Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

Anthology film ushered in on the wave of success achieved by the TV series “Tales from the Darkside”.

It starts with an entertaining adaptation of the fine Arthur Conan Doyle short story “Lot No. 249” (1892). The middle segment springs from the pen of Stephen King (“The Cat from Hell” 1977) via a screenplay by the legendary George A. Romero, and it revamps the prolific Gothic tradition of black cats, focusing excessively on a single aspect – the feline as an unrelenting, other-worldly avenger – to produce what is, at the end of the day, the weakest of the three stories. Finally, in “Lover’s Vow”, written and adapted for film by Michael McDowell, we witness a variation on the classic “pact with the devil” theme, with a particular eye to the female demons (“Yuki-onna”) that populate folklore in the Land of the Rising Sun (and which also provided source material for Japanese film masterpieces such as “Kwaidan” in 1965 and “Ugetsu Monogatari” in 1953).

Incredibly tense and engrossing, this final segment is definitely the most interesting of the three. Overall, “Tales from the Darkside: The Movie” can be considered essentially a success, a worthy genre film supported by practical special effects with excellent visual impact and by a cast rich in well-known faces.

Among those actors, we would cite the great Steve Buscemi in the role of a nerd with a grudge, a young, disturbingly beautiful Julianne Moore in her cinematic debut, and a wonderful Deborah Harry who had become a horror-fan favorite. At least two unforgettable scenes: first, the bloody cat emerging from the hitman’s mouth, and second, the gargoyle-woman’s repulsive transformation. Old-time cinema – those were the days!