A Survey of Monsters-Part Eight

Universal Monsters Live

So, I'm following three threads to get to the monster of the twenty-first century:

1. The Horror Monster, which you might also call the supernatural monster, the monster of fantasy, or the monster from the past, represented here by the Universal monster;
2. The Science Fiction Monster, which you might also call the scientific monster or the monster of the future, and which arose in our popular culture after World War II; and
3. The Real-Life Monster, which includes the psychopathic killer and the totalitarian, both of which came out of the nineteenth century, and both of which thrive on mass movements and mass developments.

I believe the monster of the twenty-first century is woven from these three threads.

***

If you go by the number of movie titles released, Universal monsters weren't so popular after World War II as they were during and before. But that's only part of the picture. If you look at the whole thing, you begin to see that they continued to be popular for years afterward. After 1950, Universal Pictures made at least three smart moves in keeping its monsters alive and in the public eye.

As we all know, the world turned on the events of the Second World War. That was as true in movies and popular culture as in anything else. In the first full year after the war, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), an extraordinary film and one as true to life as any big picture of the previous decade or more, won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. (1) More movies  treating real-life problems in more realistic ways followed. The post-war cinema was also characterized by film noir, that is, frank, realistic (though usually stylized) movies about crime, sex, terror, anxiety, and suspense, often filmed on location in the kind of city described by Fritz Leiber, Jr., in "Smoke Ghost," "The Inheritance," and "The Dreams of Albert Moreland." Interestingly, film noir had its roots in pulp fiction, in Universal monster movies of the 1930s, and before that, in German Expressionism of the Weimar period, among other things. (2) In any case, horror movies and monster movies may have declined in popularity after the war in comparison to true-to-life movies, film noir, crime dramas, and so on, but like the undead, they kept coming back.

***

In 1948, in the same year that the first Abbott and Costello-Universal monster team-up came out, CBS and ABC began regular network television broadcasts on the East Coast. They had been beaten to the punch by NBC television (1944) and Dumont (1946), but that didn't matter: there was plenty in the television business for everybody. There still is. There had been television broadcasts before. For instance, Hugo Gernsback, the father of magazine science fiction, began broadcasting television signals in New York City eighty-six years ago this month, on August 14, 1928. But TV didn't take off until after the war, when technology improved, the population (especially of children) rapidly increased, and Americans began enjoying the prosperity of the 1950s. In 1955, the last Abbott and Costello-Universal monster team-up--and the last Universal monster movie of the classic era--came out. I don't think it's any coincidence at all that in 1957, just two years later and a decade into the TV craze, Universal began syndicating its classic horror movies to American television stations as a package called Shock Theater. There was already a template for showing horror movies on the small screen. On May 1, 1954, actress Maila Nurmi (1922-2008), in her role as Vampira, became the first television horror host, on KABC-TV, Los Angeles. Soon there were horror hosts on TV stations large and small, and they all showed old monster movies and horror movies, a good deal of them from Universal Pictures.

Also in 1957, Hammer Film Productions of Great Britain released The Curse of Frankenstein starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. The movie was an immediate success and the first of what would eventually be branded as "Hammer Horror." Bloodier and sexier than Universal horror, the Hammer movies had their across-the-pond counterpart in American International Pictures (AIP). Founded in 1954, AIP specialized in movies for teenagers and young adults. AIP's first monster movie was The Beast with a Million Eyes from 1955, but the company was most well known for its 1960s adaptations of stories by Edgar Allan Poe starring Vincent Price and directed by Roger Corman. Despite its reputation for making cheapies, AIP didn't always stint on the writing. Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, and Ray Russell were among the scenarists for the Poe-Corman series. Matheson even contributed to the screenplay adaptation of his own book, I Am Legend (1954), a movie called The Last Man on Earth (1964), which was remade in 1971 as The Omega Man. More on that later.

In 1958, owing to the howling success of Shock Theater (and perhaps also Hammer films and AIP), James Warren and Forrest J Ackerman issued Famous Monsters of Filmland, a one-shot magazine that grew into a franchise and ran for a quarter of a century. After that there was a boom of monster magazines, including Monster Parade (1958-1959), Horror Monsters (1961-1965), Mad Monsters (1961-1965), Castle of Frankenstein (1962-1975), Fantastic Monsters of the Films (1962-1963), For Monsters Only (1965-1972), and so on. (4) In 1961, Aurora Plastics Company issued Frankenstein's Monster, its first model licensed from the Universal line. There is a special place in my heart for Aurora monster models, so I will list them all:

• Frankenstein's Monster (1961)
• Dracula (1962)
• The Wolf Man (1962)
• The Mummy (1963)
• The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1963)
• The Phantom of the Opera (1963)
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1964)
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1964)
• King Kong (1964)
• Godzilla (1964)
• Salem Witch (1965)
• The Bride of Frankenstein (1965)
• The Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Maré (1966)

Not all of those were Universal monsters of course. The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde model was based on the Paramount picture of 1931 (I think), King Kong on the RKO Radio picture of 1933, Godzilla on the Japanese film of 1954, the Salem Witch on history and folklore, and the Forgotten Prisoner on a collaborative idea between Aurora Plastics and Famous Monsters of Filmland. Aurora also issued series of Monster Rods (monsters driving hotrods), Monster Scenes, and Monsters of the Movies, a line that included Rodan and Ghidra.

The licensing of Universal monsters didn't end with models. There were also toys, figurines, drinking glasses, ice cream spoons, and every other thing you can think of, including trading cards in the Creature Feature/You'll Die Laughing series. You might as well say there was a monster craze in the late 1950s and into the 1960s. Monster-themed shows included The Munsters (1964-1966) and The Addams Family (1964-1966), both of which had casts like an old Universal monster team-up. Those two shows were predated by The Twilight Zone (1959-1964), but that was mostly a show of science fiction and Weird Tales-like fantasy. However, it paved the way for The Outer Limits (1963-1965), a show known for its monsters. The Outer Limits in turn influenced the makers of Star Trek (1966-1969), the first broadcast episode of which, called "The Man Trap," featured  an Outer Limits-like monster, the unforgettable salt vampire. Eventually there were enough monsters of Star Trek to fill a book of that title.

So, as television took off, Universal packaged its old movies for syndication, and once those movies started reaching a new generation of viewers, the studio began licensing its monsters for other media and other merchandise. Clearly, Universal monsters were not going to go to their graves. In fact they are still with us. Like I have suggested, part of that is because of branding, advertising, marketing, promoting, selling, etc. Part of it because of the continuing appeal of the Universal characters. But part of it, too, is because of nostalgia. 

If you disregard the movies of the silent era and look only at monsters of the talkies, only a quarter century--one human generation--separated Frankenstein and Dracula (both from 1931), from the last of the Universal monster movies, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955). If supernatural monsters or monsters of fantasy are also monsters of the past, then it seems to me that nostalgia--a sense that something from the past has been lost--would play its part in the popularity of those same monsters. (5) Supernatural monsters in the movies scare you. Afterwards, you are released from your fear, able to relax and to sleep without nightmares. Certain other monsters, monsters of science fiction as well as real-life monsters, don't allow the same kind of catharsis. Being of the present (real-life monsters) or of the future (science fiction monsters), they provoke feelings of anxiety, not of nostalgia or simple fright. There isn't any catharsis in anxiety. It goes on unrelieved.

***

Universal surely saw the writing on the wall in the early 1950s. In the previous two decades, the studio had built up a sizable body of work--a very valuable property--and they exploited it by syndicating and selling licenses for their monster movies and characters. They did more than that, though. In a canny move, they began making movies about a new kind of monster to take the place of the old. Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy wasn't the last Universal monster movie. It was only the last of a certain type. You might have noticed that I have barely mentioned The Creature from the Black Lagoon in my discussion of Universal monsters. There is a reason for that, for the Creature doesn't really fit well with the movie monsters of the previous twenty-five years. He is after all not a supernatural monster but a monster of a new age, a monster of science. And he made his debut sixty years ago, in 1954, as the previous era was coming to its end.

Notes

(1) MacKinlay Kantor, a former pulp writer and editor, wrote the novella on which the movie was based.

(2) Theorists might like to separate film noir from fantasy genres such as horror or science fiction, but that's like comparing apples to oranges. Film noir is a form, an aesthetic, or even simply a series of techniques. Horror and science fiction are genres. They need not be exclusive. So, for example, isn't Cat People (1942) film noir in its way?

(3) That was sixty years ago this year (and the same year in which Weird Tales came to an end--that's no mere coincidence), so Happy Birthday to Vampira and to television horror hosts everywhere.

(4) According to The Collector's Guide to Monster, Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Magazines by Bob Michelucci (1988), Screen Chills, from 1957, was "apparently" the world's first movie monster magazine.
(5) Supernatural monsters in literature began with Gothicism, which was an expression of nostalgia. According to Wikipedia, the word nostalgia was first applied to homesick Swiss mercenaries. Switzerland was of course the place of origin of the Gothic romance Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, of the book's title character, and of the monster himself. I don't remember now if Frankenstein's Monster ever feels homesick, but after his creation, he spends his life wandering over the world. This quote from the creature strikes me: "I am malicious because I am miserable." We have probably all felt that way in our lives, but most of us, thankfully, don't take it very far. Those who do, we may call monsters. Hitler was one of them. Eric Hoffer described the same feeling among the subjects of his book The True Believer. The True Believer, which often becomes a totalitarian monster, derives his animating idea in part from Rousseau. Like Frankenstein's Monster, Rousseau hailed from Switzerland, but that may be only the most superficial similarity between the two. If you would like to find out more, just do an Internet search on Frankenstein and Rousseau, but be prepared for some heavy academic reading.

Finally, to get all the anniversaries and birthdays in:

Happy Birthday

Vampira and Horror Hosts Everywhere (60 years)
American International Pictures (60 years)
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (60 years)
The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price (50 years)

Godzilla (60 years)

The Munsters and The Addams Family TV shows (50 years)

and

The Creature from the Black Lagoon (60 years)

Text copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

What Is the Monster of the Twenty-First Century?-Part Three

The Psychopathic Monster

When I was a child, I watched monster movies every chance I got. Every Friday night, our local horror host, Sammy Terry, showed monster movies from the 1930s through the 1960s, and on Saturday nights, we were treated to Science Fiction Theater. (1) Then, in the late 1970s and early '80s, a new kind of horror movie showed up at the theater. Mad slashers and hackers--Michael Myers from Halloween (1978), Jason from Friday the Thirteenth (1980), and all their demented offspring--practically monopolized horror movies for years. I objected. My complaint was that these are not horror movies and that slashers and hackers are not monsters. In my mind, a monster is a vampire, a werewolf, a zombie, or a space alien, or a giant ant, tarantula, or praying mantis. A horror movie has a monster, not a human being, as its villain or antagonist. I was not interested in guys with knives. (2) I felt that the essence of horror or terror is not blood and guts but something else. But I was missing something, for the murderous psychopath is in fact a monster, and one of the few real kinds of monsters in human history.

In our scientific age--more accurately, in this age of Scientism--we see psychopathy as a mental illness or as an organic (in other words, material) phenomenon. The psychopath might cut people into pieces, but that's only because there is something wrong with his brain. In the Middle Ages and even into the twentieth century, people who cut, shredded, and consumed other people were called beasts, werewolves, or vampires. They were seen as evil, demonic, or possessed. Only in the nineteenth century, when psychology became a science of sorts, did the psychopath cross over from the realm of the supernatural or metaphysical into the realm of the material or scientific. The psychopath did another kind of crossing over as well. In the Middle Ages, he lived on the fringes of humanity, in a cave, deep in the woods, or in a hovel on the edge of settlement. (3) But in the nineteenth century--not coincidentally, towards the end of the nineteenth century--the psychopathic killer moved to the city, and there he found his natural home.

For most of the history of humanity, we lived on farms and in rural areas. There were cities of course, and people were naturally drawn to cities, but life in the city as we know it was not possible until the mass movements and mass developments of the nineteenth century--mass production, mass transportation, mass education, mass employment, mass organization, mass media, and so on. The psychopathic killer had a hard time of it in his hometown. There would have been little in the way of privacy. Everyone knew everyone else. Moreover, the psychopath would not have easily found prey among people who were intimately connected to family, friends, church, and society. But the developments of the nineteenth gave the psychopath all he needed, for in a city of masses, he found secrecy, privacy, and anonymity for himself, and the loneliness, isolation, and alienation he needed in his prey. By the 1880s, it seems, large cities reached critical mass. In 1888, Jack the Ripper butchered five women in London. Five years later, H.H. Holmes dissected, dissolved, and otherwise mutilated and murdered at least twenty-seven in his Chicago house of horrors. The day of the serial killer had arrived, and as the twentieth century progressed, he became ever more notorious, a true monster for our times. He is still with us and not likely to go away anytime soon, for, again, he thrives on the secrecy, privacy, anonymity, isolation, and alienation of modern life, especially in cities and especially among the lives of the lonely and desperate masses.

To be continued . . .

Notes

(1) Both were on WTTV Channel 4 out of Bloomington and Indianapolis, one of the premiere independent TV stations in the United States. Pay TV of today is basically Channel 4 of old: old movies, old television shows, old cartoons, sports, talk shows, news, etc.

(2) I also objected to the stupidity of the characters, who, when faced with the realization that a crazy guy with a knife is on the loose, decide to split up. And I objected to the subtext for so many of those movies: that independent teenagers, experimenting with sex and other transgressions, must be punished by being cut into pieces. It's a kind of Puritanism that, I suppose, goes back to our origins as a nation.

(3) That at least is the popular notion. There were psychopaths or serial killers among the well born as well. Elizabeth Báthory is the obvious example. In any case, it's worth noting that the historical monster also inhabited the outer edges of the world. It's no coincidence that the psychopath--the Medieval beast, vampire, or werewolf--did as well. I will have more on all that by the end of this series of articles.

Copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Sammy Terry, RIP

Sammy Terry died again this week. No one knows how old he was. For anyone not from Indianapolis or central Indiana, Sammy Terry was the onscreen persona of Bob Carter, an actor and television personality in Indianapolis and Bloomington. From 1962 to 1989, Sammy hosted Nightmare Theater, a late-night television show that broadcast old horror movies from the studios of WTTV, Channel 4. When we were kids, Nightmare Theater was on Friday nights until late. Science Fiction Theater (which did not have a host but--if I remember right--played a jazzed-up version of "Dancing in the Darkness" as its theme) followed on Saturday nights. I can't count the number of classic (and not-so-classic) horror movies, monster movies, and science fiction movies I saw on those two shows.

Bob Carter was born on December 4, 1929. He arrived in Indianapolis in the late fifties or early sixties. Along with Janie, who showed early morning cartoons, and Cowboy Bob, who showed cartoons at lunchtime or in the afternoon, Mr. Carter, in the guise of Sammy Terry, became a fixture in his adopted home town. If you weren't scared by Sammy Terry and his ghoulish laughter (as my sister was), you most assuredly loved him, being as he was a part of your childhood. Bob Carter died on June 30, 2013, at age eighty-three. You can see his official website by clicking here.

RIP, Bob Carter and Sammy Terry.

I couldn't have asked for a better picture: Cowboy Bob, Janie, and Sammy Terry, together, probably signing autographs. I don't know the date or the occasion, but those look like Sharpies on the table, and Cowboy Bob is graying at the temples, so not contemporaneous with their respective shows. The current issue of Traces, the magazine of the Indiana Historical Society, has an article about the personalities from Channel 4.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales on Film-The Ray Bradbury Theater

The Ray Bradbury Theater

In the tradition of The Twilight Zone and Rod Serling's Night Gallery, The Ray Bradbury Theater presented an anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories, all drawn from the work of the host, Ray Bradbury. Produced in Canada, The Ray Bradbury Theater ran for six seasons between 1985 and 1992. (There weren't any episodes in 1987 or 1991.) Each episode ran twenty-three minutes and there were sixty-five episodes in all. Stars of the show included William Shatner, Jeff Goldblum, Peter O'Toole, Drew Barrymore, Leslie Nielsen, James Whitmore, Patrick Macnee, Shelly Duvall, Paul Le Mat, and Susannah York, all of whom had previously performed in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. (You can test your knowledge of those genres by guessing an appropriate TV show or movie--and no peeking at the Internet Movie Database.) At least eleven episodes of The Ray Bradbury Theater were based on short stories that originally appeared in Weird Tales magazine, all under their original titles with only slight variations:

"The Crowd" (1985; from Weird Tales, May 1943)

"Skeleton" (1988; from WT, Sept. 1945)

"There Was an Old Woman" (1988; from WT, July 1944)

"The Lake" (1989; from WT, May 1944)

"The Wind" (1989; from WT, Mar. 1943)

"The Black Ferris" (1990; from WT, May 1948)

"The Jar" (1992; from WT, Nov. 1944)

"Let's Play Poison" (1992; from WT, Nov. 1946)

"The Dead Man" (1992; from WT, July 1945)

"The Handler" (1992; from WT, Jan. 1947)

"The Tombstone" (1992; from WT, Mar. 1945)

Text copyright 2012, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales on Film-Thriller

Thriller

Descended from radio drama, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962) and The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) paved the way for anthology series on television. The Outer Limits (1963-1965) was probably the most well known of the anthology series to come along in the early 1960s, but there were others. Hosted by Boris Karloff, Thriller (1960-1962) combined tales of crime with tales of fantasy and horror. That uneven mix is blamed for the short run of the show. Nonetheless, Thriller benefitted from a first-rate assembly of writers, including Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, and Charles Beaumont. The show's casts read like a who's who of television and movie stars and character actors: Mary Astor, MacDonald Carey, John Carradine, Oscar Homolka, William Shatner, Leslie Nielson, Everett Sloan, Cloris Leachman, Mary Tyler Moore, Mort Sahl, Robert Vaughn, and many, many more appeared on Thriller during its two-year run.

Thriller drew many of its stories from pulp fiction, including weird tales by Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, and Margaret St. Clair. In their book, Fantastic Television (1977), authors Gary Gerani and Paul H. Schulman give special attention to adaptations of "The Cheaters" by Robert Bloch and "Pigeons from Hell" by Robert E. Howard, calling "The Cheaters," "one of the finest horror tales ever aired."

The host and a sometime cast member of Thriller was Boris Karloff (1887-1969). Karloff had of course made a name for himself as the monster in Universal's Frankenstein (1931). He played in many more horror and fantasy films over the years, including four low-budget Mexican productions released after his death. His role as a horror host was an interesting one. Karloff hosted three horror/fantasy TV series altogether. The first, called The Veil (1958), consisted of only twelve episodes and never aired, while the third, Out of This World (1962), was made for British television and lasted only thirteen episodes. Thriller, with 67 episodes, was more successful.

It's hard to say what ingredients went into the mix, but the horror host appears to have been a character type developed for 1950s television. According to Wikipedia, Vampira, played by Maila Nurmi and based on Charles Addams' cartoon femme fatale (later named Morticia), is accepted as the first TV horror host. She began her career on KABC-TV in Los Angeles in 1954. Soon, with the release of packages of horror movies into syndication, horror hosts were raising their ugly heads everywhere on local television. (Sammy Terry played the part in Indianapolis where I grew up.) But what was the origin of the horror host? You can make the case that comic books beat television to the punch with such characters as the Crypt-Keeper, the Vault-Keeper, and the Old Witch from EC Comics.

Thriller inspired a return to comics for the horror host. In October 1962--after the last television episode upon which it was based had aired--Gold Key introduced Boris Karloff Thriller, an 80-page comic book with Karloff's picture on the cover. After only two issues, the book was retitled Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery and ran for 95 more issues, finally to give up the ghost in February 1980. By then few would have remembered the television show that gave rise to the comic book.

In any case, here's a list of Thriller episodes based on stories from Weird Tales. There may be omissions: some episodes sound suspiciously weird--by title, author, or plot--but I couldn't make a definite connection to "The Unique Magazine." If anyone has any changes to make, feel free to submit them.

Season 1 (1960-1961)

"The Cheaters" by Robert Bloch, adapted by Donald S. Sanford (Weird Tales, Nov. 1947)

"Trio for Terror," three stories including "The Extra Passenger" by August Derleth, adapted by Barré Lyndon (Weird Tales, Jan. 1947)

"Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" by Robert Bloch, adapted by Barré Lyndon (Weird Tales, July 1943)

"The Devil's Ticket" by Robert Bloch, adapted by Bloch (Weird Tales, Sept. 1944)

"Parasite Mansion" by Mary Elizabeth Counselman, adapted by Donald S. Sanford (Weird Tales [?])

"Mr. George" by August Derleth, adapted by Donald S. Sanford (Weird Tales, Mar. 1947)
"The Terror in Teakwood" by Harold Lawlor, adapted by Alan Caillou (Weird Tales, Mar. 1947)
"Pigeons from Hell" by Robert E. Howard, adapted by John Kneubuhl (Weird Tales, Mar. 1938, reprinted Nov. 1951)
"The Grim Reaper" by Harold Lawlor, adapted by Robert Bloch (Weird Tales [?] )

Season 2 (1961-1962)
"What Beckoning Ghost?" by Harold Lawlor, adapted by Donald S. Sanford (Weird Tales, July 1948)
"The Premature Burial" by Edgar Allan Poe, adapted by William D. Gordon (Weird Tales, Nov. 1933)
"The Weird Tailor" by Robert Bloch, adapted by Bloch (Weird Tales, July 1950)
"Masquerade" by Henry Kuttner, adapted by Donald S. Sanford (Weird Tales, May 1942)
"The Return of Andrew Bentley" by August Derleth and Mark Schorer, adapted by Richard Matheson (Weird Tales, Sept. 1933)
"The Remarkable Mrs. Hawk" by Margaret St. Clair, adapted by Donald S. Sanford (Weird Tales, July 1950 as "Mrs. Haek" [?])
"Waxworks" by Robert Bloch, adapted by Bloch (Weird Tales, Jan. 1939)
"A Wig for Miss Devore" by August Derleth, adapted by Derleth and Donald S. Sanford (Weird Tales, May 1943)
"The Incredible Doktor Markesan" by August Derleth and Mark Schorer, adapted by Donald S. Sanford (Weird Tales, June 1934, as "Colonel Markeson")

Boris Karloff as the monster in an iconic still photo from Universal Pictures' Frankenstein (1931). The story that inspired the movie, written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, was serialized in Weird Tales in May-December 1932, probably to capitalize on the release of the film. According to the Internet Movie Database, the premiere of Frankenstein occurred on November 21, 1931, making today the eightieth anniversary of the movie monster. Happy Birthday, Frankenstein's Monster!

Nearly three decades later, Karloff began his stint as host of Thriller, an NBC-TV anthology series of crime and horror stories. Here's the cover of the first issue of Gold Key's comic book adaptation of the show, released after the last episode had aired.

The title of Thriller was changed to Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery after the first two issues. Gold Key was known for its great painted covers, not only for this title, but also for Dr. Solar, Star Trek, Space Family Robinson, and others. Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery ran until 1980.

Finally, a still from the Thriller episode "Pigeons from Hell" by Robert E. Howard, a story that first appeared in Weird Tales in May 1938. The photo is from the book Fantastic Television by Gary Gerani and Paul H. Schulman (1977). 

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales on Film-Rod Serling's Night Gallery

Rod Serling's Night Gallery

Rod Serling (1924-1975) was one of the heroes of television in what some consider its Golden Age of the 1950s. His science fiction anthology The Twilight Zone went on the air in the final television season of that golden decade and lasted five years, finally succumbing to cancellation in 1964. Six years later, Serling tried his hand at occult and weird fiction with his self-titled TV series Rod Serling's Night Gallery. As with The Twilight Zone, Serling introduced each installment in the anthology. This time Serling's introductions came in his role as the curator of the eponymous gallery. The series grew out of a feature-length pilot, one segment of which was directed by a young Steven Spielberg.

The majority of Night Gallery episodes were Serling's work, either original or as adaptations from magazines or anthologies. Other writers contributed teleplays as well. I have counted six episodes or installments based on stories from Weird Tales. I remember two from when I watched Night Gallery (as the show was known) as a child, "Brenda" and "Pickman's Model." I have recently started watching Rod Serling's Night Gallery again, and I can see why "Pickman's Model," with its fight scene between Pickman and his monster, would appeal to a child. I don't remember "Death on a Barge" from the first time around, but I can recommend it for its performance by a young and very beautiful Lesley Ann Warren and for a peek at another era in television, when there was plenty of sex for the grown-ups and chills and thrills for the kids. The episode concludes with an unsubtle and wholly erotic double entendre, one that would have flown over the heads of the kids watching.

Each season of Night Gallery had a different main title sequence. Each is creepy in its own way, but the sequence from the second season has to rank as one of the best of any television series, before or since. Night Gallery was cancelled with its third season. Two years later, television fans were shocked and saddened to hear that Rod Serling had died at age fifty. Few figures in the medium's history are as well remembered.

Season 1 (1970-1971)

• "The Dead Man" by Fritz Leiber, Jr. (Weird Tales, Nov. 1950), teleplay by Douglas Heyes

Season 2 (1971-1972)

• "The Phantom Farmhouse" by Seabury Quinn (Weird Tales, Oct. 1923, reprinted Mar. 1929), teleplay by Halsted Welles
• "Brenda" by Margaret St. Clair (Weird Tales, Mar. 1954), teleplay by Douglas Heyes
• "Pickman's Model" by H.P. Lovecraft (Weird Tales, Oct. 1927, reprinted Nov. 1936), teleplay by Alvin Sapinsley
• "The Dear Departed" by Alice-Mary Schnirring (Weird Tales, May 1944), teleplay by Rod Serling

Season 3 (1972-1973)

• "Death on a Barge" by Everil Worrell (Weird Tales, Dec. 1927, as "The Canal," reprinted Apr. 1935), teleplay by Halsted Welles

Other Stories by Tellers of Weird Tales from
Rod Serling's Night Gallery 

• "The Doll" by Algernon Blackwood (The Doll and One Other, 1946)
• "The Horsehair Trunk" by Dave Grubb (Collier's, May 25, 1946, as "The Last Laurel")
• "The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes" by Margaret St. Clair (McLean's, 1950)
• "Death in the Family" by Miriam Allen deFord (Stories That Scared Even Me, edited by Alfred Hitchcock, 1967)
• "The Devil Is Not Mocked" by Manly Wade Wellman (Unknown Worlds, June 1943)
• "Big Surprise" by Richard Matheson (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, 1959, as "What Was in the Box")
• "House--With Guest" by August Derleth (Lonesome Places, 1962, as "House--With Ghost)
• "The Dark Boy" by August Derleth (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Feb. 1957)
• "Cool Air" by H.P. Lovecraft (Tales of Magic and Mystery, Mar. 1928)
• "The Painted Mirror" by Donald Wandrei (Esquire, May 1937)
• "Lagoda's Head" by August Derleth (Source unknown)
• "The Funeral" by Richard Matheson (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Apr. 1955)
• "The Caterpillar" by Oscar Cook (Switch on the Light, 1931, as "Boomerang")
• "Little Girl Lost" by E.C. Tubb (New Worlds, 1955)
• "The Return of the Sorcerer" by Clark Ashton Smith (Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, Sept. 1931)
• "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" by Fritz Leiber, Jr. (The Girl with the Hungry Eyes and Other Stories, 1949)
• "The Ring with the Red Velvet Ropes" by Edward D. Hoch (Source unknown)

Rod Serling in his role as after-hours guide to the Night Gallery.

And Lesley Ann Warren in her role as Hyacinth in the Night Gallery episode "Death on a Barge," based on a vampire story, "The Canal" by Everil Worrell, originally published in Weird Tales magazine.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley