The Colossal Failure of AMAZING STORIES (1985): Done Dirty by Murder, She Wrote

I hated that show with a passion. It had the feel.of.a lot of schlock Spielberg-ish movies and guh. I watched anything else. Great retrospective!

I was one of those seven-year-olds watching Murder, She Wrote. 🤷‍♀

If I'm actually thinking about the Amazing stories and their episodes there are several that comes straight to mind.

The first one is a mother is sick and tired of her child actually have a bunch of baby stuff and is not cleaning his room and soon as he goes to school weird things happen. She starts cleaning the mess and then a strange creature shows up that is friendly but she trying to navigate and becomes friends with a creature.

The second one that comes to mind is a janitor who apparently is somehow absorbing all of the information from books without even reading them and it's causing him to have mental instability.

Another one is a boy who is continually having dreams of a world where the oceans are gold color and sees a highly advanced City in the middle of this ocean. It turns out that he's an alien and his family is leaving and he has to confess to his love before he leaves.

I think Amazing stories actually got a good traction when they were re-airing on early sci-fi channel programming. When the Sci-Fi channel was at its thought it had a bunch of older science fiction shows and movies that went underneath the radar. Lots of time they actually had a marathon of different shows on particular days. One day it would be incredible hulk, another day it would be Twilight zone and then it would be Knight rider. Luckily Amazing stories was one of these.

I think this is an episode of Amazing stories when it takes place at a retirement home and the guy brings a tin can and at night all the residents kick the can and suddenly the old turn into kids.

I think the main reason why the first initial run didn't go so well is because a lot of parents actually had control over the remote back then and they did not want to watch something that came out of the blue. They wanted probably just watch the next episode of whatever series or item that they wanted to see. It probably didn't help of the time slot that the chose to air Amazing stories because if memory serves me correct it was like 8:30 or 9 if I remember because a lot of kids had to go to bed at 8:00 or 9:00. And like a lot of parents back then they thought the kids saw something weird or unusual they will have nightmares.

I remember wanting to watch amazing stories as a kid and loved the commercials , the first couple episodes I saw were aired during Halloween .
However it seemed to suffer from scheduling issues here in Las Vegas .
Now I don't know if that's a national thing or a regional decision but it just never had a consistent timel schedule and other shows just filled the void for me ! 🫤

I remember the one about the writer and the plant and also the one starring a young Seth Green with the nanny

Another of Jessica Fletcher's many victims.

I have to admit that while Spielberg can be simplistic, the story premises starting at 10:20 sound bloody awful. It really does sound like a childish Twilight Zone without the political or social commentary.

This was a great time for tv. Or, I was just young.

I think I watched most of them because my late father was a huge scifi and fantasy nut and a sports nut. So if it was scifi and on tv we were watching it. I remember enjoying V the year before much better because it had the on going story line. There were some good anthology shows then though Friday the 13th the series, War of the Worlds the series, and tales from the dark side.

Despite the title most of dhe shows weren't all that amazing he just couldn't compete with Jessica Fletcher

The episode with the creepy grandmother monster scared the crap out of me.

I need to watch more eps, the three I remember.

1. Mark Hamill as the boy who kept all his collectible toys
2. The cartoonist on a WWII bomber
3. Weird Al as the Cabbage Man in the Miss Universe pageant.

I liked the Go to the Head of the Class episode as a kid. Headless Christopher Lloyd. Nuff said.

personally I think the reason amazing stories could not channeling murder she wrote is simply because murder she wrote is an old folks power fantasy
you've got this old woman that old people of the time identified with who is outsmarting everybody around her same reason the liked Quincy and columbo

I was only 10 years old, but I remember liking the show.

Loveed this series Mark Hamillstarred in EP "Gather Ye Acorns" and Carrie Fisher uncredited cameoin another e

pisode.

There's a "stop coughing" button? Why did nobody tell me this before?

7:32 The only thing i seen mark hamill in bar star wars and that war film!

A brilliant show that never got a proper chance. My first exposure to Amazing Stores was one of the Amazing Stories "movies" around 1988-1989. I remember we were watching "Remote Control Man." I've seen every episode over the years, starting in 2001 during reruns on the Sci-Fi Channel.

That was one of my favorite shows when I was kid. We would talk about it in school

I was a young kid when it came out. I was so excited for it, but it turned out to be way to soft and goofy even for a young child like me.