Tales from the Darkside Pilot: Trick or Treat Review
Medium: Television
Release date: 10/29/1983
Review date: 10/14/2024
Score: 7/10
Well this was a fun little pilot - almost a Halloween Scrooge type of scenario. The spiteful local banker and loan shark loves Halloween and scaring people, and allows the kids of his debtors to come into his house on Halloween for a scavenger hunt (all while the banker is trying to scare the child), where if the child finds their parent’s hidden loans in the house, the banker will wipe the debt free, but if they run screaming scared out the door, the debt stays. George Romero is the director and I do think you get some sense of his style throughout, the pilot is shot quite well. I thought the set up of the episode was really strong, and I think the pilot managed to nail most of the landing, with me being quite touched and surprised when the father who said he beat his kid “extra good” this year so he’d finally find the hidden debt choosing to only hug the son in comfort after he fled the house in fear. But I think the pilot’s ending is a bit nonsensical with the witch and the devil (I did find if funny none of the characters seemed particularly bothered or scared by the witch, just perplexed she was there), as I thought the “good kid” character would play more of an active role in the Scrooge’s comeuppance rather than just showing up to the house at the episode’s end. But overall it was a fun enough time - I enjoyed the play on “You’re getting warmer” with the Scrooge walking into Hell and the stinger of the Scrooge’s grave saying “He took it with him when he went.”