Finally, an episode of Night Gallery you can savor, as “Pickman’s Model” is one of the better stories that the show would present. Sure, you have to deal with a middling story in the, well, middle, and the Jack Laird blackout segment is predictable flotsam and jetsam, but when you have an opening this strong, that’s why you stay with this show.

Remarkably, Laird would direct the first segment from a script by Alvin Sapinsley. Based on the H.P. Lovecraft story, this is about Richard Upton Pickman (Bradford Dillman), a painting teacher at a women’s college. Somehow, he keeps his job despite all of his work being so horrific it nearly causes people to pass out. Mavis Goldsmith (Louise Sorel) becomes obsessed with him, despite him trying to remain apart from her. As she tracks him down, she discovers that the creatures in his paintings are horribly real, thanks to special effects by Leonard Engelman and John Chambers, who used the original mold for the Creature from the Black Lagoon to make their monster. Another tie to monster films is that Mavis lives in the same studio backlot house that was once home to the Munsters.

For someone so devoted to humorous vanilla horror, the fact that Laird made more than one Lovecraft story on this show is slightly perplexing. Maybe people really aren’t all good or bad; there are shades of everything.

“The Dear Departed” was directed by Jeff Corey and written by host Rod Serling. Based on a Alice-Mary Schnirring story, it’s about two spiritualist con artists — Mark Bennett (Steve Lawrence) and Joe (Harvey Lembeck) — and the affair Mark is having with his partner’s wife Angela (Maureen Arthur). Once Joe is hit by a bus, their act becomes legitimate, to Mark’s horror.

“An Act of Chivalry” is the absolute nadir of this show, if “Pickman’s” is near the height. Just the dumbest of sight gags and something that denigrates this show to a degree that emotionally bothers me. About the only nice thing you can say is that at least future Electra Woman Deidre Hall is in it.

Ah Night Gallery. Often you are the peak and the valley at the same time.

I prefer the episodes of Night Gallery with fewer stories, as it allows each tale time to stretch out and capture you. Sadly, this episode only has host Rod Serling appear as the host; the first segment “The Dark Boy” is directed by John Astin and written by Harland Welles from an August Derleth story and “Keep in Touch — We’ll Think of Something” is directed and written by Gene R. Kearney.

“The Dark Boy” has a widowed schoolteacher named Judith Timm (Elizabeth Hartman) coming to a small town in Montana to take over the one room schoolhouse. She rents a room from sisters Abigail (Gale Sondergaard, the original Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz who was replaced because the makeup team could not make her into a suitably ugly witch; she’s also in The Spider Woman Strikes Back) and Lettie Moore (Hope Summers, Mrs. Gilmore from Rosemary’s Baby).

Judith claims she has seventeen students, but one can’t be found in the list of her pupils. It’s the same issue the last teacher dealt with, a dark haired boy of mystery. It turns out that it’s Joel Robb, a child who died two years before who has been haunting the entire neighborhood and everyone in it. She begins to get to know the boy’s father and understand the grief that the man has been living.

“The Dark Boy” is a strong episode and Astin shows some skill as a director.

“Keep In Touch — We’ll Think of Something” is all about a piano player named (Alex Cord) and his obsession with a woman named Claire Foster (Joanna Pettet; she was married to Cord at the time). He dreams of her every night, while her husband dreams of a man with a scarred hand trying to murder him. Strangely, when he finds her — using the police to track her down, claiming that she stole his car — she isn’t nervous about this strange man. She also knows they are destined to be together.

It’s a decent story but struggles following the first story in this episode. Still, two serious stories in one Night Gallery? That’s how it should be.

By now, you know the deal. If you see four stories in an episode of Night Gallery, you’re not getting more. You’re getting less.

“House With Ghost” is directed and written by Gene R. Kearney from an August Derleth story. Ellis Travers (Bob Crane) just wants to be with Sherry (Trisha Noble), which means he has to murder his wife Iris (Jo Anne Worley) by using her dizzy spells and a haunted house, which seems like a lot of work.

“A Midnight Visit to the Neighborhood Blood Bank” is so Jack Laird that while he got William Hale to direct it, he wrote it and his stepdaughter Journey plays the victim of perhaps the healthiest looking vampire ever, played by Victor Buono. You can imagine how one note this all is. It’s also the same idea as “A Matter of Semantics,” which was in the last episode.

“Dr. Stringfellow’s Rejuvenator” is directed by Jerrold Freedman from a script by Rod Serling. Doctor Ernest Stringfellow (Forrest Tucker) claims that he has the cure for anything and when a father believes that it can save the life of his daughter, not even a doctor (Murray Hamilton) can change his mind. But what happens if that snake oil doesn’t work?

This is the kind of story that Night Gallery was made for and I wish that it had time to breathe in this episode instead of being jammed in with filler.

Randy Miller (John Astin) is a hippie that dies and soon finds himself in hell’s waiting room with a larger woman (Jody Gilbert), an old man (Hank Worden) and Satan, plated by Theodore J. Flicker, who directed and wrote this segment — based on a story by Harry Turner — called “Hell’s Bells.”  It’s not long and it’s one joke, as the hippie thinks that hell will be a party and it’s behind his generation forever.

Sometimes, all you get is one great story in these episodes and that’s enough. That said, there are some good moments coming up in the rest of the season.

When I see four stories on a Night Gallery, I get worried. It means that Jack Laird is messing up the dark doom that Rod Serling is bringing and I despise that.

In “The Diary,” Holly Schaeffer (Patty Duke, who was pregnant with Sean Astin during filming) brutalizes an aging and disgraced Hollywood legend named Carrie Crane (Virginia Mayo). Before she dies, Crane gives her a diary where everything comes true. It’s simple, yet it works. Director William Hale and writer Serling create a short and sweet story here; it also has some of the most amazing early 70s furniture — and a Lindsay Wagner cameo — that makes it even more watchable.

“A Matter of Semantics” is Laird directing from a Gene R. Kearney script. Count Dracula (Cesar Romero) goes to a blood bank. Another one note Laird joke that ruins the momentum of the show.

“Big Surprise” has Chris (Vincent Van Patten), Jason (Marc Vahanian) and Dan (Eric Chase) seeking whatever Mr. Hawkins (John Carradine) has buried. Again, it’s simple and quick, but this time effective. Then again, I’m someone that Carradine always works for. Director Jeannot Szwarc does a good job on the Richard Matheson script, which is just the right level of strange.

“Professor Peabody’s Last Lecture” may be silly and over the top, but this Jerrold Freedman-directed (he also was the man who made Victims, The Boy Who Drank Too Much, A Cold Night’s Death and Kansas City Bomber) effort from a Laird script is the first time that many may have heard the name H.P. Lovecraft. Professor Peabody (Carl Reiner) makes light of primitive cultures without realizing that those that live beyond the wall of the endless are always listening.

It mentions writers associated with Lovecraft as well, like Robert Bloch and August Derleth, who added Catholicism’s views of right and wrong to Lovecraft’s mythos, which take them away from their never to be understood cosmic horrors and turn Cthulu into more space kaiju, which I feel mean saying sounds like something right in the perfect headspace for Jack Laird. While this segment has a dumb ending, it has a great race toward doom.

All in all, even with Laird creating more on this episode, there’s enough that’s on the good side for once. If you can make it through his segments, there’s plenty to like here.

Rod Serling is back in this episode and not just hosting as he contributes an experimental story that might not completely work, but offers something beyond the expected and the everyday.

“Midnight Never Ends” has Ruth Asquith (Susan Strasberg, Scream of Fear) and hitchhiking marine Vincent Riley (Robert F. Lyons, 10 to Midnight) returning again and again to a diner where owner Jim Emsden (Robert Hogan) and Sheriff Lewis (Robert Karnes) confront them, all as they hear the faint sounds of clicking. They’ve all been there before and yet, they have no idea why. You’ll be able to decipher what this is all about relatively quickly, yet the blackened setting and strange air make this work. This is the second Jeannot Szwarc Night Gallery story that tries this approach.

This is the only story that has a painting of Serling, which is appropriate, as it is very much about how. a writer tries to bring his story to life.

“Brenda” (Laurie Prange) is a weird and often mean little girl, knocking over sand castles and treating her friends horribly. The one friend she bonds with and understands comes from the sea and is a monster feared by everyone in the summer vacation town she’s spending a few months enjoying with her parents.

Directed by Allen Reisner, whose TV career had work on every show from The Twilight Zone and Playhouse 90 to Hardcastle and McCormick, and written by Douglas Heyes, who created the mini-series North and South from a short story by Margaret St. Clair, this has an odd monster, a strange little girl and an interesting friendship between them.

Not the greatest of episodes but definitely it’s nice to have Serling back writing one story and Laird’s influence isn’t as strong.

There are only two stories in this visit to Night Gallery and it’s the first episode where Rod Serling had nothing to do with the stories other than hosting. The first tale is decent but the second is expected.

In “A Question of Fear,” mercenary Colonel Dennis Malloy (Leslie Nielsen) laughs when Dr. Mazi (Fritz Weaver) discusses how dangerous a haunted house is. Mazi challenges him to stay overnight to make $10,000, which the eyepatched military man believes is easy money. The ending, however, with its discussion of transforming men into earthworms, elevates this from a basic scare to inspired weirdness. It’s also helped by Nielsen and Weaver’s performances.

It’s directed by Jack Laird and there, I actually said something kind about something that he did on Night Gallery. The script is by Theodore J. Flicker, the creator of Barney Miller and director of Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang. He based it on a story by Bryan Lewis.

If the exterior of the haunted house is familiar, it should be. It’s the Psycho house in Universal Studios.

“The Devil Is Not Mocked” finds SS General von Grunn (Helmut Dantine) meeting the owner of an Eastern European castle, a mysterious count (Francis Lederer) who may say that he’s the leader of a small resistance group but you know, doesn’t show up in mirrors.

Lederer played Dracula in The Return of Dracula, so it’s pretty much assumed he is who he is when you first meet him. There are no surprises, but this is fine. It’s not Rod Serling Night Gallery pitch blackness, however.

This was directed and written by Gene R. Kearney. It was based on a story by Manly Wade Wellman, whose story “Still Valley” was an episode of The Twilight Zone, “Rouse Him Not” on Monsters and the movie The Legend of Hillbilly John, which came from his book Who Fears the Devil?

Here’s hoping for Serling to make a return next week.

Night Gallery works best when it’s longer stories and not — am I a broken record yet? — the excruciating black out shorts. This episode also has a more experimental first story and I love when the show tries to break new ground.

“The Phantom Farmhouse” is about a sanitarium that allows its patients to roam outside for therapy.  When one of them is killed another patient named Gideon (David Carradine) claims that a girl who lives nearby named Mildred Squire (Linda Marsh, Freebie and the Bean, The Dark Secret of Harvest Home) is the murderer. Doctor Joel Winter (David McCallum, three years removed from The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) refuses to believe that this could be true once he glimpses how gorgeous she is.

Directed by Jeannot Szwarc, written by Halsted Welles and based on a short story by Seabury Quinn, this is shot in a surreal style and Carradine is perfect as a character who feels like the antagonist but stay with it. I also read this referred to as a pre-80s werewolf story, as special effects made a leap in 1981, the year of the werewolf movie, but this still works for me.

Conrad Aiken’s best-known short story, “Silent Snow, Secret Snow,” was originally filmed as a 17-minute short movie produced by Gene Kearney. Kearney directed this story for Night Gallery and it’s a haunting tale of a boy who chooses the world of dreams and snow to the dirty real place that reality offers. It’s made even better because Orson Welles is the perfect narrator.

Paul Hasleman (Radames Pera) withdraws from our world when he starts to care about just one thing: the snow. Much like other Serling presentations that used fantasy or science fiction to explain issues of racism, this is an incredibly stirring tale of a boy with developmental issues that is failed by everyone. Kearney also wrote the teleplay for this and this is perhaps his finest work and amongst the best of Night Gallery.

This whole episode is what I want this show to be. My frustration when it isn’t aside, being able to enjoy this near-perfect journey into the Night Gallery is why I continue to champion this classic show.