Full disclosure, I don’t know how to properly read a calendar. For some reason, I thought that there were five Thursdays in October. As such, I was going to review A Nightmare on Elm Street. Don’t get me wrong, I love that movie, but what could I possibly have added that hasn’t already been said before? We’ll just file that one under the “maybe later” category. But! Since this is in fact the last Thursday in October, we get to take a look at one of my favorite childhood TV shows! We’re going to take a look at the teen horror classic Are You Afraid of the Dark?!
Pictured Above: Evidence that I can’t read a calendar.
The show ran originally from 1990 to 1995, and then there was a short revival series that ran in 1999 and 2000 for a couple of seasons. I can’t say that the show did anything particularly groundbreaking when it came out as anthology horror series had been around for quite some time, but it was the first that I can remember that specifically targeted towards a younger audience. Shows like Tales from the Crypt, and The Outer Limits revival series were definitely targeted toward an adult audience, and even aired on premium cable channels. As a person who learned to appreciate the disturbing and macabre at a pretty young age, I remember being really excited to have a show that managed to be genuinely scary without some of the R-rated elements that you got from the other shows, and movies of the time.
AYAOTD centered on a close knit group of friends who gathered, presumably every Friday, to sit around the campfire and attempt to give each other a good scare. I watched a few choice episodes in preparation for this article, including the pilot,or The Tale of the Phantom Cab, and i was surprised at some of the details that I had forgotten. I remembered easily that the ringleader of the group was a boy named Gary, but the show went out of its way to mention that the members of the group came from everywhere, that not all of them went to the same school, and that they all had their own personalities. That last point should seem like a given, but due to the format of the show, you didn’t actually get much time with the core characters. This is because as a story was told, the show would dramatize the action of the story. Let’s face it, half an hour of kids sitting around a campfire talking would have been really boring.
The stories that were told were all over the map, but in a great way. They were told by a number of different characters, and as such, covered a lot of different subjects. Some characters had a theme to the stories that they told, and others would weave the things that they were dealing with in real life into their stories. However, without fail, each story would be titled The Tale of… with the rest of the title being unique to the actual story. This maintained a certain consistency to the show that I really appreciate because it solidified the feel of the show. The other thing that helped to cement the feel of the show over time was the way in which they introduced new characters. See, in order to become a member of the group, called The Midnight Society (How cool is that?!), a prospective member had to tell a story that sufficiently impressed the existing group. The group would vote, and if the vote was unanimous, then the new person would become a permanent member. The prospective members also had to wear a blindfold so that they wouldn’t know where the group met because keeping that a secret was really important. Anyway, a couple of seasons into the show, the character Tucker was introduced. Tucker was Gary’s younger brother. This is a really important point because when the show went into revival, Tucker was made the ringleader of The Midnight Society. Once again, this really helped to cement the consistency of the universe, and it was a great nod to the previous seasons. Also lending themselves to the consistency behind the show were how the stories were opened and closed each episode. There was usually a little banter between characters at the beginning, but once it was time to start the story, the teller would announce, “Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story,[insert episode title here].” The character would then throw powdered coffee creamer on the fire to flare it up for dramatic effect. Every time I heard those words, I knew I was in for a treat, much like hearing the Fox fanfare before a Star Wars movie, it just doesn’t feel right without it. Then depending on the season, Gary, or Tucker would adjourn the meeting and put out the fire. These were all really simple touches that as I said before, made for a really solid and consistent show.
I mentioned that some of the characters ran a theme throughout their story archetype, and that wasn’t more evident than with Gary. While he did vary sometimes, a good bulk of his stories were about magic because he was super into magic in real life. This and a few other characters’ interests led to some great recurring characters within the stories. Specifically, Gary would often use a character named Sardo, emphasis on the “doh”, in his stories. Sardo owns a magic store called Sardo’s Magic Mansion. Sardo always ends up seeming like a villain, but that’s only because some of the items in his shop actually are magical, and he just doesn’t know it. Usually these unknown magic items are the catalysts that get the stories going. Similarly, a character named Frank, who told the first story of the entire show as an initiation attempt, introduced another recurring character named Dr. Vink, with a va, va, vaaaa. Dr. Vink was definitely an evil character who usually tried to trick the protagonists of the stories into doing things that will enslave them under Dr.Vink’s control. As a demonstration of how much fun the show liked to have, Gary and Frank teamed up to tell a super tale that involved the protagonists battling both Sardo and Dr. Vink.
As a young adult, one thing that I really enjoyed and appreciated about the show is that the core cast of characters were around my own age, and were dealing with a lot of the same things that I was at the time. As the characters would use their stories to work through some of their troubles, I would get insights, and new perspectives on my own troubles. I think that’s one of the reasons that the show was so popular and successful; that and it was just telling some great stories. For example, The Tale of the Dream Girl is about a young man who starts seeing a beautiful young woman everywhere. He shares this with his sister, who encourages him to pursue meeting her. By the end, we find out that the young man is a ghost who hasn’t moved on and that his sister is the only person that can see him. This episode is famously where M. Night Shyamalan got his “inspiration” for The Sixth Sense (We all know he just ripped it off, but whatever.). And since we’re on positives, take a look at this list of guest appearances over the years: Mia Kirshner, Bobcat Goldthwait, Charles S. Dutton, Ryan Gosling, Neve Campbell, Will Friedle, Melissa Joan Hart, Kim Schraner, Frank Gorshin, Hayden Christensen, Daniel Clark, Ryan Cooley, Tia Mowry, Tamera Mowry, Laura Vandervoort, Danny Cooksey, Tara Lipinski, Jay Baruchel, Jewel Staite, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Gilbert Gottfried, Jennifer Finnigan, Tatyana Ali, Jennifer Irwin, Aaron Ashmore, Christopher Castile, Christian Tessier, Colin Ferguson, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Gregory Smith, Emily VanCamp, Harold Howard, Jason Tremblay and Asia Vieira. That’s from the Wikipedia page, by the way. But there are a number of really big names on that list, and many of them appeared on this show before they’d made it big in the industry. For some, that’s awesome, but in Hayden Christensen’s case, you just get to see that he wasn’t a very good actor even when he was younger.
My final positive for this show is how the writers didn’t feel a need to always work to a happy ending for the stories. While most went the happy ending direction, there are a few notable episodes that either ended ambiguously, or just badly. For instance, in the episode, The Tale of Vampire Town, the lead character, who is a goth, sheds his goth ways, but in the end he gets turned into a vampire anyway. But maybe the most notable is The Tale of the Pinball Wizard (not that pinball wizard). In the episode, the main character has to play through a deadly giant pinball game. He nearly gets severely injured on a number of occasions. The expectation is that once he finishes the game, he’ll be able to escape, but at the end, he finishes, and the game simply resets as he comes to realization that he’s just going to have to repeat the process ad infinitum. As with some of the Star Trek episodes that I’ve discussed before, these episodes were able to teach a young audience that things don’t always end well as in movies. It’s an important, but touchy lesson that younger kids need to learn, but that can be hard to teach in a way that won’t traumatize them.
While I’ve been able to sing many praises for this gem of a show, it isn’t without its flaws. It’s number one flaw, in my opinion, is that it’s a product of its time. That’s to say that the fashions, and technology featured seem really dated by today’s standards. I know that there’s no way to fix this, but just be warned if you’re looking to try it out that things are going to seem pretty silly. My other negative for this show is that since it was aimed at a younger audience, sometimes the acting can be a bit outrageous, and over-the-top. I’m not sure the show would have worked for its intended audience as well as it did had it been more serious so I can’t really fault it, but again, be warned that watching as an adult can feel just the tiniest bit painful at times. That being said, if you watch the show, stick through until the end because the last season is such a mix of excellence and let down. The writers decided to do an unprecedented three part episode called The Tale of the Silver Sight. This episode is brilliant! The thing that sets this episode apart from any of the others is that pretty much the entire story takes place in the real world with the members of the Midnight Society serving as the protagonists of the story. We see the return of Gary to the group for one last hurrah around the fire, and the group has to track down the remaining founding members of the original Midnight Society that was formed by Gary and Tucker’s grandfather back in 1937. This is so that they can finish the story that he had started writing just before he passed away unexpectedly. Without giving too much away, the episode is a real nail biter of suspense and excitement. There are great twists in the story as we learn about the original MS, and their various members, and the payoff is perfect. The only real problem that I have with the episode is that it was originally aired as the season premiere, and I really feel like such an event should have been held aside as a series finale. Other than that, it’s a fantastic watch.
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