Until his involvement in Universal Home Entertainment’s release of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery Season Two on DVD, it wasn’t widely known that the classic 1970’s horror series was director Guillermo Del Toro’s primary creative inspiration.
As the Academy Award-nominated director said on my Internet radio show TV Time Machine www.tvtimemachine.com , “Night Gallery is a seminal work in my life. If you look at the movies I do, there’s always a little something of Gallery. I first started noticing filmic style watching the show. It has informed Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone, Hellboy 2 and basically everything else.”
It’s fortunate that someone of the stature of Guillermo Del Toro is standing up for this remarkable series. Considering its pedigree, one must marvel at how this TV series has been neglected over the years. Rod Serling wrote some of his finest scripts for the show, including the Emmy-nominated, “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar.” Steven Spielberg made his directorial debut on NG, as did Leonard Nimoy. Director John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, War Games) also cut his teeth on the series.
Diane Keaton made her acting debut on the show. Vincent Price, Joan Crawford, Lindsay Wagner, David McCallum, Pat Boone (and the list goes on), all contributed heavily to NG. However, over the years, the series has either been reviled or ignored, thrust in the background, lost in the shadows cast by the considerably more popular and critically lauded The Twilight Zone.
Fortunately, through his contributions to the Season Two DVD set and doing extensive interviews about his passion for the show, Guillermo Del Toro is helping cast Night Gallery in a different light, while introducing a new generation of fans to this remarkable TV series.
Thank goodness for GDT!
Jim Benson TV Time Machine Blog 