Tales From the Darkside - Trick or Treat

For some people, it's watching It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. For others, it's the Halloween film series, or A Nightmare Before Christmas. Every Halloween and horror enthusiast has their own favorite must-watch content that they simply have to see every October. For me, it's the pilot episode of Tales From the Darkside, a horror anthology series that aired in the US in the 1980s.

There are lots of great episodes of this show, but none can compare to this one, the pilot called Trick or Treat. It aired on 29 October 1983, about year before the series was actually picked up by CBS. From the Talesfromthedarkside wiki page:  

Gideon Hackles is an elderly miser who keeps the residents of his rural town mired in debt. As part of an annual Halloween "tradition", Gideon invites local trick-or-treaters to explore his house to search for their parents' hidden IOUs. The children who find the papers will have their parents' debts cancelled.

 Although it is filmed primarily indoors, the episode evokes vivid setting: a haunted rural countryside of barren fields and run-down old barns (things I saw a lot as a kid who grew up in New England) populated with poor farmers who are down on their luck. The haunt props in Gideon Hackles' home are clearly his own ingenious inventions, and some of his creations are truly creepy. Dude knows how to scare the crap out of kids. #goals 

Between the general spooky, claustrophobic mood of this film, and the cool haunted house contraptions, this short film was instrumental in solidifying my love of Halloween and home haunts.

I won't give away too much, but while there is that level of campy-ness commonly found in TV horror from the early 80s, there's also some great costume design and cinematography crammed into this 20+ minute feature.

Some fun facts: It was co-written by George Romero; it stars Barnard Hughes (who you might recognize as Grandpa from movie The Lost Boys); it includes an appearance by Max Wright (the dad from ALF); there is a rumor that the pirate laugh was provided by Tim Curry, although thus far I can't find any evidence to confirm.

The Internet Archive has the whole episode to watch below --

*** This version of the episode unfortunately does not have the original score. My guess is that this video was sourced from the DVD release of Tales From the Darkside, which changed some of the original scores used in the show. It's still a great episode and worth watching, but it's kinda like those editions of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark that replaced the iconic artwork by Stephen Gammell with illustrations by Brett Helquist - just ain't the same.