Night Gallery - Serling!

Rod Serling is without a doubt one of the most important figures in early television, especially in the presentation of science fiction and fantasy. The Twilight Zone remains the gold standard of storytelling in this genre after six decades. Everything that comes along in that vein always looks like a variation on The Twilight Zone. And that's true for Night Gallery as well. Night Gallery was of course Serling's very early 70's attempt to get back onto television with the kind of smart and thoughtful yarns that had made The Twilight Zone iconic. That Night Gallery falls short is not Serling's fault, for the show was done on a less than a shoestring budget. 

Whereas The Twilight Zone offered one story a week, ideally a half hour, Night Gallery was saddled with having to offer up to as many as four different takes in any given hour. Usually there were two major stories and then perhaps a couple of gags. These were brief, often unfunny and they were loathed by Serling who was not in full command of this show as he had been before. Jack Laird was the producer and he had a different sense than the art than Serling, more keyed to dark humor. 

The other big deficit that Night Gallery faced was color. There was no way that in 1970 a network was going to allow a show to hit the primetime in black and white. But that's exactly what a show like Night Gallery needed. And to make matters worse, often the shooting schedules were so short and the budgets so tight that adding atmosphere was a luxury which was often dispensed with. Night Gallery was all about atmosphere at it best and this was deemed too expensive early on. 

On the plus side Night Gallery did adapt a number of  tales of Weird Tales C'Thulhu mavens such as H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, and Robert Bloch. Even if the adaptations are not everything one would imagine, Lovecraft in particular is difficult to film in the best of circumstances, the very fact the adaptations of "Cool Air" and "Pickman's Model" exist is a virtue not to be overlooked. Perhaps my favorite episode is "Brenda" adapted from a short story by Margaret St. Clair. Few of the Night Gallery show make you ache, but this one does. 

So I'm very pleased that I at long last got the chance to watch the Night Gallery episode all the way through. There's some dross for sure, but hidden in more episodes than not there are some gems. Even if Rod Serling was not always convinced of that fact. 

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The Twilight Zone - Burgess!

When I was a youth and caught an episode of the old Batman TV show I always hoped the villain was not The Penguin, who was frequently on the show. While Frank Gorshin's Riddler wowed me and Julie Newmar's Cartwoman dazzled me, somehow Burgess Meredith as The Penguin left me cold. But I grew up and I changed my mind. Now his performances as the always overdressed bad guy now are among my favorites and he owns lots of the best moments in the show. Somewhere between when I was ten and now I came to appreciate the talents of Burgess Meredith, and no small part of that was because of The Twilight Zone. Meredith appeared on The Twilight Zone no fewer than four times in four very different roles. 

He of course first shows up in his most famous TZ role, the episode titled "Time Enough At Last" as Henry Bemis, a bookish man just looking for a little peace and quiet in which to read. But alas his boss and his wife don't like that and give him endless grief. Circumstance are such thought that he is spared as the world comes to end and after that he finds all the time he wants to read, but there's a catch. 

It's in the second season that he returns as Luther Dingle a lowly vacuum cleaner salesman in "Mr. Dingle - The Strong" who becomes incredibly physically strong thanks to the intervention of a two-headed Venusian he cannot see. But his use of that gift is put to the test. 

Later that same season he returns in "The Obsolete Man" as Romney Wordsworth a librarian in a culture which actively punishes reading. This is a much darker role than his first two and his solution to his dilemma of being forced to pick his own form of execution is severe, but he manages even then to turn the tables a bit. 

And finally in the fifth season he shows up one more time in a very different role as a mysterious Mr. Smith in "Printer's Devil". Who he is becomes pretty obvious as he uses his uncanny skills as a reporter and all-around newspaperman to revive a failing local paper. But how he does it of course causes problems, since there's always a catch to these acts of providence. 

He is of course on many another show here and there and about. I found him as a delightfully zany fellow in a story titled "Martian Eyes" on Lights Out. Meredith presents a warm often sympathetic character who it is easy to identify with and so care about when things go awry. But first and foremost in my imagination, he will be The Penguin! Waugh! Waugh! Waugh!

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The Weird, The Odd, And The Ditko!

This fine October month we find ourselves in an unusual situation in which the real world is brimming with more terrors than the mythical world. That said, the fictional realms do offer sanctuary from the terrors of the times and this month I want to focus on some of them. And often when it comes to horror and sci-fi it comes in the form of an anthology. The ghost comic made up of three or four little scares has traditionally been the norm. 

The first horror comic book is supposedly a one-off titled Eerie #1 from Avon in 1947, and the first series was from ACG titled Adventures into the Unknown in 1948.  EC though perfected the mold in many respects with books like Tales from the Crypt and The Haunt of Horror. It was a bandwagon which was quickly jumped on and scores of publishers littered the stands with books such Beware, Web of Mystery, Weird Mysteries, Fantastic Fears, and many many more. 

But of course they were pretty rugged in terms of content and that became a soft target for the always abiding social improvers and comic books were nearly decapitated by the backlash. The Comics Code came in and the anthologies went away for a time. Then Warren created Creepy and Eerie, and later DC came out with House of Mystery, House of Secrets, and The Witching Hour, and Marvel had Tower of Shadows and Chamber of Darkness, and so on and so forth and it was on again and in some respects had never really stopped, but merely mutated into giant monster tales and suchlike. Charlton Comics offered up a delightful bevy of ghostly comics in 50's such as This Magazine is Haunted and The Thing, and in the late 60's and through much of the 70's such as The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves, Ghostly Tales, Haunted, and many more. 

This October  I want to focus on stories drawn by the singularly talented Steve Ditko. The focus will be on stories he drew from  his earliest days for Charlton Comics and a smattering of other small-time publishers who like Charlton are no longer with us. He drew all sorts of tales, stories of romance and western derring-do, but I'm mostly plumbing these catacombs to enjoy his weird stories from the aforementioned titles The Thing and This Magazine Is Haunted, among others. If time permits I'd like to move onto his work under the aegis of Stan Lee at what was to become Marvel before he made his fame (if not fortune) with a certain friendly neighborhood wall-crawling superhero if some note. I've been astounded how much I like the work done in Amazing Adult Fantasy, the title Lee concocted for just himself and Ditko.

But that focus on Ditko doesn't rule out other Pre-Code wonders. Hopefully I'll be able to get around to all sorts of monsters, ghosts, mummies and assorted ghouls of many kinds from a host of creators. The basket is full and I might not get to it all, but that's a good thing. 

While I'm reading these vintage weird stories of science and the occult, I'll also be using my time also to take a look at some classics of vintage television. The Twilight Zone remains the standard by which all science fiction and fantasy shows are measured. Known for its smart writing and compact storytelling, the show held up a mirror to an America audience filled with dread and self-doubt despite the happy talk to the contrary. Rod Serling was the mastermind of the show writing many of the scripts alongside the likes of Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson. Later Serling tried to dabble in the weird again, this time with a color show called Night Gallery, a show more pointed to the occult and weird fantasy than had been The Twilight Zone, though the latter had plenty of that too. 

There were other shows too, such One Step Beyond which actually predated The Twilight Zone and the magnificent The Outer Limits, to my mind the best pure science fiction show ever on TV. I want to get a decent glance at some of these during the month as time allows and comment when and where I think interesting on certain episodes and the themes they're developing. These shows often spoke to a time when America was scared of an enemy outside our borders, and tragically not much one within. But usually the message was something akin to what Walt Kelly surmised in Pogo - "We have met the enemy and he is us."

And in addition to all that (if time allows) I might also dabble in one of my favorite pastimes, taking a good close look at some of my favorite vintage Ditko covers and assorted collections of the great man's work. He had a real knack for creating compelling images that tickled the imagination. I've a lot planned so for the duration of this Halloween-inspired month regular features such as the "The Saturday Serials" and "The Sunday Funnies" will give way for a time, but I do expect to bring back at least the latter in the portentous month of November. But that's then, and this is the Countdown to Halloween. It will almost certainly be weird, and it might well be odd, but rest assured it will be filled with Ditko. 

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