Despite the fact that this three-vignette “movie” is actually the pilot episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery TV series, I really like it a lot. The middle vignette, a cliché-ridden tale of a blind woman who temporarily regains her eyesight during a blackout, is notable mostly for the involvement of an old Joan Crawford and a young Stephen Spielberg. The first is my personal favorite, a nasty little bit of inheritance-related skullduggery between Ossie Davis and Roddy MacDowell that ends up centering around an image-shifting painting (all three episodes involve paintings in some way). The final story is a chilling tale of a former concentration camp commandant attempting to elude justice. I suppose most of this is fairly trite and dated by now, but it takes me back to the days of Friday Fright Night and a time when horror film-makers at least pretended to employ writers. Worth seeing
[note: I originally reviewed this show in 1999; since then it’s been released on DVD. Or to be more accurate, the whole first season of Night Gallery is out on disc. The actual episodes are an uneven mix. But however odd the stories, stiff the writing or dated the feel, it’s still better stuff than most of what’s on TV now.]
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