The title fills me with a sense of dread that Night Galley only wishes it could achieve legitimately.  I fear another Godawful maudlin show-biz tale like Make Me Laugh.  I was completely wrong in pre-judging Thriller, though, so there is hope.

Millicent Hardy arrives home early from a vacation at “the cape” where rooms were going for an outlandish $35 per night.  She can’t find her sister Marion anywhere.  Her room is a mess, half-open drawers, clothes everywhere, a burned-through cigarette resting on the vanity.  The kitchen isn’t much better with dishes everywhere.

Millie hears tapping upstairs — not the usual haunted house tapping — Marion was actually a tap dancer. She goes to the upstairs studio to see her sister, and finds her hanging from a rope deader that Henri Radin.

Every day for six weeks, Millie has been having strange experiences.  Today she saw Marion’s wig and passed out screaming.  Yesterday, a dress of Marion’s mysteriously appeared in her closet.  Marion’s hair is showing up in Millie’s hairbrush.  There are apple sauce jars left around — a favorite of Marion’s.  Cigarette butts, but Millie doesn’t smoke.

While talking to her boyfriend about selling the property, she mindlessly picks up a cigarette to smoke.  That night she hears the tapping again.  Well unless they were triplets, this has got to go better than last time.  Nothing really happens, Millie just begs forgiveness for not being with Marion in her time of need.

The next day she gets a visit from William Jason to purchase the property.  As he is making his pitch, the piano and tapping start again.  Jason doesn’t hear anything, and it stops the second he leaves.

Going to answer the phone, she finds a locket was buried with Marion that has pictures of a skull and Millie; or maybe Marion herself — who can tell with twins.

She goes to see the doctor who called an begins taking on the characteristics of her dead sister — smoking, referring to Millie as her sister, admitting to being a slut.

That night, a spectral voice calls out to her and lays out a tap dancing outfit for her which she puts on.  There is another noose hanging in the studio and the voice beckons her to “come to me”.  She hesitates and Jason steps out of the shadows.  There are a couple of switcheroos and it turned out to be a good episode.  So much for my prognostication skills.

Post-Post:

• Twilight Zone Legacy:  Dane Clark was in Prime Mover and Stuart Nisbet was in In Praise of Pip.  What’s up with Pip?  Serling used that name a few times.
• WTF!  Sandra Dee (Millie) played Penny on Lost?  That one had me puzzled until I saw that it was a movie from 1983.

August Kolodney (Mickey Rooney) is shoveling it back as the only customer in an Italian restaurant. He’s the kind of guy who snaps his fingers at the waiter.  Later, he verbally snaps at the waiter, sensing that the waiter has set him up for a hit.

Sure enough, two of the worst hit-men in the world come storming through the doors.  Rooney takes one in the shoulder, but manages to get away out the front door as the goons do not chase him.

He goes to see his moll, the appropriately named Molly Mitchell. She had declined Augie’s invitation that night, assuring he would be alone at the restaurant.  He tells her to beat it, and throws her out of the house he puts her up in.

The mob doctor is able to stitch him up, but tells him he was lucky the bullet that wasn’t an inch to the left or right.  He also proscribes that Augie retire to help his blood pressure, “stop drinking like a fish and eating like a hippo.”  Augie does want out. His big plan is to “someday get a razor and they’ll need a bucket brigade to clean up the mess.” C’mon, it’s Mickey Rooney, 5 or 6 Solo Cups will do. The doctor gives him an address of Dr. Glendon who can keep him alive, but at a steep price.

Rooney arrives at one of Night Gallery’s frequently used sets, and meets Dr. Glendon. Rooney lets him know he doesn’t like the doctor’s rules, not being able to tell anyone he was coming here, and having to come alone.  He calls Augie a racketeer just to be clear.  He promises Augie a long comfortable life, “free of fear, devoid of worry, absolutely without fear or tension of any kind.”  All he has to do is give Glendon everything he owns.

Rooney protests that he is just a lowly hood, but Glendon knows better and tells him that he is the best in his field.  He reads off a list of the times that Rooney has almost been hit.  Rooney says he doesn’t “want to hear a list of how many times I’ve been fingered” for which I can’t blame him.  Once a year at my annual check-up is plenty for me.

Glendon drugs his wine and promises to give him the fountain youth.  He leads Augie down a short hall and shows his collection.  First is Anastasia, missing daughter of Czar Nicholas (71).  She is behind bars but seems content in a living room setting doing needlepoint.  In the next cell is Judge Crater (83),  Beside him is Adolph Hitler (83), paging restlessly around his office setting.  And Amelia Airhart (75) who seems to be charting a route at her desk.  None of the group acknowledges Rooney or their captor.  It is also interesting how young, or at least plausibly alive, these historic figures were at the time.

The last cell is, of course open and reserved for Rooney.  As he is locked in, Glendon assures him he will live a very long time.

So what’s the point?  At first I assumed the orange hallway of cells was going to represent Hell, and Glendon the Devil — I’m a sucker for a good Devil or purgatory story.  But Hitler seems to be the only resident that would belong there.

Frankly, I’m not much of a Mickey Rooney fan and he seems terrible here.  That and the ambiguity of the captivity make this a fairly dull outing.  OK, it isn’t Hell.  But why aren’t any of the prisoners acknowledging them?  Why do most seem content?  Is Airhart really thinking she is going to take another flight?  Do they remain drugged forever? Only Crater and Hitler seem perturbed at their captivity.

Post-Post:

• Twilight Zone Legacy:  Mickey Rooney had a good, if talky, role in The Last Night of a Jockey.  David Fresco had a slightly lesser role as “Man” in The Gift.
• Roald Amundson is also a captive. At 100, he would have been the oldest. It still amazes me that Hitler could have easily been alive when this aired.

Tom & Leona Ogilvy pull up to the house left to him by his late cousin Zachariah.  More importantly, there is a new Queen of Night Gallery. Sorry, Joanna Pettet, Barbara Anderson as Leona is unbelievably hot.  There is nothing that could make this a less than average episode as long as she is in it.

The crabby housekeeper Miss Patience starts their tour in the attic.  Tom becomes interested in a large chest, but Miss Patience tells him Zachariah’s last words were that the chest was “not to be moved, and under no circumstances is it to be opened.”  Also, that someone would be coming for it.

Tom redecorates the attic to be his writing workspace since Starbucks had not yet been invented.  One day as he is working, the light dims and the chest begins moving and levitating.  Normally a bouncy and gravity-defying chest is a good thing, not so much here.

That night, it possesses Tom so that he is summoned from bed to the attic without him recalling it.  During a storm, it also types a message on his typewriter.  The next morning, Tom finds the message.  He calls Leona up to read it.

For it must come to pass that a young woman shall with a white liquid scalding hot pressed to her lips and thence forced down her throat on a Sabbath day night be executed by the young man, her everlasting soul in forfeit.

He accuses Leona of writing it, but finally decides some kids broke in and typed it as a prank.  He tells Leona, “Get ye to the scullery.”  She sees the chest rocking, but doesn’t think it worth mentioning.

The next day, Leona has the chest hauled away to a warehouse.  Not having the chest there is as disturbing to Tom as actually having it there.  He has trouble concentrating on his book, pacing around the creaking attic.  Suddenly, the chest is back in its place.  He hears Leona screaming downstairs and she claims something attacked her.

So this time, they put the chest in a storage shed and nail the door shut.  They begin cruelly sniping at each other.  He berates her for not even being able to keep food in the house, and she berates his writing.  He grabs a pan of boiling milk from the stove and moves to force it down her throat.  I guess that was the prophesied “white liquid pressed to her lips” which is bit of a let-down, I must say.

Fortunately, the trance is broken and Tom spills the milk on the floor.  Hearing a knocking, he rushes to the attic and finds the chest back in its usual place.

Downstairs, Leona answers a knock at the door expecting trick-or-treaters.  Instead it is  ghoulish figure who says he has come for the chest.  It is cousin Zachariah who shows himself to the attic.  I could post a picture, but there are none with Barbara Anderson also in it, so why bother.

The next morning, Tom realizes that the message on the typewriter was a warning from Zachariah.  He says that finally rid of the chest, he can get back to work and they will live happily ever after.  Naturally, he goes back upstairs and the chest is there again with a note that says “It will be called for.”  i.e. Zach will be back in one year on Halloween.  They get back in the car and leave behind the house with a sign posted that it is for Sale or Rent.

Sadly my assertion that this could sink no lower than average due to the presence of Miss Anderson was put to the test.  There are so many unanswered questions, but they are not interesting enough to demand answers.  There just isn’t much going on here.  Except this:

Post-Post:

• Twilight Zone Legacy:  Alan Napier was in Passage on the Lady Anne.
• The interiors are the same house used repeatedly since the pilot episode The Cemetery.
• Tom’s cousin was 23 years older than him?  Possible, but why was he not just made to be an uncle?
• At least Colin Farrell wasn’t in it.

Lots to be thankful for:  This is the beginning of the last season of Night Gallery . . . I get to skip the execrable first episode as it was inexplicably put on the Season One DVD . . . Joanna Pettet is making her fourth appearance.

On the downside, they have done away with Gil Mellé’s theme which was almost as unnerving as TZ’s.  And Serling’s intro is shamefully weak:  “Let me welcome you to this parlor of paintings . . .”  But the play is the thing, so let’s get to it.

Photographer David Faulkner (James Farentino) is developing film in is darkroom when he sees a picture of a hot babe that he doesn’t remember shooting.  The girl in the photo (Joanna Pettet) walks into his darkroom, but now the picture is not of her anymore.  He doesn’t complain about her opening the door and exposing the other negatives, but who would?  He invites her back the next morning for test shots.

The next day, he fires off hundreds of pictures of her, using the time-honored TV style of photography — constantly moving the camera so it would be impossible to get a focused shot unless he has the shutter speed at 1/30000000.  He should really get a tripod; and during the bikini shots, maybe did.  Heyoooooo!

The next day, he has a meeting with Mr. Munsch from Munsch Beer who is looking for just the right girl to be Miss Munsch in his ad campaign.  He even has a miniature billboard mocked up with a white outline reserved for the perfect white model.  None of the usual suspects in Faulkner’s portfolio excite him until he gets to Joanna.  And we’ll stick with calling her Joanna because she has no name in the episode.

Soon, Joanna’s picture is adorning beer billboards all over the city.  His pal Harry is steamed that Faulkner has not introduced him to her.  When he sees her billboards, it’s like she’s looking back at him.  He is drawn by her eyes that seem to know things about him that she could not possibly know.  Faulkner throws Harry out and makes an early night of it.

Joanna apparently plans to make an early night of it also as she hooks up with Harry downstairs.  Faulkner notices the two of them walking down the sidewalk together.  He goes down to follow them but only sees her running away alone.  He also remembers her ominous admonishment to him that she is never to be followed.  So he returns to his studio as Harry rolls down a ditch, dead.

Joanna Pettet, also figuratively hot

The next morning Munsch says he wants to meet the mysterious Joanna.  That night, Faulkner sees her kissing another man who collapses on the sidewalk.  She tries to use her magic eyes on Faulkner, but he runs back to his studio.

As soon as he enters, Joanna is already there.  He is starting to realize this is no ordinary girl, and I don’t just mean her smoking body.  He takes all her negatives from his file cabinets and throws then on the floor.  He dowses them with lighter fluid as she screams, and he sets them on fire.  She curls up like an old negative and burns.

Outside trying to get some fresh air, he sees a billboard of her bursting into flames  It would be fun the think every picture of her on billboards and in magazines is also bursting into flames across the country, but the writer lacked even the imagination of Come Back to Me‘s scribe.  Or more likely, lacked the budget.

OK, so she was a vampire who reeled guys in with her looks and hypnotic eyes — pretty standard vampire tropes for both vampires and vampirettes.  Originality is over-rated, I always say.  But where did she come from?  Why did she pick Faulkner?  Why did she let him set the photos on fire?  Why did that result in her dying?  What if the billboard had been set on fire first,would that have also killed her?  Why doesn’t she ever get that hair cut?  Good performances, but ultimately pointless.

For some reason, I think this shot was intended to be a shocker.

Post-Post:

• Twilight Zone Legacy: John Astin was in A Hundred Yards over the Rim.

This is another one of those segments considered to be among the best of the series — usually a sign of disaster.  In this case, however, it is totally accurate.

Joanna Pettet is in her third episode, lovely as ever, except for the still-too-long hair. Maybe she had a big deal with a  shampoo company at the time.  And her voice is amazing.

Rhona Warwick is in the open-air Borneo home she shares with her much-older husband John, doing some knitting and listening to the Victrola.  We know this is a period piece, not because of the Victrola, but because she is knitting.

Their house-guest / business associate Macy enters through the open doors and immediately starts bitching about the pouring rain.  He is just a chronic complainer about “Borneo, the China and Java Seas, the whole ruddy Malay Archipelago.”  And I assume his mispronunciation of Archipelago is out of spite . . . nah, it was a screw-up.

When John goes out to make sure his storage sheds aren’t leaking, Macy asks Rhona how she can stand it.  He wonders how she “under 28 years of age, you’re an absolute knock-out , and you waste away out here in the Borneo jungle 5,000 miles away from everything you know” with a 66 year-old husband —  I agree, that is weird.  I mean the way he arbitrarily says “under 28”;  I have no problem with the 28 / 66 thing.

No matter how he berates Borneo or her husband’s age, she steadfastly maintains her love of her husband and desire to stay here for all their days.  Although, I expect she will, have far more of them than will her husband.

Realizing he is being a jerk, he asks for Rhona’s forgiveness and they shake hands.  At that moment, Robinson, a local handyman appears in the doorway to sell them some kindling.  Rhona acts little out of character, getting testy with Robinson.  She says, “We don’t observe many social graces here, but knocking before entering a room is still considered de rigueur.”  This is especially stinging since there is no door.  And he didn’t enter.

Official Captain Kirk lighting is used frequently for Macy.

After Rhona leaves the room, Robinson can tell that Macy has the hots for her.  He suggests that there might be something he could do to help that situation.

Later, Rhona sympathetically apologizes to Macy saying that she understands “what loneliness can do to a man — loneliness and abstinence.”  She seductively continues that she has a friendly suggestion.  He is understandably excited by this until she continues, “Take a cold bath, Mr. Macy.”  Zing!!!

After that unnecessary bitchiness, Macy decides to see what Robinson has in mind. Robinson tells him of a local insect, the earwig, which eats wax and has a fondness for the human ear.  If one were put in a person’s ear, it is not able to back out, it can only crawl through the brain continuing to eat, with a 1 in 10,000 chance of ever finding its way out.

Robinson knows some gents who could place one of them in Warwick’s ear that night.  It would take about 2 weeks to drive him mad with pain.  And all for the low, low price of £100.

The next morning at breakfast, Macy feels a tingling in his ear that just won’t go away.  Dabbing it with a napkin, he finds he is bleeding.  The brainiac assassins have put the earwig into the wrong man’s ear — but, in their defense, it would be confusing to spot which man was 30 years younger, had black hair, had a mustache, was sleeping alone, was in the guest quarters, and had not lived in Borneo for the past 25 years.

He completely incriminates himself by running from the room screaming, “They put it in MY ear!  Dear God, they put in MY ear!”  This could have been the end on a lesser show like, say, most other episodes of Night Gallery.  But no . . .

Two weeks later, the doctor comes out of the Warwick house and describes Macy’s condition to Robinson.  Macy has his hands tied to the bedposts to keep him from clawing his face off to get at the earwig.  Red-eyed, with tears running down his face, greasy hair, two weeks growth of beard, agonizing contortions of his face — I don’t think we’ve seen this level of horror out of Night Gallery before.

Miraculously, the earwig finds its way to the other ear and escapes from Macy’s brain.  Back on his feet, Macy admits he would have murdered John for a shot at Rhona.  He expects to be arrested, but is surprised to find he will not be prosecuted.

As one of the few earwig survivors, Macy educates the doctor as to what he experienced, “Agonizing driving, itching pain.  Anything would have been preferable — to be flayed alive, to be burned at the stake, to be put on the rack, to be hanged even would have been an act of mercy.”

Macy senses that the Warwicks and the doctor are holding something back.  The doctor admits that he examined the earwig.  It was a female . . . and it laid eggs in Macy’s brain.  Macy screams in a shot that goes from the interior of his mouth to the exterior of the house.  This was the To Serve Man moment of Night Gallery.

Wait, what now?

Great casting, great set, great sound effects with the constant rain and the bird at the end, great screenplay.  If they could have pulled off a few more of these, Night Gallery would be remembered in much higher regard.

Thus endeth Season Two on a very high note.

Post-Post:

• Twilight Zone Legacy:  John Williams played Shakespeare in The Bard.
• Title Analysis:  The segment is adapted from a short story titled Boomerang.  I can understand making a change since that is a little vague.  But why a caterpillar? The insect in the story is an earwig, which is an actual inset, yet unknown to most people.  Wouldn’t that have been a more intriguing title?
• Skipped Segment: Talk about an intriguing title — Little Girl Lost was a classic episode of The original Twilight Zone.
• Wrote part of this at Starbucks, so was subjected to the Hulu version (i.e. commercial-riddled) of Night Gallery.  Stella Artois has a promotion about buying a limited edition crystal chalice (i.e. beer mug) and they will make a donation of “five years of clean drinking water to women in some 3rd world cesspool the developing world”.  Cuz, you know, f*** men.