Night Gallery

Background

Serling appeared as a curator in an art gallery setting, introducing each episode's macabre tales by unveiling paintings by Thomas J. Wright and Jaroslav "Jerry" Gebr that depicted the stories. His typical introduction began, "Good evening, and welcome to a private showing of three paintings, displayed here for the first time." The series regularly adapted classic fantasy tales by authors such as H. P. Lovecraft, alongside original works, many by Serling.

Its multi-segment format mirrored 1950s EC horror comics, a structure not seen on television since the 1961 "Trio for Terror" episode of Thriller. A pilot television film consisting of three segments aired on November 8, 1969, all written by Serling; the second segment, "Eyes," marked Steven Spielberg's directorial debut and featured one of Joan Crawford's last acting performances. Spielberg later directed the first-season segment "Make Me Laugh," shot as one long take, which he said "appalled" network executives.

According to Serling's wife Carol, NBC wanted a show of "action, ghouls and gore," while Serling preferred social commentary; producer Jack Laird, a fan of Universal Monsters films, sided with NBC's vision. Night Gallery initially aired as part of the wheel series Four in One, rotating with McCloud, San Francisco International Airport, and The Psychiatrist. When Four in One was cancelled, Night Gallery became a standalone series.

Legacy

Rod Serling, despite clashing with network interference on Night Gallery, still called "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar" one of his finest scripts, even better than his Twilight Zone work. That episode earned an Emmy nomination in 1971 for Outstanding Single Program, and the series got a 1972 makeup nomination for "Pickman's Model." Serling himself won an Edgar Allan Poe Award for writing the pilot. The show was spoofed on The Simpsons' 1993 Treehouse of Horror IV, with Bart Simpson hosting, and on a 1995 Tiny Toons episode called "Night Ghoulery." Steven Spielberg, who directed a Night Gallery segment and later a segment for the 1983 Twilight Zone movie, created his own anthology series Amazing Stories in 1985. Guillermo del Toro has cited the show as a major influence, and in 2023, Entertainment Weekly ranked it among the 21 best horror anthology shows ever.

Syndication

After cancellation, Universal re-edited the 60-minute episodes from the first two seasons into 30-minute episodes to increase syndication availability. Many segments were severely cut, while others were extended with recycled, discarded, or stock footage. For instance, "The Different Ones" was extended from 15 to 24 minutes using footage from Fahrenheit 451, Silent Running, and Apollo space missions. "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar" was cut from 41 to 24 minutes.

Some segments were paired with segments they had not originally aired alongside. The three pilot segments were excluded from syndication as they had already been released as a stand-alone movie. Universal's Harry Tatelman oversaw the edits; authors Scott Skelton and Jim Benson identified 39 of the 98 individual segments as "severely altered. Segments such as "Green Fingers" and "Lindemann's Catch" received new music leaning toward a typical horror sound.

Home media

Universal Studios put all three seasons of Night Gallery out on DVD for Region 1, and the first season also got a UK DVD release. The first season’s discs used the 1997 Universal Pictures logo, but the second and third seasons kept the 1970s logo. A complete series DVD set for Region 1 came out on September 12, 2017, and all three seasons were later released on Blu-ray between 2021 and 2022. Unlike The Twilight Zone, which streams on Paramount+, Night Gallery isn’t available on Peacock.