Tales from the Darkside (1984)

Oh, that theme music.... This show always came on in the middle of the night, after my family had gone to bed, so I hardly ever got to share it with anyone.

I discovered this was a common affliction when, in mentioning it to a friend, she exclaimed, "It IS real!" You see, she had never gotten to watch it with anyone else either. It was just one of those things you watched by yourself, in the dark.

George Romero released this on us in 1984. He'd done pretty well with his movie Creepshow and the small screen was a fine way to cash in. The cycle was completed with the 1990 release of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, which featured its own version of the Snow Maiden story (but with gargoyles! What a twist!).

You can actually get all four seasons and the movie on DVD. However...

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(Here's part two.)

I do want to share this one with you and it's an awful quality transfer, so I don't feel bad about posting it. This comes with a story:

On one of the extraordinarily rare cases when someone watched this show with someone else (namely, me and my mom), it was an episode with Divine in it. There's his name, right there, in the opening credits.

Mom started laughing. "Divine! Oh my!"

I asked who Divine was. "Oh, you'll see," she said.

So when Divine showed up, my mom said, "Oh," and "That's not right," and "Well, I guess it is him." And when I asked what the deal was, she said, "He looks completely different. Nevermind."

And, yes, that is David Gale, with more than just his head, as the dad.

Funny thing, when Divine says, "Nothing like Tibet! They are Reformed! We are Orthodox!" it just tells me they're Red Hat sect Buddhists, not Yellow Hat. That's a thing. Go look it up.