Night Gallery

Ahh, it’s good to be back down in the Sewer again, it feels like it’s been forever. When the old ‘free content site that pays its contributors’ goes belly up, as it must always, then the Sewer just starts pumping its entire outflow into the old ‘hideously polluted river’.

But I think my no-traffic home page can eventually match the pitifully low-traffic previous Video Sewer, whose host at least advertised for a while. Venture Capital. Bwahh ha ha ha ha ha ha!

So tell all your friends to sleaze on down the road to that open stench-trap known as Video Sewer. You probably won’t regret it.

What’s up? Hey, thanks to Columbia House’s ‘Re-TV’ series, you can watch all the junk from the ‘70s that forms a vague background for your confused and anxiety-stricken lives. First on my chopping block is one from the series Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (First season now also available in no-frills DVD form ~ ED.) Yes, I can hear you drooling even now…

I’m eager to delve further into this collection. I loved the show when I was a kid, ok, it was in syndication by then, but what does it matter? However, I only remember a few choice episodes. Oddly, if this particular cassette is any indication nearly all Night Gallery stories were period pieces, 4 out of 5 on this cassette. Odd.

‘A Question of Fear’ starring Leslie Nielsen is the only non period piece, and also the most successful of the batch. Nielsen’s clichéd ‘soldier of fortune’ is wagered $15,000 that he can spend a night unscathed in a haunted house. Once in the house the cheesy scare effects start right up, with special effects so poor it makes Lost in Space look like The Matrix. Everything turns a corner as Nielsen slowly searches the house for a low sound, like a man or woman caught between weeping, insane giggles, and an unclean orgasmic pleasure. It’s Blair Witch, baby! Finally, the twisted, melodramatic ending leaves a nasty taste in your mouth.

Entertaining though not scary is the Jeannot Szwarc directed version of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cool Air. Beautifully filmed and disorienting bookends for this piece add a creepy extra touch. John Badham’s Camera Obscura, another vengeance themed period piece, benefits from eerie dream-like sequences set in a strangely empty town, but the blunt plot and uninspired set-up let you down despite good acting.

Nostalgia buffs and fans of the macabre would do well to seek these tapes out if it’s been a long time since they’ve taken a tour…of The Night Gallery.

Hey, how’s that for a killer tag?