Search - Night Gallery: Season Two on DVD

K. K. (GAMER)
Reviewed on 6/24/2023...

A feel of the Twilight Zone but falls short of it.

Good things come to those who wait . . .

Scott M. Skelton | Eugene, OR USA | 08/08/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For most fans of "Rod Serling's Night Gallery," season two is when the show really hit its stride with its kaleidoscopic mix of thoughtful Serling originals ("Class of '99," "Dr. Stringfellow's Rejuvenator," "The Messiah on Mott Street," "Lindemann's Catch," "Deliveries in the Rear") and vivid adaptations of classic horror fiction by Serling and others ("The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes," "A Fear of Spiders," "Silent Snow, Secret Snow," "A Question of Fear," "Pickman's Model," "Cool Air," "Camera Obscura," "Green Fingers," "I'll Never Leave You--Ever," "The Sins of the Fathers," "The Caterpillar," and many more). Most of the series' best-remembered story segments are here in their original, uncut broadcast form; so are the critically reviled comic blackouts, which left a bad taste in the mouths of some and caused others to reject the series altogether. (On the plus side, they're fairly brief and generally restricted to the first half of the season. Those so inclined may, through the magic of DVD technology, skip over the offending vignettes.)

Universal has included some generous bonus features, including a 30-minute documentary, a menu of Tom Wright's superb paintings for the show (with commentary by the artist), and six episode commentaries: three by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro ("Hellboy II: The Golden Army," "Pan's Labyrinth"), throwing light on the series' influence, and three by Scott Skelton (me) and Jim Benson (co-authors of the series companion "Rod Serling's Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour"), offering cultural and historical context and a general appreciation of the show. For the true believers (and lovers of the macabre), this release is a godsend."

The BEST Season, IMO, incredible stories brought to life by

Schuyler V. Johnson | Lake Worth, FL USA | 08/23/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This season, is, IMO, the best of Night Gallery.
Virtually all of my favorite episodes reside in this collection, beginning with
The Academy,that is absolutely chilling and you find yourself shifting around in your chair wanting to be far away from it...the recalitrant son of the businessman who is having the guided tour, in hopes of improving his son's outlook, is in for a very different education.
I enjoyed The Diary primarily to watch the excellent performance by Patty Duke, reminiscent of her Neely O'Hara role in Valley of the Dolls. She does a great interpretation of a female you would never want to meet.
Camera Obscura is my number on all time favorite episode ever; Ross Martin and Rene Auberjenois are fabulous in their respective roles and the story is wonderful, Ross Martin is a collector par excellence and when he tries and fails to reform Auberjonois's greed in his zeal to collect his debts (by use of practices which can only be described as usury) from an impoverished friend of Martin's, Martin shows Auberjonois one last item in his collection: A camera obscura.
And last but not least of my favorites, The Caterpillar, starring Laurence Harvey and Joanna Pettit, when Harvey is so bedazzled by her beauty he schemes to get possession of her by any means available.
These shows represent the best of the best, and each one is a brilliant stand alone study of human (and sometimes inhuman) nature in all its forms. When I saw these episodes when they first came out, I was absolutely enthralled; I never missed a show and watched them every time they were on like it was the first time; never dreaming that someday they would all be available to watch as often as I wished in my own home. What a treat!!!







Season 2, Episode 1: The Boy who Predicted Earthquakes
Original Air Date: 15 September 1971
A young boy who can accurately foresee future events becomes a TV star.


Season 2, Episode 2: Miss Lovecraft Sent Me
Original Air Date: 15 September 1971
Sent from an agency for an overnight stay, a babysitter begins to think something is wrong when the father's reflection doesn't appear in a mirror and his unseen son sounds a lot like a wild dog.


Season 2, Episode 3: The Hand of Borgus Weems
Original Air Date: 15 September 1971
A man's hand is possessed and starts to exact revenge for the death of it's owner.


Season 2, Episode 4: Phantom of What Opera?
Original Air Date: 15 September 1971



Season 2, Episode 5: A Death in the Family
Original Air Date: 22 September 1971
Petty thief Doran is on the run from the law and hides out at the funeral home run by Mr. Jared Soames, an undertaker who has an unusual method of dealing with the loneliness in his life.


Season 2, Episode 6: The Merciful
Original Air Date: 22 September 1971
In this brief twist on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado", a marital partner is cemented inside a small cubicle as part of a mercy killing.


Season 2, Episode 7: Class of '99
Original Air Date: 22 September 1971
The final is given at an unknown university that reveals more than just the knowledge of its students.


Season 2, Episode 8: Witches Feast
Original Air Date: ????



Season 2, Episode 9: Since Aunt Ada Came to Stay
Original Air Date: 29 September 1971
College professor Craig Lowell and his wife have recently opened their home to her aunt Ada Burn Quigley, but he suspects that she is not the sweet little old lady she appears to be.


Season 2, Episode 10: With Apologies to Mr. Hyde
Original Air Date: 29 September 1971
Doctor Jeckyl takes his potion with some unusual results.


Season 2, Episode 11: The Flip Side of Satan
Original Air Date: 29 September 1971
A callous disc jockey finds himself spinning platters at a hellish radio station.


Season 2, Episode 12: A Fear of Spiders
Original Air Date: 6 October 1971
Arachnophobic gourmet critic Justus Walters has no use for the clingy librarian who lives upstairs, until he discovers a tenacious spider in his kitchen sink and needs help to get rid of it.


Season 2, Episode 13: Junior
Original Air Date: 6 October 1971
A "black-out" vignette dealing with parents who have to decide which one gets out of bed in the middle of the night to feed their son.


Season 2, Episode 14: Marmalade Wine
Original Air Date: 6 October 1971
Roger Blacker gets caught in a cloudburst, is welcomed into the home of retired surgeon Dr. Francis Deeking, drinks excessively, and lies about his photographic achievements.


Season 2, Episode 15: The Academy
Original Air Date: 6 October 1971
A wealthy businessman is having trouble with his son, a delinquent who's constantly in trouble. He hears of a private school that specializes in "problem" children, and pays it a visit to determine if it's the kind of place that will straighten out his son.


Season 2, Episode 16: The Phantom Farmhouse
Original Air Date: 20 October 1971
Psychiatrist Joel Winter is questioned by the local sheriff when one of his patients is savagely murdered in the forest near the sanitarium where Winter is on staff.


Season 2, Episode 17: Silent Snow, Secret Snow
Original Air Date: 20 October 1971
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hasleman are concerned when their young son Paul escapes from reality into a fantasy world full of snowy landscapes.


Season 2, Episode 18: A Question of Fear
Original Air Date: 27 October 1971
A mercenary is bet $15,000 that he cannot stay one night in a haunted house, a house that turned his companion's hair white in one night.


Season 2, Episode 19: The Devil Is Not Mocked
Original Air Date: 27 October 1971
The Nazi's plan to bring everyone under their domination throughout the Balkans during the early days of World War II including the master of a dark castle and his entire household.


Season 2, Episode 20: Midnight Never Ends
Original Air Date: 3 November 1971
A hitch-hiking Marine feels he has met the woman who picks him up before.


Season 2, Episode 21: Brenda
Original Air Date: 3 November 1971
A girl vacationing on an island comes across a creature that she befriends.


Season 2, Episode 22: The Diary
Original Air Date: 10 November 1971
A gossip columnist gets a gift of a diary in which the next day's events are described before they happen.


Season 2, Episode 23: A Matter of Semantics
Original Air Date: 10 November 1971
Dracula visits a blood bank with an unusual request.


Season 2, Episode 24: Big Surprise
Original Air Date: 10 November 1971
Mr. Hawkins is an elderly hermit feared by the children in the neighborhood. When three boys reluctantly pass his farmhouse on the way home from school, he offers them a big surprise if they visit nearby Miller's Field and do some digging.


Season 2, Episode 25: Professor Peabody's Last Lecture
Original Air Date: 10 November 1971
During one of his classroom lectures, college professor Peabody makes the mistake of dismissing pagan religious cults as childish superstitions.


Season 2, Episode 26: House - with Ghost
Original Air Date: 17 November 1971
In England an American with a nagging wife rents a house that comes with a stairwell ghost.


Season 2, Episode 27: A Midnight Visit to the Neighborhood Blood Bank
Original Air Date: 17 November 1971
A hungry vampire goes in search of a nocturnal nosh in a young woman's bedchamber.


Season 2, Episode 28: Dr. Stringfellow's Rejuvenator
Original Air Date: 17 November 1971
In the American desert circa 1880, "Doctor" Ernest Stringfellow survives by selling snake oil in the form of a medicinal tonic with dubious healing powers.


Season 2, Episode 29: Hell's Bells
Original Air Date: 17 November 1971
A hippie dies in an automobile accident and finds himself in hell. He wonders just how bad eternity in hell can be.


Season 2, Episode 30: The Dark Boy
Original Air Date: 24 November 1971
In 19th-century Montana, recently-widowed schoolteacher Judith Timm is visited by the specter of Joel Robb, a fourth grader who died two years earlier.


Season 2, Episode 31: Keep in Touch - We'll Think of Something
Original Air Date: 24 November 1971
Wealthy young housewife Claire Foster is a dead ringer for the attractive hitchhiker who pistol-whipped musician Erik Sutton and stole his car. But she steadfastly proclaims her innocence to him and to the police.


Season 2, Episode 32: Pickman's Model
Original Air Date: 1 December 1971
In 1890's Boston, art student Mavis Goldsmith has a desperate crush on her teacher Richard Upton Pickman and tries to learn why he is obsessed with painting rat-like ghouls. One night, she follows him home to learn more.


Season 2, Episode 33: The Dear Departed
Original Air Date: 1 December 1971
Con artist Mark Bennett and his bumbling accomplice Joe Casey run a successful spiritualist scam, until Mark falls for Joe's wife Angela.


Season 2, Episode 34: An Act of Chivalry
Original Air Date: 1 December 1971
When a woman enters an elevator, a ghoul is asked to remove his hat.


Season 2, Episode 35: Cool Air
Original Air Date: 8 December 1971
A Gothic love story about a woman and a man who lives in a refrigerated apartment.


Season 2, Episode 36: Camera Obscura
Original Air Date: 8 December 1971
A miserly banker finds himself trapped after viewing his client's strange optical device.


Season 2, Episode 37: Quoth the Raven
Original Air Date: 8 December 1971
Edgar Allen Poe can't even get the first line down on paper.


Season 2, Episode 38: The Messiah on Mott Street
Original Air Date: 15 December 1971
When his grandfather is ailing, a nine-year-old Jewish buy runs out looking for the Messiah. His grandfather said that he will appear big and black against the sky striking down their enemies. When he gets into trouble and is saved by a black man, he brings him home to his grandfather announcing that he had found him.


Season 2, Episode 39: The Painted Mirror
Original Air Date: 15 December 1971
Removing the paint from the glass of an antique mirror, an aged shop owner sees an alien landscape that is used in a plot to rid himself of his unwanted partner.


Season 2, Episode 40: The Different Ones
Original Air Date: 29 December 1971
In the 21st century, suburban widower Paul Koch is desperate to find a solution to his 17-year-old son Victor's facial deformity, but none seem to exist - on this planet.


Season 2, Episode 41: Tell David...
Original Air Date: 29 December 1971
Lost and asking for directions a woman gets a warning and possible glimpse into her own future.


Season 2, Episode 42: Logoda's Heads
Original Air Date: 29 December 1971
A man scours the African jungle for his missing brother and finds Logoda, a witch doctor whose "trophy room" contains the shrunken heads of defeated enemies.


Season 2, Episode 43: Green Fingers
Original Air Date: 5 January 1972
In the days before the Supreme Court's Kelo v. City of New London decision extending eminent domain rights to private business development, the owner of a construction company must resort to nefarious means to acquire the home of a little old lady in order to build a factory.


Season 2, Episode 44: The Funeral
Original Air Date: 5 January 1972
Greedy funeral director Morton Silkline balks at having to arrange a belated funeral for distinguished client Ludwig Asper, but Mr. Asper proves to be very convincing...


Season 2, Episode 45: The Tune in Dan's Cafe
Original Air Date: 5 January 1972



Season 2, Episode 46: Lindemann's Catch
Original Air Date: 12 January 1972
A fisherman who catches a mermaid longs to keep her, but wishes for her to be a real woman.


Season 2, Episode 47: A Feast of Blood
Original Air Date: 12 January 1972
Vain young beauty Sheila Gray is repulsed by Henry Mallory, the unattractive man who wants to marry her. But he's given her a gift - an unusual fur brooch that will not fall off Sheila's coat, no matter how much it is shaken.


Season 2, Episode 48: The Late Mr. Peddington
Original Air Date: 12 January 1972
A woman who is provided very little means from her husband's estate is shopping for the cheapest funeral she can find.


Season 2, Episode 49: The Miracle at Camafeo
Original Air Date: 19 January 1972
Instead of spending his insurance settlement on a medical solution to his paralyzed legs, he visits a Mexican Shrine and looks for a miracle.


Season 2, Episode 50: The Ghost of Sorworth Place
Original Air Date: 19 January 1972
Wandering through Scotland, American drifter Ralph Burke is instantly smitten with Ann Loring, a beautiful widow whose home Sorworth Place is haunted by a ghost.


Season 2, Episode 51: The Waiting Room
Original Air Date: 26 January 1972
The sins of unsavory gunfighter Samuel Dichter follow him into the afterlife.


Season 2, Episode 52: Last Rites for a Dead Druid
Original Air Date: 26 January 1972
Attorney Bruce Tarraday suffers nightmares after his wife Jennie visits an antique store and makes an impulse purchase of a life-size druid sorcerer statue that she claims resembles him.


Season 2, Episode 53: Deliveries in the Rear
Original Air Date: 9 February 1972
In 19th century New England, callous surgery instructor Dr. John Fletcher is unconcerned about where the local grave robbers obtain the dissection cadavers that they sell to him for his classroom lectures.


Season 2, Episode 54: Stop Killing Me
Original Air Date: 9 February 1972
Middle-aged housewife Frances Turchin confides in police sergeant Stanley Bevelow that her husband is trying to murder her.


Season 2, Episode 55: Dead Weight
Original Air Date: 9 February 1972
A bank robber desperate to leave the country doubts the credentials of Mr. Bullivant, an aging exporter with a reputation for complete customer satisfaction.


Season 2, Episode 56: I'll Never Leave You - Ever
Original Air Date: 16 February 1972
An adulteress tries to destroy her terminally ill husband Owen with the help of a local crone skilled in the black arts.


Season 2, Episode 57: There Aren't Any More MacBanes
Original Air Date: 16 February 1972
Arthur Porter is fed up with wasting his money supporting his eccentric nephew Andrew MacBane and threatens to cut him off, so Andrew turns to the occult to solve the problem.


Season 2, Episode 58: You Can't Get Help Like That Anymore
Original Air Date: 23 February 1972
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Fulton delight in the sadistic torture of their servants, but they may have met their match when a new robot maid, known as Model # 931, shows up at their home.


Season 2, Episode 59: The Sins of the Fathers
Original Air Date: 23 February 1972
Famine runs rampant in 19th century Wales, requiring terrified young Ian Evans to feast on the sins of deceased Mr. Craighill in order to feed himself and his parents.


Season 2, Episode 60: The Caterpillar
Original Air Date: 1 March 1972
A unscrupulous man who wants the beautiful wife of another colleague pays to have an "earwig" placed in the husband's ear. This insect will will tunnel through the victim's brain causing excruciating pain and certain death. His accomplice enters the wrong bedroom and places the insect in his employer's ear. After weeks of pain he miraculously survives, but his doctor tells him that his ordeal is not yet over.


Season 2, Episode 61: Little Girl Lost
Original Air Date: 1 March 1972
The government plays up to a genius' illusion that his dead daughter still lives so that he can finish his energy experiments even though his mind is still clouded.


Season 2, Episode 62: Satisfaction Guaranteed
Original Air Date: 22 September 1971
An employment service has a difficult time fulfilling a customer's request for staff.

"

The best season of Night Gallery

calvinnme | 08/24/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Season Two of "Night Gallery" had some of its best episodes. I have seen these episodes in syndication a great deal - they have held up very well over time. However, even if I hadn't seen them in 37 years there are some episodes that I would still remember. In particular there is the excellent "The Caterpillar" with Lawrence Harvey as a man who covets another man's wife and decides to do away with the husband in a way untraceable by the authorities. An earwick - a small caterpillar native to the tropical area - left on the pillow of the man that will burrow through his brain. The question is - do you trust a total stranger to put the earwick on the right pillow? "A Question of Fear" has a pre-Airplane Leslie Nielsen playing a mercenary who accepts a bet to stay in a haunted house overnight. However, his host has a past grievance. "Tell David" has a young woman, unhappy with her life and feeling that her husband is being unfaithful, meeting her son decades in the future when she takes a long drive. She is both reassured and resigned to her own fate by what she learns. In "He ll's Bells" John Astin plays someone who recently died. He recalls paintings of Hades while waiting for his final judgement, and thinks that the afterlife down under will be quite exciting. The episode suggests that perhaps He ll is in the eye of the beholder. The following are the details on the extra features:

Disc 1:
Podcast Commentary: "A Fear of Spiders" with Authors and Night Gallery Historians Jim Benson and Scott Skelton
Podcast Commentary: "Junior" with Authors and Night Gallery Historians Jim Benson and Scott Skelton
Podcast Commentary: "Marmalade Wine" with Authors and Night Gallery Historians Jim Benson and Scott Skelton
Podcast Commentary: "The Academy" with Authors and Night Gallery Historians Jim Benson and Scott Skelton
Audio Commentary: "The Phantom Farmhouse" wtih Guillermo Del Toro
Audio Commentary: "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" wtih Guillermo Del Toro

Disc 2:
No extras for this disc were listed by the studio in their announcement

Disc 3:
Podcast Commentary: "Cool Air" with Authors and Night Gallery Historians Jim Benson and Scott Skelton
Podcast Commentary: "Camera Obscura" with Authors and Night Gallery Historians Jim Benson and Scott Skelton
Podcast Commentary: "Quoth the Raven" with Authors and Night Gallery Historians Jim Benson and Scott Skelton
Audio Commentary: "The Messi ah on Mott Street" wtih Guillermo Del Toro
Audio Commentary: "The Painted Mirror" wtih Guillermo Del Toro

Disc 4:
Podcast Commentary: "Lindemann's Catch" with Authors and Night Gallery Historians Jim Benson and Scott Skelton
Podcast Commentary: "The Late Mr. Peddington" with Authors and Night Gallery Historians Jim Benson and Scott Skelton
Podcast Commentary: "A Feast of Blood" with Authors and Night Gallery Historians Jim Benson and Scott Skelton

Disc 5:
Revisiting the Gallery: A Look Back
Art Gallery: The Paintings in "Rod Serling's Night Gallery"
NBC TV Promos
Audio Commentary: "The Caterpillar" with Guillermo Del Toro
Audio Commentary: "Little Girl Lost" with Guillermo Del Toro"