Back in 1971 it would have been unconscionable for someone to call out another for being gay in a TV show, but that's what it seemed like here when landlord Boucher (Tom Pedi) questioned Justus Walters' (Patrick O'Neal) manhood in the first entry of this Night Gallery offering. I thought that was kind of interesting. Then his upstairs neighbor Elizabeth (Kim Stanley) tells him to call Bellevue for his insistence on seeing dog-sized spiders. The guy couldn't catch a break. Which is OK because he was totally heartless and mean spirited, which made it all the more reasonable he should be locked in his own bedroom to await his fate. Consider your own resolution to this story, since Elizabeth went back upstairs to bed, leaving the curmudgeon howling.
The 'Junior' segment - what can one say. The word 'stupid' keeps cropping up to me for any number of these short subjects on Night Gallery. This one is in that category.
'Marmalade Wine' came to a gruesome end when Roger Blacker (Robert Morse) parlayed his nature as a braggart into a series of lucky predictions for a shifty surgeon, portrayed by Rudy Vallee in an odd casting decision. In a way, this story brought to mind one of Rod Serling's 'Twilight Zone' episodes titled 'The Silence' from the second season of that series. The difference being that in 'The Silence', the principal character had his own vocal chords cut to win a bet that he couldn't refrain from speaking for an entire year, whereas here, the deranged doctor cut off his guest's feet to keep him from leaving. Thinking about either outcome is an exercise in creepy horror.
Finally, and from the vantage point of 2017 as I write this, there are no safe spaces at 'The Academy' for anyone to escape a healthy dose of motivation and discipline. In this case though, maybe it wasn't so healthy after all. One has to wonder how bad the Halston kid could have been to warrant admission to this school of hard knocks. But then again, seeing how his father was Pat Boone, a permanent residency at Glendalough might have been just the place for him.
The 'Junior' segment - what can one say. The word 'stupid' keeps cropping up to me for any number of these short subjects on Night Gallery. This one is in that category.
'Marmalade Wine' came to a gruesome end when Roger Blacker (Robert Morse) parlayed his nature as a braggart into a series of lucky predictions for a shifty surgeon, portrayed by Rudy Vallee in an odd casting decision. In a way, this story brought to mind one of Rod Serling's 'Twilight Zone' episodes titled 'The Silence' from the second season of that series. The difference being that in 'The Silence', the principal character had his own vocal chords cut to win a bet that he couldn't refrain from speaking for an entire year, whereas here, the deranged doctor cut off his guest's feet to keep him from leaving. Thinking about either outcome is an exercise in creepy horror.
Finally, and from the vantage point of 2017 as I write this, there are no safe spaces at 'The Academy' for anyone to escape a healthy dose of motivation and discipline. In this case though, maybe it wasn't so healthy after all. One has to wonder how bad the Halston kid could have been to warrant admission to this school of hard knocks. But then again, seeing how his father was Pat Boone, a permanent residency at Glendalough might have been just the place for him.