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!
Tales from the Darkside is a 1980s American anthology horror TV series created by George A. Romero. Debuting in October 1983 with a pilot episode and then being picked up for syndication in September 1984, the show ran for 4 seasons through July 1988. Each episode, aired originally by Tribune Broadcasting late at night, was an individual short story that often ended with a plot twist. The series' episodes spanned the genres of horror, science fiction, and fantasy, and some episodes featured elements of black comedy or more lighthearted themes.
#1 - Hush
Season 4 - Episode 18 - Aired 7/10/1988
A babysitter is called in to take care of a sick boy. As a game, the two make up a pretend creature out of household parts, one that eats sounds. The creature comes to life, sucking the sound and the life out of everything in the house. The two try to evade it, but the boy's uncontrollable coughing gives him away. The creature then becomes sensitive enough to the girl's heartbeat to find and kill her too, then goes out into the world for more ""food"".
#2 - A Choice of Dreams
Season 2 - Episode 20 - Aired 5/4/1986
A mob boss suffering from a terminal illness is visited by an odd man who claims that he has the ability to offer the dying a choice of dreams after death. The mob boss is skeptical at first and threatens to kill the man for insulting his intelligence. After some contemplation, he accepts the man's offer and subjects to his medical experimentations. At first, the boss experiences nothing but pleasant memories. However, after a few days, memories of the people he has destroyed through his evil and ruthless lifestyle begin to creep into his dreams. The mob boss reports these dreams to the man and demands that these images not recur after he dies. The man assures the mob boss that the disturbing memories are only a momentary side effect that will subside after further medical alterations. As the mob boss subjects himself to the final operation which will complete the procedure, the horrible memories become permanent, completely taking the place of the pleasant ones. Inside the mob boss's
#3 - 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.
#4 - 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.
#5 - I Can't Help Saying Goodbye
Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/5/1986
A young girl develops a talent for seeing the fate of those about to die and develops the habit of saying ""Goodbye"" to them when she does, and her family grows increasingly upset as a result.
#6 - Florence Bravo
Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/19/1986
The ghost of a feminist torments the woman who buys her home.
#7 - 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.
#8 - Heretic
Season 3 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/9/1986
A rich art collector buys a stolen painting from a thief. The painting portrays a man before the Spanish Inquisition. The collector, Harte, is soon visited by a mysterious man who begs him to repent of his sins and give up the wrongfully-gained picture. Harte ignores the warnings and finds himself sucked into the painting where he is to be tortured as a sinner and heretic. He recants to the Inquisitor, who lets him go. Once out of the painting, Harte refuses to give it up, and receives a personal visit from the Inquisitor in the real world. The thief returns to take the picture, and Harte is nowhere to be found...in this world.
#9 - Deliver Us from Goodness
Season 3 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/30/1986
Valeria is a saint - literally - and finds it more then she can bear. She seeks out a way to fall from Grace but is unable to do so no matter how hard she tries.
#10 - My Ghostwriter — The Vampire
Season 3 - Episode 14 - Aired 2/1/1987
Hack writer Peter, writing worse and worse vampire stories, buys a coffin for inspiration and finds it occupied by Count Draco. Peter manages to protect himself, and the two strike a deal: Draco will supply new inspiration based on his life experiences, and Peter will write the books. Peter becomes wealthy, but refuses to share the proceeds. With the aid of Peter's secretary, Draco manages to get the drop on the writer and kill him, and the vampire and secretary strike up a new arrangement.
#11 - 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.
#12 - Sorry, Right Number
Season 4 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/22/1987
Katie receives a mysterious phone call from a woman warning about her husband's death...but he isn't dead yet. Katie ignores the phone call, and her husband dies. At the funeral, a despairing Katie calls up herself...and finds herself talking to...herself. She tries to warn her past self, despite knowing that it won't do any good, then collapses in despair.
#13 - Love Hungry
Season 4 - Episode 11 - Aired 2/21/1988
Betsy, an overweight woman, receives an anonymous package with an earpiece that will supposedly help her diet. It transmits the ""voices"" of her food as is being eaten, but Betsy still has problems and the next gift is a pair of glasses that let her ""see"" her food as well...
#14 - 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.
#15 - 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.
#16 - 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.
#17 - 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.
#18 - 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....
#19 - 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.
#20 - 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.
#21 - 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.
#22 - 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.
#23 - 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.
#24 - 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.
#25 - 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.