House - With Ghost/A Midnight Visit to the Neighborhood Blood Bank/Dr. Stringfellow's Rejuvenator/Hell's Bells

This isn't the strongest episode in Night Gallery's library, but it's not even 2 minutes long, so there's not much time to get philosophical about it. The opening music and painting for this short vignette are both creepy and eerie, but that's as far as that goes. Victor Buono stars as the vampire out to collect blood from a sleeping young lady, although Buono would prefer a man(if you catch my drift), but that's another story for another time. The room's dark atmosphere and open window are OK, even when the bat transforms into the vampire is at least average for the early 70's. There isn't much dialog except the punch line when the woman utters "I gave at the office.", then the once hungry vampire sighs and says "sorry" then sighs and flies away, changing from vampire to bat, after he puts his notebook and pencil back in his pocket.

In this segment, which Theodore J. Flicker adapted from the Harry Turner short story, and also directed, stoner hippie Randy Miller (John Astin) crashes his car, resulting in his death, and while on the way to Hell, encounters 3 angry demons (played respectively by Flicker, Gene Kearney, and producer Jack Laird) who accuse Miller of committing a wide variety of sins. When Miller arrives in Hell, he discovers that it has a waiting room...and rules of conduct...and a fat lady (Jody Gilbert) who yells at people if those rules are broken. Miller isn't greatly concerned, though. He envisions the real Hell to come, complete with tormented souls, capering demons, and the Prince of Darkness all awaiting him to appear. A fire door opens and he passes expectantly into the waiting hell mouth of... A sitting room, which is furnished with dull furniture and drab wallpaper. Miller is pleased to see a jukebox in one corner of the room, with a stack of records on the changer, but when he selects the first record, instead of rock and roll he gets a decidedly boring big band tune, and is unable to get the record to stop playing. A simple, boring farmer (Hank Worden) appears in a rocking chair, and Miller asks this guy what his thoughts are concerning the disbanding of the Beatles, only to hear from the Bore that you get rid of beetles using boric acid, in addition to telling Miller about such uninteresting subjects as baby's croup, crop rotation, and the Farmer's Almanac, to name a few. Hell is turning out to be a real bummer. At this point, a vacationing couple (John J. Fox and Ceil Cabot) appear, along with their slide projector and 8,500 slides of their Tijuana trip. As Mr. and Mrs. Tourist launch into their dissertation on the joys of touring Mexico, Miller's patience is exhausted, and he demands that the Devil show his face. Satan (played by Flicker) appears, calm, unimposing, and quite short. Sure, he's got the horns, the beard, and the pitchfork, but he isn't quite as awe-inspiring as Miller had envisioned him to be. Miller asks him about the whips, the chains, the snakes, and the boiling oil, all the things that Miller thinks Hell should have. Satan tells Miller, "This is it. My dear boy, Hell is never what you quite expect it to be. For you, this is it. Don't you like it?" Miller tells him, "No, it's a real downer." Satan responds, "Yes it is, isn't it? You know, they have a room up in Heaven just like this one, and while this room is Hell for you, absolute, beastly Hell, up there the same room is someone else's idea of Heaven. Think about it. Bye." And with a wave, the Devil is gone. Hell's latest initiate, Randy Miller, clamps his hands over his ears in an effort to shut out the yammering voices of the Bore, Mr. and Mrs. Tourist, and that gratingly boring big band music, and he moans repeatedly, "Bummer, bummer, bummer," as he does so. I found this to be a rather enjoyable absurd view of Hell thanks to Theodore Flicker's direction, his script, and the performances of the cast. Spoiler alert: Theodore Flicker was to have directed more segments of Night Gallery after this, but refused to because of the temper of the cinematographer assigned to him, Lionel Lindon.

'House - With Ghost' - A man plots to get rid of his awful wife by scaring her to death in a haunted house, but the ghost has his own plans... Mediocre tale with Bernard Fox coming off best as the determined ghost.

'A Midnight Visit To The Neighborhood Blood Bank' - Dreadful.

'Dr. Stringfellow's Rejuvenator' - Forrest Tucker plays an old west peddler/con man whose snake oil has startling effects he didn't anticipate. Best of the four is an effective tale of justice and irony.

'Hell's Bells' - John Astin plays a hippie who dies and goes to hell, which isn't as he expects unfortunately for him... Amusing tale is silly but has a most pointed moral point to make, and memorable end.

"House, with Ghost" stars Bob Crane, Hogan from "Hogan's Heroes" who eventually succumbed to some pretty weird stuff. He is paired up with "Laugh In"s Joanne Woorley. He wants her dead so he can pursue an affair with an insensitive blonde who is only interested in his money. He rents an English house which supposedly has a ghost and waits for his wife's nerves to get the best of her. Unfortunately, things don't always work out. I found this episode really dull.

"A Midnight Visit to the Neighborhood Blood Bank" isn't even worth mentioning. A young woman is visited by a vampire (didn't we just see the same thing?) Short and clichéd.

Forrest Tucker is featured in "Dr. Stringfellow's Rejuvenator." He is a snake oil salesman in the old West. He is generally harmless until a man comes to him to get assistance for his dying daughter. The good doctor has an adversary, a drunk who is also a doctor, who challenges him at every turn. Stringfellow gives the girl some of his stuff, promising that it will make her well. When it doesn't he promises that he can bring her back from the grave. What happens makes for a neat horror story. The only problem is the pacing is so plodding and the events unfold so slowly that on is almost lulled to sleep. Good idea but not so good execution.

"Hell's Bells" stars John Astin (there must have been a Patty Duke, John Astin connection in this series). He is a reckless hippy who drives too fast and gets himself killed. He ends up in a waiting room, imagining that he is in Hell. Interestingly, there are strange things that happen. A fat lady called "the fat lady" appears every time he throws litter on the floor. He eventually goes into a dull room with ugly furniture, a stack of records that play awful music, an old man who doesn't hear well and runs on and on, and a couple who are going to show him their slides of their trip to Tijuana. There are thousands of them. Astin is quite good in this and it is just goofy fun. The best of this lot.