Saturday, August 30, 2008

SNICK's Masterpiece Theater: Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Ok I promised you in the Goosebumps Blog about "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" and I am a ghoul of my word.

Every Saturday night as a kid, from 1991-1996, I'd put on SNICK and go out-of-my-mind crazy in fear whenever I saw the intro to the show:

The show revolves around this group of kids/tools who call themselves "the Midnight Society" who meet every week in the deep, dark woods and tell each other scary stories around the campfire. Wikipedia has also made a complete list of all episodes here.

The one that probably bothered me the most is Frank, because he only told stories that continuously featured some guy named Dr. Vink. Get some new material already, Frank.

Someone actually created a blog last month all for the Midnight Society and comprehensive reviews of the show. I linked to the one that features Frank so you can kind of get a visual. I had to give them a Monster Bash shoutout because I love what they're doing. Great work, midnightsociety.blogspot.com!


Anyway, the show also had guest stars such as Ryan Gosling, Neve Campbell, Bobcat Goldthwait, Hayden Christiansen, Melissa Joan Hart, Charles S. Dutton, and Gilbert Gottfried.

Every episode tended to have a happy ending, and the midnight society would dump out the fire and chit chat and leave.

I still am not really convinced that this show was really meant for little kids...

look at this guy from the Tale of the Ghastly Grinner:

That's a little scary, no?

And then there was one called "The Tale of Laughing in the Dark" where this kid steals Zeebo the clown's nose, and then he comes back from the dead looking for it...

"cigars?"

Not only was the clown pretty creepy, but that fire breathing dragon and about 1:30? Perhaps a little unsafe?

This person made a great fansite dedicated to AYAOTD, including what happened to the members of the Midnight Society, as well as some fun trivia like coffee mate and sugar made the fire spark up, and the movie "The Sixth Sense" was based on an episode of 'the Dark called "The Tale of the Dream Girl".

Want to develop your very own Midnight Society? Try the official game on for size! Or just watch one of the seasons, they're all available for sale. Campfire not included.

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