SpuffyWeb
Sadly Over-hyped
Megamind
To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.
InformationRap
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Portia Hilton
Blistering performances.
lost-in-limbo
"You are in a house. Maybe your Own. Maybe one you've never seen before. You feel it... something evil. You run, but there's no escape. Nowhere to turn. You feel something beckoning you. Drawing you into the terror that awaits you in the DARKROOM!"I just watched the complete series of Darkroom over the last couple of nights and was completely surprised by how compelling, effective, creepy and amusing the short stories were in this anthology series. There was a nice variety to the tales in tone and length, with a certain cleverness within their imaginative twists and turns. Ending on a killer note. They were well-made and ably brought across with sound technical delivery despite the cheap looking origins.The memorable intro is ominously unnerving and from the photographic darkroom James Coburn effortlessly narrates with a wry touch. Familiar faces in the cast show up, some even before hitting it big. Interesting to see some genre film-makers attached; Paul Lynch (Prom Night, Humongous), Curtis Harrington (Queen of Blood, The Killing Kind & Ruby) and Rick Rosenthal (Halloween 2). Other than one story I didn't care for (Daisies), I really enjoyed this creative, if short-lived series. Some of my favourites were 'Make-Up' starring Billy Crystal and Brian Dennehy, 'The Partnership' starring David Carradine and 'Exit Line' starring Samantha Eggar and Stan Shaw. Well worth a look if you were entertained by the likes of 'Night Gallery' and 'Alfred Hitchcok Presents'. ...
ecwaenigma
Fun little EC-ish horror anthology series that lasted only seven episodes on ABC in 1981/82. Each episode had 2 to 3 short stories in it with a total of 16 stories in all. The best of these being the 1-2 punch of "Needlepoint", a VERY short voodoo revenge story that scared the living hell out of me when I was 4 years old (no V-chip back then), and "Siege of 31 August" with Ronny Cox as a Vietnam vet who gets his just desserts for terrible war crimes. Too bad it only ran half of a season. Universal really needs to release this on DVD soon as stars like Billy Crystal, Helen Hunt, Brian Dennehey, Claude Akins, and more gave this short lived series some much needed future star power. Here's hoping they're reading this.
blenderhead-1
An episode of Darkroom featured a ham radio operator who contacted the past and altered the events leading up to his father's death....particularly, his dad being killed in a liberty ship taking him across the Atlantic during WWII (it was sunk by a U-boat). He sets these wheels in motion one night and wakes up the following morning to find his world changed: his father is certainly alive, but that's not the only thing that's different. The streets are lined with Mercedes Benzes and German Army soldiers. The Allies didn't win the war in this new altered history. Of course the story ends here and leaves the audience hanging, in fashion typical of this genre.
Mister-6
What hath Rod Serling wrought?You can tell a network's in trouble when it has to drag the same musty ideas out of the closet over and over and OVER again. Here's a prime example of going to the well way too often."Darkroom" was an anthology series in the same vein as "The Twilight Zone", "The Outer Limits", "Night Gallery" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" - so what's the big diff this time? Well, remember the artistry, talent and well-written stories in those prior series? None of that's in evidence here.James Coburn hosts here much in the same vein as he played the bad guy in "Looker", which ain't saying much. The stories aren't much, either - every single one of them is downbeat, ugly, nasty and defeatist. I mean, COME ON! Even Serling had the good sense to have a comic episode of the "Zone" once in a while.Even though there are a few familiar faces in the stories (Robert Webber, Claude Akins, Rue McClanahan, Billy Crystal, Michael Constantine, etc.), nothing they do here will ever come up on their A&E Biographies. At least, they hope so.No wonder it didn't last a full season. Who, in their right mind, would subject themselves to a whole season of under-developed defeatist sludge? Of course, this is the same decade that brought us "Twilight Zone: The Movie"....No stars for "Darkroom"; the buck f-stops here.TIDBIT - "Darkroom" premiered on Thursdays on ABC right before the Robert Stack police drama "Strike Force", another Cop series that was as dark and mean-spirited as "Darkroom".Maybe if Stack and Coburn switched places and had their shows produced by the ZAZ guys (whom Stack worked with on "Airplane!")...?
