Writer and television producer Rod Serling attained his status as a 20th century pop culture icon due to The Twilight Zone, the sci-fi anthology program that he created, oversaw, narrated, and frequently scripted from 1959-1964. That show has made Serling an impressively enduring figure in the ever-shifting landscape of American media, but it's not the only anthology show that he curated. We're going to be talking about the other one on this episode.
Rachel spent her adolescence watching The Night Gallery and credits it with spurring her interest in horror fiction. For Reel Deep Dive, she's selected a few of the Night Gallery segments that she considers to be representative of the program's vibe and quality. She and Ryan break down the plots of each vignette, commenting on how the show is constructed and how it's reflective of the times and landscape it existed in. Talking points for this episode include the dangers of nostalgia, the complicated legacy of H.P. Lovecraft, Vincent Price's facial hair, the early work of Steven Spielberg, the curious form of modern Satanism, and why The Night Gallery has never managed to escape the shadow of its far more popular forebear.
