Clark Ashton Smith is an acquired taste. (It helps if you like the substitution of conspicuous ten-dollar words for plain old English that would have worked just as well.) One of his best and least effete stories is 'The Return of the Sorcerer,' on which this episode of "Night Gallery" is based. How faithful to Smith's tale is the small-screen adaptation? The mechanics of the plot are fundamentally the same, but the overtly horrific nature of the story is eschewed in favor of a languid, decadent atmosphere, with costumes and set pieces that look like something out of Théophile Gautier. (Tisha Sterling is essentially one of those set pieces. She's nice to look at, but there's really no reason for her character to exist...and of course the character did *not* exist in Smith's story. Bill Bixby is bland and inoffensive as the translator, and no one could have played John Carnby nearly as well as hammy, leering Vincent Price.)
But it works! Director Jeannot Szwarc took the bare bones of the short story and superimposed upon them the sinister/humorous aesthetic that was a trademark of "Night Gallery." It's a neat reimagining of the Smith tale, not at all like the clunky, uncomprehending adaptations to which Hollywood so often subjects the work of H. P. Lovecraft. All in all, 'The Return of the Sorcerer' is one of the better moments of the series' third and final season...by which time Rod Serling's involvement had, unfortunately, become minimal.