end.

Honestly, why is Kylie mad at her? Like he wanted her? And she told him I'll never give in to you as a as a lover because I can't feel that way about And now it seems like it should be even if it wasn't the possessed thing, if it was just Kylie, that should also have been the happy ending, right, And he was willing to up everything else now well, and he was willing to like just be like, I'm not going to Dryman anymore. I'm just gonna hang out here with you, like okay, then like then you're good, Like then you can literally stay there forever. Yeah, And the likelihood that she dies in the house is pretty high too, so she'll probably be there forever too, So you're good.

Why are you mad? And she's gonna bang you because you're a ghost now? And Ghostbusters rules would denote that maybe they can have sex or at least some form of interaction. Maybe he can use like the statue to move it on her head or I who knows. But it's just a it's a very weird conceit that the episode ends the way that it does where he's mad, like yeah, yeah, it's that's why I thought he was the other dude should have Yeah, And that actually probably gives credence to that, because it doesn't make sense that he unless that's what ghosts do.

You know? We could have included in like Missus Drucker could have Missus Ducker could have told us ghosts they are only interested in revenge or something. Just a line he just goes, I won't be there at night. I won't stay here after night. It's like, why I won't tell you late, I've seen things, Okay, like what ghosts?

All ghosts are murderous. That's all you need to know. And then leaves that then would have been something where they have the estate that they shot this in the Scottish estate that was in Pasadena. That's the Hinds estate. That's that was also featured in Beaches and mad Men and in season seven, episode one of Colombo Try and Catch Me.

It's you guys are going to see it there too, So shout out to the Hinds Estate, everybody. It's a lot like it does. Tell I'm going to get real good Richard Kylie when he comes back. I think next season Chris a friend Indeed episode he's terrific in that. I'm excited.

I like Richard Kylie. You should have me on for No. One. Okay, you don't have to, that's good. Okay, We're gonna play a previous next episode and we'll be right back to wrap things up.

In a twelve dollars and fifty cent pine box reposes the body of a frontier of Frankie, armed but disarming a victim of an Old West philosophy that any man with a good eye a limber finger in a well known trigger scirts the pastures of immortality. But this chap found out the hard way that immortality is a wish, a word, but infrequently your reality. You wait, your pleasure and a painting we call the waiting room. To those amongst you with a predilection tour antique collection or the occasional bargain hunting. It takes place in out of the way nooks and stalls.

This painting suggests a certain required wariness when it comes to your shopping, because there are moments when behind some dusty book or in a cobwebbed corner of an ancient vestibule, you'll uncover a little object dart, which can horrify the heck out of you, such being the case in this painting when a lady goes junking about and uncovers a mythological statue that has lived past its time and intruths on hers. We call the painting the Last Rites for a dead Druid. Yeah, and then things got real tense on that episode. No, I don't think so, fatherm Alone, No, that's right. On the next midnight viewing, we're gonna be taking a look at season two, episode eighteen that's broken into two segments, The Waiting Room and Last Rites of a Dead Druid.

Until then, where can people find you, Chris Statue, weirdingwaymedia dot com. Where you can find this show, my show, The Culture Cast, along with a lot of the other shows that I work on. And now, hey, Mike White's The Projection. That's a good show that you should be listening to right now. Stop listening to this and go listen to that.

This is over anyways, how about you, Mike, I shouldn't even bother to talk. I guess this episode's over. Indeed it is. Thank you all for joining us here at midnight viewing. The gallery is now closed.