Childhood throwback! Tales From The Darkside pilot

Childhood throwback! Tales From The Darkside pilot: Trick R Treat

PLOT -  Town miser Gideon Hackles spends Halloween hiding IOU's in his house, which he then rigs as haunted and invites local kids to search for the IOU's so he can scare them. This year, he gets his comeuppance.

Tales From The Darkside was the brain child of  George A Romero after the success of Creepshow. His whole team behind the "dead" movies via the Pittsburgh crew wanted to cash in on the success and make the whole horror anthology a weekly television show. Sadly the rights to the name Creepshow was being held so instead they made Tales From The Darkside which ran four very successful years and was reason we later had such shows like Monsters and the higher budget Tales From The Crypt. Dakrside featured some very impressive work from Romero himself, Savini, Stephen King, and John Harrison who later directed Tales From The Darkside The Movie in 1990.

I think we all remember the iconic opening and theme...

Darkside sadly ended in 1988 around the time two popular TV shows were just starting to take off (Friday the 13th the series and Freddy's Nightmares.) Over the four seasons we got some really awesome episodes, and some really weird ones. I decided that every once and a while I'll pick a certian episode from some of our all time favorite horror based shows. Seeing that Halloween is just a few days away I decided to pick the very first episode of Tales From The Darkside which was directed by Romero and featured some very impressive makeup from Ed French. 

Trick R Treat I could believe it or not see being made into a movie itself. It has a pretty clever plot and even though it first aired back in 1983, it really holds up (who else got scared to death by the witch at the end?) All four seasons of Darkside are on DVD along with it's feature length film. I have yet to finish the third and forth season but I was very impressed with the first two. The first disk of season one is pretty awesome. It also has "Inside The Closet" which is directed by Tom Savini which I'll be reviewing in the future. Say what you may about Tom, I have it hand it to him, the man did know how to direct. (he still owes me 40,000$ tho) So if you're interested in starting Tales From The Darkside, Trick R Treat is the perfect first episode to start your thrill ride. Also like I've mentioned before, if you're an artist or sculptor Darkside is the perfect background noise to work with.