‘Darkroom’: What Was Too Dark For The Room in 1981 is Still Pretty Damn Scary In 2020

If you’re a TV geek, one of the most wonderful things about the myriad of streaming services is stumbling upon a series you haven’t seen in a few years – or if you’re as old as I am, it might’ve been a few decades – and being able to experience fun flashback. This can often prove to be a double-edged sword, however, when you discover that the misty, water-colored memories you’ve retained of the series turn out to have been far more rewarding than the experience of actually revisiting it.

When I was on the cusp of tweendom in the early ’80s, ABC debuted a horror anthology called Darkroom, hosted by the eternally-cool James Coburn. It premiered in late November 1981 and concluded its run in mid-January 1982; despite this show’s brief run, several of the show’s installments were so disconcerting that their nightmarish impact remain with me to this day. Upon spotting the series appearing on NBC.com for streaming – because we live in a world where it doesn’t matter where something originally aired, it’s about what studio owns the rights to it now – I was ecstatic at the thought of revisiting it, but I also knew that it would be wise to approach it with trepidation, in case 50-year-old me isn’t nearly as freaked out about some of these episodes as 11-year-old me was.

I’m pleased to report that Darkroom still successfully gave 50-year-old me goosebumps on occasion, but to be fair, it’s hard to imagine that the show’s proto-Raimi opening credits wouldn’t spur that reaction in most folks. Between the handheld camera, the speed at which it’s traveling, and the sudden stamping of the series’ dripping-font logo on the screen at the conclusion, it still causes the same reaction in just about everyone who watches it: “This was on regular TV?!”

Yes, it was. Unfortunately, it arrived at a time when there were precious few anthology series on the air – the brief renaissance of the genre spurred by Amazing Stories wouldn’t happen for a few more years – and you can reasonably presume from when it debuted (the Friday after Thanksgiving) that the network had little to no faith in its ability to draw in viewers, so it never really had a chance. As noted, however, the few folks who did see it were witness to moments which gave them some serious chills, many of which were simply left to the viewers’ imagination.

An example: when a pimp (Lawrence Hilton Jacobs, Welcome Back Kotter) finds himself on the receiving end of sharp, stabbing pains, he trails them to an old woman (Esther Rolle, Good Times) who turns out to be avenging the death of her granddaughter by sticking pins into a voodoo doll, and even though he manages to stop the woman from continuing her revenge, her doll ends up elsewhere and…we’ll leave it at that. Elsewhere, there’s a story about a local tough guy who gets sick of the mewling cat owned by an old woman in the neighborhood and decides to boobytrap the neighbor’s cat door with explosives, but when the plan backfires, the tough guy finds himself not only being harassed by the cat, but also by… Well, again, we’ll leave at that, but I’ll say that the ending of that story is one of the tales that left emotional scars back then and, thanks to revisiting the episode, are now fresh once more.

Gee, thanks, Darkroom.

Yes, there are elements of the series that aren’t exactly fresh as a daisy. For one thing, it’s clear that they haven’t cleaned it up in the slightest, because there are times when it looks every bit of its 38+ years. Given the time frame, it’s probable that the score was heavily inspired by the synth-heavy stuff John Carpenter was doing for his films, and it’s a little heavy-handed at times. You’ll also be playing the “That Guy” game with the various actors who appear in the installments, trying to remember why they look so familiar, either because you haven’t seen them in years or because they’re so much younger than you’re used to seeing them. In “The Bogeyman Will Get You,” Helen Hunt plays a teenager whose little sister (Quinn Cummings) has convinced her that a series of local murders were committed by a vampire, while in “Make Up,” Billy Crystal plays a gimpy guy trying to make inroads with a local mobster (Brian Dennehy) but fails to make an impression until he gets his hands on a makeup kit owned by a recently-deceased actor that turns him into whatever character is written on the outside of the makeup cannisters. We won’t detail all of the episodes, but some of the other folks who pop up include Claude Akins, June Lockhart, Dub Taylor, David Carradine, Pat Buttram, Rue McClanahan, and Ronny Cox, playing a Vietnam vet who finds himself in battle with his son’s toy soldiers.

If you’re looking for something horror-oriented to watch in these waning days of the Halloween season, pick an episode of Darkroom and give it a spin. You might find yourself wanting to binge the whole run of this underrated horror anthology. Just don’t be surprised if it gives you nightmares for the next 40 years.

Will Harris (@NonStopPop) has a longstanding history of doing long-form interviews with random pop culture figures for the A.V. Club, Vulture, and a variety of other outlets, including Variety. He’s currently working on a book with David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. (And don’t call him Shirley.)

Watch Darkroom on NBC.com