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Night Gallery is an American anthology series that aired on NBC from December 16, 1970, to May 27, 1973, featuring stories of horror fiction and the macabre. Rod Serling, who had gained fame from an earlier series, The Twilight Zone, served both as the on-air host of Night Gallery and as a major contributor of scripts, although he did not have the same control of content and tone as he had on The Twilight Zone. (1999). 9780815627821, Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815627821 Serling viewed Night Gallery as a logical extension of The Twilight Zone, but while both series shared an interest in thought-provoking dark fantasy, more of Zones offerings were science fiction while Night Gallery focused on horrors of the supernatural.
The series was introduced with a pilot television film consisting of three segments or movies, that aired on November 8, 1969. All three were written by Serling, with the second segment of the film, "Eyes", being the directorial debut of Steven Spielberg, as well as one of the last acting performances by Joan Crawford. Spielberg went on to direct a segment in the first season in 1970, titled "Make Me Laugh", which was another Serling teleplay. This segment was shot as one long take, and Spielberg said it "appalled" network executives due to its unorthodox style.
According to Rod Serling's wife Carol, NBC envisioned Night Gallery as being a show about "action, ghouls and gore". While Serling was fine with having horror elements, he wanted it to be infused with social commentary.Commentary for "The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes/Miss Lovecraft Sent Me/The Hand of Borgus Weems/Phantom of What Opera?", Night Gallery Blu-Ray. Some of Serling's scripts were rejected by producer Jack Laird. He was a fan of the classic Universal Monsters horror films, and preferred NBC's vision of the show.
Night Gallery was initially part of a wheel series called Four in One. This 1970–1971 television series rotated three other shows with Night Gallery, including McCloud, San Francisco International Airport and The Psychiatrist. When Four in One was cancelled, McCloud joined another wheel series, The NBC Mystery Movie, and Night Gallery was spun off as a standalone series.
In its second season, Night Gallery included original comic Blackout gag between the longer story segments in some episodes, conceived by Jack Laird. Most of the blackout sketches were written by Laird himself, and they often featured supernatural characters (such as vampires) in black comedy situations. The inclusion of the short blackout sketches meant that some episodes in the second season had up to four different segments. One of the blackout sketches in the second season, titled "A Matter of Semantics", included Count Dracula (played by Cesar Romero) trying to withdraw blood from a blood bank. The actress who played the blood bank's nurse, E.J. Peaker, later said in 1998 that she remembered the director of "A Matter of Semantics" to be Steven Spielberg. However, Spielberg said in 2023 that he was fired from the show after directing "Make Me Laugh". Jack Laird is officially credited as director of "A Matter of Semantics".
Rod Serling opposed the presence of the blackout sketches on the show due to their tone, and several of them have no introduction from Serling. He said, "I thought they the distorted the thread of what we were trying to do on Night Gallery. I don't think one can show Edgar Allan Poe and then come back with Flip Wilson for 34 seconds. I just don't think they fit." In another interview, he referred to them as "foreign and substantially incorrect", complaining that "you can't sustain the mood of horror or suspense and then intersperse light laughter in the middle of it and then expect to be able to go back in a neutral fashion to an element of horror. You spend fifteen minutes creating a mood for an audience and then you dispel it arbitrarily by trying to make them laugh." These types of segments were much less frequent in the third and final season, which had a restrictive budget and a shorter half-hour format. Each episode consisted of a single segment or a short segment and one short blackout sketch. During this season, NBC explicitly forbade the philosophical stories for which The Twilight Zone was known, and demanded fewer adaptations of classic horror fiction, in favor of more contemporary American stories. NBC moved the show from Wednesday to Sunday in the same 10 p.m. timeslot. Regarding these changes, Serling said at the time, "I'm fucking furious. These people are taking what could have been a good series and they're so commercializing it it's not going to be commercial." Serling added that they wanted "considerable action as opposed to anything insightful, cerebral or sensitive." It has been claimed that NBC pushed for Night Gallery to become strictly an action show for the third season, with no supernatural elements, although this would not end up being the case.
Robert Bloch wrote two teleplays for the show. "Logoda's Heads" was based on the story by August Derleth. "Last Rites for a Dead Druid" originally was an adaptation by Bloch of the H.P. Lovecraft/Hazel Heald collaboration "Out of the Aeons"; however, Bloch's script was not used, and the episode was rewritten and retitled. As a result, "Last Rites for a Dead Druid" bears no resemblance to "Out of the Aeons".Randall Larson. The Complete Robert Bloch: An Illustrated, Comprehensive Bibliography. Fandom Unlimited, 19856, p. 76
Mexican director Guillermo del Toro has cited the show as a major influence. In 2023, Entertainment Weekly included it on their list of the 21 best horror anthology shows of all time.
The syndication edits for Night Gallery were overseen by Universal's Harry Tatelman, who had experience in re-editing old films. In their book Rod Serling's Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour, authors Scott Skelton and Jim Benson identify 39 of the 98 individual segments that were produced for Night Gallery as being "severely altered" in syndication. Segments such as "Green Fingers" and "Lindemann's Catch" had new music inserted, which leaned towards more of a typical horror sound. The music was changed in an attempt to heighten the tension, and it was also a by-product of having to either cut down segments or pad them out. Richard Bracken, one of Harry Tatelman's editors on Night Gallery, later said "Harry was given the assignment by the studio and it was a job he knew that he could do one way or the other, and he did. I don't know if there was any particular glee in changing the style and content of the show, as much as getting the job done."
25 episodes of an unrelated, short-lived supernatural series from 1972, The Sixth Sense, were also incorporated into the syndicated version of the series. The show was also produced by Universal and shared many of the same actors as Night Gallery. Serling was paid $100,000 dollars to film introductions for the episodes from The Sixth Sense, with new paintings also being commissioned for them. Serling's introductions for The Sixth Sense were written by an unknown member of Harry Tatelman's staff. As The Sixth Sense was originally a one-hour show, these episodes were all severely edited to fit into the half-hour timeslot. In order to have more commercials, some television stations required a few extra minutes be cut from episodes, in addition to the edits that had already been made by Tatelman. These edits were done by people working at their respective stations, and are described as having less care put into them when compared to Tatelman's edits. In later years, stations would simply speed up the episodes instead of creating their own edits, which would lead to a higher pitch in the voice of the actors.
Rod Serling and Jack Laird were both said to be "livid" with the syndication edits. Some directors were allowed input before their segments were edited for syndication, including Jeannot Szwarc. When asked what he thought about the show's syndicated version, Szwarc said in 1998, "what they've done to it is absolutely criminal. But they don't give a shit. That has always been the disease of Hollywood. They don't care about the past, all they care about is making a lot of money now." Szwarc additionally said that he had stopped watching the show, since the syndicated version was still being heavily used on television at that point.
The original, uncut and un-edited hour-long version of the series (and without the additional Sixth Sense episodes) has been shown on STARZ!’s Encore Mystery premium movie cable network. The show has aired in the 30-minute syndicated format in several markets through the Retro Television Network in the past.
MeTV had broadcast rights for Night Gallery and aired the show in its syndicated, 30-minute format, including the edited The Sixth Sense episodes.
From May 21 to May 23, 2016, Decades aired a marathon of the series.
On December 6, 2018, Syfy announced that it had plans to revive the Night Gallery series.
On April 6, 2020, Comet TV began airing the syndicated version of the show.
On September 12, 2017, Universal released Night Gallery: The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1, and between 2021 and 2022, all three seasons were released onto Blu-Ray. The series is not currently available to stream on NBCUniversal's streaming service Peacock, unlike Serling's Twilight Zone, which is streaming on Paramount+ due to being tied to CBS/Paramount Global rather than NBCUniversal.
!DVD name !Episodes !Release date !Additional information | |||
| The Complete First Season | 17 | August 24, 2004 | Includes pilot film |
| Season 2 | 61 | November 11, 2008 |
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| Season 3 | 20 | April 10, 2012 | |
| The Complete Series | 98 | September 12, 2017 | |
| Night Gallery: Season One Blu-ray | 6 episodes plus TV movie | November 23, 2021 |
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| Night Gallery: Season Two Blu-ray | 22 | July 26, 2022 |
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| Night Gallery: Season Three Blu-ray Season3 Blu-ray | 15 | November 22, 2022 |
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