Are You Afraid of the Dark (TV series review) Originally posted during Monster Madness 2014 on Cinemassacre.com #retro #retrogaming #nes #snes #jamesrolfe #mikematei #atari #playthrough #gameplay #gamereview
The intro sequence to Are You Afraid of the Dark still holds up to this day as an excellent example of the use of lighting and atmosphere to instill a sense of unease and horror using everyday items. All too often horror is thought of simply as some slasher or monster trying to kill the protagonists, but that's only a small part of horror, and while it can be scary on its own at times it doesn't encapsulate the full variety that the genre has to offer.
What was that episode called...? "Dead Man's Float"? About some entity in a public pool that manifested as a dripping skeletal figure with muscle and stuff hanging off? That was pure nightmare fuel.
A classic part of my childhood. I wish they would bring this show back in some capacity as a reboot. I feel like they could do so much with it today but to me, while the original is cheesy, it's still awesome.
Mary Starling They'd never do it. At least not as a kid show. Reboot implies higher budget. Can you imagine those episodes with better costumes and proper children actors?
I been going back and watching Are You Afraid Of The Dark all week. They're so nostalgic for me. Makes me feel like I'm 13 years old again. Mannn, I miss the 90's
I loved this show as a kid, especially the Halloween Marathon YTV would show sometimes. Me and my friends would go trick or treating and then head over to one of their houses to watch it while eating candy. It was a quintessential 90's shows and kids who grew up with it probably have some fond memories of it.
agreed grow up watching this series when i was 8 in 1992 until i was 16 2000 saw all 7 seasons the worst are you afraid of the dark episodes were the tale of the crimson clown and the the tale of the unexpected visitor
I absolutely love this show. One of my favorites is about a kid who's obsessed with death and finds a radio station that broadcasts specifically for newly departed. Ryan Gosling (yes, THAT Ryan Gosling) and Gilbert Gottfried are in it.
BurnoutInc Ehh...it kind of ruins it when you put Gilbert Gottfried into a "scary show". Just like when they put in Bobcat Goldthwait and had him using that voice (he sort of talks like that, but in movies and shows it's greatly exaggerated).
Amazing how this show holds up even today. I had the pleasure of meeting D.J. MacHale (the show's creator) four years ago for a book signing of his Sylo series. Great guy, with a good sense of humor.
I love this show. And I always thought the pinball episode was terrifying! HE GETS STUCK IN THE GAME FOREVER, JAMES! He thinks he won and it’ll never end. All because of his curiosity of what was hidden under the cover, and he had to play that game. Chills!!! I have so many favorites. The episode where the boy didn’t know he was a ghost makes me bawl. And the super specs still scares the shit out of me.
It debuted 10/27/1991 on Nickelodeon with “The Tale of the Twisted Claw.” The second episode aired on 8/15/1992 with the creation of SNICK. Such a great time.
I just watched that tonight because it was one of the few that I distinctly remembered! That along with the doll house one. Anyway, I re-watched it as an adult and was still legitimately freaked out.
I also think it is a sad story, this makes the episode even a bit scarier to me. I've also re-watched the doll house episode, and girl, that was fantastic! a true mindfucker!
I always thought that guy was super creepy. I think he was on more than one episode -- he's maybe the only character that has stuck in my mind over the years.
Tales From The Crypt, this show Are You afraid of the Dark?, Goosebumps, and Beyond Belief : Fact or Fiction? are the shows that scared me and sometimes makes me laugh
My sisters and I loved this show. No matter what was going on in our lives we would always make sure we were home when the new episodes aired. It always pissed us off when it was a rerun. It's crazy to think that we used to have to check out the tv guide every week to make sure when the new ones aired. Kids have it so good today, being able to watch whatever they want at the touch of a finger.
This was one of my favorite shows as a kid. It was always a treat to be able to stay up and watch it, I think it was on around 9-930 on Saturday nights at its peak? Great memories, that intro still sticks out in my mind as one of the creepiest things ever.
old fan of Cinemassacre's Monster Madness. can't wait to see what else you do with the month. p.s. thanks for stopping and taking a pic with me a while back at MAG Fest. I will always be a fan.
Been watching you for 10 years and i still love the videos as much as ever. This show scared the crap out of me as a kid but I completely forgot about it until now. Oh the memories; i had nightmares about that clown episode for weeks. Thanks james for reminding me of that haha
James, thank you for tackling this series. I might not have been able to see this series that much when I was a kid, but seeing how I have the whole series on dvd, I can actually enjoy it.
Just started to remember tiny fragments of this show when watching this episode! Can't have been older than 9-10 when I saw it and it was seriously scary!
One episode I remember to this day is Tale of the Dead Man's Float. You think this show wouldn't show something so graphic, but it goes as far as to show a decaying corpse rising from the pool to drown others.
They were quoting Jerry Seinfeld from his sitcom _Seinfeld._ Kramer was drinking tomato juice and Jerry thought it was blood, and he yelled _"You're sick! You're sick!"_
Oh the nostalgia. This show freaked us out as kids. We used to go out back of my house and had our own midnight society. It was this strange spot in the woods where everyone threw away there old tv's for some reason. There was busted tube tv's and electronic panels all over the place. I miss that
I recently got on a nostalgic look for this show and started tracking down episodes. I think the Laughing the the Dark episode is a standout for everyone. I never forgot Zeebo!
OMG.... This show was my favorite show as a kid. It was apart of Nickelodeons SNICK (Saturday Night Nickelodeon). It was the last show to air during SNICK, which was 2 hours long (4 shows). Every Saturday night was a new episode during the current season. 90's Nickelodeon was bold, it wasn't exactly G-rated as it is today... Infact, I have bought some of the episodes on Amazon, they don't come together as a complete season as the original VHS/DVD did, but they are amazing.
The best episode to me was "The Phone Police". Prank calling was all the rage back then and this was a great idea for the show. Made you think twice about making that call. I went back and watched it last year on youtube, It still holds up to this day. Great show!
Thank you for reminding me! I was scared to watch it when I was younger, those creeking swings on the playground at night really got to me for some reason. Really cool show even though it might have not aged that well indeed
Really? Lol that episode's the reason i still wear my silver chain everyday. But yeah there was a lot of cheesiness that we overlooked as kids. I still found the series to be scarier than Goosebumps.
My favorite childhood SNICK show. Between this, R.L. Stine's Goosebumps books, and Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, I was fully prepared for the horrors of Middle School.
The Pinball Wizard episode isn't scary? On the contrary, I believe it's one of the most fucked episodes in the entire series. 1. Kid is trapped inside a pinball machine. 2. He has to fight his way through a potentially fatal gauntlet to beat the "game." 3. Upon completion, the crazy old shop-owner is standing over the pinball machine, laughing maniacally as he tells the child he's stuck inside the machine FOR ALL ETERNITY. 4. He'll now spend the rest of his days in a Groundhog Day murder machine in the back of a dusty mall-shop. His options? Spend every waking moment of his life attempting to complete the game over, and over again, or dying. Now, tell me again how this isn't horrifying.
Man this shit takes me back. I loved that show, and watched it all through the 90's. I remember most of the episodes you touched on, and yeah, a couple of them freaked me out a bit back then too. The super specs one especially. Thanks for the nostalgia James!
Used to love watching Are You Afraid of the Dark with my kids when they were little. Miss those great times, also really enjoyed the Goosebumps shows, we had many episodes of both shows on VHS. And every Halloween before taking them Trick or Treating we would have to watch some of each all during the day, then at night The Great Pumpkin & Garfields Halloween.
The episode about the kid that drowns in a pool scared the heck outta me. The red dead thing that was the monster was really well made and really spooky.
We as adults have magic powder too, but it goes to our noses instead of a campfire I loved the show when i was a kid, i was like 10 when it aired so you can imagine how it scared the shit out of me, but i continued watching as much as i could
I remember the episode with the radio that could be tuned beyond 107.1 FM to get stations from the afterlife. I thought that was more cool than scary. The episode that freaked me out the most was the one with the room full of mirrors. Still gives me chills!
Hey Janelle, what's wrong with Rolfie? I can hear him barking.. Rolfie's fine honey, rolfie's just fine...now where are you? Your nerd character is dead. -click-
I loved this show. Wasn't there an episode about "phone police"? Where a kid makes a prank phone call and the phone police come after him? I do remember an episode where there was a corpse floating in a highschool pool. That freaked me out for a long time
Awesome video! I still love Are you afraid of the dark and have purchased a lot of episodes on ITunes that I still watch all of the time. Laughing in the dark is one of them!
I feel like AYAOTD is much better if viewed through the lens of analyzing how well-written the stories were, rather than how scary vs fantasy they were/still are. not all of them are super-original, but I think the Prom Queen episode inspired the twist ending of the Sixth Sense. I still like watching them as an amateur writer, in the same way I like watching the Twilight Zone mostly for the writing.
Forget ‘Goosebumps’, THIS KIDS’ show was legitimately frightening. Certain episodes still scare me when I think about them, like the aforementioned x-ray goggles one, night cult in the school, Dangerous Soup, etc. I believe this series ended the “SNICK” block.
This was a great series. It did have 1 recurring character that popped up in a few episodes, the creepy guy named Vink "with a vuh, vuh". This was when Snick ruled and I always knew where I'd be every Saturday night from 8 to 10.
Great video and nostalgia factor. I think the time it came on should also be mentioned. Many a kid stayed up past bedtime or broke TV curfew to get nightmares watching this. Me included.
Usally filmed in and around the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). The guy with glasses (around the campfire) became a weather man for Global News. Fantastic show and I'll never forget the Fright Night marathon at Halloween which I used to run home from school for.
I remember seeing the episode where this kid gets tormented by a giant clown doll for spending money on something for himself instead of getting something for his mother from the convenience store. It had a scene where the kid is watching TV & the clown doll's hands come out from behind the TV set and reach out for him, while his family members can't hear him nor help him
Honestly, i know it souds cheesy but there is something about stuff like this and my childhood years in the mid 90s that brings an overwhelming feeling in my chest and makes me almost drop a tear cuz i wish i could go back and be there again at least for a moment but then i have to snap out of it.
I remember back then there used to be two such shows, Are You Afraid of The Dark? and RL Stein's Goosebumps. I used to prefer Goosebumps simply because Are You Afraid of The Dark? was way too scary most of the time. I remember there was even a movie and it was AWESOME.
I actually thought the tale of the pinball wizard was a terrifying idea, especially the ending finding out you were going to be in the game for eternity!
I loved this show, especially because it was one of the only kids shows to sometimes have "bad" endings. The episodes where the characters wound up doomed at the end would keep me up all night.
I was in my 20's during most of the 90's, so I entirely missed this, doing much of the very things depicted in these shows, metaphorically speaking. Remember when phones weren't Star Trek communicators? Pepperridge Farm remembers. Oh, the fun we had, knowing we could hang up the phone and be human again
Does anyone remember the adventure game for this series that came out in the mid 90's? It was a POV point-and-click exploration game sort of like Myst, except the framing device was that you were a new potential member of the midnight society, and the game was the story you were telling.
Correction. This was originally a show on Canadian television network called YTV back in 1990. The Nickelodeon version from 1999 to 2000 was a revival series with new directors, writers. The show James is referring to is the original series on YTV....
DUDE!!! This was my favorite show growing up, "Submitted for the approval of the midnight society"... Bro u brought me back to when I was 14 yrs old!! I'm 34 now!!
I remember watching one episode where there was this ghost kid that would say, "I'm cold". As a 90's kid it was this, Eerie Indiana and Goosebumps. I remember having some Goosebumps books, they were about the only books you could get me to read at the time, lol.
