![]() Spielberg was all of 22 years old when he directed Crawford (an acting legend since the 1920s). The second segment, “Eyes”, sees (excuse the pun) legendary actress Joan Crawford (“Mildred Pierce”) in a story directed by future wunderkind director Steven Spielberg, who would also direct an episode of the regular series as well, before becoming a legend himself (starting with 1971’s “Duel” and hitting it big with 1975’s “JAWS”). The painting is actually a series of paintings created by a collaborator of the butler in order to drive the young man insane. Each time he sees the painting the corpse appears to get closer and closer. Artwork plays a pivotal role in the story, as the nephew sees a painting of the outside cemetery seeming to change…with his uncle’s corpse apparently returning to seek revenge. ![]() His uncle’s servant (Ossie Davis) has designs on the fortune as well, and the two try to out-screw each other for the inheritance, with deadly results. The first segment, called “The Cemetery”, casts Roddy McDowell as a spoiled, decadent, wealthy young southerner who returns home to claim his unearned inheritance from his freshly dead uncle. The film was an anthology, consisting of three segments. ![]() It began with Rod Serling in a darkened surreal art gallery, introducing each segment via a single painting. As most good pilots do, the “Night Gallery” pilot film successfully set the tone for the series that followed in December of 1970. The pilot episode aired in 1969 as a 90 minute TV movie, and starred Joan Crawford, Roddy McDowell, Ossie Davis, and Richard Kiley. I won’t lie “The Night Gallery” scared the living s#!t out of me as a kid… and I couldn’t get enough of it. There was also, of course, an NBC-TV series hosted by none other than Rod Serling himself, called “The Night Gallery”. In those days, there was a witch’s brew of horror flicks & TV series/movies involving haunted houses, witch’s cults, or satanic themes (“Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, “The Devil’s Rain”, “Race With the Devil”, “Satan’s School For Girls” and “Legend of Hell House” to name a few). The still-scary opening titles of “Night Gallery”…ĭecember of 1973 saw the release of William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist”, which was the first movie I remember attending (at the wildly inappropriate age of 7) with lines going around the block outside of the theater. In fact, the 1970s seemed to be much more cool with those sort of things in popular media than we are today ( I’m looking at you, Nashville Catholic School’s ban of Harry Potter books…). The early 1970s were a time where the occult was everywhere. The late Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” was my absolute favorite television show (that is, before “Star Trek” came into my life). “Famous Monsters of Filmland” magazine was my first magazine subscription and monthly bible (rest in peace, Forry Ackerman). I used to build monster model kits with loving patience. When I was a little boy (far too little to watch horror, anyway), I was madly in love with monsters and the supernatural. Some of the terrifying faces that populated the main credits sequence of “The Night Gallery”’s first two seasons.
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