Gotta Get The Spirit

 

I tried and tried to watch American Horror Story, but I dunno, that tender, loving feeling just wasn't there. Bernard Hughes as the greedy old crone is perfectly nasty in the pilot episode of Tales from the Darkside, the very example of grinning capitalist who gets too much enjoyment from being a human debtor's prison, lording over the farmers and their families how much they owe him. 

Hughes doesn't get a thrill from Halloween for the sights and sounds of this great season. He just loves scaring the shit out of children while dangling the IOU as an incentive for the parents to encourage their kids to enter Hughes's home and brave his Halloween fright machinations. Today few kids would even flinch or bat an eye.

But that old crone eventually meets his match in a witch and Lucifer as well. Made in 1983, it feels very much like it came from the early 80s. Being almost a year before the remainder of the first season, too, that fact does sort of sets this apart. It has a rough, cheap look of a syndicated show you might find at 10:30 at night.

I was really looking for something to get my Halloween juices flowing, to remind me that October isn't too long now. "Trick or Treat" does that. Tales from the Darkside was always a fun go-to if I had a small window to slide in an episode or two. I found the show in marathons of The Sci-Fi Channel or now-defunct Chiller from NBC Universal. So I did my share of marathons with it.