Five years after the ground breaking TV show The Twilight Zone ended, creator Rod Serling was back on the air with an anthology show, The Night Gallery.  I remember watching this program as a child and being both enthralled and terrified by the eerie stories. While it lasted three seasons, there were only 43 total episodes.  Because of this low number of shows, the program has not been syndicated as often as its more famous cousin.  Now, with the first season's release on DVD, viewers who've had trouble locating this classic show on TV can now own it on DVD.

As where The Twilight Zone mainly concerned itself with science fiction, The Night Gallery was firmly routed in the macabre.   It was a show of suspense that had an eerie feel to it.  The stories concerned themselves with hauntings, being buried alive, and ESP rather than the spaceships and aliens.

One of the neat things about Night Gallery was that it was an anthology.  Each hour long show would tell a few stories.  This gave the creators the freedom to make each tale as long as it needed to be.  They didn't have to make it fit into a half hour or hour time slot.  Some stories were very short, like The Nature of the Enemy, while others were much longer like The Dead Man.

There were some good segments in the first season.  Steven Spielberg's first directorial job for a major studio was for a story in the pilot, Eyes.  In this tale, a blind rich woman (Joan Crawford) blackmails a doctor into preforming an experimental eye transplant, from a living donor, so that she will be able to see for a few hours.  The story works pretty well, though I wouldn't have predicted that Spielberg would have gone on to bigger and better things after viewing this.

Burgess Meredith plays an alcoholic doctor who has hit the skids until he finds a medical bag from the future in The Little Black Bag.  When Dr. Fall first finds the miraculous medical bag while arguing over a bottle of cheap booze in an alley, he figures that he can pawn it for a quick buck.  But taken by the pleas of a lady to help her dying daughter, Fall finds out that the instruments in the bag can cure just about any malady.  His partner wants to sell them to the highest bidder, but Fall see this as his chance to regain his soiled reputation and to help mankind.  It is always fun to watch Meredith act, and he does a superb job in this story.  He makes his character seem real, with strengths and weaknesses that everyone has.

The Emmy nominated story They are Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar is included in this set, which was my first time viewing this nice story of a man who misses the past.
 
There are some scary tales too.  The Doll has a horribly ugly child's toy hunting a man, and The Dead Man looks at what happens when a doctor hypnotizes someone into believe that they are dead.

While some of the stories still come across very well, on the whole this first season doesn't hold up well.  It seems rather dated when viewed today.  Most of the director's were trying to be new and innovative, but when viewed now the camera work is just distracting.  The shows are filled with odd and unusual camera angles, fish eye lenses, and with out of focus objects put in the foreground.  This just makes the episodes look corny and strange, and doesn't really add any atmosphere.

I could easily overlook that if the stories were better, but overall they are not that great.  The tales are not tightly constructed, with a lot of extra scenes that aren't necessary.  (Which is odd given the format of the show.)  Often times the story will not end where it should.  After the twist ending is revealed in The House, the story will goes on for a minute or two longer.  It doesn't wrap anything up, just restates what has already been revealed.  In a similar fashion the punchline to the humorous story The Nature of the Enemy is told twice, ruining the effect.  A slight reworking of the story would have made this story much more effective (though still not funny.)

In addition to plots, I really had a problem with a lot of the dialog.  It is often excessively flowery and verbose.  The lines that the actors are speaking don't sound natural at all.  The people in these shows just don't talk the way real people communicate.

There are other problems with the show too.  A lot of the acting is too broad and many of the actors don't do a great job.  Jackie Vernon does a rather poor job as a inept miracle maker in Make Me Laugh, and Diane Keaton overacts her way through Room With a View.  Several of the stories have no likable characters either.  I found it hard to sympathize with William Windom's character when he gets fired after consistently showing up to work drunk and taking three hour lunch breaks in  They are Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar.   I also wondered who you were supposed to relate to in Certain Shadows on the Wall, all the characters were unpleasent.

That said, I still had fun watching this set and reliving moments from my childhood.  Night Gallery never had the consistent quality that Twilight Zone had, and even the best episodes weren't great, but there are some show worth viewing in this season.

This three DVD set comes in a fold out case like Buffy and West Wing.  There is a pocket in the flap of the case for an informational booklet, but the only thing included is an ad for other sets.

Audio:

The two channel mono soundtrack was adequate, but not outstanding.  There was some hiss in the background in some scenes, but this wasn't audible in most scenes at normal levels.  The dialog was clear, but the music was a little flat, which is natural for a 70's TV show.

Video:

The full frame video image was actually very good.  Before this set was released I heard that the video wouldn't be restored and that it looked awful.  It didn't look bad at all, and I can understand why Universal didn't go to the exspense of restoration.  The colors were bright and full, and the definition was very good.  The image was sharp and the picture was generally clear.  While I was surprised at how good the picture looked, it is not perfect.  Every episode has moments when white spots will flick across the image for just a second or two.  They are distracting, but only last a quick moment.  Luckily they are not to frequent. There is a little grain to the picture and some edge enhancement that was a little heavy handed at times.  Still, the picture looked good, and no one should avoid buying this set because of the image quality.
 
Extras:

It is very disappointing that there are not any real extras on this DVD.  The I was hoping that one of the two unaired shows would be included, or the recent special about the Night Gallery that aired on The Mystery Channel.  As it is, the 'extras' are three episodes from the latter seasons. They are:

Episode eight from the second season with the stories The Diary, A Matter of Semantics, Big Surprise (a favorite of mine when I was a kid staring John Carradine) and Professor Peabody's Last Lecture.

Season three episode one, The Return of the Sorcerer, and episode fourteen, Whisper.  (These are half hour episodes.)

I find it a little curious that they are including episodes from the later seasons on this set.  I hope that it doesn't bode ill for future seasons being released.

Final Thoughts:

The Night Gallery hasn't aged as well as The Twilight Zone.  When viewed today, this show is very dated and looks corny and tired.  While there are some very good stories in this set, they never quite achieve greatness.  Contrary to the rumors circulating before this set was released, the image quality is really pretty good on this set, with some minor irritations but an overall clear picture.  If you are a fan of the show, but sure to pick it up, but people who haven't seen it in years are better off renting it.