Tales from the Darkside/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Nightmare Fuel
    • "Trick or Treat" : A hated and spiteful old man with an obsession for documenting and exploiting debts owed to him, offers trick-or-treaters the chance to search his house for their parents' mortgages, only to terrify them with animatronic "spirits." Unfortunately for him, the old man finds himself the victim of a particularly frightening trick-or-treater, namely a real demon.
    • "Halloween Candy": A misanthropic old man torments trick-or-treating children and is visited by a terrifying goblin demanding candy. Believed by many to be the most disturbing episode, along with "Ursa Minor", and "The Geezenstacks".
    • "Ursa Minor": A little girl blames her new teddy bear for various pranks in her parent's house. They do not believe her-until giant claw marks on the walls and lumbering sounds at night convince them. The mother destroys the teddy, but forgets one of the most basic rules of the wild -- harm the child, and you must meet the mother...
    • "The Geezenstacks": A father realizes his daughter's dollhouse can change the future when played with, yet only he believes it. Things become strained in the household until near the end... when the dollhouse transports the family into it, like its other owners. ...also, the violin music didn't make things better.
    • And, of course, "The Cutty Black Sow": On Halloween, a boy is warned by his dying great-grandmother about the Cutty Black Sow, a Celtic demon that steals the souls of those who die on All Hallow's Eve, and tries to prevent it from getting hers.
      • And guess what? While he saves his grandmother's soul, the creature takes his! No Infant Immortality here!
    • The opening music/narration. That is all.
    • "Inside The Closet", featuring a mysterious, child-sized door in a woman's bedroom. A touch of Uncanny Valley at the reveal, but horrifyingly suspenseful until that point.
  • Nightmare Retardant: The series finale. Seriously, a momma's boy wrestler (said momma is his manager) fights a demon from hell.
    • The monster from "Inside the Closet."...it looked like an aborted Muppet...
    • The Cutty Black Sow in ... "The Cutty Black Sow". ...seriously, look me in the eye and TELL me it doesn't look like a black-furred ALF.
  • Tear Jerker: The last segment of The Movie focuses on an artist who witnesses a gargoyle kill a man in an alley. The gargoyle makes the man promise not to ever, EVER, tell anyone what he saw at the cost of his life. Apparently, making this promise proves more beneficial then he thought, as he immediately meets a beautiful woman whom he starts dating, and his artwork is bought by an exclusive gallery. Years later, he's Happily Married to the woman and they have two kids, but he feels guilty for keeping the secret about the gargoyle from her. So, he tells her... and it's revealed that SHE was the gargoyle the whole time, and that by breaking his promise she can't stay in human form. At the same time, their children turn into gargoyles as well. The man tearfully tells his wife that he truly loved her, as did she, right before she kills him. It ends with the gargoyle and her children sadly watching as his body is taken away, before turning to stone.
    • The ending of Miss May Dusa. May catches sight of herself in the mirror and turns into a statue again, her blind boyfriend goes in to find her, only to get shot by the burglar from the opening. He dies, not three feet away from the May-statue, weakly calling out for her.
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