Ciao! Many thanks to you mavens of the macabre for joining me here in this article, where I will be not only contemplating the current state of entertainment but also briefly reviewing “The Return of the Sorcerer” (episode 1, season 3) of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, because it is, I feel, one of the best episodes in that series, it is good fun for a Samhain night, and said episode was inspired by the short story “The Return of the Sorcerer” by Clark Ashton Smith, who is one of my favorite writers (I have shared my thoughts about his work in a previous article). Possible spoilers below.

Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Return of the Sorcerer” is a short story that slowly, languorously builds a ghastly shambles of nervousness and existential terror as it staggers to and fro between metaphysics and materialism, the supernatural of fantasy fiction and the realism of weird fiction, with tones of dark Romanticism, its style being fairly Gothic also, with a hyperventilated air, though its narrative and dialogue, while wonderfully rococo, are overly plodding with trepidation and tedium. Although it may not be the most decadent, the most exciting, nor the most exotic of Smith’s writings, alas, its chilling dénouement remains gratifying and redeeming.

Meanwhile, in Night Gallery’s “The Return of the Sorcerer,” the dialogue for all the characters is awkward and inharmonious; yet despite such a drawback, the virtuoso Vincent Price, who in that episode plays Mr. Carnby, provides the only performance of merit therein, a fascinating performance which fizzes with melodramatic vim and charm: ’tis a style of acting mournfully absent from the vast majority of today’s series and motion pictures.  

Seeing as how we are on the subject of filmmaking and television and what have you, I must say it looks to me like the motion pictures from before the 1930s largely are superior by their purer artistic forms, when compared to most of the movies, shows, and the like that have released afterwards, undoubtedly there being some outliers; that said, movies and shows, as a whole, began a much bigger decline in artistic quality after the 1960s; and so often it seems as if the monolithic majority of what constitutes as the entertainment of our contemporary world (i.e., any television, movies, streaming, shows, and such that were created after the 1990s) is overly ultramodern as well as consumerist and corporatized, mediocre and mundane, polarizing and propagandistic; the commercials, marketing, advertising, and product placement of big business are omnipresent, ludicrous, and aggressively intrusive, more often than not these days; and sociopolitical rot is reducing art and entertainment to bread and circuses, fueling a Mephistophelean factory of worldwide mechanization. With the growing influence of AI and CGI—oh, what volant and viral worms!—this pestilential ailment is worsening, and Decay is rampant.

Well, fortunately for us, Night Gallery’s “The Return of the Sorcerer” is actually a decent piece of entertainment, a somewhat faithful adaptation, but its alterations are not overly distracting; the camerawork and the lighting in it were a tad interesting; adequately, this episode conjures up a spooky mood; its costumes and makeup were not highly impressive, although its sets are intriguingly esoteric; the exotic music playing in it is appealing; and that episode’s colors and shades, especially the reds and purples, do have life—ah, yet they do not live as exquisitely as the colors and shadows in the decadent film Moulin Rouge (1952; directed by John Huston; with performances by José Ferrer, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee)!

Speaking of decadence, Night Gallery’s “The Return of the Sorcerer” has at least three details with aspects that resemble Decadent characteristics.

First is a display of morbid art: at the very start of the episode, there is exhibited a Satanic-seeming, occult painting.

The second is a moment of eccentricity and outlandishness: there is a scene in which, whilst exotic background music plays, a black goat is sitting at a dinner table, eating with the human characters, and wearing a jeweled collar, and this goat is introduced as being Mr. Carnby’s father. Could there be an implication of a dégringolade or devolution, perchance a man-to-beast metamorphosis or some unnatural crossbreeding?

The third is an instance of transgression and subversion: the character Fern—a femme fatale who, like the character Salomé in Oscar Wilde’s play Salome: A Tragedy in One Act, is irresistible and causes a man’s decapitation—she talks about how women are dominant in the black arts yet subservient to men, how women use magic to gain power, maybe suggesting a contradiction or revolution; and in my mind, she also appears to imply that life in the Middle Ages was ruled by such despair that, mayhap, some folks practiced Black Mass, alluding to a prevalent helplessness against societal dogmata.

Now, before the ave of departing, very quickly I’d like to recommend some films that are excellent for watching around Allhallowtide. I Married a Witch (1942; directed by René Clair; with a bewitching performance by Veronica Lake) could be a delightful choice, since it is such a wholesome, humorous movie. Additionally, don’t miss Georges Méliès’ The Magician (1898). And for those needing aesthetically unique films of preternatural horror, look to Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960; with a spellbinding performance by Barbara Steele) and to Vernon Sewell’s Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968; including performances by Barbara Steele, Boris Karloff, and Christopher Lee).

I thank you for reading my article. Arrivederci, my friends! Have yourselves a blessed Hallowe’en!

Enjoyed what you have read here? Consider reading the other articles that I composed for the DMR Books blog.

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MATTHEW PUNGITORE is the author of “The Tale of Marius the Avenging Imp” (DMR Books, Samhain Sorceries, 2022); The Report of Mr. Charles Aalmers and other stories; “To a Dead Soul in Morbid Love” (Cirsova Magazine, Fall 2023); and more.