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Reviews
Night Gallery: The Diary/A Matter of Semantics/Big Surprise/Professor Peabody's Last Lecture (1971)
What was the Big Surprise?
As one can see, there are mixed feelings about the segment entitled "Big Surprise." John Carradine plays a scruffy old man who beckons one day to one of three boys walking home from school. I don't believe the time period is precisely defined, although the boys are walking with their books lashed together with a belt, thrown over their shoulders - a rural practice that my mother spoke of from her childhood in the 1930s.
Carradine gives the boy directions to a place where he should dig down four feet and find a "big surprise." What could it be? A joke? Money? The boys discuss the probabilities and then finally decide to dig for the surprise. All three help dig, but eventually all but the first boy give up and go home. This boy continues to dig until he uncovers a locked wooden box or crate . He breaks the lock and the lid opens on its own. The boy looks in surprise and perhaps fear - it is the old man who comes close to the boy (the camera) and says, creepily, "Surprise."
Now some have supposed that the story is nothing more than an old man's twisted prank, and that may be. But at one point the boys mention that the old man is never seen off his property. The crate/box is locked from the outside until the boy breaks the lock. Me, I fancy that the old man is a spirit or demon confined to the property unless he can convince some hapless passerby to open the demon's only possible escape hatch. Fanciful? Perhaps, but plausible, I think.