By Geno McGahee

I never found Dorothy Lyman hot.  I know they made her the “hot chick” on MAMA’S FAMILY, but I never saw it and don’t see it now. Perhaps, thinking about her getting banged by Vint (Ken Berry) was a turn off.  If it was a turn on, I’d probably need help.  The fact that I’m thinking about it now probably means that I need help. 

IN THE CARDS is an episode of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE where Catherine (Lyman) is a psychic that uses Tarot cards.  I like Tarot cards even if they’re bullshit and I definitely like bullshit.  I love stuff about aliens and Sasquatch and ghosts.  Even though I believe in them, I’m willing to say that I have an attraction to bullshit and that includes psychics. 

Catherine is a bullshit artist and has no real psychic powers, but she wants to line her pockets.  When Madame Marlena (Carmen Mathews) shows up for a reading, everything changes.  She sneaks in her own deck and now Catherine can see things happening with her readings, even though they are all bad. 

After predicting the deaths of a woman’s boyfriend and some old dude, she tries to get rid of the cards but they won’t go away.  She throws them away and they immediately appear back on the table. She is stuck, but she soon discovers that Madame Marlena fucked her over and she heads over to get answers.   Marlena lets her know that the cards are basically a curse and that you have to pass them off to another psychic fraud. It’s sort of like THINNER with the pie. 

Catherine tries to get rid of them but can’t and ends up running into some muscle-bound dude with pantyhose over half of his face.  What the fuck is the guy doing walking around with pantyhose over his face?  I can see if you’re robbing a bank or store or something but to wear them out just for kicks seems odd.  Also, you don’t see many robbers/killers that are so big and muscular.  They are usually crack heads and crack heads are usually thin.  

So this thug with pantyhose over his face (spoiler) stabs Catherine and kills her, leaving one Tarot card behind.  IN THE CARDS is a decent episode of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, but I have my issues with it.  Why the fuck didn’t Madame Marlena, the original fraud psychic, get killed by this curse? Did that guy with the pantyhose buy a better-fitting pair, made for thugs with fat heads, after he got Catherine’s money?  Did that thug inherit the deck of cursed Tarot cards and if he did, does he know what to do with them? 

So I recommend IN THE CARDS, but I wish they answered my pantyhose questions. 

Rating: 7/10

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By Geno McGahee

I love TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE for the most part. I loved all these horror TV shows, but they cannot knock them out of the park every time.  The 1984 “A CASE FOR THE STUBBORNS” features a very young Christian Slater as Jody, a young man that is mourning the loss of his grandfather.  His mother, Ma (Barbara Eda-Young), is also dealing with the loss and prepares breakfast and that’s when it gets weird.

Titus, the grandfather (Eddie Bracken), makes his way downstairs and asks for his meal, shocking them.  Immediately, I hated Bracken’s performance.  He is terrible and he keeps slapping his lips together like he took a load in the mouth from a moose.  Most grandparents are annoying and at least he checks that box, but I doubt the show’s intent was to annoy the viewer.

Reverend Peabody (Brent Spiner) shows up and tries to convince Titus to accept death and move on from this world.   Titus won’t have it and insists that he is still alive, despite the fact that he is visibly decomposing. 

To convince his grandfather to move on to the other side, Jody goes to see the local witch (Tresa Hughes) and you want to talk about bad acting.  Hughes does this terrible witch laugh and is so over the top terrible, but she was better than Bracken.  I’ll give her that. 

The witch helps Jody out and they (spoiler) convince Titus to go and die.  That is all this episode is and it’s terrible.  Unless are you a Christian Slater fan, for some reason, and want to see his early work, I’d skip this episode.  It’s just shit.   The only thing I will give it is that the makeup at the end for the decaying grandfather wasn’t all that bad.  It couldn’t make up for the rest of the episode though.  

Rating: 1/10

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I don’t know if I wanted to kill myself or punch the lead actor in the face as I suffered through this episode of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE.  I know that there are going to be bad episodes in every series, but it usually doesn’t come in the very first season and this tale “Djinn, No Closer” is in the first season.  I would have cancelled the series after seeing this one if I ran the network.  What pure shit.

Danny (Charles Levin) stares directly at the camera, while in a strait jacket, talking to some psychologist and was trying to be funny.   Now, there is nothing worse than forced lame humor and here we go.  I was tempted to kill this episode immediately and move onto another, but I wanted to review it so I would remember it and remember never to suffer through it again.

Danny talks about his wife and how happy he was and it transitions to them walking on the street.  I was initially happy, hoping that they would return to this weird-looking shithead staring right at me in a tight shot.   His wife, Connie (Colleen Camp), somehow tolerates this guy.  He must be hung like a horse and have a tongue like Lassie.  Otherwise, this douche has nothing to offer.

As they walk, a tent suddenly appears and Mohandus (Nate Esformes), offers great sales.  Connie picks up a genie lamp and then we get a couple minutes of Danny and Mohandus, face to face, insulting each other and haggling over price.   What the fuck is this shit?  I think they were going for humor, but it’s wretched and annoying.  I was hoping that the genie would jump out of the lamp and cornhole Danny and Mohandus for the remainder of the episode. 

After bringing the lamp home, Connie decides to rub it and the voice of the Djinn, played by basketball guy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, starts insulting them.  We keep going back to Danny sitting there, talking directly to us.  I don’t know Levin personally, but I’m guessing his family probably says: “If he’s acting, he’s not here, and that’s a good thing.  Who cares how shitty it is as long as he’s not hanging around us.”

As the Djinn ruins their apartment, Danny decides to check himself into some mental hospital, which makes it odd that they put him into a strait jacket as they did.  We get more of him talking directly to the camera and then he finally decides to leave, freely, which is also odd that they’d let him leave if they thought he was dangerous enough to restrain while there.

When he gets home, the genie is out of the lamp and everything is normal.  We see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in a suit and they talk about how they got the genie out of the lamp…with a can opener.  Oh boy, what humor this episode had.

DJINN, NO CHASER is fucking terrible.  There is nothing good about it.  It is annoying and stupid.  It’s trying to be funny, but it’s the most terribly unfunny thing I’ve seen in my entire life.  Shame on TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE. 

Rating: 0/10

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The 1980s knew how to drive a point home.   Richard (Bruce Davison) has a lousy life, but they really wanted to show you how bad it was.  In the TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE Episode “The Word Processor of the Gods,” Richard is given a gift from his nephew that died in a car wreck.  It’s a homemade word processor.

Delivering the processor is Tom (William Cain), an old guy that knew Jonathan (Jon Matthews), the nephew that made the processor.  He carries the boxes into the house and we get a good look at the unkempt home.  There are open bags of junk food everywhere and Richard’s overweight wife, wearing a moo-moo, Lina (Karen Shallo), sits there and watches on with a sneer on her face.  She is quick to point out that her brother-in-law that died in the same car wreck that took out Jonathan and Belinda (Miranda Beeson), Jonathan’s mother, was a drunk.  She then complained about the amount of money that they had to pay for a triple funeral while drinking a 3 liter bottle of soda.  I never read the Stephen King short story that this is based on, so I don’t know if he portrayed the woman in such a negative light.  He probably did. 

On top of a fat miserable wife, Richard has a shithead son, Seth (Patrick Piccininni).  His son is also fat and lazy and refuses to get off the sofa.  On top of all that, Richard deals with abuse from his wife, as she constantly notes that he makes no money from his writing, but she makes money from her Bingo.  I wonder if she was this fat and miserable when he nailed to her to make Seth.  Maybe he liked fat chicks.  Some guys do.

The processor is set up and it has powers.  It’d have to have something going on for it to be a TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE episode. It would suck if it was just 25 minutes of Richard typing.  It’d be even worse if it was 25 hours of him twerking.  That would probably be on a show called “TALES FROM THE BACKSIDE.”  I wonder if there’s a porn by that name. I’ll have to do research. 

Whatever Richard types comes true.  He starts by making random things disappear and appear and then gets some gold out of it.  He then decides to end his son that he calls “a creep.”  Now, isn’t “creep” usually used when describing a sexual deviant?  “Stay away from Uncle Jimmy. He’s a creep.”  So, was Seth into weird sexual shit?  This predated the internet.  So I’m guessing that Richard found weird porn in Seth’s room.  

With his son now deleted, he gets verbally berated by his wife, saying that Richard wanted to marry Belinda, his deceased brother’s wife, but never had the balls to ask her out.  Stephen King may be trying to tell us something here.  Hey Stephen King’s brother, keep an eye on your wife.  Stephen may be trying to show her “IT” if you know what I mean. 

(SPOILERS)

Richard decides to get rid of his wife and bring back his brother’s wife and Jonathan and claim them as his own. As for his brother, he can drop dead…or stay dead, I should say.  The processor catches on fire and the two dead people are back and are now his new family.  THE END.

THE WORD PROCESSOR OF THE GODS is a rather fucked episode.  Richard has every right to hate his life.  He should have dumped his wife and kicked his son’s fat ass out of his house.  I’ll give him that.  I just can’t see Richard as a very nice guy if he has elected to remove them from existence all together.  He then gets to win at the end and gets his brother’s wife.  Shame on you Stephen King for thinking these thoughts.  Sicko. 

Another thing that I wanted to mention was Tom, the old guy.  He called Richard to ask about the processor, but he implied that he knew how it worked.  Did he use it prior to bringing it over?  If so, what did he wish for?  He could have wished to be young again or could wish to have Stephen King’s brother’s wife, if he wanted to.  Whatever the case, he knew it made shit happen.  If I was Tom, I would have held onto that shit and used it all the time.  Fuck work.  I would just stay home and delete shit.  I would start with some of my neighbors and their fucking dogs that shit on my front lawn.

I do recommend this episode.  It was entertaining and interesting enough, but weird when you think about how it all turns out.  Shame on you King.  Sicko.

Rating: 7/10 – Hide your wives from Stephen King.  He wants to knock their tommies. 

The post The Word Processor of the Gods (1984) – Stephen King TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE TV Show Review appeared first on SCARED STIFF REVIEWS.

By Geno McGahee

The intro of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE is always awesome and scary, but it can lead into episodes that don’t always belong in the dark side. Some are so tame that it’s difficult to categorize them as horror, but making a show like this, it’s probably easy to run out of ideas and if there are a smidge of horror elements involved, then they can live with themselves I guess. In THE TEAR COLLECTOR, we have one of these episodes that are really more of a drama than a horror short, but it’s interesting even if the payoff sucks in the end.

Prudence (Jessica Harper) is emotional and not happy. She cries often and doesn’t have anything really going in her life. Her roommate, Gretchen (Linda Lee Johnson), tries to help, but comes off as insensitive and pushy. I’ve never met a Gretchen I liked, but it’s an old name and most Gretchens I met were pushing 80. They had Bingo dabbers and were angry.

To make her life worse, Prudence walks past a homeless junkie (Eric Bogosian) talking to himself as all homeless people do…in movies at least. Homeless people aren’t always depicted in the best light in film, but I guess the thought is that if they don’t have a house, they don’t have a TV and they can’t see this shit, so fuck them. I get it. It makes sense. But, in their defense, there are plenty of crazy junkie homeless people and they are not nice. This junkie begins yelling at poor Prudence and grabbing her, yelling “you want to help me out, don’t you?” She throws money at the bum and hauls ass, right into Ambrose Cavender (Victor Garber). Ambrose? What pretentious douchebag wrote this? If I ever meet a guy named Ambrose, I’m going to punch him right in the face, unless he’s tough-looking or into MMA. Then it’s all good.

Ambrose is creepy and tells Prudence that her tears are beautiful. She’s been lonely so long that this seems charming, but the guy looks like he walked off the set of TO CATCH A PREDATOR. Beggars can’t be choosers though, and they set up a meeting and this is when the mystery begins and I like mystery. She goes to see this dude and when she shows up, she walks to a locked door. He approaches and tells her that there is “something irresistible about locked doors.” Really? Really Ambrose? Well, people lock the door when they have to take a shit, don’t they? What’s irresistible about that locked door? You tell me.

He has Prudence lie down and starts collecting her tears in a glass container and this guy is very creepy. I wonder if he collects other bodily fluids. I would be creeped out if he said take this glass container, this copy of Jugs and fill the bottle for me because your man juice is beautiful. Damn, the money had better be good for that, and apparently it would be. He paid Prudence 100 bucks for her tears each time she gave them. That was in 1985! In 2018, that has to be at least 500 bucks and he’d probably pay for other fluids, I’m sure. Damn, I picked the wrong occupation. I should have found where this dude lives and brought a bucket.

Ambrose informs her that when her jar is full, she “will be ready,” which really brings the mystery element full force. Ready for what? Is he a monster that needs tears and will turn into such beast when it’s time? Is he really draining her of her life? Is he using this as some weird way to get into her pants? I wanted to know!

The container fills and fills and Prudence begins falling for Ambrose, which is so odd, but then again, a lot of women find strange guys to hook up with. Strange is better than average I guess and crazy people make interesting lovers. So, maybe I shouldn’t criticize her choice here, but remarkably, he has no interest in that. She throws herself at him, but all he wants are her tears and then kick her to the curb. WHAT?! So, she leaves, but she takes her tears with her, prompting poor Ambrose to give a sad face. Now what happens? Guess what… NOTHING happens. He’s not a monster. She’s not dead. He’s just some toolbox that gets his rocks off collecting tears. In fact, he collected so many that he dedicated a room to it, which is what was behind the locked door.

So this tale just kept jerking me along and jerking me along and then when they could not jerk any more, they left me with blue balls. I was so fucking disappointed at the end of this one. I would have been OK if she left and the guy smiled and had fangs. Don’t explain it. I know it don’t make sense, but it makes more sense than nothing. I would have been happy if he looked at the camera, while holding his jars of tears and said “time to make my tear lube…it’s better than KY…that’s for sure.” That would make sense! But this?!

Prudence leaves and almost gets hit by a taxi, leading to some strange geeky guy (John Rothman) to run out and come onto her. She walks away with this dude and I’m totally lost. What did I just watch? It wasn’t badly written, but it made no sense. There was no payoff at the end. Damn. THE TEAR COLLECTOR should have collected other things that were more interesting. The adult magazine collector would at least be fun to watch even if the payoff sucked. I recommend this but just barely.

Rating: 5/10

The post Tales from the Darkside: Tear Collector (1985) – HORROR TV SHOW REVIEW appeared first on SCARED STIFF REVIEWS.

By Geno McGahee

I have always liked Vic Tayback. When I was a kid, I watched him on ALICE, but I always thought it was called “MEL’S DINER.” He played Mel and you can’t tell me that he wasn’t banging the three waitresses that worked for him. I hated Flo. That entire “kiss my grits” got old after about the hundredth time, but to Mel, it was all good I bet. Perhaps he said: “Forget the grits, I want the tits.” Perhaps not. Whatever the case, my point is that I like Vic Tayback.

Alan (Tayback) works for Brad (Jon Jacobs) and is in sales…I think. He may be in insurance or real estate or sex toy safety, but whatever the case is, Alan has a demon. He was a drunk and he is still fighting the battle day by day. Brad walks up to him and offers him a drink, but he declines. Immediately, some young boy named “Jerry” (Chris Hebert) walks in and starts calling Alan dad. Alan is confused because he doesn’t have a son named Jerry and has no clue who he is.

When Alan gets home, his wife is furious at him and Jerry is over for dinner. Sharon (Kelly Jean Peters), Alan’s wife, insists they have a son and starts implying that her hubby has been drinking again. Can you blame him? All those hours at the sex toy safety place and running a diner? You need to relax a little.

As time goes on, Alan starts to fall back into his old ways and begins to look worse for wear. His suit is all wrinkled and he needs a shave, and he is totally fed up with that little shit pretending to be his son. His whiney wife keeps nagging him. It’s no wonder he drinks! On top of her busting his balls, she continually brings up his past problems. How will that help the guy? “Remember what happened? Remember!” Poor Alan. He deserved a better wife than that. Zero support!

While at work, Alan gets a call and his wife is leaving and taking their children. He isn’t very happy about that and storms home, tearing up Jerry’s room and screaming “Jerry doesn’t exist” over and over again, as he tosses shit around. He collapses on the bed and realizes that he has lost everything and reverts back to the drunk he was before all the nagging and the guilt trip shit.

SPOILERS

It turns out that Jerry, the 9-year-old, was hired by the company that Alan works for, which was apparently hired by his wife. The idea, I guess, was to take a recovering alcoholic, drive him mad, force him to drink again, and hopefully he will kill himself. Alan isn’t the only guy they do it to. At the end, they got some other poor guy that says he’s “on the wagon” as Brad offers him a drink. Fucking Brad. He needs a good kick in the balls for playing this game.

THE NEW MAN is a good episode, but a strange one. What parents would allow their 9-year-old son to move into a strange man’s house and do this? I guess they could just get the names of the parents of the kids that stayed at Neverland Ranch, but Alan didn’t even have a monkey named “Bubbles”. It’s just not realistic. If the alcoholic is violent, the kid’s ass would be grass and if Alan wanted to, he could have taken that little shit and thrown him down the stairs. I can only assume that the kid is related to Brad, since he set this up. Whatever the case, it didn’t seem realistic.

I recommend THE NEW MAN. It’s a great performance by Vic Tayback and there is enough mystery around it to make it interesting.

Rating: 7/10

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By Geno McGahee

I haven’t seen TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE for years, but when I found the entire series for 20 bucks, I had to pick it up. As a kid, the intro to the show was very terrifying and it’s creepy now, as the guy with the scary voice talks about the other side that isn’t very nice. It sets the tone for the show and gets you into that mode where you want to be scared. In the first episode “TRICK OR TREAT”, the focus is on scares and is set on Halloween. It’s the perfect way to start a short horror series.

Gideon Hackles (Barnard Hughes) is a rich old man and he enjoys throwing around his wealth and exploiting those less fortunate. He gives out loans to the townspeople and holds it over their heads with great joy. His two accountants come over, Mr. Bindle (I.M. Hobson) and Mr. Bundle (Max Wright), and he even has fun at their expense, sending a large scary head floating over to them. They clutch onto each other and scream as Gideon laughs. I know that there is money involved but Max Wright could have and should have kicked the ever-loving shit out of that old bastard. Max Wright was the man on ALF and he doesn’t need to bend over and take it from this old prick. He should have gotten up and kicked him in his saggy nuts.

Every Halloween, Gideon gives the townies a chance to clear their debts and it’s a very unusual way. He wants their children to come into his house so he can scare them. I think Chris Hansen might want to show up too for this one. The townspeople are reluctant to send their children into his home, but they are also desperate and concede. The kids show up in costumes and Hackles hides in a room, controlling mechanisms to scare the kids as they walk around. He does everything he can to stop them from finding the IOUs and finds great joy in their fear. When they scream and run away, he laughs up a storm. Fucking prick.

An unexpected visitor arrives. A scary witch stands at the door and she is amused, but Hackles is not. He demands that she leaves and insists that he only wants kids. Chris Hansen…where are you?! The witch floats in and is now returning the favor and terrorizing the old man. The witch looks rather good…almost as if she came from THE EVIL DEAD. The voice, the laugh and the smile remind me very much of the women from THE EVIL DEAD and how they played the role. This isn’t as scary, but it brings some of that creepy element in and for network TV, this is rather scary.

Hackles runs around his house as he encounters new ghoulish sights and watches as his money flies away. He runs into the devil himself and realizes that he has no lived the best life, but it doesn’t matter anymore. The money is spread around the town and the IOUs are forgiven. This was a very fun episode.

TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: TRICK OR TREAT was written by George A. Romero. This is the sort of episode that must have scared a lot of kids and some adults. The visuals are very good and the bad guy is very unlikable. I highly recommend this one. I just wish that Willy Tanner would have gotten off his ass and pounded Hackles into hamburger. Other than that, it ruled.

Rating: 9/10

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