Contes de l'au-delà

Ghost Stories is a reasonably entertaining ultra low budget series that was shot on tape and aired late at night in syndication. I'm usually pretty savvy on such things but it escaped my radar without so much as a blip and being infirmed in 1997 I had a lot of TV time on my hands. Other than the dead on narration of your unseen host Rip Torn the tales of specters and precognition are presented by no name thespians whose performances range from adequate to ridiculously bad. I'm now on disc 3 of the 5 disc series of 44 episodes so it's not so bad as to be disinteresting but it's certainly not Twilight Zone or One Step Beyond. All the stories are pretty straight forward no cutting up like Tales From The Crypt or Monsters and they usually contain some vague morality like the guy whose conscious leaves his body to betray him to the police or the writer who cheats on his wife with a ghost to get his passion back. For the few bucks I paid for it on Amazon I'm satisfied just don't go for it expecting House On Haunted Hill (Either Version).

I love a good ghost story as much as the next guy. That's the problem with this little-known series: its ghost stories are far from good. Perhaps this is the reason Hulu is offering episodes at the time of this review: no doubt Hulu obtained it very cheaply indeed.

Without exception, the series scripts are hackneyed, the acting rarely rises above the typical junior high school play, and the production values--well, let's just say no one went broke putting this turkey together.

Not all television productions deserve to be resurrected after a failed first run: this is one of them. Watch if you must, but don't say you haven't been warned!

When I started watching this series I was hopping that it was something in the region of and tales from the crypt. But this is probably one of the worst series of its kind. The majority of the stories is poor and the endings are very predictable. No special effects what so ever incorporated with bad acting.

Probably deserves a high 7 but I'm giving it a 10. Because I can! I picked up this 1990's horror anthology on DVD a week ago and am way into it. I've been on it like Oprah on a baked ham! It's widely available on Youtube with a little searching if you want to save a few bucks.

Some pretty well wrought and thought-provoking tales here. The writing is generally very good, with top-notch camera work & high production values all around. Better looking show than "Tales From The Darkside", which I also love. This series has, to me, more in common with the Amicus portmanteau moralistic lesson horror films of the 60's & 70's than say the overproduced & brain-dead "Tales From The Crypt" or the utterly awful "Freddy's Nightmares". Ghost Stories is peopled with actors I've mostly never seen anywhere else, but who are obviously well-trained and give there all. I did see a young Stuart from "The Big Bang Theory" playing a horror obsessed video clerk in "It's Only A Movie". So there you go! :) But yeah, I highly recommend this. Other than "Night Visions" hosted by Henry Rollins, I can't think of a modern horror anthology series that's nearly as good.

This was indeed a great show. I have always loved horror/sci-fi/fantasy anthologies whether it's on TV, the movies, or comic books. Ghost Stories was arguably one of the best, and definately overlooked. The show was low budget and featured no name actors. It even reused a few brief scenes and settings on different unrelated episodes. Surprisingly, 2 of the Ghost Stories episodes, "You'll Always Be Mine" and "Denial" were remade in the 2002 Twilight Zone series that came later. The TZ episodes were "To Protect and Serve" and "Dead Man's Eyes". Maybe not so surprising since IMDB lists Frederick Rappaport as a producer on BOTH shows. The power of script recycling compels you!!! Anyway, Rip Torn was surprisingly effective as the narrator and commentator in Ghost Stories. The stories were much more serious than most other anthology shows. The stories were always eerie, but also touching and thought provoking at times. Unfortunately, this show didn't have a chance. It received very little media attention or promotion when it first aired. I wish they revive this show..