Small Screen Screams! – NIGHT GALLERY: “Class of ‘99” (1971)

After dealing with a lot of fuckery over at CBS in the closing years of THE TWILIGHT ZONE’s run, a burnt-out Rod Serling gave the network one more chance (with the short-lived western series, THE LONER) before he jumped over to NBC for his next endeavor. 

Though NIGHT GALLERY never consistently reached the heights of Serling’s previous classic, it nevertheless provided a few thought-provoking chills during its three-season run. No better example is the segment “Class of ‘99”, found in the second episode of season two.

At his hammy, piercing best, Vincent Price plays a college professor about to give his graduating class their final exam. Unfortunately for his pupils, it turns out to be an oral exam. Soon, Price is dispensing stringent queries randomly to the sea of nervous faces in front of him, sniping and reloading as he moves from one student to another. When one undergraduate is unable to rattle off the precise answer Price’s professor is looking for, we witness a haughty wrath that can only be mustered by educators who’ve gotten to where they are through a routine abuse of trust and power.

However, the Behavior Science portion of the exam is where things truly start to get crazy. Here, the professor goads students into acting out the narrowest of human prejudices. The wealthy are snobbish, the poor uneducated and without distinction. The Blacks are pushy and inferior to Caucasians, who are illogical and bigoted. However, it’s to be understood that Asians are the lowest rung on society’s ladder, a distrustful enemy worthy of death. 

The reasons we find for all of this are horrifying, even more so because of how prescient they seem to be in the 21st century, when the divide between races and classes traverses borderlines, political parties, and even families. If you think all this sounds edgy now, imagine what prime time audiences were thinking in 1971 when this segment originally aired. Serling was never one to shy away from the darker tendencies of mankind, but in just ten jarring minutes “Class of ‘99” undeniably cements its place as the most important episode of NIGHT GALLERY.

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