Tales from the Darkside is a collection of short stories similar to The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and Tales from the Crypt, though this series has a much more horror slant than those first two series. And what makes Darkside even better is how much the show's executive producer, George A. Romero is involved.
The first season has great episodes like "Trick or Treat" where an old man who likes to collect debts gets haunted by a group of ghouls on Halloween if he doesn't straighten up. Another good episode, "The Odds," features a man who keeps showing up at a bookie's and betting on the long-odds, but the thing is, he keeps winning. Of course, the loan shark gets a bit nervous when the man bets that the bookie will be dead the next day.
Some of my favorite episodes are the ones that deal with our fears of computers. In "Mookie and Pookie," one of a pair of teenage twins is bed-ridden, but also a wiz at building computers. His new project has consumed his life, and when he passes away, he asks his twin sister to finish his project as per the instructions he has written out. The crazy thing is, she thinks her brother is somehow contained in the network, and finishing the project is the only way he can live again.
Another tech-heavy episode is "The Word Processor of the Gods." This particular episode, which is based on a short story by Stephen King, features a computer that can change reality. When the owner discovers this, he quickly re-writes a life where he doesn't have an ungrateful son and he is married to the woman that got away.
Like I said before, most episodes feature a guest star like Jessica Harper, Harry Anderson, David Patrick Kelly and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but if you pay attention, you should see a few other now-familiar faces as well. In the episode "A Case of the Stubborns," not only does it feature the comedic-actor Eddie Bracken, but you get to see a young Christian Slater and Brent Spiner as well.
While I usually frown a bit when I see a lack of special features on a DVD, in the case of older series or movies (at least anything pre-Laserdisc where special features weren't really thought about), I tend to be forgiving. Such is the case here. Besides some commentaries by Romero, there isn't anything additional, but the episodes themselves should go a long way to anyone who remembers staying up late to watch this show (not to mention it's very creepy intro). Fans of the 80's or the horror genre alike should look into picking up this DVD (or at least renting it and reminiscing).
