My thoughts on Nite Tales: The Series can be summed up very simply and concisely. I hate this show. I hate everyone involved in this project. I hate the producers who put up the money to make this piece of crap. If you like Nite Tales, I want to punch you in the face. Flavor Flav, even your self-aware camp cannot save this show. Nite Tales is The Twilight Zone without brains, creativity, or talent, and if you must watch it, I recommend getting extremely drunk or high before doing so.
Nite Tales only lasted for five 20-minute episodes, but it still took alcohol and excessive yelling at my television to get through the experience. The first episode involves a security guard in a warehouse full of mannequins. The second episode was about a young woman who visits a psychic to try to contact her father who died a year ago. The third episode is about a group of people stuck inside a room with no doors. The fourth episode is about a struggling rap artist trying to get signed to a record label. The fifth and final episode is about a mother and daughter who murder men and use their skin to make iPod cases.
How do I loathe thee, Nite Tales? Let me count the ways…
1. Nothing Happens. In every episode, there are long periods of time where nothing happens. In the first episode, the guy just keeps wandering around the warehouse of mannequins, the camera cuts to close-ups of mannequin faces, and nothing happens. We didn’t even get some good campy gore out of the experience. There is so little blood or gore in Nite Tales, and they aren’t smart enough to get away with eerie Twilight Zone-esque stories.
2. They blew their Gary Busey load too quickly. Throughout the first two episodes, my husband and I kept hoping they would save the episode with Gary Busey so we would have something to look forward to. From the picture on the box, we knew he would be in full crazy Gary Busey mode, and we were kind of weirdly excited about that. Unfortunately, he is wasted in the third episode, and we had nothing else to look forward to with the final 2 episodes.
3. The twists are incredibly stupid. I’m not kidding. This show doesn’t have gore, so it should have good writing. Nite Tales has neither gore nor good writing. M. Night Shyamalan would roll his eyes at the twists in Nite Tales. (SPOILER ALERT) I will tell you how each of these stories end so you don’t have to waste your time. The security guard is turned into a mannequin. The girl’s father was accidentally killed by her friend, so he was resurrected as a zombie and killed the friend. The people inside the box with no doors are really toys in a toy box. The rapper faked his own death so he could sell records and become famous, but no one came to dig him up. The mother killed the daughter’s date because she was mad that her daughter put a boy ahead of the family business. See? You aren’t missing anything.
4. There is no sense of logic. In the story about the rapper, the rapper is buried alive in a coffin. When the batteries in his flashlight begin to die, he turns off the flashlight. He turns it back on a minute later, and the guy who signed him to the label is on top of him in the coffin, dead. Of course for this to happen, the mobsters would have had to dig up the coffin, drop the body in on top of him, and rebury him in the course of a minute, but what do I know?
5. There is a guy with two popped collars. In the fifth episode, there is a guy with two collared shirts on top of each other, and both have popped collars. I didn’t think it was possible for someone to look like that much of a douchebag.
6. Brigitte Nielsen shows up in S&M gear over and over again. Eww. Nothing else needs to be said. Eww.
DVD Bonus Features
There is a behind-the-scenes featurette where people talk about how Deon Taylor is a visionary writer and director (barf), and there is a trailer for the series.
"Nite Tales: The Series" is on sale January 18, 2011 and is not rated. Horror, Television. Directed by Deon Taylor. Written by Diana Erwin, Deon Taylor. Starring Dante Basco, Flavor Flav, Gary Busey, Ray J, Rodney Perry.
