Night Gallery: The House

The TV Tomb of Mystery is an ongoing catalog of one man's attempt to stave off  acquisition of any more impulse-buy DVDs until he can take better inventory of the ones already in his possession. 

Today's excursion:

Season 1, Episode 3. Specifically:

The first part of the episode.

Night Gallery (1970-1973) probably falls on the lower side of the anthology show spectrum: not quite Freddy's Nightmares and maybe neck and neck with, if not below, Tales from the Darkside.  Nevertheless, had it been in syndication when I was growing up, I likely would have devoured it the same way I devoured Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Twilight Zone on Nick at Nite. Had that been the case, I'd undoubtedly have formed some kind of nostalgia bond with the material that would help me over some of the rough spots. But I only came to the show much later (2007 or 2008 via Netflix) and so, while I do enjoy it, I don't love it.

The first thing an anthology show needs is a snazzy title sequence with a memorable theme.

Check. I realize this is true of most television shows, but an anthology show's intro has to be at least twice as highly stylized and over-the-top as any other show's, according to theorems and laws I am making up right now.

Second, it needs a kick-ass host. And he or she (or it - whatever the Cryptkeeper is) can't just be talking to the screen, they have to be employing some conceit organic to the show itself.

Check. And how. 
Night Gallery deserves special praise in this category, since they actually had someone creating paintings for each and every episode. You can see them all here.

Rod Serling is the equal of Lee/ Kirby or Roddenberry/Coon (or Iron Maiden) when it comes to having ignited my adolescent imagination the most. It's kind of funny that this is the case, as all of the aforementioned (except Maiden of course) are associated with the 60s, before I was born. But, speaking broadly of course, the trickle-down effect of their work (and EC Comics, definitely) is all over the era in which I did grow up, in the work of John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg, in the Marvel comics I read, etc. When I was going to school in Dayton, OH, I made frequent pilgrimages to Serling's old stomping grounds in Yellow Springs, searching many times for his initials allegedly carved on the wall at Ye Olde Trail Tavern, where he worked and taught a writing class in the banquet room upstairs. (I never found them.)

The third and probably most important thing an anthology show needs is a consistent level of quality. And this is unfortunately where Night Gallery fails to launch. The first season is relatively solid, but the quality and production value of the second and third vary widely. Rod Serling, frustrated by this and repeated producer interference, tried to get his name taken off the show, to no avail.

He died shortly after, way too young, at age 50.

But Night Gallery certainly had its high points, and among them is this gem from December 1970.

The Plot: On the day of her discharge, sanitarium patient Elaine Latimer tells her doctor of a recurring dream. In it, she's driving along a country road that is both familiar and unfamiliar and approaches a house. She goes to the door and knocks and when no one answers, she gets back in her car.

It's only as she is driving away that she notices that the front door is slowly opening, but she always wakes up before it can open completely. Her doctor assures her it means nothing, and she is discharged. She finds herself driving down the same country road from her dream, leading to the very same house. A realtor steps from the shadows and offers to show her around. This proves unnecessary, as she discovers she knows every detail of every room.

The realtor tells her the house is priced-to-buy on account of its being haunted. She moves in immediately. She begins to have the dream again, but this time, from the perspective of inside the house.

She arrives outside just in time to see the car pulling away.

She's awakened by the ringing of the phone. It's her doctor, checking up on her. She tells him rather matter-of-factly, that she's found the house and that it is haunted by a ghost that only comes with the sunlight.

There's an odd penultimate scene where she puts the phone down and runs out of frame, only to return and say "I just met my ghost."

I can only imagine this was some kind of mistake born of necessity, as... well, who does that? "Okay, I'm back - while you were waiting, I resolved the plot off-screen. The end." There are some odd zooms, as well, but that is a hallmark of the era and can't be lain at this episode's door.

Okay, so if you're any kind of ghost story buff, it's unsurprising to discover that she is the ghost, haunting herself. It is foreshadowed throughout in some compelling ways:

As a "sun ghost," the slow-motion, dreamlike way she is photographed while driving, with her robe and hair billowing like a shroud, is spell-binding. The first time I saw this I had these images - and the cascading strings and Pettet's upper crust narration accompanying them - in mind for days.

Black Sabbath album cover, the daylight version.

Another aspect of ghost stories is repetitive behavior on the part of the ghost. ("All ghosts have OCD" is the spook-equivalent to "All dogs go to heaven.") When we first meet the non-dream Elaine, she is working on a cross-stitch, feverishly, while she and her doctor go over her dream.

It's a nice visual motif for her repetitive behavior,

recalled in every scene she's in the house.

And then there are the not-so-subtle ones:

I don't really know Joanna Pettet's work very well. But her presence in this episode is really something. Not just the way she is photographed - though that is certainly commendable - but the way she carries herself and speaks. Everything works towards the the end of creating and sustaining a dreamlike, ghostly affair.

For a simple enough story, John Astin (yes, that John Astin) packs an awful lot into these twenty-odd minutes. Nowadays, undoubtedly, the whole thing would revolve around an awkwardly-moving girl with hair covering one eye while she crab-walks to the camera and then raises a finger to her lips to say "Shh." God, Mr. and Mrs. Nowadays: get a life.

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