LADIES AND GENTLEMEN THIS IS THE NIGHT GALLERY : ROD SERLING'S' NIGHT GALLERY OVERVIEW

After 'The Twilight Zone had ended on CBS, Rod Serling tried to sell it to another network but was unable to due to CBS retaining the rites to the series. So he went to another network and pitched an idea for a show called 'Rod Serling Wax Works' however that idea was rejected , Serling then tweaked the concept and set it in an art gallery instead and 'Night Gallery' was born.

What might have been? Rod Serling on set while shooting The Twlight Zone episode 'The New Exhibit'

While 'The Twlight Zone' was primarily a science fiction show with horror overtones, Night Gallery focused mainly on horror and the supernatural. Each episode of the series opened with Serling in a darkened art gallery, he then introduced each story by revaling the paintings that depicted them. For the first two season the epsidoes where 50 minutes in length and containted multiple self contained stories varying in length, while in season three the episodes where cut down to 25 minutes and mostly containted just a single story. While Serling wrote the majortiy of the scripts some where adapted from authors such as HP Lovecraft.

Rod Serling's opening monologe from the pilot of Night Gallery

The pilot for Night Gallery aired 8th November 1969 of NBC and consisted of 3 stories all written by Serling, the first one 'The Cemetery' starring Roddy McDowall and Ossie Davis in which Jeremy Evans (McDowall) murders his rich uncle in order to get his hands on the inheritance, much to the disgust of his uncle's butler Portifoy (Davis) but find finds he might not get away with it so easy after all.

The second story 'Eyes' (which marked the directing debut of Steven Spielberg)  stars hollywood legend Joan Crawford (in one of her last acting roles), as Claudia Menlo, a rich selfish woman who has been blind since birth, who blackmails  her surgen friend into performing an operation that will allow her to see for a short time, however it backfires on her in a bizarre twist of fate….

The final story 'The Escape Route' stars Richard Kelly and Sam Jaffe. A war criminal (Kelly) has fled and his hiding from the authorities under an alternate name, one day his past comes back to haunt him as a old man (Jaffe) recognises him and starts to ask questions, so he finds solace in a tranquil painting in a local art galley and longs to enter that world, however he should be careful what he wishes for……..

Night Galley ran for three seasons after the pilot and a lot of famous actors guest starred such as Burgess Meredith, Leslie Nelson, Vicnent Price, Angnes Moorehead, Leonard Nimoy, Ray Milland, Sally Field and many more, and while it never achived the same level of susscess as The Twlight Zone (perhaps in part due to the fact Serling did not have as much creatvite control over the series as he did with The Twlight Zone) it still remains one of the best TV horror antholgy series of the 70's and well worth checking out.

Just some of the famous actors that guest starred on 'Night Gallery' Vincent Price, Anges Moorehead, Sally Field and Burgess Meredith

CHARLTON HESTON : PLANET OF THE APES: GALLERY AND REVIEW

CAST:

Charlton Heston (Colonel George Taylor), Kim Hunter (Zira), Roddy McDowall (Cornelius), Maurice Evans (Dr Zaius), Linda Harrison (Nova), Robert Gunner (Landon), Jeff Burton (Dodge), James Whitmore (President of the Assembly), Lou Wagner (Lucius), James Daly (Honorious)

PRODUCTION:

Director – Franklin J. Schaffner, Screenplay – Rod Serling & Michael Wilson, Based on the Novel Monkey Planet by Pierre Boulle, Producer – Arthur P. Jacobs, Photography – Leon Shamroy, Music – Jerry Goldsmith, Photographic Effects – L.B. Abbott, Art Cruichshank & Emil Kosa Jr, Makeup – John Chambers, Art Direction – William Creber & Jack Martin Smith. Production Company – Apjac/20th Century Fox. USA. 1968. 
  

SYNOPSIS:

A space mission that left Earth in 1972 crashlands on an alien planet. Due to Einsteinian relativity, it is now the year 3978. The three surviving crew led by Captain George Taylor trek across a desert. They come to a civilisation only to discover that on this planet humans are dumb and the culture is ruled by talking apes that regard humans as mere animals. Taylor is captured and taken to the Behavioural Science laboratory of the chimpanzee scientists Cornelius and Zira. He becomes a cause celebre when it is discovered that he can talk. However, Taylor’s existence becomes a threat to the Minister of Science Dr Zaius who wants evidence of his existence eliminated to protect ape society.

COMMENTARY:

This is the film that started off the money-spinning series. Planet of the Apes was one of the biggest science-fiction successes in the period before Star Wars (1977) and the era of the science-fiction blockbuster. It produced a then unprecedented four sequels and two tv series spinoffs (see below), even a popular Marvel comic-book.

Planet of the Apes was an adaptation of an up until then not-so-well-known novel Monkey Planet (1963) by French writer Pierre Boulle, who was best known for the book that became the basis of The Bridge Over the River Kwai (1957). As has been snidely noted in regard to both River Kwai and Planet of the Apes, Pierre Boulle’s books tend to make better films than they read as novels. Monkey Planet tells the same story as Planet of the Apes but in a heavy-handed and polemic way. Planet of the Apes may be a rare case of the film adaptation having fine-tuned and refined the themes of the book. 

The script for the film comes from Michael Wilson, a screenwriter who was blacklisted during the 1950s (who had also uncreditedly worked on the script for River Kwai), and Rod Serling, who became a genre legend as the creator, host and principal writer of tv’s genre landmark The Twilight Zone (1959-63). After the cancellation of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling began to take on film script work, delivering works that had a strong and ardent political voice with the likes of Seven Days in May (1964) and The Man (1972). The early scenes here with Charlton Heston delivering a series of lengthily embittered comments on the human condition are pure Rod Serling, run through as they are with the frequent cynicism that beset much of The Twilight Zone and certainly dragged down Serling’s later series Night Gallery (1969-72). (It appears that Rod Serling delivered the early draft of the script – a much more elaborately scaled version, which was closer to the book, and featured the apes living in a technological world analogous to our own – and that this was later rewritten by Michael Wilson).

Planet of the Apes is not exactly a believable scenario. Indeed, it may count as one of the most incredulous uses of astronauts failing to question the fact that they are on an alien planet and encounter aliens who just happen to speak English. The twist ending is a classic, no doubt – in fact, it is probably one of science-fiction cinema’s most potent and haunting images – but in retrospect is it any surprise? Nevertheless, what must be said is that Rod Serling, Michael Wilson and particularly director Franklin J. Schaffner do much to make the basic premise believable. Planet of the Apes could easily have toppled over into a cute, gimmicky one-gag novelty.

However, any idea that the film is going to be a cute jokey treatment is dispelled the moment we first see the apes – riding on horseback, shooting at and hunting the humans, then standing over the slaughtered bodies to pose for photos. These scenes are directed with a dramatic urgency with the camera perpetually on the move and make for a bold, exciting beginning.
 

 

In the middle of the film, the tone changes. The violence of the early scenes is replaced by social satire. Sometimes the satire does not always sit easily. At its worst, it is merely gimmicky mimicry with people in ape masks satirising human religious services, posing for photos and particularly the apes doing a ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil’ gag at the trial. (This latter was in fact a shot that was ad libbed on the set and kept in after the dailies made people laugh). At its best, Planet of the Apes swings a giant satire on the Scopes Monkey Trial, biting at religious fanaticism with a vehemence and in the end turning around to use the apes to deliver an embittered comment on the human condition. Rod Serling and Michael Wilson hit their stride during the trial scenes and particularly the dialogue put into mouthpiece character of Dr Zaius, which has a literacy that ranks among the best of screen science-fiction. 

Planet of the Apes is an extremely well made film. The director was Franklin Schaffner, who had previously made the Mediaeval epic The War Lord (1965) and would go onto big-screen historical dramas such as Patton (1970), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), Papillon (1973) and one other science-fiction film The Boys from Brazil (1978). The opening scenes have some beautifully expansive widescreen photography. The Death Valley locations evoke the atmosphere of an alien planet with stunning regard and the eerily atonal Jerry Goldsmith score makes a hauntingly evocative background to the scenery. 

The performances are all excellent. The usually stocky, inexpressive Charlton Heston even gives a fine performance as Colonel Taylor. Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter give charmingly chirpy performances and Maurice Evans is excellent as Dr Zaius.  

There were four sequels to Planet of the Apes:– Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). All but the last are well worthwhile. The series was subsequently spun off into a tv series Planet of the Apes (1974), which only lasted one season and was occasionally better than many dismiss it as. This was followed by an animated series Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975). Roddy McDowall played three different chimpanzees throughout the different incarnations, appearing in all except Beneath and the animated series. The films established arguably the most elaborate Future History of any science-fiction film series, although both tv series disrupt the continuity established by the films. The film was remade as Planet of the Apes (2001), which was regarded with general disappointment, and this led to a prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) explaining how the apes became intelligent. Behind the Planet of the Apes (1998) is a documentary that traces the making of the series in some detail. The film, especially the ending, has been parodied in Spaceballs (1987), Hell Comes to Frogtown (1987), Madagascar (2005) and The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009), even an episode of The Simpsons (1989– ).

    

Review:HERE
Images:Marcus Brooks.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE MOVIE: REVIEW LOBBY CARDS AND STILLS GALLERY

Producers: John Landis & Steven Spielberg, Music: Jerry Goldsmith, Production Design: James Bissell. Production Company:Warners.USA 1983

Cast:
Burgess Meredith (Narrator)

Prologue/First Segment
Director/Screenplay: John Landis, Photography: Steven Larner, Special Effects Paul Stewart, Makeup:Craig Reardon.
Cast

Dan Aykroyd (Driver), Albert Brooks (Hiker)
Vic Morrow (Bill Conner)  

   Kick the Can Director: Steven Spielberg, Screenplay: George Clayton Johnston, Richard Matheson & Josh Rogan, Based on the TV series The Twilight Zone Episode Kick the Can Written by Johnston, Photography: Allen Daviau, Special Effects: Mike Wood.

Cast: Scatman Crothers (Mr Bloom), Bill Quinn (Mr Conroy), Murray Matheson (Young Errol Flynn), Evan Richmond (Young Mr Agee), Helen Shaw (Mrs Dempsey), Christopher Eisenmann (Young Mr Mule), Laura Mooney (Young Mrs Dempsey), Scott Nemes (Young Mr Weinstein), Tanya Fenmore (Young Mrs Weinstein)  

  It’s a Good Life  Director – Joe Dante, Screenplay – Matheson, Based on the TV Series The Twilight Zone episode It’s a Good Life Written by Rod Serling (Based on the Short Story by Jerome Bixby), Photography – John Hora, Special Effects – Mike Wood, Makeup Effects – Rob Bottin.   

Cast: Kathleen Quinlan (Helen Foley), Jeremy Licht (Anthony), Kevin McCarthy (Uncle Walt), William Schallert (Father), Patricia Barry (Mother), Nancy Cartwright (Ethel), Dick Miller (Walter)  

  Nightmare at 20,000 Feet  Director – George Miller, Screenplay – Matheson, Based on the TV Series The Twilight Zone Episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet Written by Matheson, Photography – Allen Daviau, Visual Effects – Industrial Light and Magic & Peter Kuran, Makeup Effects – Craig Reardon & Ed Verrieux. Cast: John Lithgow (John Valentine), Abbie Lane & Donna Dixon (Stewardesses), John Dennis Johnston (Co-Pilot), Charles Knapf (Airline Cop), Christine Nigra (Little Girl)  

SYNOPSIS:

Prologue:- A driver plays a game with a hitch-hiker, driving without lights to see who can break first. The hitch-hiker then decides to show the driver something really scary... First Segment:- A middle-aged bigot is suddenly thrown through time where he is persecuted by the Nazis as a Jew and the Ku-Klux-Klan as a Black Man. Kick the Can:- Mr Bloom becomes a new resident at a geriatric home. He takes the other oldsters out at night to play a game of ‘Kick the Can’, which causes them to be magically transformed into children again. It’s a Good Life:- Helen Foley accidentally knocks young Anthony off his bicycle outside a diner. Concerned, she drives him home. She meets Anthony’s family who seem to live in terror of him. She then learns that he keeps them prisoner, as he has the power to manifest anything he wishes. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet:- A man terrified of flying boards a plane flight. However, as the journey gets underway, he is unable to convince anybody there is a creature out on the wing tearing the engines apart.

COMMENTARY:

The tv series The Twilight Zone (1959-63) was a genre landmark. The Twilight Zone was created, written and hosted by Rod Serling, a writer who had delivered highly acclaimed and award-winning plays from the early days of live television with the likes of Patterns (1956) and Requiem for a Heavyweight (1956). The Twilight Zone used an anthology format to tell science-fiction, horror and fantasy tales. Rod Serling was workaholic and wrote nearly three-quarters of the 92 episodes during the series’ run, as well as producing and hosting the series. Serling’s dialogue often overburdened into shrill moralising but when he wrote well – which was more often than not – his stories ended on thoughtful O. Henry-esque twists that pulled the carpet out from under one’s expectations. The science-fiction of the decade up until that point had all been bombast concerned with alien threats from outside – Rod Serling was one of the first to take this in more internalised directions, where instead of the world being attacked and humanity triumphing, stories ended in places of thoughtful uncertainty where one’s original assumptions were not always what they seemed. Some of the episodes are minor masterpieces of psychological tension. The term ‘the twilight zone’, which Serling had intended as a nebulous phrase meaning a place where all rules of reason are suspended and anything can happen, has gone on to enter popular parlance. 

In 1983, Steven Spielberg, then riding high on the successes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), purchased the rights to the series and made this anthology film. Spielberg employed Richard Matheson and George Clayton Johnston, who scripted many episodes of the original tv series, to deliver the film’s script. Three of the film’s four stories (all but the first) are remakes of episodes from the tv series. Steven Spielberg has also brought in various contemporary fantasy directors – John Landis, who had just made An American Werewolf in London (1981); Joe Dante, who was having success with his quirky B-budget genre homages Piranha (1978), which spoofs Spielberg’s own Jaws (1975) in no small part, and The Howling (1980); and Australian director George Miller who had just had a big hit with Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior (1981).

John Landis directs the prologue and the first episode. The prologue with its quick-fire banter and short-sharp twist ending works better than the episode that follows. The episode itself buys into the just desserts moralistic tub-beating that typified the worst parts about the tv series where Rod Serling liked to create straw characters to moralistically pontificate about. While calling someone racial names is certainly intolerable, throwing someone through some of the worst racial persecutions in history seems somewhat of an overreaction in terms of punishment. John Landis nevertheless directs the episode with slick and exciting camerawork and there is one good final image of Vic Morrow crying out through the slats of a train on its way to the Nazi gas chambers as his buddies are seen emerging from the bar on the other side. Much controversy surrounds the segment when Vic Morrow and two children were killed when pyrotechnics caused a helicopter to crash during shooting in 1982. John Landis and four others of the crew were placed on involuntarily manslaughter charges, although were later acquitted.  

Surprisingly, Steven Spielberg’s episode Kick the Can is the weakest of the segments. It is Spielberg’s childhood obsessions perhaps at their most literally personified. The slimness of the premise never gives Spielberg much opportunity to open up. The sentiments engendered are corny and sentimental and the wistful tone aimed for shallow.

Joe Dante has clear fun with the It's a Good Life segment. Both the piece and the original tv episode are adapted from Jerome Bixby’s popular 1953 short story of the same name. The episode emerges as a version of The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1937) as directed by Steven Spielberg. All of Joe Dante’s films are overrun with genre in-jokes and references – here Dick Miller makes his customary appearance (as he does in all of Dante’s films) and most of the characters are named after characters that appeared in various Twilight Zone episodes (Kathleen Quinlan’s Helen Foley is even named after the high school teacher that Rod Serling acknowledged as one of the influences on his writing – how’s that for trivia?). As with any Joe Dante film, it is the ability to have fun with the genre that has drawn Dante’s attention. What clearly interests Dante here is being able to bring cartoon characters to life and characters thrown into a cartoon universe – an aspect completely added over the story or the tv version of the story. The film predates Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) in this regard – although unlike Roger Rabbit, Dante crafts cartoon characters as three-dimensional rather than drawn objects. [Dante later got to make his own feature-length toon film with Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)]. Rob Bottin’s creation of a huge sinister cartoon rabbit is wonderfully scary and inventive. There is also the marvellously ick image of a girl imprisoned without any mouth. The episode works well enough, although the maudlin ‘happily ever after’ ending with Jeremy Licht causing flowers to sprout along the roadside as he and Kathleen Quinlan drive off into the sunset is terribly trite. 

George Miller’s Nightmare at 20,000 Feet is the gem among the four episodes. It is a wonderful exercise in jokey-scary claustrophobia. Miller whips his camera about, shooting John Lithgow’s quivering face in wide, distorted angles and depicting the other passengers with a paranoid weirdness. Using exactly the same running time that all the other episodes do, George Miller manages to run a rollercoaster ride between scares, pulling back to make us think the character imagined it, paranoia and humour. This is one episode that should have been made as a feature film.

Overall, Twilight Zone – The Movie is a disappointment. Only the Nightmare at 20,000 Feet segment stands out, while the other stories seem to miss the essence of the original tv Twilight Zone and never inhabit that same haunted psychological space that Rod Serling’s tales did. Only the prologue and epilogue come with the Twilight Zone-esque sting in the tale. The film was only a modest success, not the blockbuster that many other Steven Spielberg films had been. It did however pave the way for a major revival of horror/fantasy tv anthology series. There have been not only two revivals of the tv series, The Twilight Zone (1985-8) and The Twilight Zone (2002-3), which both proved disappointingly bland shadows of their eminent predecessor, but also of classic other anthology series of the 1950s and 60s – Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1985-9) and The Outer Limits (1995-2002), as well as various original anthology series such as Tales from the Darkside (1983-8), The Hitch-Hiker (1983-91), The Ray Bradbury Theater (1985-92), Monsters (1988-90) and Tales from the Crypt (1989-96).

Review: Richard Schieb

Images: Marcus Brooks