Art and Horror: An introduction to The Night Gallery

The connection between art and horror is as old as the connection between literature and horror. Indeed, arguably it’s even older. If the animals and were-creatures in the paintings at Lascaux and other prehistoric sites represent creatures that the painters’ society feared at least a little, then in a sense they’re the world’s earliest horror comics.

Thus it’s odd that writers, producers and directors so seldom exploit this natural relationship. Both the movie and book review sections of 8sails are piled with horror stories, but I can count the number of art- or artist-centered tales that come readily to mind without running out of fingers. Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model.” King’s “The Road Virus Heads North.”

And of course Rod Serling’s The Night Gallery.

Perhaps I should be more precise. The three segments that make up the pilot (later packaged as a stand-alone movie) all involve works of art. Though the painting in the Steven Spielberg / Joan Crawford segment is incidental to the plot, the other two chapters make excellent use of their canvases.

And for many years I assumed that the rest of the series did the same. The series originally ran from December 1970 to May 1973, and back then I was a little too young to stay up late and watch it. So for years all I knew about the series as a whole came from watching the pilot when it aired on Friday Fright Night (once I was old enough to stay up for it, of course) and the ads in monster magazines for the poster reproductions of the paintings from the rest of the series. So naturally I figured that the whole set was a series of stories with art at their cores.

No such luck. Serling uses the art gallery theme to introduce stories, but beyond that the paintings seldom play roles in the tales. Indeed, some of the pairings have little obvious connection to each other.

That was a shame, because the art almost always suggested some good horror potential. Even the abstract stuff could have been twisted around into something interesting. The scripts, on the other hand, frequently came up short. Even the well-crafted ones – such as Emmy-nominated “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar” – were often far too sentimental, strange or just plain dull to work as horror stories. Still, every once in awhile one would really work.

For many years The Night Gallery lived only in syndication. For the first two seasons of the series the episodes lasted an hour, but for the third season the shows were 30 minutes. For some reason – presumably to make it easier to wedge into gaps in schedules – in syndication the half-hour format was selected. So some of the stories from the 60 minute seasons were either butchered to make them fit or beefed up with extra footage to make them longer. Further, segments from a short-lived series from 1972 – The Sixth Sense – were also cut in.

The advent of the DVD was a real boon to many old shows, including this one. As of this writing, both the first and second seasons are available on disc in their original broadcast formats.