I want to write a little bit about two recent book releases that share some thematic crossover and urge you to check them out. Both books are remarkable pieces of writing and deserve a wide audience. A fair warning: the books deal with gnarly subjects and this piece references them throughout, so if you’re put off by mentions of grief, illness, gore and the like… read no further. No spoilers, however.
In Phengaris, we meet 17-year old Mark, a young man adrift. He is looking after his terminally ill mum, a parent with whom his relationship is conflicted to say the least, his dad disappeared years ago, and all Mark really wants to do is get high and tune out of the relentless noise of his life. He thinks he’s found the perfect spot in nearby Thurstrop Wood and an abandoned workshop yard. Unfortunately for Mark, something no longer human there has seen him and doesn’t want to let him go.
Phengaris opens with a visceral description of a body mutilated by disease and something disturbingly unnatural. It sets the tone for what follows, as Mark becomes consumed by the mystery of Thurstrop Wood and how it connects to his family, revealing secrets that have been buried for years. There’s other things buried in the woods, too, and they are coming to the surface. Orridge writes with skill and empathy about the burden of youth, and of illness, and about the unforgiving way bodies attack themselves at the same time as the world around us weighs down on us. There’s a thread of ecological awareness, too, and a focus on the nature of parasitical behaviour.
It’s also concerned with what it means to be human, and how family connections not even escapable by death bond us together for good and for ill. Orridge has a beautiful way with phrasing and illuminates the secondary and minor characters in a way that brings them vividly to life. Sadness and melancholy and loss knot their way through Phengaris, as does a quietly effective rage. It’s ambitious, passionately alive, and makes the personal deeply political.
Fleischerei by Saoirse Ní Chiaragáin has some complimentary themes but is a radically different experience. In it, we are introduced to Órfhlaith, living in Berlin and working as a content moderator. Órfhlaith is a bloody ball of grief, guilt and self-loathing, punishing and exciting herself with masochistic fantasies. When she moves their focus onto her sickly, compellingly unreadable colleague Arnaud, the wall between her interior darkness and the world around her unravels. As their romance develops, they find in each other a shared yearning for emotional dislocation and physical mutilation. Órfhlaith just wants to know Arnaud, but is it ever really possible to know someone else, no matter how much a part of you they become?
This is a troubling, affecting work. Intimacy throughout is a transgression that leads to violence and permanent scarring. It’s a confrontingly visceral book and will make you look at the concept of ‘meat’ substantially differently afterwards. It is also fearless about making bodies and consumption and grief defiantly, unapologetically political and challenging us to think about what that means.
Fleischerei is putrid as it builds its grotesque concoction of smells, tastes, sensations and consumption. It’s about the interior as pungent reflection of what is outside of us, what is done to us. Again, this is a book concerned with what makes us human and what it is to be human, and offers no easy answers, preferring instead challenges to expected narrative conventions. An unrelentingly brave, compassionate work of art.
Phengaris and Fleischerei are both outstanding, personal, feminine, bleakly beautiful works of modern horror writing at its best. I highly recommend you experience them.
I have been waiting too long for you to come and pick me up. It’s cold and wet; this mist rain is papercutting my eyes. Getting darker too, and the cars passing by now have their headlights on. The change from day to night usually creeps up on me, so I don’t notice until I look up and everything is shaded with black. But headlights jar my brain into paying attention in a way I don’t care for.
Where are you?
I don’t want to get into another stranger’s car, but I’ll do it if you’re not coming.
If you’re trying to hitch a ride and you’re not pretty, it’s hard fucking work. I stick out my thumb and try to look as pathetic as possible. My shirt jacket is getting soaked through and my hair is getting welded to my forehead. The rain is making me blink, like I’m crying. It’s going to be some fucking psycho that picks me up, but if he’s got a warm heater running, I’ll take my chances.
Where are you?
A few cars drive by me, splashing my boots and the bottom of my jeans with water, until a flatbed truck pulls over. I run up to the door and don’t even look in before I open it and slide into the seat, slipping my backpack between my legs. I look over at whatever abomination took pity on me. He’s twice my age, hair growing out of every hole in his head, even his eyes, I swear to God.
“Not a good road to be thumbing a lift on, buddy,” he says.
“I know, I know,” I say, looking down at my hand gripping the bag’s top loop. “I’m just glad someone stopped. Thank you.”
I look up and catch him giving me a disgusted appraisal. He turns his head to the road and pulls the truck back into the descending night.
“Been a few people killed along here. I mean, there’s been lots over the years, but more than a few recently.”
I let his statement hang in the air long enough for both of us to move on.
“I only need the next town along, if you’re going that way?”
“I’ll drive through it,” he says, and it sounds like a threat somehow.
Where are you?
I was sick of waiting but I think this is a bad idea.
This guy isn’t a talker, thankfully, and we slip into silence. The sound of his windscreen wipers scrapes the glass like some doomsday metronome.
I sweep my hair back with one hand and rub my palm down my damp jeans like it’ll somehow dry it. I’m starting to get warm now, my clothes still clinging to me, but not enough now I can’t feel I haven’t had a shower or bath in days. Not since we argued. Not since you told me it was done. We were done. You said being with me was like a slow suicide.
Do you remember when we were new and I got lost so easily? You told me whatever happened between us and wherever I ended up, you would find me. Come get me.
Where are you?
I hear the guy trying to clear his throat like a fist is stuck in it. He can’t do it. It starts to sound like choking. When I look over at him, he’s already going purple. The truck drifts to the side of the road, running over gravel towards the ditch. I feel the lurch in my stomach as we tip into it and grind to a halt, the truck deep enough in to nearly be on its side.
Dirty water starts collecting around me. The guy is gone now, slumped towards me, looking down at me like some distended old ventriloquist puppet, only his seatbelt stopping him from crushing me down into the black water that’s filling up the cab, reaching up for my head. I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this one.
I have been waiting too long for you to come and pick me up.
It’s cold and wet; this mist rain is papercutting my eyes. Getting darker too, and the cars passing by now have their headlights on. The change from day to night usually creeps up on me, so I don’t notice until I look up and everything is shaded in black. But headlights jar my brain into paying attention in a way I don’t care for.
Where are you?
I don’t want to get into another stranger’s car, but I’ll do it if you’re not coming.
(This story inspired in part by Greet Death’s song ‘Motherfucker’)
A brief journey through what has been distracting me this month
Book highlights this month
Cover image of Born to Lose: Tales of Gigi by Marek Z. Turner
Marek Z. Turner had the inspired idea to take a minor character from a Dario Argento film, Cat O’ Nine Tails, and make him the central focus of a book detailing some of his career as a burglar and minor-league criminal in Turin during the 1970s. Born to Lose: Tales of Gigi is a look into the world of Gianluigi ‘Gigi’ Moretti, a not-untalented burglar frequently derailed by alcohol, and equal parts poor luck and bad judgement.
Turner finds comedic gold along with pathos as Gigi encounters everything from explosively broken toilets to double crosses and, in the book’s set piece story, a desperate attempt to outwit a deadly assassin. He has done his research and submerged himself in the culture of that decade in Italy, but also layers the stories with details of Turin and the realities of being a petty criminal nobody that add to a feeling of authenticity. The tone weaves with skill between being genuinely amusing, bittersweet with melancholy and escalating in tension, sometimes within the same story. I really enjoyed Born to Lose, and recommend not just it but Marek’s previous two books: another crime story (the brutal thriller The Eighth Hill) and a gory creature-feature horror (Killerpede) that opens with a bravura, grotesque death sequence that enjoyably sets the tone.
Television highlights this month
Close up from Public Affairs – DR-07, of a hand holding a badge that says ‘Make Love Not War’ on it
Dragnet 1969: After writing about Jack Webb earlier this month it sent me back to what is probably still the defining achievement of his career, the resurrection of Dragnet in the 1960s for television.
Launched in 1967, each of the four seasons are defined by the year they were broadcast. Dragnet 1969 is the show’s third season and the one where Webb detaches more significantly than in previous years from the template his original series (from the 1950s) had established. There’s only occasional room for the crime-of-the-week format from now on as Webb instead focuses on various functions of the police officer’s role in Los Angeles. I’ve not long reached a mid-season episode where Friday and Gannon are pulling duty at the Business Office (essentially the front desk) and it’s glorious.
Webb sets out his stall from episode one this season, ‘Public Affairs – DR-07’, in which Friday and Gannon are sent as LAPD representatives to sit on a panel for the show Speak Your Mind. They are up against ‘historian, social critic, and political activist’ Professor Tom Higgins and Jesse Chaplin, ‘editor-publisher of L.A.’s favorite underground newspaper’. Neither are fans of the police. Nor is anyone in the crowd. What follows is 25-ish minutes of fantastic television, as Friday and Gannon respond to charges the police are a state goon squad solely there to protect property, to oppress Black people, and that a “man of conscience (has) the obligation do disobey outmoded laws“, including the police.
Dragnet 1969 (and its other seasons) is a fascinating record of television and society changing to reflect the momentous events of the decade. It’s also simply very entertaining, directed in Webb’s clipped, easily parodied style, and as individual a series as you’re likely to find. Revisiting Dragnet 1969 also led me back to Suzy Dragnet’s wonderful blog ‘Everyone Nods: The Dragnet Style Files, a work of art in and of itself.
Poster image for The Remarkable 20th Century
The Remarkable 20th Century: I’ve also been taking a slow meander through a documentary series from 2000, The Remarkable 20th Century, presented by Howard K. Smith, one of the Murrow Boys and well positioned to host as someone who spent six decades of his life reporting on the events of the day. It’s a mix of talking heads and substantial footage from news reels and programmes, some of it potently shocking in its intensity. Each episode romps at speed through a decade and as such, it touches on events before moving on to the next big thing, but the fascination of what is unfolding prompts you to explore more after. Given the state of the world today – and its leaders – it’s clear we have learned little from history. Those leaders could certainly do with even this swift gallop through the best and the worst of last century.
Warren Oates with GIANT EYES in The Mutant, episode 25 of The Outer Limits’ first season
The Outer Limits: I am currently back to a run through The Outer Limits and up to ‘The Mutant’, the 25th episode of the first season. This has one of the most iconic ‘bears’* of the series, Warren Oates’ bug-eyed telepathic mutant Reese. It benefits immensely from Oates’ off-kilter rhythms and strange charm as he makes Reese feel genuinely ‘other’. Reese would likely be strange even if he didn’t have giant eyes and the ability to think people out of existence. It’s a good episode of a great show that twisted noir and fantasy, science fiction and horror into something uniquely queasy.
*’Bear’ was the name given to the monster of the week, displayed prominently and quickly (usually in a pre-credits tease)
Lola Albright and Craig Stevens in Peter Gunn
Peter Gunn: I’m also back to Peter Gunn, a private investigator series created by Blake Edwards in the late 1950s. It has a jazzy score and instantly recognisable theme by Henry Mancini, and each week finds Gunn taking on a case that frequently gets him beaten up and/or nearly killed. Gunn is a good guy and that gets him into trouble as he comes up against gangsters, duplicitous dames and other unsavoury types. It’s a little slice of noir each episode, gorgeously shot and usually dependably entertaining. A lot of fun, and very much recommended.
Music highlights this month
Cover of Lonely People with Power by Deafheaven
I quite like a lot of music, but it’s rare there will be a music highlight, given I only love two bands, listen to one band more than anyone else by far, and am generally otherwise indifferent to a lot of what gets released.
But… this month, that one band I listen to the most by far released their first album in nearly four years, and it’s a beautiful record that distills everything that makes them special. Lonely People with Power by Deafheaven is a joyous listen from beginning to end. That might sound unlikely for a band that have mostly returned to their dense, overwhelming signature sound after a segue into lighter territory. It might also seem unlikely for a record that runs to just over an hour and keeps up a sustained mood of furious apocalyptic melancholy. But, we are where we are.
Unlike lots of heavy music that trades in tedious machismo or bludgeoning anger, Deafheaven, and Lonely People with Power, takes darker emotions and fashions them into something else entirely. Blastbeats and giant riffs mix in with influences that vary from nineties British rock to ambient soundtracks. It’s the soundtrack to the end of the world, sure, but it’s a beautiful end. This might be their best apocalypse yet.
Returning soldier Harry Spalding is determined to uncover how his brother died in the remote Cornish village of Clagmoor Heath. Was it the Black Death, as the locals fear, or a more melancholy and human evil?
Generations separate us as people and families and communities. Sometimes were decades, centuries or even millennia removed from other humans that walked and talked, loved and felt deeply, bled and lived and died. I contend we’re not so different in what we want, despite the years and the different focuses of each successive generation, the cruelty and petty prejudices that threaten to consume us. We want happiness, however fleeting, human connection, status, safety, love. Those who reached adulthood in the most recent two decades can easily be forgiven for feeling as though the doom and gloom of these years is unprecedented. Growing up in the shadow of a global financial crisis, austerity, a monstrous pandemic and institutions run by the very worst of us is enough for anyone. It’s not that long ago however, that people grew up in wartime or in the feverishly imagined ever-present shadow of a mushroom cloud, or the devastation wrought by AIDS. No, we’re really not so different. And so it is with the art that touches us. The methods may differ, but the intent is similar. To connect, to inspire, to share what it is to be human in all its failures and glories.
My main aim here is to explore how this unusual Hammer classic offers commentary and a caution on the ways we can be toxic and poisonous if we stew in the unspoken, choosing to live in darkness, letting fear control us. The characters in this film are from a time older still than when the film itself was made, but the connection is universal. There are other readings of the film and I recommend you seek those out, too. But first, some context.
Part of Hammer’s fascinating 1965 four-film cost cutting exercise, The Reptile (UK, John Gilling, 1966) was shot on the same sets as The Plague of the Zombies (UK, John Gilling, 1966) and the only one that actually came in under budget. These films are close siblings in other ways, from mood to intent. Both are Hammer chillers that don’t rely on the tropes of traditional monsters or previously filmed titles. Each is unsettling and compelling in its own way, a mix of mystery and for-its-time grisly and grotesque horror. Gilling, who had a reputation as someone who did not suffer fools, was a tight craftsperson, in charge of the material, pacing and clarity throughout the majority of his work and yet who also includes flourishes of artistry in almost everything he made. And so it is with The Reptile, a film which retains control of its central mystery and also loads it with sinister atmosphere, disturbing imagery and an understanding of the mechanics of what horrifies in sometimes startling ways.
Italian poster for The Reptile (1966)
We have no bloodsuckers or traditional monsters here. The horror is not overtly sexualised like Hammer’s vampire films, nor is there anything murderous or of human malevolence in what transpires. Instead, we have a tragedy of family played out where the monster is us. And the deaths are grim in a way Hammer rarely was, to some degree prefiguring the following decade’s obsession with body horror. It’s partly this which provides The Reptile with a remarkably oppressive atmosphere. Much of Hammer’s output of the decade revolved around things rational people can easily discount, from vampirism to monstrous doctors building people out of body parts to zombies, ancient curses and Satanism. These now frequently come as a cosy, distanced horror, one that can be resolved in under 90 minutes and pose no real threat to us. And while the ending of The Reptile doesn’t stray too far from this template, the majority of the film is something else. The deaths in the film are, well, disgusting. Each victim starts frothing at the mouth, turning black, their bodies dying from poison. Still recent world events have only underlined the fear that can be generated by something invading us, free from any moral underpinning, indiscriminate. This is how events first appear in Clagmoor Heath with people dying and the community circling in on itself in fear. And fear and poison are key themes of the film, both viscerally and brutally swift in the deaths and achingly sad in the central relationship between Dr. Franklyn and his daughter. A fear and poison that affects not just them but spreads out into the community they live within.
Harry’s brother Charles dies as the film begins, the prowling camera showing him stalked by something through the countryside until he is cut down and left blackened, rotted to his core. Harry meanwhile has a new wife and nowhere to stay. It’s partly this that brings him to the village, inheriting his brother’s house and giving the new couple somewhere to live. But there are also unanswered questions about his brother’s death and Harry has decided he will find out what really happened. It’s not long before Harry has artlessly alienated the suspicious villagers even further and only friendly(ish) publican Tom remains (played in an expanded role by Hammer cameo master Michael Ripper). In the course of his investigation, Harry comes into contact with the profoundly unfriendly Dr. Franklyn, who has more reason than any to seek the solitude that comes from living on the heath. That Franklyn leaves flowers on Charles’ grave underlines to us there is something rotting the doctor too, a poison of a different kind, one that has destroyed the generations that should have followed him.
The Reptile has many fine qualities, making it one of Hammer’s very best films. It has an unusual (for Hammer) cast, beautiful use of sets and another melancholy and haunted turn from the estimable Jacqueline Pearce. We have John Laurie as a twisted and ultimately deeper and tragic riff on the comic relief character. Gilling does wonders with his budget, producing a frequently handsome film that succeeds as chilling horror including at least one great jump scare. The core mystery is at once obvious and complicated. Don Banks’ score is a wonderful mix of the melancholy, the brash and the inventive. Anthony Hinds’ screenplay (writing here under the name John Elder) is unforgiving and, combined with Gilling’s skill as director, a bold approach for Hammer. The Reptile is a stirring and remarkable tale of curses, disturbed graves, death and desire.
For the rest of this piece however, I’m going to explore that key theme of the film which, for me, keeps it ever-relevant to the now and can resonate with us personally, through its mournful atmosphere, heavy with guilt, to its focus on the damage wrought by those who act without integrity or passion or courage. From here there be both spoilers and commentary you may wish to avoid.
In The Reptile, Dr. Franklyn has returned to England after time overseas with his daughter, Anna. Franklyn and Anna are attended by a servant, known only as The Malay. Franklyn presents a harsh front, rude and dismissive of attempts to converse or connect with him. He is contemptuous of his daughter, cruel and unkind to her. Despite his protests to Harry that he is not a doctor in the way the village needs, no surgeon but instead a doctor of divinity, Franklyn also shows no interest in discovering more about what is killing people. This is because, as the film reveals, Franklyn knows ‘it’ is Anna. In his time overseas, Franklyn took a colonialist’s approach to the secrets of the religions he encountered and one such ‘cult’, of which The Malay is a member, took extreme umbrage at his methods and disregard for what they considered holy. Kidnapping Anna, they placed a curse upon her which sees her turn into a snake creature with a poisonous bite. Franklyn has retreated with Anna to somewhere remote, surrounded by the empty collected trophies of his work and travels, watched over by The Malay, to endure his suffering. And suffering it is, with Anna the victim of his hubris and arrogance, condemned to live not even half a life, no joy in her future. When Franklyn lays those flowers on the grave it is symbolic of the regret, loathing and guilt that is his life now. He has destroyed the life of his daughter, Anna turned literally into a monster to punish him. In Franklyn’s distorted world, those flowers are for him more than anyone else.
Dr Franklyn looking tired, The Malay looking invigorated
As touched on earlier, The Reptile is not a traditional Hammer horror film. Although not new to themes of tragic monsters, notably in pictures like The Curse of the Werewolf (UK, Terence Fisher, 1961), Hammer arguably had its greatest success with the villainy of its Dracula and vampire series. The Brides of Dracula (UK, Terence Fisher, 1960) presents a somewhat more nuanced evil and it’s there in Van Helsing’s mix of pity and disgust at the close of Fisher’s first Count film as Lee’s king of the vampires crumbles to dust, but ultimately there’s no quarter given to wickedness that inarguably must die, must be purged, and in the context of desire, must be contained. Helen Kent’s animalistic panic at her demise in Dracula: Prince of Darkness (UK, Terence Fisher, 1966) followed by the beatific expression on her face after being staked to death makes it clear to us, Dracula and his ilk are no misunderstood monsters, but evil in a pure, defiling form. After all, it’s part of the enduring appeal of certain horror stories, as with the police procedural, where equilibrium is disrupted by evil only to be restored at the end. But there is no restoration at the end of The Reptile. Undeserved tragedy begets yet more tragedy and no one is left untouched. Fire is so often used at the conclusion of a film as symbolic of a cleansing, the world being reset. Here it just covers the truth, burying everything unspoken in ashes, cleansing nothing.
This then is a key theme of The Reptile for me. How recoiling from acknowledging and confronting ourselves, our personal guilt and regret, if left denied, often reaches out beyond us to others, impacts on the lives of people we care about, usually first and most profoundly those we share blood or bonds with. About how our actions reverberate down the years, how that poison infects others and spreads like a death that consumes. Franklyn tries to hide, to disappear, to run from and ineffectively reduce the damage his actions have caused but not try to fix it, to refuse the help he is desperate for. Instead, he acquiesces to self-inflicted punishment, wallows in his misery, gives up on his daughter and anything she might want from her life. And yet the guilt will not leave him be. It dismantles everything around him, even as he tries to stumble on and blank it, unravelling anything he touches. He lives in fear of himself, what he has done, and what will come next as a result of his inability to act.
Poor John Laurie, doomed for sure
This can be found in The Reptile in its approach to fear, from fear of ourselves, or feelings for each other and more widely of those we meet and subject to fear of the other. The Reptile is uncommon in its time in that its fear of the other is not presented through overt racism or xenophobia. The Malay is not a cartoon villain here, but instead an agent of revenge without comment as to whether that revenge was earned or justified. Hinds’ writing is thoughtful and subtle here when compared with some contemporaries. The curse placed upon Anna is not The Malay and his people acting with eye-bulging, moustache-twirling malevolence. It is, for him and his people, simply a matter of justice. Instead, the other presented here is a different kind of fear, a fear of ourselves and the people, even in our own immediate family, that we know and love but can never really know but also in how we choose not to acknowledge who we are and what we have wrought. It’s presented in how Franklyn is at once appalled by and desperate to protect his daughter, but only really to hide his shame.
Anna is a victim, cursed through something she did not bring upon herself, by the action of one who should have been building a world she could find her place in. Here she is confused and lonely and unable to explore her dreams or desires. This is all instead directed at her uncomprehending father who it seems would be equally uncomfortable with the idea of his daughter maturing sexually as he would be her turning into a snake monster. It’s both symptomatic of the time it is set in, but particular to Anna and the life Franklyn knows he has doomed her to. We can imagine Anna’s wants and her desires have never matter to Franklyn until he was confronted by them. Franklyn’s cowardice as a human-being swirls at the centre of The Reptile, as much as his self-involved guilt and grief that she has no real future. These are the layers here to unravel how it remains so devastating nearly sixty years later. In that respect, this is as potent a metaphor for the fears of the parent about what the child may become and learning to love who they are as The Exorcist (US, William Friedkin, 1973). Except here, Franklyn knows what Anna is and why and there is nothing to love for him, a mirror showing him his failings.
Jacqueline Pearce as Anna
For Franklyn, the poison is of his own making. Anna is a mirror too, to his crumbled hubris and it is fitting, for him at least, that he dies at her kiss, a kiss as poisonous as he deserves. And there is The Reptile as cautionary tale against our hubris, selfishness, disinterest, arrogance and living in fear. We might want to, but we can’t hide from that which will consume us, and sometimes those we care about. If we really do care, we must force ourselves to confront the darkness, if not for us, for those who, like Anna and the people of Clagmoor Heath, don’t deserve to share in desperate things not of their making.
Contemplating the panic of the inevitable in ‘The Cemetery’ and the choices we make
Rod Serling posing in a graveyard setting for a promotional photo
For several reasons, I’ve been thinking more in recent years about who I understand myself to be and what legacy I want to leave in my wake. Legacy might sound overly grand, but that’s really what it is to be thought of and remembered and talked about, whether it’s by millions or by whatever nucleus of immediate people you hold to be family. A worldwide pandemic will get you to thinking about the impact we all leave on each other, and that’s not even the sum total of an at times challenging, rewarding and enlightening few years that have followed to process. Largely for me it’s about the impact of leaving the people and places you find along the way better than you found them, or at least not worse for your presence. But life makes that hard. Communicating with each other with kindness and empathy and consistency is a journey that doesn’t end. Trying to be good to the planet that hosts us while just a handful of companies continue to be the biggest polluters in the world provokes wild cognitive dissonance. Capitalism swirling the drain and dragging us with it, bloody-knuckled and exhausted, into the slop. Social media a distracting feedback loop where we play out status games and performative emoting while the literal and figurative world around us burns. The worst people clinging ruthlessly to positions of power and scapegoating the most vulnerable as cause of the world’s ills. It is easy to lose focus.
What has this got to do with Roddy McDowall and the Night Gallery pilot film (NBC, 1969) you may ask? Well, firstly Rod Serling and his writing has been one of the primary influences in my life on my own personal philosophy about how I treat people and how my own personal code developed, and I come back to his work regularly for course correction as much as entertainment. And in ‘The Cemetery’ and McDowall’s phenomenal performance we have humanity in crisis in microcosm, in all its sadness and rage and selfishness and dread and pathetic hope. Just as much as any episode of The Twilight Zone (CBS, 1959-1964), this play provokes in me considerations of consequence and personal choice. A warning in a world gone wrong, embodied here by McDowall’s performance and Serling’s writing.
Ten years after the launch of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling was ready to revisit anthology television. In the intervening years since his beloved fantasy show had ended, Serling had kept busy with a variety of different projects, even though he was no longer the celebrated angry young man of the golden age of television. These projects ranged from a modern television movie adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) reformed as a nightmare of nuclear Armageddon and a plea for cooperation between nations before mutually assured destruction, to The Loner (CBS, 1965-1966), a contemplative Western set in a this-time only figuratively haunted post-civil war America, and co-writing The Planet of the Apes (USA, Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968) amongst other films. For his new television project, this time however, Serling would move beyond fantasy and science fiction and go deep into the dark waters of horror.
The painting of the cemetery used in the segment
Night Gallery premiered as a television movie on November 8th, 1969. It took the form of three separate stories, linked by Serling’s narration. He presented these tales from the titular dimly lit gallery, offering us a trio of stories that all suggest not an indifferent universe, but instead one where the immoral might be able to run from their wickedness, but not, eventually, from consequences. And it’s the first of these plays we are considering today, ‘The Cemetery’, as well as the delicate and bruising performance at its centre from Roddy McDowall. Directed by Boris Sagal, it is thirty minutes of television that distills everything that makes Serling such a great writer: emotionally literate, atmospheric, wittily loquacious and unyieldingly moral. Interestingly, the British-born and raised McDowall plays his role with a lyrical Southern-tinged accent that will just as frequently tip into British pronunciation. Similarly, Serling’s tale could just as easily be set in a country house at the edge of a small English village and nothing would need to be changed to accommodate this meeting of a tradition of Southern USA and British gothic, where the older ghosts of the past, both real and imagined, leave their graves to haunt us. It could be set here, there, or anywhere.
Introducing the segment, Serling begins: “Good evening, and welcome to a private showing of three paintings, displayed here for the first time. Each is a collector’s item in its own way—not because of any special artistic quality, but because each captures on a canvas, suspends in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare. Our initial offering: a small gothic item in blacks and grays, a piece of the past known as the family crypt. This one we call, simply, “The Cemetery.” Offered to you now, six feet of earth and all that it contains. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Night Gallery…”
William Hendricks is old and in poor health. A series of strokes have left him largely incapacitated and housebound in the family mansion. He is attended to only by his loyal butler Osmond Portifoy, with the family burial plot the view from his window and the last thing he painted. Hendricks is wealthy and had only a sister to leave his money to, or so he thought. But with his sister dead, the inheritance will now pass to her son, Jeremy, a thoroughly disreputable man. Jeremy has moved into the home and is impatiently waiting for his uncle to die, so much so that he takes matters into his own hands to make sure William relocates to his place in the cemetery sooner rather than later. After this, Portifoy learns that a miserable stipend of $80 a month is his reward for decades of faithful service. And so, it seems, Jeremy finally has the means to support the lifestyle he is accustomed to. But then Jeremy notices that painting of the house and graves hanging at the bottom of the staircase keeps changing and suggesting his uncle is not at all at rest.
What follows is a beautifully paced and executed Gothic tale of vengeance that for me is some of Serling’s finest writing. One of my favourite themes in his work is that of a moral universe and our choices within it. The idea that our reality is not passive, that we can make better choices but also that there are consequences for our cruelty, selfishness and inaction. Serling was frequently concerned with equality, the impact of racism and, as his wife Carol once explained, the ‘ultimate obscenity of not caring’. In The Twilight Zone, this could be a positive exploration, if we take for example the compassion and sacrifice of Lew Bookman or the universe indulging the sentimentality of Henry Corwin. But in Night Gallery it was frequently the other side of this coin. That moral universe is unrelenting in ‘Escape Route’ (the third segment in the pilot film), ‘Lone Survivor’, ‘The Doll’ or perhaps most memorably in ‘The Caterpillar’. In all of these, bad people do bad things and, perhaps not immediately but certainly inevitably, the universe revisits this on them manyfold. Serling was always a champion of the best in humanity and what we could achieve, alone and most importantly together, and believed in the next generation and their capacity to do and be better. But he was also acutely aware of our frailties and disappointments as a species, from his experiences as a far-too-young man at war, to his own personal failings, and to the impacts of racism and isolationism in the decade that birthed Night Gallery. Perhaps this is why Night Gallery largely trades in the hope and optimism found in The Twilight Zone for more of the cosmic justice seen in that show’s ‘Deaths-Head Revisited’.
Roddy McDowall stood next to the painting looking unsettled. In this version of the painting, a grave can be seen open, a figure lurching towards the house
Despite this, ‘The Cemetery’ never stoops to being cruel. Enraged perhaps, and unforgiving, but not cruel. Instead, it is human and sad, much of this found in Roddy McDowall’s performance. Jeremy at first is cruel as he taunts his uncle and brings about the old man’s death. An unremarkable and embittered would-be conman, Jeremy thinks himself destined for a life of luxury he possesses neither the means nor the character for. And in his uncle, he has found the chance to fulfil this destiny. He revels in verbose cruelty, not just to his uncle but also to Portifoy, whose name he allows to roll regularly from his tongue with contempt, for the man and for the role he plays in Hendrick’s life. There’s disgust here at a man who could be a servant but also envy. After all, Jeremy has never succeeded at anything, let alone three decades at one thing. After his uncle dies and is buried, Jeremy wastes no time in having the will executed and becoming master of the house. All through this however, McDowall uses flashes of expression or a sadness in his eyes to give Jeremy inner life. There’s part of him behind the facade that is perhaps regretful, or even himself disgusted momentarily by the brutality he is capable of. But he overrides this, pushes it down, makes his choice.
It is soon after his uncle has died that Jeremy notices that final painting he did of the house and cemetery has changed. Something new has been added. William’s freshly dug grave has appeared on it. Jeremy asks Portifoy but Osmond says he can see nothing different. It is the beginning of the end for Jeremy. As the painting continues to alter, different each time he sees it, Jeremy has two frightening conclusions to draw. The first is unthinkable, that his uncle is not at rest and is making his way from the grave to the house to exact revenge. The second is that he is losing his mind. As he diminishes from the swaggering, arrogant swine at the segment’s opening towards an imitation of his deathly ill uncle, abandoning the fancy shirts and sharp jackets and taking on William’s wardrobe of dressing gown and blanket, McDowall invites us into Jeremy’s confusion, where both he and us can believe both at once. Pushing Portifoy too far, the butler resigns and goes to stay at a hotel in town. It is now that Jeremy is alone in the house with no one to turn to. Devolving into panic and rage and overwhelmed by fear, Jeremy has dropped all bravado, clinging to the hope Portifoy will save him. It’s a name he no longer says with contempt, but instead with desperation.
Jeremy’s supposedly dead uncle come to ‘life’ again in the painting
There are many elements that for me make up why ‘The Cemetery’ is so successful at what it sets out to achieve: Serling’s words, Sagal’s assured and controlled direction, the set design and presentation, the supporting performances, the stirring and oppressive Billy Goldenberg score that mixes traditional instrumentation with atonal electronic noise. But at its core and what brings Serling’s writing to life is the complicated, human villainy in Roddy McDowall’s performance. At the start of this journey, Jeremy repulses us. At the end of it, we still despise him but pity him too and perhaps recognise ourselves more. Night Gallery may have traded hope and optimism for the finality of cosmic justice, but particularly in Serling’s work for the series, it doesn’t lose his focus on humanity. If The Twilight Zone could often be a call to arms to be better before the worst happens, Night Gallery is a warning that to be better is a journey of choice that never ends, particularly – especially – if the worst is happening now. In McDowall’s panic, fear and anger as seemingly unrelenting consequence approaches, and in that final coda sting in this tale, that warning is clear to me: it is too late for Jeremy and William and Portifoy, but not too late for us.
And so, I think about ‘The Cemetery’ and how art like it influences our real lives. I think about legacy and the imprints we leave on each other both while we’re here and when we’re gone. Let’s not be Jeremy, or Portifoy or Hendricks. Let’s be better. Rod Serling thought we could be, and McDowall shows us ourselves if we don’t at least try.
Jack Webb is as important to American television drama as anyone who has ever lived.
Working mostly in the period we might refer to as ‘classic television’ or the golden age, he should be held in as high regard as Rod Serling. Where Serling is (rightly) still hailed as a singular talent and innovator, Jack’s reputation sank into one of parody and ironic ‘enjoyment’. Webb is one of the most influential contributors to television in the medium’s history and yet he is often mainly forgotten these days or considered a curious relic of his time. But the truth is, almost any drama or thriller series that you enjoy now or have enjoyed owes a debt to the framework he established as star, producer and director of the series he is most famous for. In particular this applies to crime dramas and police series, because Webb was the first and is still one of the best.
The television version of Dragnet (1951-1959) and its subsequent incarnations and spin-offs set the template that so many shows chose to follow or to outright kick against. Dragnet started at a time where there was nothing quite like it, and as such is the essential foundation of the development of the police drama. And Webb wasn’t just television either, because his films fit within the oeuvre he created and demonstrate a through-line of creativity that shouldn’t just be consigned to the past or thought of as a ‘relic’. Webb’s work remains vital and incredibly important to the films and shows that followed. He took his inspiration from Frank Capra and the style he developed of rapid, clipped dialogue delivery, extreme close ups and what critic Andre Sarris described in his book The American Cinema (1968) as “visual shouting and verbal whispering” defines his work, marking it as a Jack Webb production.
Born in 1920, Webb was raised by his mother and grandmother and never knew the father who abandoned him before he even entered the world. At only 6 years of age, Webb caught pneumonia and nearly died. He lived, but the resulting serious asthma found him unable to do the running and jumping that other kids his age took for granted. So, Webb became an avid reader first, poring over classic novels and tales of WW1 daring that fired his imagination. Later, Jack discovered the cinema during the Depression-era and found the fantasy these films provided an escape from the harsh reality of being a dirt poor, sickly kid. From school Webb discovered a love of producing and emceeing that would serve him well later on. Jack was also a solid illustrator and came within swinging distance of a Disney career. He found occasional work in local radio and frequented the jazz clubs that were filled with the music he had come to love as a young man.
When World War II became a reality for America, Webb tried to get involved but much to his disappointment he washed out of pilot training and spent his time as a correspondence typist out in Texas. With his mother and grandmother unable to work, he got a discharge on dependency grounds and moved back to L.A. Here, he would try for a proper career in radio and learn as much as he could about all aspects of putting shows on air. A brief dalliance with comedy aside, Webb took part in two private eye dramas and around this time had a part in a film called He Walked by Night (1948, dir. Alfred L. Werker).
This film and his friendship with a real policeman called Marty Wynn sparked an idea in Webb. What if there was a drama that told the stories of cops in the voices they used? Dump all that fanciful nonsense and create something that presented authentic cases of the LAPD for listeners. It was an opportunity to reframe police not as the chaotic idiots or corrupt dangers of the preceding decades.
As the show came together, negotiations were completed with the LAPD to use real cases, the caveat being they must be cases that were concluded, that had gone through court. With this real-life input from the police force, a commitment to realism and reflecting the real laws and processes of crime solving, Dragnet was brought to life. The implication also is that this would not be an unvarnished representation of the LAPD, an organisation frequently mired in allegations of corruption, cruelty and violence. And although it would not shy away from issues that surrounded crime (for example, alcoholism, abuse, poverty) it would not accurately represent the simmering tensions of a sprawling, multicultural Los Angeles. For those interested in the level of research Webb did, it can be found in his non-fiction account The Badge (republished in 2006 by Arrow) which documents the lives of the various different ranks of cops in Los Angeles as well as the crimes too brutal for the show to adapt (including the Black Dahlia murder).
True crime classic The Badge by Jack Webb
NBC radio wasn’t impressed with the first attempt but a second go around had the show praised for its authenticity and vivid recreation of not only the banality of police work but just how compelling following a case from beginning to end could be. Listeners became cops for the duration of each show, immersed in the mystery and gripped in a way that made the new series a huge hit. The radio series would air 314 original episodes between 1949 and 1955 and finish out its last two years to 1957 with reruns. It was a short time before the idea of transferring the show to television came about. The same things that worked so well in the radio version would be moved directly over.
Foremost, of course, Webb himself who would play Joe Friday for the series (not his actual first preference) and produce and direct. With a huge number of scripts already written for radio the series would make use of most of them for the television version. Across eight seasons from 1951 to 1959 there would be 276 episodes of Dragnet and Jack Webb would direct every single one of them. Viewed today, Dragnet works both as a legitimate time capsule of contemporary police methods and social mores as well as showcasing Webb’s early creative focus on a lack of pretension in writing, performing and directing. It is also inarguably cop propaganda, presenting the police as diligent, fair and moral. Another thing Dragnet helped create is the fantasy of small-screen policing.
Additionally, the show works as a condensed noir thriller for the home or drama in twenty-five minutes. In its earliest days the television version showed Webb’s ambition to stretch the Dragnet format. Although the dialogue retained the clipped delivery and rapid-fire pace of the radio series, and rarely dallied with such luxuries as character development or anything not specifically related to progressing that week’s plot, Webb understood it wasn’t enough to make the show a hit for TV.
He was ambitious and wanted to show he could use the new medium to amplify what made the radio series work. And in doing so he developed a style that he would use throughout every subsequent project. This approach favours tight close-ups of actors faces, methodical cutting between shots that matched the flow of the words, and occasionally vivid and direct action sequences that practically lunged out of TV sets at viewers. Occasional, almost jarring flourishes of camera work, like extended tracking shots, stand out.
If the shows that follow immediately in the wake of a hit underscore just how popular and influential a series is, Dragnet was inevitably imitated by a number of underwhelming series but could claim that other fine television series like Decoy (1957-1958) or Naked City (1958-1963) wouldn’t exist in the form they did without it. Dragnet the television show would also become the first television series to transfer to the big screen. Webb would take his directorial approach and ramp it up for cinemas. Dragnet (dir. Jack Webb, 1954) was made for Warner Bros and unlike the series could take advantage of being released in bright Technicolor.
The cinema version is one that fully understands it is a film and not simply an extended episode of the show. It’s not just colour that works here to make Dragnet work for the big screen. The opening murder is a vividly shot, often confrontationally framed killing that uses blood and noise to underline this is something different. What follows has all the procedural police rigour that an episode would usually have but uses its extended time to expand the focus of that procedure as well as presenting different elements the series could not. Like an episode of Columbo (1971-2003) we know who did it from the very first scene of the film but that is not the point. The point is for Webb to flex his fascination with the process of investigation and his respect for the men (and women) who do the job. Here as well, Webb allows more shading into the black and white world of Joe Friday, and even though the case progresses from point A to point B as expected, it’s the subtle – and no-so-subtle – commentary that seeps through that distinguishes this further from a standard week’s case. An accusation that has been made before is that Webb and the character of Friday is humourless, but the black humour that threads through the film culminates with a final punch of irony that demolishes that argument.
Lobby card for Dragnet (1954) showing a scene from the film’s opening
Webb’s generosity to his stable of performers can be found here too. Virginia Gregg worked with Webb for over two decades in a variety of roles but her performance here as the victim’s alcoholic widow is an example of an actor taking their one scene and giving it their all. And Webb knows this, allowing Gregg to inhabit the character in a scene that is moving and helps provide some of that shading mentioned above, lingering on Gregg at the end and providing the emotional core to the film. As an example of noir meeting the purest police procedural Dragnet still stands as a huge achievement and indicated a move to feature films would be easy for Jack. Although there were some fine films to follow this would not turn out to be the case, but the features he did make all have much to recommend.
Next would be a film version of Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955, dir. Jack Webb) based on the short-lived radio series from 1951. It tells the tale of Prohibition-era jazz band leader Pete Kelly (Webb) as he tries to decide how to respond to a local mobster’s attempt to manage and extort the band. It’s again shot in colour and is filled with fine performances, not least from a magnificent Peggy Lee. Webb’s lifelong love of jazz is evident throughout with the music ever-present, as well as performances from Lee and Ella Fitzgerald. Pete Kelly’s Blues is probably the most off-kilter of Webb’s features. Audiences familiar with Dragnet were likely taken aback by the lack of Joe Friday’s moral absolutism, with Kelly a conflicted and compromised character. That aside, it has many of the hallmarks of Webb’s style, including letting each performer have their moment. But perhaps because it lacks a focus on process or an institution the film finds Webb floundering outside of where he is surest, the music at the movie’s heart. And yet, from the opening sequence that suggests a semi-mythical edge to the story that sadly never comes to anything to the final shoot-out where Kelly ultimately resolves his conflict, both internal and external, there is much to enjoy in the film too.
Webb’s next film would be The D.I. (1957, dir. Jack Webb), written by James Lee Barrett and based on his experiences as a marine recruit. Webb stars as Jim Moore, a marine training instructor putting recruits through their paces. Much of the film focuses on Moore’s attempt to break and rebuild the problematic Private Owens, a young man seemingly hellbent on earning a discharge from training and a way out of the corps. Unlike Pete Kelly’s Blues, Webb is on more solid ground here as the film uses the process of training to explore the relationship between these two men. Barrett expanded his script with a romantic subplot for Moore as well as a late-film appearance by Virginia Gregg (who again is perfect in her one scene) but the meat of the movie is about Moore’s Marine-for-life refusing to let Owens wash out because he sees something in him. It’s a loud film with an incredible amount of shouting in it but Webb knows when to use quiet or silence to amplify the point of all that noise. It’s Webb’s most traditionally directed film but also his most thematically simple and narratively straightforward, even more so than the procedural cop drama of Dragnet. It’s a compelling journey for the characters and the attention to detail of the film plays to Jack’s strengths.
As the decade entered its final years, Dragnet managed another first as a series. It lasted too long and the temptation to continue it despite creativity and commitment waning won out over any artistic arguments. But by 1958 Dragnet had dropped to just a third of its peak audience levels. The show was tired and needed to be put to rest. Webb’s replacement series, shows like The D.A.’s Man (1959) and a version of Pete Kelly’s Blues (also 1959) didn’t work out either. Added to this, the effects of his smoking habit and lifestyle and the production of The D.I. had took their toll on Webb whose previous smooth-voiced sex-symbol status (seriously, check out his pre-Shatner spoken-work ballad album You’re My Girl: Romantic Reflections by Jack Webb from1958) was now to be cut with a harshness that he couldn’t soften. Webb tried a newspaper drama called The Black Cat but it didn’t make it out of the pilot stage.
The cover for You’re My Girl , Jack’s bid for pop stardom
This did inspire Jack to star and direct in a film about newspaper production called -30- (1959). The film has all the Webb hallmarks in rapid-fire dialogue, his usual shooting style and commitment to realism with all the action taking place inside a newspaper’s building over one evening, recreated from the Los Angeles Examiner’s real headquarters. But there was a problem.
Although screenwriter William Bowers was an Oscar-nominated writer of some standing, and he was basing the script on his own earlier work experience, he hadn’t done the job for 20 years. Contemporary critics seized on this oversight and cut the film down as an anachronism. But given the considerable distance now from the film’s original release it can be assessed for what it gets right. Webb always front-loaded his series and films with heart and a real sense of feeling and connection. This could be mistaken for simple sentiment but in the respect of something like -30- it comes out in the characters and their interplay. Webb was interested in people and in -30- it shows.
Jack was also a generous director and star and never seemed to want to dominate screen time at the expense of his co-stars and again, in -30- it is clear. Every performer gets their moment and it’s never rushed. Webb gives his performers the space to act and it’s a respect that’s paid back to him. For many others, a potentially scenery-chewing role like Bathgate would be so overwhelming it would likely force anyone sharing scenes to the edges of the frame. But, even though William Conrad has huge fun with the eye-rolling sarcasm of Bathgate’s frequent tirades, he knows just when to dial it back and let others shine and much of this is down to the tight control of Webb’s method. -30- is an undervalued film and probably more than his other cinematic outings contains the essence of the best of Jack’s approach. Sadly, it was more or less ignored by audiences too and Webb ended the decade of his greatest success weathering the blow of a series of failures and the sad sigh of Dragnet’s final episodes.
Webb tried to continue in movies with the wartime comedy The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961) starring Webb and Robert Mitchum. It would be his first comedy and his last theatrical film and the end of his movie career. The flop of the film ultimately moved Webb back to television. This he did as the new head executive in charge of Warner Bros. television, as well as a brief spell as host of an anthology series. Jack’s first major act as head of production was to make radical changes to the previously successful but now faltering private eye drama ’77 Sunset Strip (1958-1964). Retaining only one member of the cast and changing the tone proved disastrous and the show folded. Webb’s next project would fail too (not surprising given Webb and everyone involved would have only four weeks to bring it to air from nothing) and he found himself fired and embroiled in a lawsuit against his former employer, bringing an end to his relationship with Warner Bros for good.
It would eventually be a combination of television and film that would bring Webb back into people’s homes and resurrect his greatest success for a new run. By the mid-sixties the biggest thing on TV was old films. But there wasn’t enough of them to fill the schedules and it was costly to agree the broadcast rights and so Universal came up with the idea of making films specifically for television showings. The first few tries at this (beginning with Don Siegel’s The Killers in 1964) were either too violent or too expensive to show on sets at home and ended up in theatres. By this stage Webb was out of work and getting nowhere with his plans for new series. When Universal came to him with a budget and approved shooting schedule for a Dragnet movie Jack couldn’t have said no even if he wanted to. Webb still had police contacts and went to them for ideas on what sort of case could inspire the new film. It would be the brutal story of serial murderer Harvey Glatman from the late fifties, a man who had posed as a photographer of pulp crime magazines, once through a lonely-hearts club. Glatman tied up, attacked and murdered three women until his last attempt failed when the intended victim struggled with him and this was seen by a patrolman. He tried to deny his guilt until a toolbox full of pictures of the victims and personal effects of theirs was discovered. All of these elements would find their way into Webb’s finished film.
Jack Webb on the set of Dragnet 1966
Jack had built loyalty in the actors who he had supported during Dragnet’s first run and the majority of them readily agreed to supporting this new venture when he called on them. He found a new partner in Harry Morgan as Bill Gannon, the two men having known each other for a long time. Richard Breen returned too to write the script for the film. The finished product was considered such a success Webb was invited to bring Dragnet back as a weekly series. But Jack had never really wanted to play Friday again and even though he was now doing that, he envisioned Friday’s return as a series of similar two-hour movies. Webb was also aware that until this film he hadn’t worked for over two years and no one was really interested in his other ideas so with an assurance from Universal and NBC he would have the freedom to develop other projects Webb agreed. After the new Dragnet’s premiere was pulled forward by some 8 months, the film was shelved and wouldn’t be shown for three years. When the series arrived in homes each season would be identified by the year of broadcast and so this version begins as Dragnet 1967 (we’ll refer to it as such from now on). Jack framed his return in the press as not trading on old glories but instead an attempt to bring back respect for authority, a respect that was being lost in the burgeoning youth culture. Webb surrounded himself with talented actors, writers and producers and got to work.
The first show to reach air is also one of the most notorious in Dragnet’s entire run, whatever the incarnation. It’s important too because if anything sows the seed of Dragnet 1967’s never-less-than-interesting unevenness over the next few years or reflects how adrift Webb inarguably was with youth culture (or indeed why shows like Police Story (1973-1978) would establish a new way forward for the police drama), it’s episodes like ‘The LSD Story’. This tale of dealer Blue Boy and the tragic consequences of LSD use plays out like a conversation between a disappointed and uncomprehending father (Friday) and his son (Blue Boy). It’s a fight between Friday’s respect for authority and disdain for self-medicated escapes from reality and Blue Boy’s fatalistic naivety. It establishes Dragnet 1967’s approach to narcotics (they’re all bad and ruining society) and it’s these episodes that are most likely to be cited by critics who accuse this run of being ‘camp’. But the show’s at once ahead-of-its-time and hopelessly out-of-touch approach to drug issues wasn’t all the new series was about. Subsequent episodes find Friday and Gannon coming up against Nazis, kidnappers, bad cops, conmen and murderers.
Harry Morgan and Jack Webb on the cover of TV Guide
All of them are shot through with Webb’s later old-school conservative with a small ‘c’ approach to life (something that would mark him out as a borderline progressive these days). In that, in Friday’s world, if you’re a guy (or gal) and you respect authority and play fair, life should play fair with you in return regardless of colour, sex, religion or anything else. A swing from the original incarnation of the show which was made of sharper stuff, this belief that the world can be essentially fair to everyone who worked hard and contributed to society, no matter your background, was not true then, nor is it true now.
Nevertheless, when it diverts away from grumbling moralising, great episodes abound in this series, from ‘The Interrogation’ (a return to the formal experimentation of the first run’s ‘The Big Cast’, except here it’s not serial killer but a potential dirty cop being questioned) to wildly enjoyable episodes like ‘The Fur Job’ that nail a mix of crime-solving and humour. Then there are outstanding episodes like season three opener ‘Public Affairs – DR-07’ that are also genuinely extraordinary television, approaching Friday’s rigid world view from a different perspective. In it, Friday and Gannon appear on a television debate talk show and argue the case for the police against those who would dismantle the force. The arguments are still relevant today, with the duo’s accusers starting with “Property rights are all they care about, not human rights.” That unevenness presents itself just two episodes later in ‘Community Relations – DR-10’ with a deeply misguided story of a Black officer deciding to leave the force after encountering abuse, which Friday attempts to convince him not to do.
The focus of a television programme isn’t (or should never be) on being timeless or forever relevant, it should be to entertain week in and week out, episode after episode and in this Dragnet 1967 remains an outstandingly successful and consistent series, even considering its few episodes that don’t work as well. Alongside the sledgehammer drugs-are-a-bad-trip-man core of the show, Jack used the opportunity to play it differently, including more overt and less nuanced commentary on society’s ills, alongside frequent and always interesting experimentation – within the confines of the Dragnet style – with story and structure. Webb was able to poke fun at his most famous creation, too, such as his appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1968 for The Copper Clapper Caper sketch.
One of the results of Dragnet 1967’s solid critical and substantial ratings success was that a spin-off was created with Webb collaborating with R. A. Cinader. Seeking to represent a different side of the police experience, Adam-12 (1968-1975) was to focus on the beat cops who patrolled Los Angeles. It would follow the shifts of two officers and wouldn’t concern itself with following a crime from beginning to end. Often, Adam-12 episodes follow two or three separate stories, from missing children to being first on a murder to running down escaping felons. It mixes the exciting with the banal to try and present the reality of the patrol officer’s average day. In typical Webb style he would find his two officers in his existing pool of actors. Martin Milner had appeared in a number of Dragnet episodes and as tragic drummer Joey Firestone in Webb’s Pete Kelly’s Blues. More importantly for a show that would find Milner doing a lot of driving (and stopping driving on the right mark) he had been the star of weekly road-movie series Route 66 (1960-1964). Milner’s young, green to the job partner would be found in recent Dragnet 1967 guest star Kent McCord. Milner would school McCord (and us as audience) on the daily grind of being a beat cop, a good cop. It would be a big success with viewers and would be the first addition to the shared universe of Webb’s Mark VII series. Frequently shot out on location, a lot of Adam-12 still resonates and fits in with Webb’s focus on showing the appealing, comforting fantasy of the majority of cops as decent, hard-working people out there to protect us.
As Webb’s main show continued towards the seventies and cultural movements like The Summer of Love occurred, Dragnet 1967’s straight arrow of the law approach was looking even more apart from the zeitgeist. Webb’s commitment to his perception of realism and procedure was marking out Dragnet 1967 as something existing almost within its own reality. It was no longer an accurate reflection of either society or the way it was policed. Adam-12 was more connected with this but it is inarguably earnest in its approach, presenting cops as thorough idealistic but pragmatic professionals who deserve our respect. It would last several years longer than Dragnet 1967 too, and try in some different ways than its parent show to reflect a changing society as it entered the mid-1970s and the end of its production.
Back to Dragnet 1967. A number of other series airing around the time presented an alternative reality of authority, with shows like The Invaders (1967-1968) using science fiction to create and comment on a world where authority was at best frequently incompetent and at worst murderously inclined and not to be trusted, a world where we can only rely on ourselves. People who found Webb’s respect for institutions and those who worked within them inherently sinister, or felt Jack was a stooge of the establishment, had dramas now that more reflected their perception of that world.
Films like Buzz Kulick’s Warning Shot(1967) straddled the line between respect and suspicion of authority and anticipated the later outright mistrust of police and reaction to it that would be found in films like the Dirty Harry series. In it, David Janssen’s honourable cop shoots dead a suspect in self-defence but when no gun can be found he is quickly abandoned by a public and press that easily believe him a violent thug and even by his own colleagues. It reflects a change in the public mood, one that has witnessed violence and corruption in the police and how it has reacted to youth or the civil rights movement and is weary and suspicious of it now. And in fiction a young police officer, Joseph Wambaugh, had turned his experience of being a young cop in this dangerous and unsure new world into a novel that would lead to a film and subsequent television show that helped rewrite the police series in deeper, more purposefully grim shades of grey than any iteration of Dragnet had ever attempted and ultimately leave Webb’s template behind, consigned to the past. Across the next decade events like Watergate would reinforce a wider belief amongst people that government and the institutions of authority no longer had their interests at heart but instead sought to control them and Webb’s fascination and respect for them was more unfashionable than ever.
Webb would end Dragnet 1967 in 1970 and turn exclusively to producing and directing. He would have one of his greatest behind-the-scenes successes in the series Emergency! (1972-1977) as well as a number of interesting attempts at something different, including Project U.F.O. (1978-1979), a kind of Project Blue Book Dragnet, before working towards a further resurrection of Dragnet for TV.
Newspaper advert for an episode of Project U.F.O.
Ultimately, he would die early at only 62 years of age, a lifetime of heavy drinking, a two-pack-a-day habit and workaholism helping to bring about a heart attack in December 1982.
Whilst inevitably sad, this spared him the ignominy of his most famous creation being spoofed in Dan Aykroyd’s 1987 cinema version of Dragnet (with Aykroyd playing Friday’s nephew in full-Joe style as a ‘homage’ to Webb). The film certainly has its moments as an action-comedy but fundamentally misunderstands the Joe Friday character, recasting him through his nephew as an uptight and humorous dullard – something Friday never was – who just needs to get laid as much as his new partner Pep Streebek (Tom Hanks) so he can remove the stick from his ass. Adverts for reruns of the sixties version on television purposefully played on this notion that Friday was a square, the show as camp curiosity, and Webb’s reputation was probably here at its most maligned. And yet, Dragnet would circle around again, first in 1989 as The New Dragnet and then again in 2003 with Ed O’Neill as Friday.
Both of these shows underlined if it was needed that the format that Webb had refined didn’t work the same way anymore and just how much series like Hill Street Blues (1981-1987), Law & Order (1990-2010, 2022-present), NYPD Blue (1993-2005) and Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999) had pushed the network police drama into forever-changed territory.
None of this diminishes Jack Webb’s achievement in radio, television and film as a pioneer, because none of those series would exist without it. Webb’s work survives as a record of its time and taken within that context plays just as well now as it did then. Dragnet is a genuine classic of both television and film and is an achievement that any actor, producer or director (and Webb was all three) could be justifiably proud of as a life’s work.
As can be the the case, time has been kind to Webb’s work and intent in recent years and his reputation is being thankfully rehabilitated. Being able to assess it years removed from the time it was made in (and commented on) helps to pick out the value in what he achieved, and there is much to enjoy.
Joe Friday is an iconic character and Jack Webb’s style is iconic too with them both intertwined. In the same way as Rod Serling’s work is both of its time and timeless entertainment, we can argue the same for Webb as a true visionary.
A final Webb recommendation: Red Nightmare, from 1962, was made for the Department of Defense and designed to caution against the perils of communism. Produced and narrated by Webb, it is a remarkable piece of paranoid propaganda designed to sway public opinion and well worth seeking out.
Writing by Jamie Evans 