THEY'RE TEARING DOWN TIM RILEY'S BAR

I watched The Dead Man, co-starring Whats-His-Name from Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls. Once again, he doffs his shirt and doesn't fare too well.

I'll have to check out Tim Riley, which sounds far less cheesy gothic horror and far more classic Serling.

The late Michael Blodgett.

I always thought "Tim Reilly" had no business being on "Night Gallery."

The only episodes I saw were the ones on that videotape release. The one I'm sure that's on there is with Joan Bennett as a blind woman.

The other two episodes that I'm not sure whether they came from the tape or whether the came from NIGHT GALLERY at all.

There's one about a burglar in an art gallery who escapes into a painting.

The other one's about a guy who kills his uncle (I think) and there's a painting depicting the figure of a man coming towards the house. The guy keeps destroying it but each time it reappears the figure gets closer.

Were these from NIGHT GALLERY? What were their titles?

Make that Joan Crawford, as I remember. Steven Spielberg directed that part of the pilot.

Both are from the pilot, and Roddy McDowell starred as the guy who kills his uncle.

I don't think the man who escapes into the painting is a burglar, though--he's a war criminal of some sort.

This sounds like a variation on M.R. James's fabulous story The Mezzotint, which you can read here.

All from the TV movie which aired during the 1969-70 season. The Roddy McDowall/Ossie Davis episode was first ("The Cemetary"), followed by the Spielberg/Joan Crawford segment ("Eyes") and the episode with Richard Kiley as the war criminal. All written by Serling.

Season One aired the following year, 1970-71 as part of Four-In-One. That's the season that is available on NBC.com right now.

I'm hoping this (NBC.com making these available online) means Seasons Two and Three are finally on the way via DVD.

This week, a very young pre-Godfather Diane Keaton as a sexy and kooky nurse takes care of Joseph Wiseman, Burgess Meredith and a really spaced-out Chill Wills make housecalls, and then Night Gallery wraps things up with a really stinky little lump of green moon cheese! Check it out!

...and, less than half a month later, with all of Season One used up, NBC is showing episodes of this show The Sixth Sense under the Night Gallery banner. How disappointing!

The Sixth Sense premiered on Night Gallery. It was an episode/pilot. My memories are hazy, but wasn't the last season of Night Gallery just Sixth Sense episodes?

I wish FEAR NO EVIL & RITUAL OF EVIL would show up.

THE SIXTH SENSE was an entirely different series that debuted with a 90-minute pilot movie titled SWEET, SWEET RACHEL. What happened later to confuse everybody is that Universal cut the 26 hour-long episodes down to a half-hour (!) and rotated them into the NIGHT GALLERY umbrella, so that each SIXTH SENSE became a (completely incomprehensible) NIGHT GALLERY "episode." It's hard to tell if THE SIXTH SENSE is actually any good because of its mishandling by Universal.

Yeah, I've always wondered if the actual, intact SIXTH SENSE was any good (or even if there was one good episode). All the NIGHT GALLERY cuts seem to devolve into people running around outside in day for night shots with wind machines running while ghostly voices haunt them.

Although, in a piece of pointless trivia, I did find out by accident, while watching one over the summer, that a particularly haunting sample from an early MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT album (never a great, or even a "good" band, but able to come up with the occasional fun song), a sample of a man saying "Joan? Joan? First I'm gonna find her, then I'm gonna kill her!" is from, ta-daa, some obscure old SIXTH SENSE episode.

Now, would somebody just throw DARKROOM and QUINN (act one) MARTIN'S TALES (act two) OF THE UNEXPECTED (epilogue) onto DVD already!

You might want to strap yourself to the couch before you watch "The Little Black Bag." If the look on Chill Wills' face near the end of that one doesn't put you on the floor, the rimshot cut to the line "Perfectly ghastly" and the crack about Japanese films will have you kicking over the coffee table. One of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life.