Creepshow blew the doors open in 1982 and suddenly anthology horror was back in fashion. HBO ’s Tales from the Crypt gets the flashy credit later — big stars, big directors, big budgets, plenty of comeuppance — but the real heir to Creepshow showed up earlier and cheaper: Tales from the Darkside. It ran in syndication from 1984 to 1988, had a wicked little sense of humor, and, crucially, came from Creepshow’s own director, George A. Romero. The budgets were shoestring, but the show still landed a surprising number of familiar faces (sometimes before they were familiar at all) and occasionally adapted the heavy hitters, including Stephen King and Clive Barker. Here are 10 episodes where you might go, Wait, they were on this?
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Bruce Davison — 'The Word Processor of the Gods' (S1 E8)
Before he was Senator Robert Kelly (aka Mystique’s favorite chew toy) in Bryan Singer’s X-Men and X2, Davison broke out with Willard (1971) and worked with directors like Robert Altman, Ken Russell, and John Landis. This episode is a sharp Stephen King adaptation: Davison plays a struggling writer who discovers his late nephew’s custom computer can literally rewrite reality. It is exactly as dangerous as it sounds, and exactly the kind of high-concept Darkside did well without spending a dime. -
Danny Aiello — 'The Odds' (S1 E4)
The late Danny Aiello did lovable and intimidating with equal ease — The Godfather Part II, Once Upon a Time in America, Moonstruck, Do the Right Thing, Leon: The Professional, Lucky Number Slevin, The Purple Rose of Cairo — pick your flavor. Here, as bookie Tommy Vale, he’ll take any wager, no matter how dumb. Enter Bill Lacey (played by Tom Noonan), a guy who never loses. Vale, convinced he’s found a goldmine, makes the ultimate sucker bet: the exact time of his own death. Then he barricades himself from anything that could kill him. Fate, famously, does not like being hustled. -
Jessica Harper — 'The Tear Collector' (S1 E16)
Suspiria’s Suzy Bannion herself. Harper also popped up in Phantom of the Paradise, Woody Allen’s Love and Death and Stardust Memories, Pennies from Heaven, Boys, and Minority Report. After laying low for a while, she’s been busy again in the 2020s: Bones and All with Timothee Chalamet, Memory with Jessica Chastain, Nightbitch with Amy Adams, plus Carousel with Chris Pine and Kill Me with Charlie Day in 2026. In this moody entry, she’s Prudence, a woman battling clinical depression whose therapist, Ambrose Cavender, literally collects tears. She starts falling for him while trying to figure out why he bottles grief like perfume. -
Brent Spiner & Christian Slater — 'A Case of the Stubborns' (S1 E9)
Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation meets a teenage Christian Slater (who would later headline Tales from the Darkside: The Movie ). The setup is pure Darkside: a family ’s patriarch dies... and then wanders downstairs for breakfast like nothing happened. He’s dead, he just refuses to admit it. Slater is the grandson; Spiner plays the priest trying to reason with a man who won’t let facts — like decomposition — change his mind. No money, big payoff. One of the show’s best, easy top 10. -
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — 'Djinn, No Chaser' (S1 E10)
Yes, that Kareem. NBA legend with the Bucks and Lakers, and the scene-stealing co-pilot in Airplane!. Here he’s a genie in a lamp, carrying on a grand anthology tradition — The Twilight Zone did it, Creepshow’s TV run did it — where wishes are technically granted and practically nightmares. The episode itself is a little rough around the edges, but Kareem is the reason to watch. -
Bradley Whitford — 'The Deal' (S4 E12)
Before Josh Lyman on The West Wing and before he gleefully stole scenes in The Cabin in the Woods and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Whitford turned up here in an early gig that plays to his approachable-everyman vibe. He’s Tom Dash, an English teacher who gambles it all on a Hollywood dream and moves west with a spec script. His neighbor has industry connections... for a price that might be way steeper than a standard agency commission. File under: careful what you pitch for. -
Seth Green — 'Monsters in My Room' (S2 E12)
Green started working at 10 — commercials, an ABC Afterschool Special, It, Pump Up the Volume — then Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie) and, of course, Oz on the TV series. This early turn is written and directed by John Sayles, which is a fun behind-the-scenes flex for a syndicated horror half-hour. Green plays Ronan, a kid whose mean stepdad will not hear one more word about bedtime monsters. So Ronan flips the script, befriends the creatures, and points them at the real problem. -
Tippi Hedren & Justine Bateman — 'Mookie and Pookie' (S1 E5)
Bateman, forever Mallory Keaton from Family Ties, later popped into Arrested Development and Modern Family. Hedren is Hitchcock royalty from The Birds and Marnie — plus, her daughter is Melanie Griffith and her granddaughter is Dakota Johnson. In this one, Bateman’s Pookie loses her twin brother, Mookie, who manages a last trick before he goes: he uploads his consciousness into his computer. Pookie keeps talking to him after the funeral, which her parents read as a breakdown. They want the machine gone; she has to prove there is literally a person in there. -
Debbie Harry — 'The Moth' (S4 E4)
Blondie’s frontwoman — 'Heart of Glass', 'Call Me', 'One Way or Another' — also did legit screen work, most notably in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome. She has a fun two-fer with this franchise: she’s in both the series and Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, where she plays the witch prepping to eat Matthew Lawrence’s Timmy in the wraparound. On the show, she’s another witch, this one fatally stabbed. She’s convinced her soul will exit as a moth, so she instructs her mother to catch it and put it back into her mouth to revive her. Small snag: Mom might not be thrilled to get her daughter back. -
Robert Forster — 'The Milkman Cometh' (S3 E13)
A 50-year career of quiet excellence: Oscar- nominated as Max Cherry in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, plus standout turns in Alligator, Olympus Has Fallen, London Has Fallen, Breaking Bad, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, and Better Call Saul. Here he’s a struggling artist trying to support his wife and son while wishing for one more child. The neighborhood is normal except for one detail: the milkman grants wishes if you leave a note. And like any good genie, he twists them into something you did not order.
That’s Tales from the Darkside in a nutshell: thrifty, nasty little morality plays with a wicked grin — and a roll call of actors who were about to be everywhere or already were. Romero’s DNA is all over it, and you can feel the Creepshow spirit even when the cash clearly wasn’t there.