Shark Bytes

I loved this series, it never, never jumped. It had some weak eps, but so did The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Dark Room, just about every horror/sci-fi anthology you can think of, but like TZ and OL you can build a top 10 list that is stronger than most shows. With that said, here is my list.

1. Halloween Candy - Show this once to a group of kids and they will never go trick or treating again.

2. Word Processor of the Gods - Probably one of the most original plots, because it revolves around a man's decision and a nephew's love.

3. A Case of the Stubborns - Flat out funny.

4. The Tear Collector - A lot of people don't like this episode, but I rank this one as being the most creative of the episodes.

5. Anniversary Dinner - This show is why I don't trust the AARP set.

6. The Devil's Advocate - Admit it, you all think Jerry Stiller is a demon of some sort.

7. Deliver Us From Goodness - A more creative way of falling, unlike City of Angels.

8. The Milkman Cometh - Another one of those creepy ones, this probably led to the demise of the milkman (grin).

9. The Grave Robber - I rank this as the third funniest episode of the series, behind Deliver Us From Goodness and A Case of The Stubborns.

10. Baker's Dozen - Do not, I repeat, do not piss off a baker that practices Voodoo.

The episode where you can push a button to win a large sum of money with the caveat being that someone you don't know will die was actually a 1986 episode of Twilight Zone ("Button, button"). Apparently, this same episode is being made into a movie to be released later this year.

This show never jumped the shark. Sure there were some episodes that weren't scary at all, but the show overall was great TV.

Every time I catch a re-run on The Sci Fi Channel I get nostalgic for the WPIX 11 Good Ole Days. They would show "Tales", "Monsters", "Friday The 13th" and if you switched over to WWOR you could also catch "Freddy's Nightmares". I was an insomniac child.

Whoever bought "LBS Communications" should really consider releasing the entire series on DVD. I'd buy it in a heart beat. "Love Hungry" was hilarious to me as a kid. "Season's of Belief" was great. And "Sorry Right Number" was also good.

Another good idea would be to relaunch the series on a cable network and remake the old episodes. That way you can improve upon many of the original episodes that had tons of promise, but couldn't pull off the execution due to budget constraints.

The show ended for me when the "heroes" started to get screwed for the sake of being screwed over. The final straw was "Medusa" where a burglar unwitting;y frees medusa while he becomes stone. Medusa wants a normal life and tries to find love. Her boyfriend dies, she returns to stone, and the burglar goes along his merry clueless way.

The continuous male-bashing episodes didn't help either. The one I remember most is of four friends, three women and a man, find a creature locked in the basement. The creature eventually seduces the women to join her and kill the man to take his heart for the ritual to free the creature.

I remember two episodes from the series, one where a housewife finds that she is so good that she's an angel but wanting to be a regular wife and mother to her family decides to commit the seven deadly sins in order to stop being an angel. It was a funny episode. The other I remember was an episode where a genius kid turns a vacumn cleaner into an energy sucker that proceeds to suck energy out of all the lamps and appliances, and the boy's mother. Not as good as the Twilight Zone but enjoyable.

I saw a version of that "Press the Button to get a million dollars only a stranger has to die" story mentioned previously, but it was a skit on Bill Cosby's variety show.

There are alot from full episodes of Tales From the Darkside posted on ebay. And in my opinion i think that the 4th season of Tales From the Darkside was the best.

Oh geez. Tales from the darkside. Okay, so im 17 and i actually love this show. When i was a baby in the early 90's my family used to always watch that so i guess i basically grew up loving that show too. But to be honest, the begining of that show, the credits, scares me soo much, i cant take it. My fave episode, and i guess because it scares the heck outta me, is about the woman who lives in an apartment building and she keeps hearing the phone ring next door. Then in the end she realizes that the woman who used to live there died and she dies in there also. Good show, great show.

I'M LOOKING FOR A PARTICULAR EPISODE, WHERE A DEMONIC MALE IS USING A YOUNG WOMAN AS THE TEMPTRESS TO GET A MAN TO LEAVE HIS WIFE..... HE GIVES HER A TIME FRAME, IF SHE DOESN'T SUCCEED THE MAN WILL GO BACK TO HIS WIFE, & THE GAME WILL BE LOST...... ANYONE KNOW WHAT THE NAME OF THIS EPISODE IS & WHERE I CAN GET IT ON DVD????

My favorite episode was called "The Tunnel", in which a lady riding on a train keeps seeing strange things happen to her fellow passengers every time they pass through a tunnel.

SUGGESTED SYMBOLISM: The train represents life. The tunnel represents troubles. The passengers represent various types of people. The moral to the story is it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what you are, it doesn't matter how old you are, you are always going to have troubles so get used to it.

It has been many years since I saw Tales From the Darkside, so I was enthusiastic about seeing episodes air on the Sci-Fi channel in the last few weeks. I have to say that the series as a whole varied widely in entertainment and creative value. The show’s quality rose and fell with the quality of each individual episode, so it’s difficult to make a general jumpability assessment. Perhaps one can make a judgment on the ratio of good to bad episodes (or very good to totally crappy ones). Of course, who remembers the time sequence, of when such-and-such an episode aired and in what season? But, watching the show again, it’s hard not to wince at the conspicuously inferior production values. Almost every episode looks like it was filmed on an unimaginative sound stage, designed by interns whose overriding goal was to recreate the living rooms of daytime soap operas. The camera work lacked any trace of style. The so-called special effects, whether they were demons, aliens, or magical powers, were leagues away from special; in fact, they were cheesy, clunky, and often distracting. Many of the episodes are completely unintelligible in terms of meaning or story line. Just when you start getting into a particular story, it ends abruptly and incoherently. And the actors, while moderately famous (in their day), often appear as if they couldn’t act their way out of a paper bag. Maybe it was those two-bit, one-dimensional set-pieces. But despite all this much-deserved criticism, Darkside did have a welcomed ambitious streak, which puts it a cut above most of the other offerings of its genre. There were episodes that were creepy and provocative, and some that were downright amusing despite their silliness. Also, the opening visuals and narration were memorable. Among my top episodes are: A Case of the Stubborns, featuring a young Christian Slater, in which an old man refuses to die and pesters his family as a curmudgeonly corpse; The Devil's Advocate, with Jerry Stiller as a malicious Talk Radio-type host who meets a hellish end; and I'll Give You a Million, involving two wealthy, wager-loving men who bet on one of their souls and then have to pay up to the devil himself. Probably many of the mediocre episodes could have been better if not for the budget constraints, which limit the amount of talent you get. But this is just letting Darkside off easy. The original Twilight Zone didn’t exactly have the greatest production values, but it had the necessary terrific acting, writing, and directing to make it a classic. Darkside had some great ideas, but too many were butchered in their execution. Yet watching them again on the Sci-Fi Channel, I remember almost every one, which is a lot more than I can say for many other anthology series. So, overall, I would say the series never jumped. For its genre it was pretty good.

This show never really jumped. In my opinion this is one of the best anthology series ever.(To me; it is only behind the original Twilight Zone/Outer Limits and ahead of the 1985 Twilight Zone as best anthology series.) My favorite episode is "Seasons of Belief" or the one with the Grither. My little sister freaked out after seeing that one. The Sci-Fi Channel has started airing it again as of 10/2/06, so watch it and/or tape it while you can. To the poster above, that episode with the talking fruit was called "Love Hungry", but I don't remember that one, because I haven't seen a lot of the last season's episodes. Also, to the poster 6 posts above me; That wasn't a Darkside episode, but an episode of the 1985 Twilight Zone titled "Button, Button". It's still a very good episode, though.

This show was scary. My favorite episode was the one with the talking fruit. Another poster mentioned it. Although, I don't think it was about a fat, ugly lady who gets a hearing aid. I remember a young skinny girl with like brown hair and she sees the fruit talking to her and the fruit say, "No, no, don't eat us." Does anyone out there know the name of that episode because that was hysterical! The fruit kept talking to the woman and the poster was correct in saying that she ends up having her mouth sewn shut because she doesn't want to eat her new friends--the talking fruit! (LOL)

This show stopped being scary late into about the third or fourth season when the shows started becoming monotonous and paint-by-the-numbers formulaic. Despite this, the good episodes definitely outnumber the bad. The Milkman Cometh was one of my favorites. It was about a milkman that would come late at night and grant people's wishes. Some of his clients would leave him a box of chocolates, resulting in their wishes going awry. VERY mysterious, VERY intriguing. Distant Signals was another touching classic. Very symmetrical, very pleasing. Word Processor of the Gods was interesting, but am I the only one that disagreed with the ending? So, a man erases his wife and son completely from existence so he can have the woman of his dreams and his nephew becomes his son. Wasn't that a bit selfish of him to eradicate his former family from the passage of time, though??? Hated the black widow episode. And Baker's Dozen. LAME. But when TFTD wanted to scare you, it proved it could with that white daughter monster!

I was a little kid when this show was on the air and I grew up in the woods. My backyard looked just like the creepy trees at the beginning of the show and that bit about the dark side being "just as real but not as brightly lit" -- that freaked me the hell out! Even at that age I knew that not all the episodes were great, but it was one of my favorite shows. I have fond memories of watching it with my family. And, yes, the little white daughter/experiment was the creepiest thing ever.

A mysterious stranger ask a veteran television producer to film a final episode to a series that was canceled many years ago. The short-lived, long-forgotten series was about a man on the run from someone who was unexplainedly trying to kill him. The series is sort of reminiscent of "The Fugitive" or maybe "Coronet Blue". The producer isn't interested until the stranger offers to finance the production and pay him a hefty fee. The producer tracks down the alcoholic former star of the series who is now out of the business and is working as a bartender. The former star is played by the brilliant Darren McGavin who starred in many fondly remembered, short-lived series of his own. The stranger somehow makes McGavin appear much younger so he can play the series lead one more time. The final episode is filmed where the killer turns out to be McGavin's brother. The stranger is deeply touched by the final episode, calling it very symmetrical and very pleasing. The stranger disappears. McGavin's theory is that the stranger is a space-traveling alien who identified with the lonely, always wandering, never resting hero of the series. This was a very symmetrical and very pleasing episode of "Tales from the Darkside".