More Tales from the Darkside Eps!
Here’s a pair of Tales from the Darkside episodes, because I can never get enough of this show. (…which should be obvious, since this is the third time I’ve posted about it on Dino Drac After Dark!)
Trick or Treat was the first episode in the series, and remains one of the most beloved. I’ve never been as big on it as others are, I guess because it lacks the sort of corny/creepy subtlety of the later eps. Still, this one tops many fans’ lists of favorites, and it has one hell of an ending!
Answer Me is also from the first season, and it’s much more my speed. It’s about a woman tormented by a ringing phone, and I’ll say no more than that.
Episodes like Answer Me are a tough sell by today’s standards, but if you can picture being a kid and watching this on a crummy hand-me-down television in a dark bedroom late at night, I think you’ll get the appeal.
In Dino Drac news, I’ll be darting in and out of Funpack duties this week, but I have a couple of cool articles on deck, too. Also think we’re gonna try to record the next Purple Stuff episode. Should be fun!
What do you collect?
Survey night!
(We haven’t done one on Dino Drac After Dark in ages, after all.)
In the comments, talk about WHAT YOU COLLECT.
The impetus for this one: Next week I plan to do a minor purge to ditch a whole bunch of stuff that I really don’t need.
(My “toy room” back in ’98. I own almost none of this stuff now.)
I’m not talking about things with any real sentimental/nostalgia value, or honestly any value at all. I mean stuff like half-complete board games, DVDs that I’ll never watch and that don’t even fall within my preferred genres, and other things that I’ll plainly never miss.
Reason? I want the items I actually do collect to have a better chance to shine. For instance, I have a pretty decent collection of old horror videos, but good luck spotting them when there’s so much other junk on their shelves.
I’ve done these purges before, and the biggest of them were because I was feeling weighed down by the sheer amount of garbage in my life. I’ve gotten much better about that, but there’s always room to prune.
Suffice to say, most of what I’ll be tossing is stuff I wouldn’t even take for free from someone’s yard sale, so yeah, the goal here is just to give my actual good stuff a better podium. I expect the process to be both cathartic and full of sneezes.
To answer my own question, what do I still consider myself a true collector of? Besides the horror videos, old food items are high on the list. I’m still pretty wild for vintage Kool-Aid, for instance.
(It may surprise you to learn that I don’t consider myself a toy collector, these days. Still have tons of ‘em and love tons of ‘em, but I’m super casual in that arena.)
Your turn! In the comments, talk about what YOU collect.
Chopping Mall!
Tonight is cold, snowy, quiet and lazy. Perfect for an old horror movie!
Here’s Chopping Mall, from 1986. It’s a cliched ’80s slasher film in so many ways, but the trick is that this time, it’s ROBOTS doing the killing. (And in an old shopping mall, to boot!)
You’re gonna love the design of those “Killbots.” They look like big fat Alpha 5 vacuum cleaners.
Advance warning: Not for kids, not for the office!
PS: If you missed it, Dino Drac’s January Funpacks are now on sale! Only a few boxes left!
Captain N: The Game Master!
Here’s the first episode of Captain N: The Game Master, from 1989. I haven’t seen this show in years, but in its day, it was THE hottest shit going. (As if a cartoon with a blue King Hippo and an anthropomorphized Game Boy would be anything less!)
If you like what you see, the rest of the series is on YouTube, too.
Hope your weekend is off to an excellent start.
