Category: Tales From The Darkside

Gail, a college student, rents a room from a veterinary professor, Dr. Fenner, who provides her with room in a wardrobe because the key to the closet in the room she’s renting was lost long ago by his daughter. But once Gail moves into the room, she hears something behind the closet door – and learns that the key to her room also opens the closet that supposedly can’t be opened. Thinking that she heard a rat, Gail puts a mousetrap into the small closet, but what’s living in there is definitely not a rat.

written by Michael McDowell
directed by Tom Savini
music by Charlie Morrow

Cast: Fritz Weaver (Dr. Fenner), Roberta Weiss (Gail), Paul Sparer (Narrator)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

The Hummels – Sam, his wife Edith, and their daughter Audrey – are visited by Edith’s brother, Richard. He’s brought a gift for Audrey: a large, elaborate dollhouse with four dolls. As Audrey begins playing with the dolls and concoting elaborate stories around their day-to-day lives, Sam is alarmed to notice that the scenarios Audrey imagines for her dolls are playing out in real life as well. Do the Hummels still have free will…or are their lives now at the whim of their daughter’s vivid and sometimes disturbing imagination?

teleplay by Nancy Doyne
based on a story by Frederic Brown
directed by Bill Travis
music by Charlie Morrow

Cast: Craig Wasson (Sam Hummel), Tandy Cronyn (Edith Hummel), Larry Pine (Uncle Richard), Lana Hirsch (Audrey Hummel), Paul Sparer (Narrator)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Buddy, an asthmatic boy stuck at home with this babysitter, Jennifer, while his mother goes out, invents things in what used to be his father’s workshop. Most of them are toys made out of found items around the house, but Buddy’s latest is his attempt to finish something that his father had started – a “noise-eater” which, with its ghastly and organic-looking mouth-stalk, sucks the “noise” out of anything that’s making noise…but what it’s actually doing is draining the energy from whatever is making sound. To Buddy and Jennifer’s horror, that includes a caged bird kept by Buddy’s mom: the noise-eater can drain the life out of living things too. Now they have to figure out how to escape the house and trap the noise-eater inside…and the biggest obstacle to that seemingly simple goal is Buddy’s persistent cough.

teleplay by John Sutherland
based on a story by Zenna Henderson
directed by Allen Coulter
music by Pat Irwin

Cast: Nile Lanning (Jennifer), Eric Jason (Buddy), Bonnie Gallup (Beth), Paul Sparer (Narrator)

Notes: Director Allen Coulter would go on to direct numerous television projects, as well as the movies Hollywoodland and Rememeber Me. John Sutherland is a pseudonym for writer/director/composer John Harrison, who wrote (and directed) numerous other Tales From The Darkside installments, as well as going on to adapt and direct Frank Herbert’s Dune in miniseries form for the Sci-Fi Channel in 2000.

LogBook entry by Earl Green