Darkroom

I remember watching this with my family when I was a kid. Some episodes were scary "Catnip") and some were tense ("Guillotine"), but I enjoyed them all. Too bad it only ran for one season.

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.

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!")...?

Only lasting six episodes, Darkroom proved why anthology series can work, and why they can't.

Way too many of the short segments were clichéd (oh no, yet another 'man has a chance to change the past' story), obvious and dull. And then they'll throw in a story like "The Boogieman Will Get You", or the one with Billy Crystal to tease you into watching again, hoping for one good moment to make sitting through the bad moments worthwhile. Every so often they delivered, but not enough to work on a whole.

James Coburn tried to give the show a presence, but a show like this lives and dies by it's writing, and all too often it died.

If you love films like TALES FROM THE CRYPT or shows like THE NIGHT GALLERY you`ll like DARKROOM . But if you hate these types of shows then there`s unfortunately nothing here that will endear DARKROOM to you , the only real difference between this and its predecessors in the anthology series is that it stars James Coburn , well stars maybe isn`t the word because he`s only used as a links man to introduce the stories . As for the stories themselves they`re not at all different to anything THE TWILIGHT ZONE or NIGHT GALLERY had already done , and you do get the feeling the idea was well past its sell by date by 1981