Customer Reviews

Tales From The Darkside Vol. 2 [VHS]

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In the second volume, I lovingly discovered that my second all-time favorite episode was included: The Devil's Advocate. My all-time favorite episode, Seasons of Belief, is on the first volume. Anyway, The Devil's Advocate stars Jerry Stiller as a smart-alec radio talk show host who neglects to see how his life is worse than those he constantly puts down over the airways. He realizes it eventually, but not before it's too late. The remaining four episodes are good, but don't exactly compare to The Devil's Advocate. These episodes include Ring Around The Redhead (starring Home Alone's John Heard), The Trouble with Mary Jane (starring Phyllis Diller), The Satanic Piano (starring Michael Warren from Hill Street Blues), and A Choice of Dreams (starring The Godfather's Abe Vigoda). Buy it for Stiller if nothing else!

I believe this is the best volume of this series out of them all. It includes my favorite episode of all time, "Trouble With Mary Jane." In which a yound girl becomes possessed by a demon and her grandmother hires a pair of occultists to perform an exorcism on the little girl. Although they do succeed in the exorcism, the result is something very unexpected. Other episodes on this volume include, "The Devil's Advocate", "Ring Around the Redhead", "The Satanic Piano" (another one of my favorites), and "A Choice of Dreams". If you like twisted, strange, and unusual stories, I highly recommend this product to you.

I used to love watching "Tales from the Darkside" when it premiered back in the 1980s. I thought it was even scarrier and creepier than "The Twilight Zone" (although it clearly owes much to the Rod Serling's creation). The episodes are rather hit-or-miss. Some are thought provoking; other episodes are banal.

This volume features some good episodes. "The Devil's Advocate" is a lesson to be learned for our modern day radio loud-mouths everywhere. "The Satanic Piano" has a great message; and while "Choice of Dreams" goes nowhere, it's interesting to see the great (not so late)Abe Vigoda use his "Godfather" experience to portray a ruthless gangster.

The quality of these "Darkside" tapes is not at all good, so caution to those of who prize audio/visual quality.

I have also bought up most of the other "Darkside" tapes, and enjoy watching them: best results come from late-night viewing.