One of the first things I did when the World-Wide Web unlocked its portals 30-odd years ago, was look for a site where I could learn more about films and filmmaking.
Up until then, I got my information mostly from the hefty film encyclopedias that were published every few years. I could spend hours leafing through pages and pages of film data, but the books were always quickly outdated for obvious reasons.
Imagine my delight when during those first clicks down the information superhighway, I stumbled across something called the Internet Movie Database. Anything I ever wondered about when it came to the movie industry (who is Ridley Scott, what was James Cameron’s first screenplay, how many films did Steven Spielberg make, etc. etc.) was right there on the virtual page.
As I plunged deeper and deeper down the digital rabbit-hole, I started noticing a lot of my favorite directors had been involved with an anthology series called Amazing Stories, a collection of SciFi-Fantasy shorts in the vein of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone.
Further investigation learned that the principal creative force behind this TV show was none other than Steven Spielberg, my favorite director at the time. The stories were of such high quality, that one of ‘em had even expanded into the theatrical film *batteries not included (1987).
I had read enough. AS was something I just HAD to see.
Mind you – this all took place around ‘94 or ‘95, still the early days of internet, and streaming content was not even a sparkle in Reed Hastings’ brain yet. However, the mid Nineties were also still the halcyon days of home entertainment, so I was confident I could find a nice DVD somewhere online.
I eventually tracked down a beautiful collector’s edition through Amazon (another whole new world opening up for me) and paid a pretty penny to have it shipped to me from somewhere in the US. Several weeks and many custom fees later, I finally received my parcel.
But there was a problem.
The information on Amazon at the time was a bit sketchy, and although I thought I had purchased both seasons one and two of AS, it appeared the discs contained only season one.
IMDb had already taught me that the early episodes arguably had more big-name directors behind the camera (Spielberg himself took on two episodes, other installments were helmed by the likes of Martin Scorsese and Peter Hyams), but the second season still featured work by some of my other personal favorites like Robert Zemeckis and Danny DeVito.
Being an OCD completist, I immediately went back online to search for AS season 2 – preferably in the same nifty collector’s packaging. This however, proved more difficult than I had thought. I scavenged every early online-retailer imaginable, but the discs weren’t available anywhere.
I eventually gave up on finding AS season 2 and more or less forgot about the series, until a few years back when Apple announced they were going to reboot Spielberg’s show.
Ever the completist, I decided I wasn’t going to check out the new series before I had properly finished the earlier chapters. Sure – the home-entertainment boom of The Eighties and Nineties is a distant memory these days, but it’s not impossible to find a physical copy of something you liked if you know where to look. And while studios are steadily backing away from rereleasing back-catalogue, the resell market is flourishing. So I jumped on eBay and found a second-hand copy of AS s2 in all but 30 seconds.
After finally having seen the missing episodes, I can happily report that AS remains a wonderful slice of Eighties nostalgia. Choice episodes for me are indeed the ones directed by DeVito and Zemeckis, but there are more hidden gems.
Definitely check out The Greibble, a Gremlins-E.T. hybrid of sorts directed by Joe Dante, and You Gotta Believe Me, a nightmarish tale about a premonitioned plane-crash from director Kevin Reynolds. It is worth mentioning that most of the stand-out episodes were actually written by Spielberg himself.
Next on my revisit list is Tales from the Crypt , another star-studded Eighties anthology-series that was destined for a 21st century streaming-reboot. The original show boasted superstar directors like Walter Hill and William Friedkin, and the remake had M. Night Shyamalan attached as showrunner at some point. Sadly, the new show never materialized due to crippling rights-issues between the many stakeholders.
Fortunately, I own a physical copy of the first season…
Who needs a subscription to a streaming platform when you have a DVD collection?
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Twitter (X): Robin Logjes | The Screen Addict