With both the final season of FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES and the second season of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE coming out this year, let's take a look back at all the eighties television anthology series that popped up in the wake of CREEPSHOW. Which one is your favorite?
I guess FRIDAY THE 13TH was my favorite show of that lot but I'm not sure I'd consider it an antholgy .It had a standard format and regular cast of characters that figured in it weekly,unlike most anthologies (like say TALES FROM THE CRYPT )which had a ''host" but told different,self contained stories each week with different casts.
Yeah, but even if Micki, Jack and Ryan would always be in the episodes, they'd still be transplanted outside into a completely different environment. Essentially they played out just like the Crypt episodes did, with a start and end hosting in the familiar location, but the rest of it more or less different. There were some serial things, like Vendredi coming back, or Micki and her husband at the start of season one, but more or less you could watch them out of sequence and just focus on whatever the artifact of the day was, much like any other anthology series.
I haven't seen any episodes of most of those shows, but there were some really good ones of the later generation Twilight Zone so it got my vote.
Amazing Stories hands down for me. You can't really go wrong with the level of talent attached to that show!
Tales From the Darkside is my favorite. Also a fan of Friday the 13th, Tales From the Crypt, and The Hitchhiker. Amazing Stories had some good episodes. Never got to see Hammer House of Horror, though there was an Anchor Bay dvd set available for a while.
Tales From the Crypt, it's a tough choice for me as I love Monsters, Darkside, and F13. It was just a fun spooky horror anthology series, with some great stories. Very much in the spirit of the comics.
Gotta go with the obvious Tales from the Crypt. It could be very miss sometimes, but nothing would be as cool on TV as finding that on late at night when I was a kid.
Got a soft spot for TftD, the only thing that has kept me from picking up the DVD sets is the word they've screwed with the music. I'd probably rank that series a notch above TftC, as its mood was consistently down beat. Never saw much of Hitchhiker, looks like my exposure to that will be limited to the incomplete series 3 volume set (picked up dirt cheap at Big Lots long ago). I liked Friday the 13th, but I could never get how the main characters could keep going in the face of repeated carnage, misery, and the darker side of humanity. After each depressing episode conclusion, often hitting someone close to them, you'd figure their compounded misery would drive them to eat a bullet. Still sitting in my ever growing unwatched pile. I should know something is wrong when by the time I get to watching something I bought new, it has gone out of print.
Out of the ones listed I have a soft spot for Tales From the Darkside, but I prefer DARKROOM (which isn't listed).
My favorite was actually the short-lived Alfred Hitchcock Presents Redux. It followed Amazing Stories initially and I found the stories darker and more interesting. The 2 hour movie/pilot was terrific, and contains one of my favorite anthology stories ever..."An Unlocked Window". voted for my runner-up fave which was the 1985 Twilight Zone. Fuck I miss the '80s.
I had to really think about it but recently I've been watching the Twilight Zone and Tales from the Darkside alot. Tales From the Crypt was good but I dont think it was serious enough at times and was very miss more than hot in the last few seasons. Amazing Stories is very good but I think the series was more miss than hit. I also agree that I wouldn't consider Friday the 13th an anthology either but its one of the best shows in the list. In the end I voted Tales From the Darksie as I think it has the best mixture of different genres.
