Countdown to Halloween Day 15: Anthologies - Tales from the Darkside "Halloween Candy"

Welcome back my fine feathered friends! Today I'm back on about Anthologies! This time we're taking a look at a particularly memorable episode of the series, "Tales from the Darkside!" We've already looked at the film, so now let's look at an episode from the show that inspired it!

Tales from the Darkside had an incredible theme song. The opener itself was pretty weak, just showing some black and white scenery that flips over into a negative image before the title logo pops up... but man that THEME SONG!!! It had this weird, whiny sound to it that strikes the brain somewhere between the areas where a Theremin and a saw you can play with a violin bow would normally land. 

The episode I'm featuring here is, appropriately enough, a Halloween one! Called "Halloween Candy" this story may sound familiar to you, so stop me if you've heard this one before: There's a crotchety old man who would rather freak out trick-or-treaters than hand out candy. He gets his comeuppance in the form of a murderous, pint-sized supernatural trick-or-treater. Sound at all like one of the stories in (still coming up in this very countdown!) Trick 'R Treat? You wouldn't be the only one to think so. But I'm not going to harp on the similarities, since this episode of Tales came first, but Trick R' Treat did it waaay better. That's not to say I didn't have room in my heart for both.

Cantankerous old Mr. Killup hates kids, hates Halloween, and hates trick-or-treaters begging for candy. His son Michael has a strained relationship with him, to put it lightly, but cares for his dad out of obligation. The episode opens with Michael trying to convince his dad to hand out the candy he has supplied him, to save the trouble of undoing all of the Halloween pranks that are sure to follow.

Well grumpy old men will be grumpy old men, and shortly after Michael leaves, the hungry hoards of candy-begging juvenile delinquents descends on the Killup house. This kid in the bunny costume is arguably the creepiest looking thing in the whole episode, and shows up with an Easter basket loaded with spray paint for the folks not handing out treats.

MR. Killup puts a stop to those shenanigans IMMEDIATELY. Finally, when a kid dressed as a devil shows up and finally pushes Mr. Killup over the edge, the old man gets in a Halloween trick of his own when he mixes glue, mayonnaise, honey, and assorted other foul goop together to make "Goblin candy!" which he gleefully scrapes into the disgusted kid's bag of treats.

This does not go unpunished.

Later that night, much later than the average trick-or-treater would remain out... there comes a knock at the door after Mr. Killup has fallen asleep in front of the TV. Outside stands a ridiculously persistent, booming-voiced trick-or-treater who will not take a no when it comes to getting a treat. Mr. Killup denies this request and tries to ignore the "kid" but to no avail. It becomes very apparent very quickly that this is no run-of-the-mill Halloween prankster, and that Mr. Killup is in for more than a ding-dong-ditch or a tree-TP-ing.

The Halloween creature pushes its way inside after menacing Killup from the porch for awhile. He almost gets ahold of a treat but Mr. Killup manages to fight him off. Things settle down for a bit, but Mr. Killup can't help but feel like this Halloween night is taking an extra long time to get over with. He's getting really hungry as well, and since Michael won't be bringing more groceries until the next day, Mr. Killup finds himself with very little to eat.

I should note at this point that Tom Savini is the director of this particular episode. I mention this because there are some close connections between this episode and ANOTHER anthology horror film I have yet to discuss here on the blog: Creepshow! There are several scenes, (including one involving the goblin's trick-or-treat sack, left discarded in the entryway) with maybe-real-maybe-not invading bugs, much like the Creepshow segment "They're Creeping Up on You" which Savini was a big part of.

The image above is from Creepshow, and there's even a kitchen scene to match in Halloween Candy:

Things begin to escalate from there... As Mr. Killup realizes "That's not a mask..." and then begins to suspect that something is wrong with time. Time in his house seems to have frozen, making Halloween night last forever, and Mr. Killup is just getting hungrier by the second.

There is a final confrontation with the Halloween Goblin, as Mr. Killup looks out to see it sitting on the porch swing, and then finds it crouching directly in front of him inside the house!

Mr. Killup does not survive this encounter, though mostly out of sheer terror and clumsiness rather than any violence on the part of the goblin. I want to take a moment here and talk about how great I truly feel this episode is. It obviously influenced Michael Dougherty more than a little when he was putting together the Sam vs. Mr. Kreeg segment for Tr'T... and you can totally see why. This episode while a little cheap and goofy feeling at times, is for the most part very good. It sets a good atmospheric tone, and builds to the climax of the episode very well. It has a very cinematic feel to it, and with a little tweaking it would actually have felt very much at home in a film like Creepshow.

The Goblin, by the way, bears more than a passing resemblance to another Creepshow beastie:

Fluffy, from The Crate! While not identical or anything, there is pretty obviously a "Savini Style" at work here.

The outcome of the episode is rather bleak, and not just because mean old Mr. Killup got his just desserts... but because due to the time loop he was trapped in, he also wasted away to the shriveled up corpse you see above, placing his son Michael under investigation for Senior neglect! Yes, the medical examiner tells Michael to get a lawyer because he's obviously not been feeding the old man properly! MAN! IRONY! UNDESERVED PUNISHMENT!

Well that's it for tonight kids! I'll be back soon with some Gasping Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Haunting!

Remember, I'm doing this countdown as a part of the official Countdown to Halloween, so be sure to pop over there and look and see who else is participating this year.

Countdown to Halloween Day 7: Anthologies - Tales From the Darkside the Movie!

Welcome! Today we're back into horror anthologies! And I want to focus on one of my very favorite portmanteau films of all time: Tales From the Darkside the Movie! This came out in 1990 and features a bevy of talent both behind and in front of the camera. 

This one has it all folks, it is just a CLASSIC in every meaning of the word. From the three stories themselves to the wrap-around story that holds it all together, there aren't many ways I can think of to improve upon this one. From this point on it should be noted that SPOILERS are in full effect. If you've never seen this one and want to be surprised by the stories (and that just might happen!) then stop reading now, go watch the movie, and come back!

The casting on this film was just AMAZING, let me just start off by saying. In the wrap-around story we have none other than Deborah Harry as a suburban witch who cooks little boys up for dinner parties! She's extremely blasè about the whole affair, which is a bit distressing for Timmy, the paperboy she has locked in a cage in her pantry. Timmy decides to try and Sheherazade his way out of being cooked by distracting the witch with stories. Thus, we get the three tales contained in the movie.

The first tale is "Lot 248" which is based on an Arthur Conan Doyle story (yes, the Sherlock Holmes guy!) and stars Christian Slater and Steve Buscemi in a tale of supernatural revenge. You see Buscemi's character has been framed for a theft he did not commit so that he would lose out on a scholarship. He wants revenge on the ones who framed him (who happen to be the sister and friend of our main protagonist, Mr. Slater) so he does what anyone might do, and gets himself a mail-order mummy which he animates and uses as his murderous slave.

The mummy succeeds in killing the twerps who framed Buscemi, but fails to kill Christian Slater, who in turn discovers the mummy's weakness:

Modern appliances! Slater takes down the mummy, and ALMOST takes out Buscemi... but has a change of heart at the last minute. Which is too bad because...

Buscemi reanimates Slater's sister and friend and sends them after Slater. We are to assume this does not end well for our hero. What I LOVE about this movie is that it is unapologetically a creature feature from one end to the other. They don't go too left field with ghosts or demons or any kind of nonsense that feels really out of place. They manage plenty of smart twists and turns and some great moments of pure genius that make these classic-feeling monster stories really shine.

Debby Harry is rather impressed with the stories as well. She does indeed let herself get distracted with each tale, and she gets annoyed with Timmy, and with herself for doing so. But it doesn't stop her from listening again and again...

The next tale is a Stephen King story adapted by George Romero. There was a lot of buzz that this film was originally intended to be another Creepshow follow-up but they went a different direction. I don't know anything about that honestly. I do know that "The Cat From Hell" is my least favorite of the three main stories featured in the film... but man if THIS is the weakest tale, then we're in good shape. Basically Buster Poindexter is hired by Dr. Finklestein to kill a cat that is picking off people that have profited from using cats as test subjects for a pharmaceutical company. Pondexter is a hit man who agrees to the odd job, and goes after the cat with gusto and panache. BUT...

This happens. The cat climbs down Buster Poindexter's throat, waits for Dr. Finklestein to come back to the house...

... and then coughs himself up like a murderous furball.

He jumps up in Dr. Finklestein's lap (this is actually famous character actor William Hickey, who did indeed voice Dr. Finklestein in The Nightmare Before Christmas) causing him to have a fatal heart attack. It's a pretty cut and dry tale of an evil old man who is besieged by a murderous, vengeful cat and hires a hitman to take care of the problem, only to have said hitman... invaded(?) by said cat as a sort of "surprise I was hiding in the cake!" kind of moment that kills the old man. You know like you hear about on the news from time to time.

I can only assume that at this point the cat went off to kill an evil gnome living in Drew Barrymore's baseboard.

The stove isn't quite ready yet, so Timmy takes a stab at another story. I'm not really sure what his end game is here though (I mean, there's the way things play out at the end of the movie, obviously, but I don't assume that was his plan all along) because it doesn't really matter how long you keep a hungry witch distracted with bedtime stories... she's still got you in a cage in her pantry. It's not even like he's running out a particular clock to save his life... he's trapped. But anyway...

The last story in the trio is my absolute favorite. I think Lot 248 comes in second place, and The Cat From Hell comes in third (unless you count the wraparound, in which case, The Cat comes in last) but this final story, "Lover's Vow" is just so poetic and artful and twisted and gorgeous to look at and tragic to think about... it has it all. This one's a gargoyle story. James Remar is a struggling artist who witnesses a demonic gargoyle kill someone in an alley near his apartment building. The gargoyle spares his life on the condition that he never tells anyone about the gargoyle. Remar promises to keep the secret and the gargoyle lets him go.

Remar meets the beautiful Ray Dawn Chong and they become a couple very shortly after his encounter with the gargoyle. His life takes a turn for the better. They marry, have some kids, and he becomes a mush-less-struggling-much-more-successful artist. They live it up real good.

Then Remar does something incredibly stupid, but necessary for the story to work. HE TELLS HIS WIFE ABOUT THE GARGOYLE. He shows her drawings of what it looked like, and even a FREAKING BUST HE SCULPTED OF IT. And surprise surprise, his wife turns out to BE the gargoyle. She reverts back to her gargoyle form and so do their precious little darling children:

Baby... Ruth?

The gargoyle kills the guy even while professing her love for him. But a pact is a pact no matter how tragic the consequences of breaking it. Them's the breaks. Honestly though, I have always LOVED this story. It is so deliciously tragic and the perfect kind of story for Tales from the Darkside. What makes it even worse is that the guy breaks his promise out of love! Love for the very creature he made the promise to! When faced with the mummies and gargoyles of this movie, can you blame me for being a little less impressed by the killer cat?

Debby Harry realizes that Timmy, the little jerk, has distracted her almost to the point where she won't be ready for her dinner party! She makes a few fatal mistakes that would have Julia Child spinning in her grave, and the tables get turned, Debby takes a rack of HUGE needles to her back, and she ends up getting Hansel-and-Gretel-ed into the oven by Timmy. That smug little jerk then eats a cookie as he smiles at the camera and walks out.

This is one of my all-time favorite anthology horror films. It just has it all! It has a perverse sense of humor, it has art, and it feels like real effort was put into making it a good movie. If you've never seen it before, check it out! If you haven't seen it in a long time, check it out! If you love this movie and watch it every other month or so, check it out! You'll be glad you did!

I'll be back soon with more Grotesque Goodwill Goodies! So until then, Happy Haunting!

I'm doing this countdown as a part of the official Countdown to Halloween, so be sure to pop over there and look and see who else is participating this year.