Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990) is a horror anthology you can watch online on iFILM — four nasty fables wrapped in a single frame story, directed by John Harrison. A boy named Timmy buys himself time by spinning scary tales for the witch (Debbie Harry) who is planning to cook him for dinner.

The first segment puts a reanimated mummy on a college campus; a young Christian Slater handles the cover-up. The second follows a cold-blooded hit man (David Johansen) hired to kill an unkillable cat — and losing badly. The third, loosely drawn from an Arthur Conan Doyle story, sends an artist (James Remar) into a pact with a winged creature for the woman he loves, with a young Julianne Moore in the cast. Steve Buscemi also turns up in an early supporting role before his Reservoir Dogs breakthrough.

The film spun out of the 1983–88 anthology TV series of the same name. Each segment closes on a note of grim inevitability rather than shock, which is exactly what makes the endings land. Stream Tales from the Darkside: The Movie online on iFILM.