The Day the Daylight Died: Why “Tales from the Darkside” Still Haunts Us
by Tara Adams The Creature Beat Is the intro to Tales from the Darkside the most terrifying television opener of all time? I'd say yes. Without question. Kids who grew up with a television set in the mid-1980s share this specific trauma. It didn't come from a big-budget theatrical slasher or a banned-in-three-states gorefest. It arrived in our living rooms, usually via some independent syndicate channel late at night, announced by the cold, mechanical ticking of a synthesizer. I still remember watching the show as a kid in a darkened living room, frightened the second that music started. Whenever the intro began its slow, deliberate crawl, I’d find myself peeking around the room, checking the corners to make sure the shadows weren't shifting. And I'd watch the darkness of the stairs to ensure no glowing eyes were beaming back at me. That is the exact level of primal, irrational terror the show managed to scrape out of our young brains. Before a single frame of...
