La By Night Season 5 Episode 8

[Teena Ruiter]

Sincethe show had numerous stories of various lengths per hour, many of the shorter segments had to be expanded in the re-editing with superfluous, meaningless footage, serving only to confound the narrative. Conversely, many segments longer than the half-hour time slot were severely trimmed of key scenes, making them even more perplexing than their shorter counterparts. Some segments were missing half their original length in syndication.

The staircase walls (and this set appears to be re-used in several subsequent episodes) contain paintings made by the old uncle. The scenes painted are dark in nature, including one of the cemetery which lies just outside the house. There is also a glowering self-portrait hung at the top of the stairs.

Later, the painting has a casket partly in the grave, causing Jeremy to erupt in a fury, yanking the painting off the wall and tossing it into the fireplace, where it burns. He goes upstairs, relieved, then sees the painting is again on the wall, this time showing a man, his uncle, in the open casket, leading to a scream of horror from Jeremy.

When (Mr.) Portifoy glances at the picture, he sees that it now shows two graves. We have the same progression as before, but much more quickly, this time with Jeremy rising from the grave and approaching the house. The door opens, Portifoy screams and we fade to black.

Overall, this segment is an excellent introduction to the series. However, the ending falls flat and is simply unnecessary. Incidentally, in the syndicated version of the show aired on tv, the endings often are dissatisfying, but this is usually due to the heavy editing the stories underwent to put it into the 30-minute package. Still, the occasional original version suffers from the same weakness, and this is one of them.

When it is made clear that Portifoy was changing the paintings on the wall in order to drive Jeremy insane, it provides a deflating real-world explanation to what seemed like a frightening dose of occult-style justice.

The moral grounds are not an issue for Menlo, of course, and she surprises Heatherton by informing him she has found a donor willing to give up his eyes for $9,000. She then uses blackmail to force him to perform the operation by threatening to expose some long-ago medical transgression that could ruin his career.

The episode really slows to a near halt in the overly long sequence with Resnick meeting with Heatherton and a surgical colleague to sign his consent to the surgery and receive his payment. The scene tugs, yanks and gloms on to the heartstrings and would have been more effective had it been substantially trimmed.

As she blinks her eyes open, Spielberg gives us her point of view as we see the rising sun coming into focus. Excitedly, she begins to stand, but the sun then dims and fades from her view, which has again gone black as the 11 hours have concluded. Desperate and in denial, she moves closer to the window in hopes of restoring her vision of the sun, but she moves too close, breaking the window and falling through to her death in another highly imaginative shot where the camera zooms downward with the glass shattering on the pavement below, making us feel that we, too are falling.

Strobe returns to the gallery the next morning and again sees his face in the painting. He seems to be visualizing himself there, to escape his reality, his guilt, his running away, his looking over his shoulder.

Attempting to leave town by bus, the Israeli agents who were following Strobe in the car at the beginning of the episode, catch up with him. He manages to escape and a chase ensues, leading to the art museum. Inside the darkened gallery, Strobe finds the spot where his idyllic painting hung, wills/prays himself into it.

We find out that the painting of the fisherman had been moved and in its place now hangs the painting of the crucifixion scene, this time, as the camera zooms in on it, with the terrified face of strobe on the man on the cross.

Teleplay by Douglas Heyes, story by Fritz Leiber Jr.

Directed by Douglas Heyes

Carl Betz as Dr. Max Redford

Jeff Corey as Dr. Miles Talmadge

Louise Sorel as Velia Redford

Michael Blodgett as John Fearing

The particular patient, or perhaps subject would be a better description, John Fearing (Michael Blodgett) originally came to Redford ill and Redford cured him. Then he came back with a different illness and Redford cured him again. The pattern continued, making Fearing perhaps the first recidivist medical patient. Now, Fearing is the ultimate male specimen for the surfer crowd: young, muscular, tanned, exceedingly handsome with flowing blonde curls atop his head.

Written by Hal Dresner

Directed by Jerrold Freedman

Joseph Wiseman as Jacob Bauman

Diane Keaton as Nurse Frances Nevins

Angel Tompkins as Lila Bauman

Larry Watson as the Chauffeur

All the way around, this Serling-written episode works beautifully, as it would have on Twilight Zone. Good pacing, excellent performances by Meredith and Wills (who does a lot simply with an open-mouthed stare) and fine direction for the first time from the man who would go on to direct the most Night Gallery episodes, 22, Jeannot Szwarc.

Written by Rod Serling

Directed by Allen Reisner

Joseph Campanella as Simms

Richard Van Vleet as the Astronaut

James B. Sikking as the First Reporter

Jason Wingreen as the Second Reporter

Teleplay by Rod Serling, Story by Andr Maurois

Directed by John Astin

Joanna Pettet as Elaine Latimer

Paul Richards as Peugot

Steve Franken as Dr. Peter Mitchell

Jan Burrell as the Nurse

It turns out she is describing this scene to a psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Mitchell, at the sanitarium from which she is being discharged the next day. She says she has had this recurring dream the last ten years.

Emma Brigham (Agnes Moorehead) lies in bed, deathly ill. Her physician brother, Stephen (Louis Hayward), ministers to her after giving up his practice, including nightly readings to her of works of her favorite author, Charles Dickens. Her spinster sisters, dour, pragmatic Ann (Grayson Hall) and sweet Rebecca (Rachel Roberts) live with Emma.

Soon thereafter, that well-used staircase becomes the focal point once again as an image of what looks to be the late Emma sitting up in bed appears on the wall of the staircase. It is a silhouette, seemingly a shadow, yet on closer inspection, it is not a shadow, but rather an image directly on the wall.

Written by Rod Serling

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Godfrey Cambridge as Jackie Slater

Jackie Vernon as Chatterje

Tom Bosley as Jules Kettleman

Al Lewis as Myron Mishkin

Sidney Clute as Theater Producer

John J. Fox as the Heckler

Gene R. Kearney as the Second Bartender

Tony Russel as the Theater Director

Sonny Klein as the First Bartender

Michael Hart as Miss Wilson

Georgia Schmidt as the Flower Lady

Eventually, Slater tires of people laughing at his every utterance and longs to be taken seriously. An audition for a dramatic role is predictably disastrous as the producer, director, a fellow actor and everyone in the theatre guffaws uproariously at his words. He is literally laughed right out of the theatre.

Later, on the street, he runs into Chatterje and tells him he no longer wants to make people laugh; he wants to make them cry. Slater then begins to cross the street to tell a joke to a flower vendor but before he can make it to her, he is run over by a car. The flower vendor approaches his lifeless body and, yes, cries. Wish granted.

This is a strong, if heavy-handed Serling script, solidly directed by Walter Doniger. Raymond Massey is perhaps a bit long in the tooth for the role of the Colonel, but what he may lack in terms of a physical intimidation factor, he makes up for by projecting a mean, disdainful, dismissive, cruel man.

Jonathan (John Astin), alone in a funeral parlor, lights a cigarette in a kind of relieved celebration over the death of his wife Pamela, whom we hear in his spoken aloud narration was quite the annoying nag, with a voice the opposite of honey.

Jonathan expects the funeral home will be taking Pamela away soon but she points out that she was buried months ago. She has him open the casket and look inside and he sees himself in it. He realizes that they are both ghosts. She is in heaven so she can do whatever she pleases and he is in hell, and so she will annoy and harangue him forever.

This is a taught, well-directed (by Gene Levitt) episode, that keeps up the level of stress and anticipation in the viewer. John Colicos, who plays the survivor, really gives it his all, nearly overplaying it, but he seems genuinely terrified of the fate he realizes has befallen him. This makes up for the fact that the budget did not apparently allow for much in the way of sets, but this adds to a sense of claustrophobia that works here.

Returning inebriated at 3:00 p.m., Lane is followed into his office by his concerned assistant, Lynn Alcott (Diane Baker). He reminds her that on this day twenty-five years ago he joined the firm fresh out of serving in World War II.

There, Lynn shows up, suspecting he might end up at the house. They talk. She makes clear that she is interested in him as more than a boss, but he again declines her overture, saying he is past his prime.

Jack Cassidy, almost always very interesting on screen, even in subpar material, here overplays his part as ex-star runner/athlete Marius Davis, who is now a middle-aged shell of his former self, confined to a bed from a crippling automobile accident.

I really appreciate that you have done a fantastic job of reviewing the NG episodes. I just watched the Housekeeper, and I do not understand the ending at all. Who the heck is the old lady that appears out of nowhere, with Mrs Waddle (or whatever) voice? Why did the transformation take place instantly when the previous one took an hour and a half? But yeah, who the heck is the old woman at the end? HUH?

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