The Best Episodes of Night Gallery Season 2

A bored colonial on a Malaysian plantation employs an exotic accomplice, an earwig, in his gruesome plot to assassinate a romantic rival. Military strategists unwittingly plant the seeds of the apocalypse when they humor a scientific genius unbalanced by his daughter's death.

Director: Jeannot Szwarc

Writer: Rod Serling

A devastating famine forces a young man to play the part of a sin-eater at a dead man's wake. An abusive couple find that their latest robot maid is developing survival instincts.

Director: Jeannot Szwarc, Jeff Corey

Writer: Rod Serling

A haunting love story of a young woman and her late father's colleague, a man clinging desperately to life in a refrigerated apartment. A heartless moneylender gets his just desserts with the help of a client's unusual telescopic device. Edgar Allan Poe receives some unwanted coaching during a bout with writer's block.

Director: Jeannot Szwarc, Jeff Corey

Writer: Rod Serling, Jack Laird

Desperate to stay alive for the sake of his nine-year-old grandson, an elderly, near-penniless Jew on the brink of death pins his hopes for salvation on the coming of the Messiah. A mirror reflecting an alien landscape figures into an antique dealer's scheme to rid himself of a hateful business partner.

Director: Don Taylor

Writer: Rod Serling

An unscrupulous tycoon takes drastic steps to force an old widow off her land. A vampire plans his belated, lavish -and noisy-final obsequy. A couple stopping at a roadside diner encounter a jukebox that plays only one song, a tune connected with a tragic romance.

Director: John Meredyth Lucas, John Badham

Writer: Rod Serling, Richard Matheson

A gunfighter's final reckoning awaits him in a frontier saloon. When a woman buys a statue bearing an uncanny resemblance to her husband, he soon feels the influence of its model: an ancient druid sorcerer.

Director: Jeannot Szwarc

Writer: Rod Serling

A phenomenally successful young seer suddenly refuses to make further predictions. A vignette about a babysitter and her latest client. A desperate man seeks a surgeon's help when he discovers a presence that controls his right hand. The Phantom of the Opera gets the shock of his life when he menaces a beautiful young singer.

Director: John Meredyth Lucas, John Badham

Writer: Rod Serling, Jack Laird

An intrepid mercenary accepts a $15,000 bet to stay overnight in a haunted house. A Nazi general hunting for resistance fighters gets a strangely warm welcome at a Balkan castle.

Director: Jack Laird

Writer: N/A

Taking refuge in a funeral home, a wounded killer encounters a gentle undertaker with a strange secret. Bricks and mortar figure in a wife's plan to end her husband's suffering. A graduating class of the future takes a particularly revealing final exam. A brief incantation in verse while a coven hungrily awaits an overdue member.

Director: Jeannot Szwarc, Jerrold Freedman

Writer: Rod Serling, Jack Laird

A psychiatrist finds himself falling for a mysterious woman whose last visitor was killed, so police conclude, by wild animals. A boy's fascination with snow begins to draw him into a beautiful fantasy world.

Director: Jeannot Szwarc, Gene R. Kearney

Writer: Halsted Welles, Seabury Quinn, Gene R. Kearney

A vicious gossip columnist receives a gift diary that appears to write its own fearful entries--before the events occur. Count Dracula visits a blood bank. An eccentric farmer promises a "big surprise" to a group of boys if they dig for it. While debunking ancient cults, an academic unwisely scoffs at the wrong god.

Director: Jeannot Szwarc, Jerrold Freedman, Jack Laird

Writer: Rod Serling, Jack Laird, Richard Matheson

A young woman of Victorian Boston finds herself drawn to a reclusive artist obsessed with ghouls. Bad luck follows a phony spiritualist and his assistant's unfaithful wife after an auto accident. A vignette about elevator manners.

Director: Jeff Corey, Jack Laird

Writer: N/A

A captured mermaid awakens emotions in a coldhearted sea captain, who desperately seeks a way to keep her alive. A businesslike widow goes shopping for the cheapest funeral she can buy for her husband. A repulsive suitor evens the score with a calculating beauty by presenting her with an unusual gift: a brooch that seems almost alive.

Director: Jeannot Szwarc, Jeff Corey

Writer: Rod Serling, Jack Laird

A college professor suspects that his visiting aunt is an ancient witch--with designs on inhabiting his wife's body. Dr. Jekyll tries out a new potion. A callous disc jockey is offered up as a hellish sacrifice at a deserted radio station.

Director: Jeannot Szwarc, Jerrold Freedman

Writer: Jack Laird, Malcolm Marmorstein

An insurance swindler stages a miraculous recovery from his fake paralysis at a Mexican shrine. An American drifter protects a Scottish widow from the specter of her late husband.

Director: Ralph Senensky

Writer: Rod Serling

A ghastly shocker about a surgery instructor unconcerned about the source of his cadavers. Convinced that her husband is trying to worry her to death, a distraught housewife files a complaint with the police. A gangster on the lam engages the services of a compliant exporter.

Director: Jeannot Szwarc, Jeff Corey

Writer: Jack Laird, Rod Serling

A schoolteacher in a frontier town tries to reach a timid, hauntingly strange fourth grader. A distraught musician asks the police to help him find an elusive woman.

Director: John Astin

Writer: N/A

The wife of a loathsomely ill farmer decides to force nature's hand with the help of an old crone skilled in the black arts. A sorcery student invokes an ancient spirit to rid himself of a bothersome uncle.

Director: John Newland, Daniel Haller

Writer: Jack Laird

An arachnophobic gourmet columnist seeks help from a woman he spurned when he discovers a hairy, and obstinate, little guest crawling in his kitchen sink. A mother and father learn the hardships of parenting. A careless braggart foolishly exaggerates his meager talents to a crackpot surgeon. A widower investigates an unusually strict military academy for his delinquent son.

Director: Jerrold Freedman, Jeff Corey, Theodore J. Flicker, John Astin

Writer: Rod Serling, Jerrold Freedman

A motorist and a marine hitchhiker experience an uncanny sensation that they've shared previous experiences. A love story about a friendless teenager and the strange creature she traps in an abandoned quarry.

Director: Jeannot Szwarc, Allen Reisner

Writer: Rod Serling, Douglas Heyes

A philandering husband schemes to murder his wife with the aid of a ghost. A thirsty vampire visits a young woman, with disappointing results for him. An unscrupulous medicine man in the Old West promises to heal a poor farmer's dying daughter. A recent initiate is surprised to find that Hell is a little tame for his liking.

Director: Jerrold Freedman, Theodore J. Flicker

Writer: Rod Serling, Jack Laird, Theodore J. Flicker

In a rigidly conformist future society, an anguished father agrees to send his deformed son to a distant planet. A chance encounter with a strange couple convinces a young woman that she has had a glimpse of the future. Searching for a lost explorer in Africa, British authorities accuse a powerful witch doctor of his murder.

Director: John Meredyth Lucas, Jeannot Szwarc, Jeff Corey

Writer: Rod Serling, Robert Bloch