The WORST episodes of Tales from the Darkside
Every episode of Tales from the Darkside ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of Tales from the Darkside!
"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 - 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.
#2 - 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.
#3 - Dream Girl
Season 2 - Episode 14 - Aired 1/19/1986
A group of people find themselves trapped in a scenario with Otto, only to discover that he is a stagehand and they are a theater group all trapped in his dream.
#4 - 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.
#5 - 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.
#6 - 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.
#7 - Auld Acquaintances
Season 3 - Episode 18 - Aired 3/1/1987
Two long-lived witches, Elizabeth and Mary, vie once more over an amulet in the modern day that they agreed to share hundreds of years ago.
#8 - 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.
#9 - Ring Around the Redhead
Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/13/1985
As Billy is waiting to be executed in the electric chair, he relates the bizarre tale of how he came to be in his predicament at the hands of an attractive woman.
#10 - Going Native
Season 4 - Episode 17 - Aired 6/19/1988
An alien is sent to Earth to study the nature and behavior of human beings. The alien, who resembles a normal Earth female, meticulously studies photographs of still life from large cities, simultaneously fascinated with and disgusted by the disarray and degeneration depicted in the pictures. The alien joins a therapeutic support group in an effort to better understand the seemingly contradictory humans. As she develops personal relationships with each group member, she begins to further understand the origin of and reasons for the behavior of humans, albeit from an outside observer's vantage point. The other members of the group see the alien as distant and detached, a condition that they assume is rooted in a self-denial complex. As the alien speaks at one of the group meetings, she suddenly realizes that she has been experiencing the exact same feelings as the humans that she has been studying. She has become human-like through assimilation, trapped within the emotional shell of ano
#11 - Parlour Floor Front
Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/20/1985
A woman becomes concerned when she discovers that a man that she and her husband rent a room to has been practicing voodoo. Although the man is good intentioned and kind, the woman regards him as a threatening and undesirable tenant. The husband sees the man as a well meaning and harmless, albeit strange individual, a view that is contradictory to his wife's feelings. She decides to hatch a plot to expel the man from her building. When the child that she has been pregnant with miscarries and her cat turns up dead, she blames the incidents on the black magic of the tenant. Guilt-ridden, the tenant hangs himself in his room. When the husband confronts the wife about the incident, the truth soon reveals itself. It was the wife that caused the miscarriage and killed the couple's cat. Disgusted by her malicious actions, the husband leaves her. Later that night, while in bed, the woman is woken by the sound of horrific groans coming up the stairs to her room....
#12 - 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.
#13 - The Social Climber
Season 3 - Episode 19 - Aired 3/8/1987
A shoemaker's apprentice discovers a strange power when he finds he can step into other peoples' lives simply by putting on their shoes.
#14 - 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.
#15 - Let the Games Begin
Season 3 - Episode 21 - Aired 5/10/1987
When Harry Carson has a heart attack, an angel and a devil fight for who will get his soul and it's up to Harry to make the right choice.
#16 - Barter
Season 4 - Episode 19 - Aired 7/17/1988
A mother tries to get a reprieve from her noisy drums-practicing son by making a deal with an ammonia-seeking alien.
#17 - Lifebomb
Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/6/1985
Ben Martin, a rich businessman, is contacted by a special medical firm, ""Lifebomb"" which offers him an expensive policy that will let him live forever. They give him an implanted device which, every time he ""dies,"" activates and places him in a cocoon until the corporation can arrive and revive him. His wife soon leaves him and since Ben is close to death, the Lifebomb goes off constantly. Tired of life, he finds that he is trapped since Lifebomb refuses to call off the policy so that they can make money off of him.
#18 - Florence Bravo
Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/19/1986
The ghost of a feminist torments the woman who buys her home.
#19 - The Impressionist
Season 2 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/29/1985
An impressionist, "Mr. Personalities," is brought in by the government to try to help them communicate with an alien. Mr. Personalities is at first stumped but finally makes "contact." The alien departs and Mr. Personalities is depressed...until the alien returns for him.
#20 - The Unhappy Medium
Season 2 - Episode 22 - Aired 5/18/1986
The family of a dead preacher show up for a reading of the will but discovers he left them nothing specific. Rather, he warns them on his video-taped will that he will send them a sign.
#21 - Strange Love
Season 2 - Episode 21 - Aired 5/11/1986
Dr. Carrol visits the Alcotts and discovers that they are vampire and that wife Marie wants an escape.
#22 - 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.
#23 - 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.
#24 - The Swap
Season 3 - Episode 20 - Aired 5/3/1987
Anna Belle's plot to murder her husband to gain his money backfires with unpleasant results.
#25 - Black Widows
Season 3 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/2/1986
Audrey Webster is concerned about her reclusive mother, but when she pursues the matter discovers exactly why her mother stays away from others, and what awaits Audrey on her own upcoming wedding night.