Something Weird on TV: The Long Lost Clive Barker Television Episode

Tales from the Darkside Part Eleven – Deals & Diets

Look, I’ll level with you; I was pretty sure I had seen just about everything ever adapted from Clive Barker’s work (notwithstanding the occasional DTV Hellraiser sequel), and certainly just about anything that Barker himself had penned the script for. And yet, I’m not sure I even knew there was a Tales from the Darkside episode adapted from “The Yattering and Jack” until I picked up this DVD set.

Aired just a few months after Barker’s directorial debut hit screens in the United States, this version of “The Yattering and Jack” is (perhaps unsurprisingly, with Barker himself on scripting duties) a pretty faithful adaptation of the source material, even if it flattens the central conflict out somewhat to fit into its half-hour time slot. David Odell (who wrote and directed “No Strings” earlier this season) is back behind the camera here, and veteran “little person” actor Phil Fondacaro plays the Yattering. In contrast, Antony Carbone (the doctor friend from Corman’s The Pit and the Pendulum) plays Jack, an unflappable pickle salesman. The latter is constantly tormented by the invisible demon, which plans to drive him to madness.

Here’s the thing – “The Yattering and Jack” is a comedic episode (and a Christmas one), albeit a far less goofy one than many. The saving grace here is, primarily, that the original story is comical, as well. What makes this iteration work less well is that the Yattering in question looks more like a professional wrestler in furry pants, while Beelzebub (played by Tom Newman) looks like your boozy grandpa cosplaying a warlock.

Unlike “The Yattering and Jack,” the unfortunate “Seymourlama” does not explicitly take place at Christmastime, though it does open with a driving snowstorm. Another comedic episode, the cultural insensitivity in this one makes some of the previous questionable episodes feel positively politically correct by comparison. There’s really no saving this tale of a suburban teen who is chosen as the next lama of a strict religious community near Tibet. Still, if it could be salvaged, it would be thanks to comedic performances by Divine and Re-Animator’s own David Gale.

“Sorry, Right Number” is a hard about-face from the previous two episodes. Not only is it not comical, it’s tragic and maybe even elegiac, a meditation about mortality and the inevitability of grief. It’s also the only episode of the entire series written by Stephen King. While “Word Processor of the Gods,” all the way back in the first season, was adapted from one of King’s short stories, this one was written for the screen by the man himself, whole cloth.

Directed by series regular (and helmer of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie) John Harrison, the episode stars TV habitues Deborah Harmon and Arthur Taxier as the Stephen King stand-in, because every Stephen King story stars Stephen King, pretty much.

The episode, about a mother who receives a distressing phone call that she knows came from “someone in her family,” takes some turns before getting to its denouement and is certainly one of the stronger episodes of the series. Also, part of its plot revolves around the film version of the author’s husband’s first horror novel being recorded off TV, and the movie they’re watching is pretty clearly Dawn of the Dead, which seems like a weird choice for what is supposed to be a movie called Spider’s Kiss. Were there no spider movies available? Was Kiss of the Tarantula deemed too on-the-nose?

“Payment Overdue” returns the series to its equilibrium. Neither comical nor especially good, it is a placeholder episode that occupies a solid middle ground. Yet another story of cosmic comeuppance, it involves a cruel collections agent who sees the tables turned after a client commits suicide. The twist in the tail is pure morality play, and its depiction of the working poor can’t help but be saccharine and maybe a little insensitive, but it’s mostly just forgettable.

With a story by frequent Disney contributor Bobs (yes, more than one) Gannaway, “Love Hungry” is one of the weirdest episodes of Tales from the Darkside to date. The premise is simple enough: a compulsive eater is desperate to lose weight. She is so desperate, in fact, that she tries some weird diet aids sent to her by a sinister weight loss company. Where the weirdness comes in is how the aids work. A pair of glasses and a hearing aid, they let her see little Muppet faces on all her food, and hear it as it begs her not to eat it or screams in agony as it’s being devoured.

While the episode is another comedic one, it’s unusual both for the style of the special effects and for the fact that it ends on a particularly mean-spirited note for a comedy episode. The next couple of episodes, unfortunately, feature pretty timeworn storylines by comparison.

“The Deal” stars Bradley Whitford (Get Out, Cabin in the Woods) as a struggling screenwriter who makes a deal with the devil, while “The Apprentice” sees a college sophomore taking a job at a local “living history” attraction that recreates Puritan life (on a shoestring TV show budget). Of course, there’s some witchcraft accusations before all’s said and done because we all know that there was literally only one thing about Puritans, and that was accusing people of witchcraft.

Probably more interesting than the episode itself is that it was helmed by Eleanor Gaver, who also directed the 1998 Fairuza Balk vehicle Life in the Fast Lane and the weird 1988 thriller Slipping Into Darkness.

That’s it for tonight, but join us next time as we finish out our coverage of Tales from the Darkside with a classic Halloween episode (in December) and more. Until then, try to enjoy the daylight…