Tales from the Darkside

“Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality. But there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit… a darkside.”

I have such strange memories of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE. I remember watching it all the time on the Sci-Fi Channel (back when it was still called that) as a kid growing up in the ‘90s, but I don’t remember watching any specific episode when I was young. It wasn’t until I was in high school and the series began re-airing on Chiller that I actually started watching in earnest, and I was captivated. This is and has always been a show that speaks directly to such particular corners of my horror-loving heart, with its parade of lo-fi ghouls and ghosts, and Halloween goblins.

But an even bigger phenomenon happened as I watched it as a teenager, and that was that it truly scared me. Maybe more than it should, because it was a low-budget show from the ‘80s and I was a teenager in the mid-late 2000s. But it scared me because I was instinctively aware of how much some of those particular episodes would have terrified me as a child. In fact, I’m positive I did see some of those episodes as a kid and what I was feeling in the moment was simply a re-opening of those childhood wounds.

For example, I was absolutely petrified of ERNEST SCARED STUPID as a child, more so than any horror film aimed at adults I’d seen. I was so terrified of that troll that it ruined the concept of trolls for me. I couldn’t even read “The Three Billy-Goats Gruff.” My favorite episode of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, “Halloween Candy,” gives basically a version of that creature that’s actually intended to be scary and the first time I remember seeing it, it knocked me on my ass.

There’s such a low-budget charm to TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE. And I truly mean that its almost homemade quality works in its favor. It’s almost what the kids now would call analog horror. Something about TALES really feels like you’re tapping into a wrong broadcast, picking up signals from something you weren’t meant to see.

HIGHLIGHT EPISODES:

• “Trick or Treat”- The perfect pilot for the show. It’s like the Halloween version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL if a change of heart wasn’t in the cards for old Scrooge. A curmudgeon landlord forces people who owe him money to send their terrified children into his house of horrors to find a cash prize. But he gets a visit from an old witch who subjects him to a house of horrors of her own.
• “Halloween Candy”- Another Halloween episode, and another grumpy old man, but it’s the best of the show. A man who hates trick-or-treaters and refuses to hand out candy gets a visit from a goblin who relentlessly torments him and is, for my money, one of the scariest practical creatures ever created. A monster masterstroke by Tom Savini.
• “The Last Car”- A woman is stuck on a never-ending train. This episode is not as viscerally nightmarish, but there’s a palpable sense of dread. No one else on the train is panicking, everyone is comfortable, except the panic that comes on every time they pass through a tunnel, and the horror begin.
• “Monsters in My Room”- A very young Seth Green stars as a boy who sees monsters under his bed, and in his closet, and in seemingly every corner of his room at night. His stepdad tells him to man up and get over his fears and young Timmy discovers that in conquering his fears, he could also use them to his advantage.
• “A New Lease on Life”- A man moves into an apartment with some strange rules. He must not hang pictures on the walls, and he carry his weight by taking trash to the disposal every night, encouraged and even demanded to make more than he can eat, and waste a great deal of food, by his landlord. This old building is generous to its tenants, but it is very hungry.
• “Seasons of Belief”- Two kids who no longer believe in Santa Claus are captivated and horrified as their father tells them a different tale of a Christmas beast known simply as “The Grither.”
• “The Cutty Black Sow”- Another banger of a Halloween episode and in many ways the show’s most terrifying episode, and not just because of its monster. The whole thing hinges on the idea of forces that doom us, that we maybe can’t ever escape. An old woman on her deathbed tells her grandson of a Celtic demon called The Cutty Black Sow, who will take her soul when she dies, a fate that seemingly waits for the entire family, unless the grandson can find a way to stop it.