Director Guillermo del Toro has built a reputation as a master of horror and dark fantasy over the years. He’s a man that has put together pretty twisted realities to startle and frighten his viewers, and he’s a man that you wouldn’t expect to easily be scared. Once upon a time, however, there was a TV program that managed to freak out the Hellboy director. Recently, del Toro shared the story about the TV episode that scared him so heartily that he peed his pants. Here’s the story from his own mouth.
“My golden measure is pretty depressing. Because when I was a child, I watched an episode of Night Gallery called “The Doll.” The Doll turned around and looked at the camera and smiled and I literally just peed like a hose. And I was screaming uncontrollably. And my father just grabbed me and took me into the bathroom and put me in the bathtub… That for me was the highlight; that’s as scared as I’ve ever been in anything.”
If you aren’t of an age to remember Night Gallery, it was an anthology series hosted by Rod Serling that aired on NBC in the early seventies, often featuring multiple storylines in one horrifying episode. The Night Gallery episode in question involves a large house, a lonely little girl, a creepily mustached man and the doll in question. “The Doll” narrative is part of a larger story arc in the episode, but it is certainly one of the creepiest bits of the episode, and it seriously puts Annabelle to shame.
In the interview with Yahoo, Guillermo del Toro reveals that peeing uncontrollably while watching the episode is a bit “sad” to share with everyone, but it’s also a bit comic as well. You have to think that in the time since the Night Gallery episode aired, del Toro worked up a tolerance to frightening occurrences, figuring out how to bring them to the big screen and scare others, as well. Yet his experience with the Night Gallery episode seems as vivid today as it did when the creepy doll first appeared on the TV screen in front of him.
If you are a fan of Guillermo del Toro and you want to see what all of the hullabaloo related to that epic Night Gallery episode is about, it’s totally available to stream online. Click over to the next page to catch the full episode
