User Reviews

***SPOILERS*** Getting a frantic phone call for help Kate Weiderman tries to find out who's calling until the line goes dead. Sure that someone in her family was calling her and may be in serious trouble Kate gets in touch with everyone in the vicinity who's a family member and finds out that everything back home or on the reservation, The Weiderman clan, is not only OK but in fact peachy clean! Things couldn't be better for Kate's mom as well as daughter Polly and sister Dawn who in fact fell asleep watching Kate's husbands Bill latest made for TV horror story "The Spider's Kiss" on her TV set. This goes to show just how exciting Bill's best selling horror novel was!

With the emergency now over and both Kate and Bill's lives back to normal Bill suddenly drops dead of a heart attack as he relaxing on his easy chair where he sat down to take a cat nap! A nap that was to last Bll for all eternity! Bill had been joking around earlier about feeling that he's got a very terrible pain in his skull which Kate didn't at all take seriously. Kate just thought he was only suffering for a lack of sleep in him writing day and night his latest horror novel. Kate in her wildest dreams never thought that Bill was on the verge of getting a fatal heart attack with all the warning signs right there in front of her!

***SPOILERS*** It's now ten years later with Kate's daughter Polly all grown up about to get married on the tenth anniversary of Bill's death that Kates suddenly realize who made that mysterious phone call to her ten years ago that turns out to be from the beyond or the "Dark Side"! By popping a video tape based on Bill's best selling book "The Spiders Kiss" in her VCR that everything that happened that fateful day came back to her with chrystel clarity! Even to who the person who made that mysterious phone call was! And if Kate had realized who that person was and why she was calling for help it could have very well have saved her husbands Bill's life!

This "TFTD" episode titled "Sorry, Right Number" is one that takes a twist that's a little odd and it leaves the viewer thinking about how it really happened. Deborah Harmon stars as a housewife who's husband is a horror novelist(hint: written by Stephen King)and while at home one evening with him and her two children,she has a phone conversation with one of her friends. Only all of a sudden she receives a call coming in on another line of a disturbed and upset voice. She thinks it might be from her daughter who's away at college, yet when she calls and checks in with her everything is fine. Only later you wonder was this just a sign of things to come to the episode was it a great foreshadowing technique used by King who wrote the episode. As we see when she receives the phone call again the bad news becomes a reality that involves the demise of her husband so King really used flashback to prove his point in the end. Overall nothing great, it's a little hard to follow you may have to watch it a few times for the way King foreshadows and used flashback to twist the plot.

For a start there's no horror as such to speak of in this one, unless you count the very real fear of loss and how we can never undo or change the terrible events in our lives, no matter how much we may yearn to... I love the book version of this story because it was presented as a screenplay and was a bit different to read but the themes of the story were so strong that I loved it anyway. So I thought a lot of the music that they used for this was very inappropriate and positively cut into the tension and mood during the more moving scenes, it just seemed like a really corny and generic 'spooky' theme when clearly the ominous and dramatic plot called for something much more seriously ominous and dramatic. And I really didn't like the man that played the husband, I thought he was awful for the part and plain ruined every scene he was in, his face and manner, and how he delivered all of his lines was just stupid, and he wasn't a very good actor! Thankfully he doesn't hurt the episode that much.. What really makes this episode special and worth watching for me was the performance of Deborah Harmon, I really thought she was the best actor in the whole thing and I can only think that she must have studied the short story because to me she nailed it and very effectively portrayed all the confusion and dread that this woman feels as she tries to figure out the lingering unease of the mysterious phone call that's eating away at her as it all comes to a startling conclusion that leaves you feeling small and helpless. I felt she more than accurately conveyed the depth of emotion and pain that this strange tale of cruel fate and unexpected tragedy needed. She was especially terrific at the big revelation at the end when her character finally realises that the unknown sobbing voice she had heard on the phone five years ago was in actuality herself calling from the future, and that what the voice was trying to say before the impossible connection was severed, was: "Please take your husband to the hospital, he's going to have a heart attack!" It's like a kind of time paradox, the depth of her mental anguish somehow opening an all-too-brief window into the past, and the time thing I always find awesome and interesting, and I found it just as moving as in the story because it really plays into deep-seated human desires that I think we all feel the bitter sting of at some point in our lives, the hopeless need to go back and change something wrong that happened somewhere, along the way... And the story, and to a decent extent this episode just explores that in such a subtlety powerful, bittersweet and poignant way. Her grief somehow casted a backwards shadow... This is a very good, moving and thought-provoking episode and one of my favourite ones, worth a wee look for sure! X

Katie Weiderman (well played with winningly perky aplomb by Deborah Harmon) receives an alarming and mysterious phone call warning her about someone's impending death. Director John Harrison, working from a tight and involving script by Stephen King (it's based on his short story), relates the gripping story at a quick pace and builds plenty of tension. Arthur Taxier contributes a likable turn as Katie's laid-back writer husband Bill while Rhonda Dotson amuses as the ditsy Dawn. The surprise twist at the end is a doozy. Ken Lauber's shuddery score further adds to the edgy enigmatic atmosphere. Joseph D. Urbanczyk's agile cinematography makes effective use of a constantly moving camera. A worthy show.

"Sorry, Right Number" was Stephen King's lone screenplay credit for the Tales from the Darkside show (although he would contribute to Tales from the Darkside: The Movie), although his story, "Word Processor of the Gods", would be developed in a screenplay by Michael McDowell in the previous first season.

On occasion the show would go pop culture on us, when certain directors or writers closely associated with Romero were involved (John Harrison is a long-time Pittsburg film associate of Romero's while King has been involved with Romero on Creepshow and The Dark Half), as when "Dawn of the Dead" pops up on the television set a few times. King's use of an author as a feature character is once again utilized here in this episode as the father of a family is a horror novelist. A phone call is the catalyst in a nagging anxiety that plagues the novelist's wife, Katie (Deborah Harmon), when a voice on the other side seems panicked and positing a forewarning. She believes it could be one of two daughters (a married oldest daughter with a baby, or a slightly younger daughter away at college) or her mom. Katie's husband, Bill (Arthur Taxier), humors her, even driving to the oldest daughter's house to check on her (an unusual trip outside the confines of a singular location is rather surprising considering the Darkside show purposely tries to save as much as possible on budgets during the series' run). Time and again, nothing out of the ordinary presents itself so the night seems to unfold like any other, with Katie and Bill embracing warmly before she turns in while he falls asleep in his recliner, recording a movie (Dawn of the Dead, named after the novelist's book in this episode) for his son. What Katie doesn't anticipate is a startling death.

The episode seems to be offering a fleeting false alarm tale, but the phone call twist is quite a knock-out, tying the entire plot together, with who made the call and the death reported resulting in grim irony. It is a tragic conclusion wrought with melancholy. The good performances by Harmon and Taxier make the conclusion all the more impactful. When I like the characters, their fates mean a lot more, so the episode worked for me. King's involvement could always bring interest to this episode, even if it is a rather obscure footnote in his career.

Tales from the Darkside: Sorry, Right Number starts as Katie Weiderman (Deborah Harmon) answers the phone & hears a woman on the other end crying & in obvious distress. Katie recognises the voice but can't quite place it, after phoning her friends & family & finding out no-one she knows made the call her husband Bill (Arthur Taxier) convinces her to forget about it. Then that night tragedy strikes & Bill dies, it's not until ten years later that Katie learns the truth about that mysterious phone-call...

Episode 9 from season 4 this tales from the Darkside story originally aired in the US during November 1987, directed by John Harrison this is a fairly average episode. The script was by Stephen King, his second for the series after The Word Processor of the Gods (1984) from the first season, & is a fairly unremarkable way to spend twenty odd minutes. I don't want to brag or anything but I must admit that I guessed the twist ending quite early on, I didn't guess every last detail of the end but in a round about sort of way I knew where the call had come from & more specifically whom made it. I don't think the end works that well, why did Katie pick up the hone & dial a number anyway? Who did she intend to call & for what reason exactly? I don't know, the basic story could have been good but with such a short running time, the no gore or bad language rule & such a low budget Sorry, Right Number doesn't really amount to much.

Written by Stephen King there has been several guest writer's during the fourth season including Robert Bloch & Clive Barker. Unusually for a Tales from the Darkside episode Sorry, Right Number has more than one location, besides the Weiderman house which actually has more than one room there's a sequence set in another totally different house. I guess the production team wanted to spoil us. There are no special effects or scares & the film Bill watches on telly is in fact Dawn of the Dead (1978) rather than Spider's Kiss which is what it is said to be. Anyone who has seen Day of the Dead (1985) will recognise that the music used in Sorry, Right Number is just sightly altered cues from Romero's zombie film.

Sorry, Right Number is an alright Tales from the Darkside episode, it's not the best but it's not the worst & at least the story is supposed to have a point but one would quite rightfully expect more from Stephen King.