The BEST episodes of Tales from the Darkside season 1
Every episode of Tales from the Darkside season 1, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Tales from the Darkside season 1!
"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." This horror/fantasy anthology series follows in the vein of The Twilight Zone. Each week presents another standalone story of horror fantasy, and/or science fiction. Some episodes are gruesome, a few are of a lighter comedic style. Like many such shows, Tales... adapted the work of famous genre authors of the period such as Harlan Ellison, Stephen King, and Clive Barker. Many episodes also featured veteran actors of the '40s and '50s that saw very little work in their later years. "The Darkside is always there waiting for us to enter; waiting to enter us. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight."
#1 - A Case of the Stubborns
Season 1 - Episode 9 - Aired 12/2/1984
In the backwoods, a family patriarch dies...only to come back, unaware that he's dead. The townspeople are up in arms, but the old man is too stubborn to admit he's dead, despite his rigor mortis, lack of appetite, and bad smell. His grandson Jody eventually goes to an old voodoo woman for a solution. Rather than magic, she provides him with a simple solution: pepper. Jody puts it in his grandpa's handkerchief. When the old man sneezes, his nose falls off, which finally convinces him to go lie down and give up life for good.
#2 - Inside the Closet
Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/18/1984
A student takes a room with an abrupt, somewhat rude anthropology professor. He instructs her never to open the small door in the back of her closet. Hearing strange noises, she eventually opens the door and finds the chamber beyond occupied by a small, hairless-monkey sort of a creature. It kills her and goes after the professor...only to reveal that it is his deformed daughter, which he lovingly dotes on.
#3 - The Odds
Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/21/1984
Tommy Vale, a barroom bookie finds himself in a curious predicament: a man comes in who can't lose. As the story unravels, he finds out that his opponent is Lacey, a man who went broke gambling with Vale in the past. Now Lacey is back from the dead, with tips from the other side, and is unbeatable. In a final ghoulish wager, Lacey bets that Vale will die at a particular time, and he's never been wrong. But the clock chimes and Vale is still alive. Lacey is forced to depart, and Vale reveals that he set the clock ahead five minutes, then dies right on time.
#4 - In the Cards
Season 1 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/27/1985
A fake fortuneteller, Caterina, soon finds that every fortune she tells comes true...but she can only predict gruesome and horrific ends for her customers. She soon discovers that another cursed fortuneteller slipped her a cursed pack of cards, and Caterina can only get rid of them by giving them to another fake. She does so by slipping into another fortuneteller's parlor, asking for a fortune, and slipping her the cursed deck. Unfortunately the first fortune the new cursee reads is of Caterina's death...which rapidly comes true.
#5 - Levitation
Season 1 - Episode 19 - Aired 5/19/1985
A teenager enraptured with magicians goes to a flee-bitten circus to seek out one of the greater: Kharma. However, Kharma now does cheap magic for the crowds, and none of the great illusions the teenager believes him capable of. When Kharma refuses to do them, the kid heckles him until Kharma relents and uses the boy as a subject for his greatest feat of levitation. However, Kharma dies of a heart attack, and the boy simply keeps on levitating...up into the sky and out of sight.
#6 - I'll Give You a Million
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/7/1984
Two old, rich men like to wager among themselves on trivial matters for huge amounts. One of them, Williams, offers his friend a million dollars for his immortal soul. Blaine accepts but discovers that he is dying of cancer - frightened, he tries to buy his soul back. Williams holds out for more money, until it's too late - Blaine dies. Soulless, he comes back for his soul, shocking Williams into a heart attack...and the Devil comes to claim his due from both of them.
#7 - The New Man
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/30/1984
A recovering alcoholic is disturbed to find a young boy who shows up at his office claiming to be his son Jerry. The man is further angered when the boy shows up at his house. While the other family members carry on as if Jerry is a regular member of the family, the man insists that he has never seen the boy before in his life. The man's wife assumes that he has begun drinking again and is harboring delusions brought on by his inebriated state. The family, disgusted by the father's unwillingness to acknowledge Jerry as his son, ultimately leaves him. Driven back to drinking by the ordeal, the previously sober father ends up in a state of emotional ruin. In the final scene, Jerry visits another man, claiming to be HIS son, as the nightmarish pattern continues.
#8 - Pain Killer
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/14/1984
Harvey goes to Dr. Roebuck with back pains and Roebuck prescribes a miraculous cure. It's not until later that Harvey finds the price he must pay...
#9 - Anniversary Dinner
Season 1 - Episode 13 - Aired 2/3/1985
A young girl fleeing her boyfriend finds herself in a small country home with a genial older couple. They take pity on her and invite her in, and even invite her to their special anniversary dinner. After getting her set up in the hot tub with plenty of wine, they start pouring vegetables in. As she passes out, the girl realizes exactly how the couple will be having her for dinner.
#10 - Madness Room
Season 1 - Episode 17 - Aired 5/5/1985
Cathy Osborne brings her husband up to a previously-unknown room in their house and along with her friend Michael, relates the tale of how the room is the ""madness room"" from which no one has ever stayed the night...and survived. In reality it's a set up and Cathy and Michael plan to kill Cathy's husband by scaring him to death. They succeed by faking some supernatural activities, but soon find that the curse of the room is all too real...
#11 - The False Prophet
Season 1 - Episode 23 - Aired 8/4/1985
Cassie Pines is a woman travelling on her own who believes in astrology, tea leaves...everything. She comes into a diner with a most unusual mechanical fortune teller named Horace X. ""Horace"" is uncanny with his predictions but Cassie soon finds that Horace is demanding and possessive - despite her misgivings she enters the booth one more time...and disappears.
#12 - Slippage
Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/11/1984
A young ad-design artist begins to literally ""slip"" out of reality. Slowly but surely he seems to be fading out of existence: first his payroll checks disappear, then his high school not only fails to mail him about their reunion, but has no records of his existence. The artist soon realizes that since he's drifted through life, he's basically ""slipping through the cracks"". Even his mother has no memory of him. At the end, even his wife and best friend (now the woman's husband in this new reality) forget he ever existed.
#13 - All a Clone by the Telephone
Season 1 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/20/1985
Leon, a hapless TV writer, buys an answering machine that has a mind of its own - it initially helps him out by providing him with new material, but Leon soon finds that it's taking over his life.
#14 - Bigalow's Last Smoke
Season 1 - Episode 21 - Aired 6/9/1985
Mr. Bigalow, a lifelong cigarette smoker, wakes up to find that his windows have bars on them and his door is sealed shut. A mysterious figure appears on Bigalow's television, informing him that he will quit smoking. Bigalow scoffs at this notion and reaches for a morning cigarette. As soon as he lights up, a deafening alarm sounds, demanding that he extinguish the cigarette immediately. Bigalow is subjected to various endurance tests and is further tempted to smoke when thousands of cigarettes materialize in the room, only to disappear. After being driven to the edge of sanity, he wakes up to find that he no longer has a desire to smoke. Believing that the whole ordeal was a dream, Biaglow reaches for a cup of coffee, at which time the mysterious figure reappears on the television screen, insisting that Bigalow now work on his caffeine addiction.
#15 - The Word Processor of the Gods
Season 1 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/25/1984
Richard Hagstrom is dismayed with the way life has treated him (a rude son, a shrewish wife). His nephew Jonathan gives him a birthday present: a homemade word processor. Hagstrom soon discovers that anything he types into the processor becomes real, and no one but him knows the difference. He begins with simple experiments, but then wipes out his son from existence. Even his wife is unaware of the changes. As the machine overheats into self-destruction, Hagstrom types in one last story: he makes sure that he and Jonathan's mother married and that Jonathan was his son. As the word processor destroys itself, Hagstrom's final wish becomes reality.
#16 - It All Comes Out in the Wash
Season 1 - Episode 20 - Aired 5/26/1985
Henry, a greedy developers, stumbles upon a Chinese laundry that offers a unique service - it can ""wash out"" guilt. Henry employs their services but soon finds there is a unpleasant price to pay.
#17 - Snip, Snip
Season 1 - Episode 14 - Aired 2/10/1985
A warlock and a witch get into a battle over a $10 million lottery ticket when each claims that the spirits gave them the winning number.
#18 - Answer Me
Season 1 - Episode 15 - Aired 2/17/1985
Joan is apartment-sitting for a friend but finds herself tormented by a phone that won't stop ringing.
#19 - If the Shoes Fit...
Season 1 - Episode 18 - Aired 5/12/1985
Fast-talking politician Bo Gumbs finds himself in serious trouble when he arrives for a meeting and waits at a nearby hotel.
#20 - The Tear Collector
Season 1 - Episode 16 - Aired 2/24/1985
Prudence is a young woman who can't stop crying, but finds a peculiar way to make a profit when she meets Ambrose Cavender, a man who collects tears.
#21 - Mookie and Pookie
Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/4/1984
Twin siblings, Mookie and Pookie, are extremely close. But Mookie has a terminal illness. Later the scientific genius Mookie succesfully downloads his mind into the computer before he dies. But now that he's in there Pookie must convince her parents not to pull the plug.
#22 - Grandma's Last Wish
Season 1 - Episode 22 - Aired 6/16/1985
An elderly woman's family considers committing her to a retirement community, but grandma has one last wish that will help the family understand exactly what she goes through.
#23 - Djinn, No Chaser
Season 1 - Episode 10 - Aired 1/13/1985
A couple inadvertently buy a magic lamp that contains a genie. Unfortunately, the genie is anything but amiably. Confined in the lamp for thousands of years and still trapped, he refuses to grant wishes and instead terrorizes the couples with plagues, rains of frogs, etc. The husband finally has himself committed, but a few days later his wife brings him home. Their apartment is now richly decorated and they have plenty of money. The genie is now an amiable and willing wish-granter. The wife's solution to freeing the genie: a can opener.