Hell, I knew it sucked back when I was 13. But watching reruns on Sci-Fi I truly did not know to what magnitude. About one in ten episodes were decent, but for the remainder, what treacly, pedantic crap. So many bad episodes come to mind. The killer toupee, Robert Townsend’s ghostwriting houseplant, the space aliens obsessed with 50s TV, the ghosts and the porn queen, the utterly pointless Alama Jobe…
Does this thing have any serious defenders?
I will always have a soft spot for the show just because it produced the incredibly funny “Mummy Daddy” episode.
All I remember of that show was laughing HARD at that episode. I don’t even remember the episode, just that it made me and my mom laugh hysterically.
It’s true! You never are too old…
The series ran during a wave of retro-suspense anthologies, including remakes of The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Amazing Stories had much less of an edge than the other two, and it my opinion it was the weakest.
That’s the only one I remember. Didn’t they have vacuum tube snouts and their hero was Milton Berle, and they finally got to meet him dressed in Hawaiian shirts or something?
I wonder if that’s where Futurama got their idea for the episode where the Omicrons attack b/c they must see new episodes of McNeal.
“I demand to know what happened to that plucky lawyer, and her compellingly short garment!”
I was seriously disappointed by the show – I’d expected better of Spielberg. But it did have a few good moments. One was a black-and-white war story, beautifully shot, that I admire for its cinematography and direction. Another was the filming of a script Richard Matheson originally wrote for the original Twilight Zone, but which was not filmed for that series. Dummies, I think it was called.
What was the Mummy Daddy-wasn’t he trying to film a movie and then found out his wife was in labor so he had to leave in costume and ended up freaking everyone out?
Yeah…he was nearly lynched by a town full of rednecks. And to top it off, there was a REAL mummy wandering around the woods…
The one I still remember was with the bomber that had to land without one of the wheels, where the cartoonist saved the day. I liked that one.
As an aside: The Amazing Story theme song is a complete rip-off of the Hook theme. (Since they have the same composer, that’s merely lame.)
The only Amazing Stories episode that I ever really liked was the one about the man who died but didn’t really die. He was lying on a table in the morgue about to be cut open for an autopsy, completely paralyzed but conscious of everything.
In the end, IIRC, he is able to summon the strength to muster a single tear that rolls down his face and alerts the attendant that he is still alive.
Or maybe that was Outer Limits. Or Twilight Zone. I’m confused. Still a good episode!
The ones I remember:
The ghost train that drove into the house
The one where this guy has this doll and he keeps looking for this woman. Then he finds her-she looks just like the doll and has a doll that looks just like him.
There’s this artist at the turn of the century, and his fiance dies in a buggy accident. Well, he keeps on painting her portrait, and every time he does, he sees her, but he can’t touch her. Finally, he finds out he has to paint them together, and then he paints all these pictures of them doing stuff. I think in the end he paints himself painting more and more pictures of the two of them so she can stay alive.
And then there was this one where a little girl is at a picnic with her mother and father right around the time of WWII. For some reason, she runs away into the woods (she’s mad at her parents), and gets lost. They never see her again, nor do they have any other children. Her mother opens up a daycare/learning center to compensate for the loss of her child.
Years later, the mom is dying, and they talk about what happened that day. Then, the woman dies, and the man is heartbroken when he hears a knock at the door. It’s his little girl-and she looks just like she did the day she disappeared.
Was this the Spielberg of Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, Close Encounters, Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Arc
or the Spielberg of 1941, A.I., Jurasic Park II and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?
The only episode I recall clearly was the animated, “Family Dog”. My friends and I thought it was hysterical and memorised all of the lines.
“He’s wizzin’ on the carpet, Dad!”
The only one I remember clearly from when the show was actually on was the ep with Mark Hammill as a crazy dreamer who loved toys and comic books and the like, who was encouraged by his family to shun his childish things but refused. He ends up an old lonely man, homeless, driving around in his car loaded with his childhood memorabilia, when he pulls into a gas station to fill up with his last meager pennies. Someone looks at his piles of crap and discovers an Action Comics #1 in mint condition. The last shot is of Old Man Hamill selling his stuff at an auction. Moral: Keep all your old crap and live a life of misery because someday it might be worth a fortune on the secondary market.
Grewolf 73, I think that was an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Although it could have been remade for Amazing Stories.
I never saw that one, but my brothers did, and they used to quote lines at our dog.
“Maybe we need a new dog. Or maybe we need a cat!”
If you’re referring to the Robin Williams’ movie, Hook, then its theme would be a rip-off of the Amazing Stories theme, since the TV show came out in 1985 and the movie in 1991.
The problem with Amazing Stories (besides John Williams’ crappy music) was that Spielberg insisted on using his own lame, hackneyed story ideas. The guy is a great director, but he can’t write to save his dick. He had, if I recall, a two-season commitment from the network, and a big budget, and could have filmed scripts by the best writers available, but instead used his own stupid, half-baked ideas.
I don’t remember ever seeing that on tv, but I did hear the same plot in a radio drama – well, almost. In the radio drama, he’s in a funeral home, about to be embalmed. We hear the man’s anguished internal dialogue, until he finally produces a tear, and is grateful to God for his miracle. Then…
The undertaker, flabbergasted, goes to another room and phones a doctor he knows to ask whether it’s possible for a dead man to produce a tear. After he’s on hold for a while, they sort things out and an ambulance is on its way. The undertaker goes back to the slab – and his assistant has performed the embalming. Not an ending you ever would have seen on Spielberg’s insipid show.
Amazing Stories had a few marginally decent episodes and a lot of stinkers. But, as others have mentioned, the Family Dog episode was wonderful. The writing and animation was great and the voice talent was perfect. I’ve seen that episode several times, and just hearing some of the lines can still get me laughing.
They eventually spun it off into its own awful series in the rush of prime-time animated shows that followed the success of the Simpsons. Mercifully it only lasted a few episodes.
The original was included on one of series video compilations (Amazing Stories: Book Two). It’s out of print, but it’s worth hunting down just for Family Dog.
Gather Ye Acorns, and the thing I remember most about it was the troll who kept egging him on to keep all of that memorabilia (played by David Rappaport (i.e., The Wizard)).