"Night Gallery" Professor Peabody's Last Lecture (1971)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Jerrold Freedman

Writer:

Jack Laird (written by)

TV Series:

"Night Gallery" (1970)

Original Air Date:

10 November 1971 (Season 2, Episode 25)

Genre:

Mystery | Fantasy | Horror | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Plot:

During one of his classroom lectures, college professor Peabody makes the mistake of dismissing pagan religious cults as childish superstitions. |

Plot Keywords:

Painting | Black Comedy | Anthology | Supernatural | Vampire

Cast

Carl Reiner	...	Professor Peabody
Johnnie Collins III	...	Mr. Lovecraft
Richard Annis	...	Mr. Bloch
Louise Lawson	...	Miss Heald
Larry Watson	...	Mr. Derleth
Rod Serling	...	Himself - Host

Movie Connections:

References Superman (1941)

A personal favorite with "In" jokes

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Professor Peabody is teaching a seminar on mythology at Miskatonic University, and makes it plain that his opinion of the subject matter couldn't be any lower. He airily dismisses superstition as "Balderdash," commenting to one of his students that "Ancient man was out making sacrifices to nonexistent gods" when he should have turned his faculties to harnessing the elements.

Alas, the Prof ends-up picking on the wrong gods, who take a dim view of his view of them. They are, of course, the "Old Ones" of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulu Mythos, and the professor insults them and then accidentally invokes them with a spell he reads aloud from the Necronomicon. Their vengeance is fairly grotesque but the episode manages to end on a light note anyway.

Carl Reiner is superb as Peabody, the man who just doesn't know when to shut up (there is a lull in the proceedings, indicating that if he'd just quit while he was ahead, the Old Ones would have let him off the hook.) He's also the professor who constantly cracks jokes which are completely unfunny. The students who are identified by name are the In joke-- the names are connected to Lovecraft: Mr. Derleth, Mr. Bloch, and Mr. Lovecraft himself. The latter is very well portrayed by Johnnie Collins III, who was a dead ringer for Billy Mumy. He is very good-- his face expresses perfectly his growing sense of alarm as he seems to realize what is really happening.

All in all, very good.