Tales from the Darkside No Strings (1983–1988) Online

I happened to catch this one morning while surfing around and (dag nab it!) i didn't have the recorder going. But the statement by the puppeteer about the art of puppetry is one of the finest statements of the artist and their muses. My highest praises to the author, as well as the entire cast and crew.

I especially liked the connexion between the performer and their alter-ego and how they "breathe life" into the puppet. When we see a really good ventriloquist, we really *do* get the impression of a second person being there.

One might ask how the aesthetics of the puppeteer differ from theatre. After all, they both involve the basics of "story": The narrative, an actor, a writer whose words are the "cold text", a director who steps "off the stage" (ie, through the so-called "fourth wall" which we "read" as "the audience")...

The director seeks to view from the audience's point of view how the "mere" narrative will be transformed into *story*.

But, for the puppetter, ALL of these roles are combined being even more challenging than the standup comic or the "one man/woman act" - they have to be BOTH the "George and Gracie" of the act.

• Frank Leeding, 2008.03.04

***SPOILERS*** World famous puppeteer Mr.D, Barry Dennen, didn't know what to expect when he was brought into this deserted warehouse by Nicky, Bradely Fisher, to see his boss mobster Eddie Minelli, T. J Castronova. Minelli had just knocked off his boss of 18 years Don Paulie, Derek Loughran, and taken control of his mob empire. As happy as a pig in you know what Minelli wants to celebrate his long sought promotion, by having Paulie knocked off, to mob boss by having Mr.D put on a sick and macabre puppet show for him and his moll Tiffeny, Cameron Milzer, Paulie's former girlfriend. That's by having Mr. D use the stone cold dead body of Paulie as its star attraction!

Mr. D having no choice with Minelli and is henchman Nicky holding his beloved puppet Motu as hostage does the best he can in using Paulie in his act. Thats in having him admitting to a gleeful Minelli what a no good creep he was in treating him like dirt all these years. This sick comedy act gets so out of hand and insulting to the dead where a shocked Mr. D is forced to have Paulie do things in showing how he's so grateful to the sadistic Minelli that are not suitable for publication.

***SPOILERS*** Just when Minelli felt real comfortable, after a number of belly laughs, in how things were going on stage things started turning sour for him. This sick display on Minelli's part just got too far and out of hand in his disrespect for the dead, Paulie, as well as the living, Mr. D and Tiffany and even Nicky, who were forced to watch it! It in fact was non other then Mr. D's puppet Motu who was the one to put his foot down and not only put an end to Minelli's bizarre puppet show but, with the help of the dead Paulie, put an end to Minelli himself!

A Mafioso, Eddie Minelli (TJ Castronovo), has a little wicked fun at the expense of a rival he had shot, waking up a puppeteer in the middle of the night for a peculiar *performance*. This master puppeteer, Aldo (Barry Dennen), tries to get out of doing this puppet act (using the actual dead body of the rival!), but Eddie insists, and his henchman, Nicky (Bradley Fisher), reinforces his demands with a gun. So Aldo gives in (what is his other option, die?) and after Nicky places hooks into different areas of the corpse (the sound effects include a squishing sound as Nicky does this grisly deed for his boss!), a performance begins…and the "guest of honor" stops by to surprise Eddie after a powerful force of wind intrudes upon the show! Cameron Milzer is Eddie's adulterous floozy, Tiffany, as ill-at-ease as Aldo. Tiffany was having an affair with the dead mobster while married to Eddie, and the re-emerged spirit of the human puppet spills the beans. A document of Eddie's exploits as a mobster, his crimes and ties to city officials and political powerhouses he's associated with is read by Aldo in the *voice* of the dead rival while Eddie listens on, entertained by this demented show he has orchestrated. Eddie doesn't realize until told by his rival's spirit that Nicky and Tiffany have been having affair as well! Aldo, poor Aldo, is caught in the middle of all this, anxious and entrapped, but perhaps a reprieve will be granted to him in the form of the rival's returned vengeful spirit.

This is as off-the-wall and strange as the previous episodes of the fourth season. Each episode I watch seems to be even stranger than the one which came before it. A dead body, on hooks, is being used as a puppet to entertain a mobster! I mean, let that sink in. And then if that wasn't enough, the spirit of the bullet-ridden corpse returns to put the hooks in on Eddie! Like Aldo and Tiffany, we are a bewildered audience to all of this. The spirit of the rival infiltrating Aldo's clown puppet chatting away about Eddie, Tiffany, and Nicky, with bullets firing out of guns as betrayal and unveiled secrets surface further emphasizes just how daft an episode this is. What a weird experience. The cast play it up for all its worth; the episode kind of warrants performances that send up such perverse material.

Vicious mobster Eddie Minelli (robustly played by T.J. Castronovo) plans a private performance from famous puppeteer Aldo D (an excellent portrayal from Barry Dennen) with a macabre twist: The puppet being used is the bloody remains of Eddie's freshly slain rival Don Paulie.

Writer/director David Odell relates the deliciously warped story at a swift pace and milks plenty of sick belly laughs from the wickedly funny sense of pitch-black humor gallows humor. Cameron Milzer as ditsy moll Tiffany and Bradley Fisher as dim-witted flunky Nicky contribute amusing supporting turns. Joseph D. Urbanczyk's sharp cinematography provides a pleasing polished look. Further enhanced by grotesque sound effects and ghoulish make-up, topped off by a neat supernatural surprise ending, this honey rates as one of this show's single most twisted half hours.

A life sized marionette puppet of a gangster's dead body can be quite unnerving. In this freaky and really violent episode, a mean gangster goes to a puppeteer so he can put on a show with his enemy gangster's dead body. The gangster's ghost comes back and it just gets freaky from there. This is in my top 5 episodes and is really quite scary, even before the ghost comes in. This episode is one I remembered for years after I saw it and didn't remember quite where I saw it from, but it was memorable. I highly recommend you try and find this classic horror episode.

My rating: Perfect episode. 23 mins. TV PG V

A mob boss whacks his partner then hires a famous puppeteer to do a private show using the corpse as a marionette. Hmmmm...When you put it that way it sounds a lot more interesting than watching it was.

Season 4, Episode 5 "No Strings" could also be called "No Stars" and is a perfect exemplar of how this weak show deteriorated in its final season. It features actors known for playing roles like Reporter #1 or Card player #2 or Thug #1 or Waiter or Guard #1. These are people that bigger productions cast in walk-ons to blend in and be living set-pieces.

Tales From the Darkside would quite often provide viewers with a jarring horror story that fired the senses, sent pulses racing and even provoked cackles of laughter at the profundity of some biting irony revealed in it's endings. More often it provided low-brow comedy. In such instances it delivered neither laughs nor chills and was vastly inferior to its evil twin series Tales From the Crypt - which was similar in tone but endowed with greater panache and wit.

Several episodes could have opened with the narrator's voice saying "And guest-starring on tonight's episode is somebody else ya never heard of". Those were episodes which didn't feature d-list celebs (the BIG stars in this series) from bad sitcoms. But mainly it was the ironic tone, the bush-league production value and the incoherence of various plot-lines that sank the worst of the episodes in the series and diminished the appeal of the better ones.

Three or four actors in a single location often on a set where most of the action took place in a single room suggests dinner theater - not television. But other horror anthology series were able to stage utterly brilliant teleplays with little more. The original Twilight Zone which did that consistently remains the standard for the genre and but a few episodes of Tales From the Darkside were ever its equal in quality.

Although it's an episode in the last season of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, NO STRINGS turns out to be one of the strongest filmed stories yet. This is a gangster tale in which a violent mobster bumps off a rival. He's not finished with his foe yet, however, as he enlists the help of an ageing puppeteer to put on one last, macabre puppet show.

The shortcomings of this episode are obvious, as most of it consists of four characters standing on a single set and chatting, but the idea behind it is a thoroughly macabre one. And when the horror and supernatural stuff starts to make an appearance, I found it genuinely disturbing. Ignore the over the top acting and the paucity of the budget; concentrate instead on a genuinely spooky menace, adequately executed.

Tales from the Darkside: No Strings starts late one night in a warehouse as big time gangster Eddie Minelli (T.J. Castronova) boasts about killing his partner Fat Paulie (Derek Loughran) to his girl Tiffany (Cameron Milzer). Then his man Nick (Bradley Fisher) walks in with the kidnapped puppeteer Mr. D (Barry Dennen) who is ordered to put on a macabre puppet show, Eddie actually has Fat Paulie's fresh corpse there & with the aid of some rope & a few hooks turns it into a marionette puppet that he orders Mr. D to operate...

Episode 5 from season 4 this Tales from the Darkside story originally aired in the US during October 1987, written & directed by David Odell one has to say that No Strings isn't too bad & certainly the best episode of the fourth season so far. The premise here for this episode turns to the old horror film/anthology stand by the living murderous puppet, the first & only time Tales from the Darkside went down that route although I can name any number of films or anthology show's that used a killer puppet storyline. At least there's a nice macabre feeling to the story, I am not sure why someone like Eddie would kidnap a puppeteer & then boast about killing someone. I would have thought Eddie would have liked the fact he had just murdered his partner kept as quiet as possible, but then we wouldn't have a story would we? At only twenty odd minutes at least it's short, there's a definite horror feel to it & while the twist ending isn't the best since it's rather predictable it passes the time harmlessly enough.

Like most Tales from the Darkside episodes No Strings is set in a single location, here a rather bland looking warehouse. There's a bit of gore in this one, there's a dead body with gun shot wounds over it's face & some blood. T.J. Castronova who plays Eddie was one of the show's regular producers across it's four seasons.

No Strings is a good solid horror themed Tales from the Darkside episode with a dark & macabre feel to it, if only this was the rule for the series as a whole rather than the exception.