DEATH CRUISE

Kate Jackson and Edward Albert

DEATH CRUISE (1974 telefilm). Director: Ralph Senensky.

Three couples have won an all-expenses-paid, three week cruise on an ocean liner. Sylvia Carter (Polly Bergen) is distressed by her husband Jerry's (Richard Long) philandering. Elizabeth Mason (Celeste Holm) is concerned that her children are grown and may not need her, and then learns that her husband (Tom Bosley) wonders if there's any point in their even staying married. Mary (Kate Jackson of Making Love) is bitterly disappointed when her husband James (Edward Albert) insists that he doesn't want children. Then one by one all of them begin dying. The ship's doctor (Michael Constantine) discovers that the company which paid for the three couple's cruises doesn't even exist. Screenwriter Jack B. Sowards channels his inner Agatha Christie to come up with a suspenseful, twisting, and diabolical plot, and all of the actors do their best to bring their characters to life as well as to conceal who may or may not be behind it all. Everyone is good, but Holm [All About Eve] and Long [Follow the Boys] make the best impression. Albert and Jackson also played a couple in the previous year's Killer Bees.

Verdict: Absorbing TV puzzler well worth the watching for mystery fans. ***.

NIGHT GALLERY (1969)

Joan Crawford in a dramatic moment

NIGHT GALLERY (1969 telefilm). Hosted and scripted by Rod Serling. Directors: Boris Sagal; Steven Spielberg; Barry Shear.

Rod Serling's follow-up to The Twilight Zone was a new fantasy-horror series in which Serling introduced each episode from a gallery of paintings, each painting tied in to one of the night's stories. This telefilm was the pilot for the show, and featured three tales of the bizarre. In the first, "The Cemetery," Roddy McDowall murders his decrepit wealthy uncle (George Macready), then freaks out as he sees the old man apparently breaking out of his grave in stages in a painting that hangs on the wall -- is the corpse coming after him with murder on its mind? The manservant, Portifoy (Ossie Davis), figures in an amusing climax. In the second story, "Eyes," filthy rich Miss Menlo (Joan Crawford), who has been blind since birth, pays a poor fool (Tom Bosley) to give her his eyes for money even as her doctor (Barry Sullivan) tells her she'll only have sight for about eleven hours. The story is deliciously ironic if quite improbable. [This was one of Steven Spielberg's earliest assignments; Crawford thought he was the coffee boy!] The third tale, "The Escape Route," is a highly satisfying tale in which a Nazi war criminal (Richard Kiley) in South America dreams of finding peace from "persecution" [!] in a pastoral painting hanging in the local museum, but winds up in a much more fitting scenario. Serling has scripted some fine dialogue for the stories, and gotten some top-flight actors to give their all for the all-important pilot. Roddy McDowall and Ossie Davis both deliver the goods in the first segment; Crawford and Sullivan are terrific in the second [with solid support from Bosley]; and Kiley, in an unusual turn for him, is splendid as the Nazi Strobe, with Norma Crane making quite a positive impression as the contemptuous prostitute, Gretchen. Serling is as adept a host as ever and the three directors are on top of things.

Verdict: Easy to see why this went to series. ***.