John Kenneth Muir, notable expert on all things retro (at least when you define “retro” as the crap I grew up watching on TV in the ’70s and ’80s, and the toys I played with during the same period), today reminded me of a series I haven’t thought about in years, a short-lived horror anthology called Darkroom.

I’ll be honest, I don’t remember any of the stories from this show. Even the episode that Muir summarizes in the blog entry I linked above sounds only vaguely familiar, at best. But this opening… man, I remember this. It always gave me a good case of the willies:

Something about the way movies and TV shows were made in the ’70s and early ’80s was perfectly suited for the horror genre. Maybe it was the graininess of the film stock — since we’ve gone digital, everything looks too slick and polished, so modern horror films have to re-introduce grime through artificial means, and they always lay it on too thick (I hate the dank, sweaty, grungy look of modern horror films!). Whatever it was, I miss it. It could make even a show like Darkroom, which was probably pretty cheesy, look like something. The title card shot with the red light bulb above the logo is just perfect. You know, that’d look really good on a t-shirt…