Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

Bloody fun from beginning to end. It's nothing genius but a truly entertaining anthology. It's like _Creepshow_ but much darker. Often with horror anthologies, some stories will be better than others, but that's not the case here. All three stories, plus the wrap-around, are all excellent. The score is well-chosen and adds the creepiness of each story. The build-up in the second segment is sublime with some impressive practical effects!

Three stories to give you nightmares.

My original review of this film is almost entirely backward. My re-watch proved to me that "Lot 249" is the best story, with "Cat From Hell" being not as good. The weakest story is the one I originally called the best. "Lover's Vow" is a pretty boring romantic tale with a twist that I should have seen coming and I'm now embarrassed to say now that I didn't. Shame on me.

The first thing to note about this movie is that it looks so much better than the TV show that it's spun from. Granted, the TV series has the disadvantage of 1980's fashion sense and some pretty bad accompanying music, but this movie was much easier on the eyes. The "wraparound" story is a pretty basic one. Debby Harry is a beautiful witch (there's an old-school broom leaning in a kitchen corner) whose captured a boy who will be the main ingredient at her dinner party. The little squirt turns out to be a resourceful catch, as he delays becoming a meal by reading the witch a trio of scary tales.

First up is story called "Lot 249" starring Christian Slater and Steve Buscemi. It's an old mummy story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It's got all of the shadows and light in all the right places and looks good. When Slater flips the insanity switch, things actually get entertaining. It's not a very strong adaptation, but it's not bad, either.

Next it's "Cat From Hell", a Stephen King penned, George A Romero adapted story of a cat whose killed all but one of the inhabitants of a rich CEO's mansion. That one survivor is the actual CEO, who hires David Johansen to kill the cat. Johansen attempts to kill it with all of his hit man related tools of the trade. It's annoyingly silly and Johansen is such a caricature that the whole story never materializes. The best part about this is Johansen gets it in a disgusting one-on-one with the evil cat. It's gross and it's the only thing that makes the story worth watching. But it's still more funny than frightening.

Finally, "Lover's Vow" completes the trilogy and is the best story of the lot because it had a surprise ending twist. I'm not ruining anything by mentioning that this entry has a great looking gargoyle, too.

Recommending "Tales From the Darkside" isn't easy but if you like the TV series, you'll be just fine sitting down to watch this.

Kind of a hokey horror-comedy, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie is too tongue-in-cheek for its own good. In the film a suburban witch is entreated to three tales of horror by a young boy that she’s preparing to cook. However, the stories are rather lame; a mummy that comes to life, a killer cat that won’t die, and a gargoyle that falls in love. The writing is really poor, and is full of clichés and painfully bad stereotypes. Yet the cast is surprisingly good, and includes Christian Slater, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore, and James Remar. Tales from the Darkside: The Movie is mildly entertaining, but it just isn’t able to pull off the campiness and clever wit of the television series.