Episode
Tales from the Darkside: All a Clone by the Telephone
Overview
Leon, a hapless TV writer, buys an answering machine that has a mind of its own - it initially helps him out by providing him with new material, but Leon soon finds that it's taking over his life.
Details
- Series
- Tales from the Darkside
- Season
- Season 1
- Episode
- Episode 11
- Air date
- 1985-01-20
- Runtime
- 23 min
Episode context
All a Clone by the Telephone is Episode 11 in Season 1 of Tales from the Darkside. It aired on 1985-01-20. The runtime is 23 min.
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Episode 10: Djinn, No Chaser
A couple inadvertently buy a magic lamp that contains a genie. Unfortunately, the genie is anything but amiably. Confined in the lamp for thousands of years and still trapped, he refuses to grant wishes and instead terrorizes the couples with plagues, rains of frogs, etc. The husband finally has himself committed, but a few days later his wife brings him home. Their apartment is now richly decorated and they have plenty of money. The genie is now an amiable and willing wish-granter. The wife's solution to freeing the genie: a can opener.
Episode 12: In the Cards
A fake fortuneteller, Caterina, soon finds that every fortune she tells comes true...but she can only predict gruesome and horrific ends for her customers. She soon discovers that another cursed fortuneteller slipped her a cursed pack of cards, and Caterina can only get rid of them by giving them to another fake. She does so by slipping into another fortuneteller's parlor, asking for a fortune, and slipping her the cursed deck. Unfortunately the first fortune the new cursee reads is of Caterina's death...which rapidly comes true.
More episodes from this season
Episode 9: A Case of the Stubborns
In the backwoods, a family patriarch dies...only to come back, unaware that he's dead. The townspeople are up in arms, but the old man is too stubborn to admit he's dead, despite his rigor mortis, lack of appetite, and bad smell. His grandson Jody eventually goes to an old voodoo woman for a solution. Rather than magic, she provides him with a simple solution: pepper. Jody puts it in his grandpa's handkerchief. When the old man sneezes, his nose falls off, which finally convinces him to go lie down and give up life for good.
Episode 13: Anniversary Dinner
A young girl fleeing her boyfriend finds herself in a small country home with a genial older couple. They take pity on her and invite her in, and even invite her to their special anniversary dinner. After getting her set up in the hot tub with plenty of wine, they start pouring vegetables in. As she passes out, the girl realizes exactly how the couple will be having her for dinner.
Episode 8: The Word Processor of the Gods
Richard Hagstrom is dismayed with the way life has treated him (a rude son, a shrewish wife). His nephew Jonathan gives him a birthday present: a homemade word processor. Hagstrom soon discovers that anything he types into the processor becomes real, and no one but him knows the difference. He begins with simple experiments, but then wipes out his son from existence. Even his wife is unaware of the changes. As the machine overheats into self-destruction, Hagstrom types in one last story: he makes sure that he and Jonathan's mother married and that Jonathan was his son. As the word processor destroys itself, Hagstrom's final wish becomes reality.
Episode 14: Snip, Snip
A warlock and a witch get into a battle over a $10 million lottery ticket when each claims that the spirits gave them the winning number.
Episode 7: Inside the Closet
A student takes a room with an abrupt, somewhat rude anthropology professor. He instructs her never to open the small door in the back of her closet. Hearing strange noises, she eventually opens the door and finds the chamber beyond occupied by a small, hairless-monkey sort of a creature. It kills her and goes after the professor...only to reveal that it is his deformed daughter, which he lovingly dotes on.
Episode 15: Answer Me
Joan is apartment-sitting for a friend but finds herself tormented by a phone that won't stop ringing.
Episode 6: Slippage
A young ad-design artist begins to literally "slip" out of reality. Slowly but surely he seems to be fading out of existence: first his payroll checks disappear, then his high school not only fails to mail him about their reunion, but has no records of his existence. The artist soon realizes that since he's drifted through life, he's basically "slipping through the cracks". Even his mother has no memory of him. At the end, even his wife and best friend (now the woman's husband in this new reality) forget he ever existed.
Episode 16: The Tear Collector
Prudence is a young woman who can't stop crying, but finds a peculiar way to make a profit when she meets Ambrose Cavender, a man who collects tears.
Episode 5: Mookie and Pookie
Twin siblings, Mookie and Pookie, are extremely close. But Mookie has a terminal illness. Later the scientific genius Mookie succesfully downloads his mind into the computer before he dies. But now that he's in there Pookie must convince her parents not to pull the plug.
Episode 17: Madness Room
Cathy Osborne brings her husband up to a previously-unknown room in their house and along with her friend Michael, relates the tale of how the room is the "madness room" from which no one has ever stayed the night...and survived. In reality it's a set up and Cathy and Michael plan to kill Cathy's husband by scaring him to death. They succeed by faking some supernatural activities, but soon find that the curse of the room is all too real...