Tales from the Darkside

1984

Seasons & Episodes

  • 4
  • 3
  • 2
  • 1
  • 0

EP1 Beetles Sep 27, 1987

An Egyptologist working on a sarcophogus ignores a curse and meets a horrific fate when he ignores it.

EP2 Mary, Mary Oct 04, 1987

A woman who lives with mannequins because she is unable to deal with real people gets a rude awakening.

EP3 The Spirit Photographer Oct 11, 1987

Despite the discouragement of his friend, a middle-aged photographer, Algernon, tries to captures spirits on film.

EP4 The Moth Oct 18, 1987

Sybil, a woman on the verge of death, is obsessed with the thought that after she dies her soul will dwell within a moth, and she begs her mother to hold the moth until she can be restored to life.

EP5 No Strings Oct 25, 1987

A mobster who has finally defeated his old rival hires a reluctant puppeteer to string up his rival and make it dance for him. The mobster is unaware that puppet and puppeteer both have agendas of their own...

EP6 The Grave Robber Nov 01, 1987

In this comedic episode, two treasure hunters discover a lost Egyptian tomb and accidentally revive a mummy. The mummy, Tapok, doesn't try to strangle them, but rather challenges the male explorer to a game of strip poker. The explorer loses, and with each piece of clothing he loses he takes on more of Tapok's wrappings until finally Tapok transfers his curse and leaves with the other explorer.

EP7 The Yattering and Jack Nov 08, 1987

A normal, everyday, plain-as-day man, Jack Polo, lives a normal, everyday life...despite the fact that strange poltergeist-like events occur around him. He seems oblivious to everything bad around him. We soon realize that a small demon, a Yattering, has been sent to torment him because his mother was a witch. The Yattering's boss tells him he can do anything he wants as long as he doesn't touch Jack. Jack's daughter comes to visit, and she is surprised at both the host of strange occurrences (including an animated Christmas turkey) that occur, and her father's increasingly strident attempts to deny anything amiss. His motto: ""Que Sara Sara"". Finally, driven out of its mind with desperation, the Yattering touches Jack...which makes him his willing servant. Jack knew of the demon's plans all along, and that he hoped to trick it into touching him. Now he is safe from Hell's revenge, and has a new servant in the process.

EP8 Seymourlama Nov 15, 1987

Much to his parents' frustration, a spoiled young boy, Seymour, is declared the High Lama by a group of monks.

EP9 Sorry, Right Number Nov 22, 1987

Katie receives a mysterious phone call from a woman warning about her husband's death...but he isn't dead yet. Katie ignores the phone call, and her husband dies. At the funeral, a despairing Katie calls up herself...and finds herself talking to...herself. She tries to warn her past self, despite knowing that it won't do any good, then collapses in despair.

EP10 Payment Overdue Feb 14, 1988

Michael, a heartless collection agent, finds out that Jeanette doesn't quite understand the rules of going into debt, and has some unpleasant problems as a result.

EP11 Love Hungry Feb 21, 1988

Betsy, an overweight woman, receives an anonymous package with an earpiece that will supposedly help her diet. It transmits the "voices" of her food as is being eaten, but Betsy still has problems and the next gift is a pair of glasses that let her "see" her food as well...

EP12 The Deal Feb 28, 1988

Screenwriter Tom Dash unwittingly makes a deal with the Devil and finds he must get out of it by finding a new victim or offer up his soul.

EP13 The Apprentice May 01, 1988

Jane is hired by a Puritan museum but ends up mysteriously going back in time where she is forced to work as a near slave in the past.

EP14 The Cutty Black Sow May 08, 1988

On her deathbed, Jamie's great grandmother tells him the tale of a Celtic demon, the Cutty Black Sow, that comes to claim the soul of anyone dying that night, and Jamie vows to protect her soul from the beast.

EP15 Do Not Open This Box May 15, 1988

An aged inventor and his wife come into possession of a box marked "Do not open this box." The wife opens it and finds it empty. The next day a man comes to claim the box and the lady makes up a story about losing the box. The man begins giving them nice things in exchange for eventually getting the box back. The couple begin living the sweet life thanks to the stranger but when they finally give the box back, the man tells them that it contained a human soul - since the box was opened the soul has escaped and now the man needs a replacement.

EP16 Family Reunion May 22, 1988

Janice, a young mother, swears to a social worker, Trudy, that her husband Robert kidnapped their son Bobby six months ago and she hasn't seen either of them since. Trudy agrees to find the father and son, but discovers that everything isn't what she was led to believe.

EP17 Going Native Jun 19, 1988

An alien is sent to Earth to study the nature and behavior of human beings. The alien, who resembles a normal Earth female, meticulously studies photographs of still life from large cities, simultaneously fascinated with and disgusted by the disarray and degeneration depicted in the pictures. The alien joins a therapeutic support group in an effort to better understand the seemingly contradictory humans. As she develops personal relationships with each group member, she begins to further understand the origin of and reasons for the behavior of humans, albeit from an outside observer's vantage point. The other members of the group see the alien as distant and detached, a condition that they assume is rooted in a self-denial complex. As the alien speaks at one of the group meetings, she suddenly realizes that she has been experiencing the exact same feelings as the humans that she has been studying. She has become human-like through assimilation, trapped within the emotional shell of ano

EP18 Hush Jul 10, 1988

A babysitter is called in to take care of a sick boy. As a game, the two make up a pretend creature out of household parts, one that eats sounds. The creature comes to life, sucking the sound and the life out of everything in the house. The two try to evade it, but the boy's uncontrollable coughing gives him away. The creature then becomes sensitive enough to the girl's heartbeat to find and kill her too, then goes out into the world for more "food"".

EP19 Barter Jul 17, 1988

A mother tries to get a reprieve from her noisy drums-practicing son by making a deal with an ammonia-seeking alien.

EP20 Basher Malone Jul 23, 1988

A wrestler seeking one great opponent finds himself tricked into fighting a demon from Hell.
7.4| 0h30m| TV-14| en| More Info
Released: 30 September 1984 Ended
Producted By: Tribune Entertainment
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

Tales from the Darkside is an anthology horror TV series created by George A. Romero, each episode was an individual short story that ended with a plot twist. The series' episodes spanned the genres of horror, science fiction, and fantasy, and some episodes featured elements of black comedy or more lighthearted themes.

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Reviews

ctomvelu-1 DARKSIDE proved to be a distinct step down from classic TV anthology series like THE TWILIGHT ZONE and CHILLER. Episodes were shot on video and a synthesizer was often the only musical accompaniment. Plots were often all too predictable. Yet a handful of episodes stand out,and you can read about them in detail here on IMDb. Familiar faces popped up in most episodes, which was a definite plus. But if you watch a TWILIGHT ZONE episode followed by a DARKSIDE episode, you are going to cringe at the incredible cheapness of the latter. The show is constantly in reruns on channels like The Sci-Fi Channel, for what it's worth. For all its faults, I will recommend HBO's TALES FROM THE CRYPT over this. Heck, I'll even recommend THE RAY BRADBURY THEATER or Roald Dahl's short-lived series over DARKSIDE.
saintize I liked the movie just fine.Any movie or series in the vein of Twilight Zone and Amazing Stories always gets my interest. As far as Tales From the Darkside,the series...The stories (Most of them) were pretty well written, while some were pretty cheesy, like the "Highway to Heaven" Halloween episode where the guy with the beard sells his soul to the devil. The twist in the Gargoyle story was pretty good and disturbing. I really wrote in to say the guy a space or 2 above me said, "I don't know if the show is still on" well, it's not. It's been quite a few years since it's been off the air. But I recommend the movie and the series if you can find it. Sci Fi channel ran a TFTDS marathon recently.
Tommy Nelson This show was really great, most of the time. Like the original Twilight Zone, it was sometimes horror episodes, sometimes fantasy and sometimes comedy/fantasy. 92 episodes aired, around 70 of them being really great, and the others being stinkers. Since it was on regular TV, it couldn't contain very much language, and the violence was plentiful, but usually mild. The narrator Paul Sparer had a really creepy voice and started and ended the show. The shows were often about ghosts, demons, Satan, monsters and even a boy putting his voice onto a computer. Each episode had a surprise ending, which made it even better. It was often very morbid and could be depressing, but usually wasn't. It was great.My rating: A. 1984-1988. 30 mins. 6 volumes with 5 episodes on each are available on VHS, and one volume has two.(32 episodes available)
Earl Roesel (Sanguinaire) The television horror anthology has a long and noble history. In the Fifties, Rod Serling blazed the trail with THE TWILIGHT ZONE; though the series mostly veered in the direction of what may be called "speculative fantasy", it did produce its share of horrific/macabre episodes. This was to be followed by THRILLER in the early Sixties, a much more overtly Gothic series hosted by Boris Karloff, and one of the first television series to catch flack for experimenting with graphic violence (one episode featured a man staggering down a flight of stairs with an ax buried in his head!). Serling struck again with NIGHT GALLERY in the Seventies, an often genuinely weird and experimental series that, like THRILLER, often drew from the great pulp horror tales of the past for inspiration. And, in the Eighties, came George Romero's TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE.I vividly remember the show as a pre-teen; it would premier late at night, around 11:30 after the news and "normal" programming concluded. As that bleary witching hour approached, when the wholesome prime-time like of FAMILY TIES and THE FACTS OF LIFE seemed miles gone by, disorientation and apprehension would set in - the atmosphere was right for a kid to be scared! And nothing was scarier than DARKSIDE's opening sequence. What looked like pastoral postcard scenes of rural Vermont would give way to the ominous intonations of Paul Sparer, backed up by a prickly synthesizer score. The title card would then appear in dripping letters of crimson. It was, in a word, unforgettable.For budgetary reasons, the episodes were shot on video; on the one hand, this gave them an air of cheapness, but on the other lent them a kind of creepy immediacy. The frequent appearance of veteran stars meanwhile, some of who hadn't then worked in years, provided some old-fashioned cachet. Eddie Bracken starred in one I'll never forget - A Case of the Stubborns, based on a story by Robert Bloch. Bracken plays a cranky old grandfather who refuses to accept the fact that he has died, much to the distress of his family. As the days pass, Bracken begins to decompose, to the point of literally sneezing his nose off. Another one that stuck with me was called Inside the Closet, which starred Fritz Weaver as a doctor with a horrible Tom Savini-designed secret locked in his doll closet. One of the (deservedly) best-loved episodes was a Christmas-themed affair called Seasons of Belief. This one had E. G. Marshall sadistically terrorizing his children with stories of The Grither, a sort of demonic Santa being whose name must never be spoken. Building to a truly spectacular conclusion, Seasons of Belief stands out as an endearingly bilious Yuletide classic. In addition to the old-timers, TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE boasted some up-and-coming talent as well - the aforementioned A Case of the Stubborns also starred Christian Slater. Another one I remember, called Monsters in My Room, had little Seth Green as a boy who faces the titular trouble. To further sweeten the package, horror masters like Romero, Savini, and Bloch frequently contributed behind the camera.TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE looms large in the pantheon of Eighties horror (when the genre wasn't afraid to be bold and nasty), as well as in the hearts of those of us who remember it. As it's been off the air for some time, a DVD release may well be in order, so that a whole new generation might behold what gave many Children of the Eighties a pleasant little chill back in the day. As the show's closer immortally put it: "The Darkside is always there, waiting for us to enter, waiting to enter us. Until next time - try to enjoy the daylight."