'80s Fantasy/Horror Anthology TV shows

I was really into Friday the 13th and Monsters, which was George Romero, right?

I think George Romero did Darkside.

I just remember all these shows being on sunday evenings.

I once spent two weeks at camp in 1988 with a roommate who could name the title of any of the new Twilight Zone episodes.

Not so impressive now with the internet, but dude! 1988!

My 7th/8th grade computer teacher would get bored from time to time, so he'd bring in the vcr+bigscreen and we'd watch New TZ eps. I remember one of them had Kevin Nealon.

This was the same teacher who was scared of the dark, and would get freaked & angry when the kids would shove him into his little side office and turn the light out.

Also it should be noted that a lot of the later ones, like Friday the 13th series, would show up on the dregs of late night syndication, having the same timeslots(and audience, really) of all those horrible 90s syndicated sci-fi shows.

Many of these series were lame, the equiv of half hour soap operas, only not daily.

Tales from the Dark Side -- intermittently good
Friday the 13th -- the series -- always shit
The Hitch Hiker -- mildly interesting if bombed. Likely, since it was on so late on the weekend.
Monsters -- crap after you saw it once. If you were bombed late at night, twice.
Tales of the New Twilight Zone -- Like the idea of being lectured by Forrest Whitaker for a half hour show. No, thought not.
Ray Bradbury Theatre -- All down hill since "Martian Chronicles" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes," which weren't great. Ray doesn't translate well to TV. Maybe Larry Niven would have been a better bet.

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I caught a few episodes of Amazing Stories a couple years ago on the Sci-Fi channel. They seemed really weird and dated. There was one involving a group of aliens who had the personalities of particularly mischievous Florida retirees. It was kind of painful to watch.

The only Tales from the Darkside I remember is the one in which the grandpa refuses to acknowledge that he's dead... until he sneezes and his nose falls off.

I'm voting for the 80s Alfred Hitchcock, which actually had lots of good episodes (though much of them were remakes of stories from the original series).

There's the one with the woman convict who tries to escape from prison and accidentally buries herself alive. The one with Yaphet Kotto as an escaped prisoner who intrudes on a home and strikes up an unlikely friendship with a housewife. The one with the young boy who picks up a real gun thinking its a toy and walks around town playing Russian Roulette with the townspeople who piss him off. The remake of "Man from the South" with John Huston as the crazy eccentric guy (and a cameo from Kim Novak at the end). The one with Martin Sheen killing and attempting to dismember and dissolve Parker Stevenson in the bathtub with acid while "Ride of the Valkyries" (Apocalypse Now tribute) plays in the background. Anything that pits Martin Sheen against Parker Stevenson can't be anything but excellent.

There's the one with the woman convict who tries to escape from prison and accidentally buries herself alive

because she's buried with the blind janitor who's mail she was reading and lying to so he won't be able to dig her out? That was the BEST.

Yep. :) Actually, it was the prison handyman/carpenter. He had needed money for eye surgery, and she lied to him promising him to pay for the operation if he would sneak her out in a coffin the next time an inmate died, then come back and dig her up once no one was around. She hears the bell announcing a death in the prison, sneaks into the coffin, gets buried. Time goes by...no handyman. Then she lights a match to see who she's buried with in the coffin...OOPS. :)

Fantastic episode.

Amazing Stories = treacly schlock, terrible terrible

The 80s revival of Twilight Zone had some genuinely freaky moments that have stuck with me tho - 1) a really REALLY short piece about kids trading in their parents at a "Parent Zoo", 2) a variation on the "magical stopwatch" episode that ended with the owner stopping time just before a nuclear war hits; everyone else is frozen, episode ends with her staring up at a missile frozen in the sky, 3) guy with language problem; gets confused when everyone around him starts talking differently, using words incorrectly, etc. Ends with him poring over a children's book, mystified that he can no longer understand anyone or anything.

(also btw there was no Forrest Whitaker in the 80s TZ episodes)

3) guy with language problem; gets confused when everyone around him starts talking differently, using words incorrectly, etc. Ends with him poring over a children's book, mystified that he can no longer understand anyone or anything.

Yup, this is the kevin nealon one.

best thing he's ever done - besides maybe his John Waters cameo

Don't you mean Robert Klein?

I always like this one. Unforgivable treacly, but well done.

oh wait, maybe you're right. Hmm.

Yeah, that episode was "Wordplay" with Robert Klein; definitely one of my favorites from that series. Great moment is when he is praying at the dinner table, right after his son was successfully saved from pneumonia complications: "God, thanks for saving my little boy......
I hope you can understand me!"

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Hmm, interesting spread.

Yeah, I voted for Storytellers even tho I think was intended to show fairy tales in their original, unbowdlerized way as Bettelheim advised and not to make OoOoOoO creepy scarity. Altho I can say it did genuinely scare the crap out of me as a five-year-old. But it also entranced & fascinated me. "Hans My Hedgehog" stuck with me forever.

I loved the dog.