Tales From the Darkside: the Movie is a 1990 anthology film directed by John Harrison from a screenplay written by Michael McDowell and George W. Romero. The first segment is based on the Arthur Conan Doyle short story "Lot No. 249"; the second segment is based on the Stephen King short story "The Cat From Hell"; the third segment is based on the tale of "The Woman in the Snow."
The film is a continuation of the 1983-1988 television series Tales From the Darkside, and a spiritual successor to Creepshow 2.
Plot
Prologue
A young paperboy delivers newspapers during his daily rounds. One of the women on his route lures him into her house with the promise of cookies, and then captures him. She takes him into her kitchen and informs him that she is going to cook him in her giant oven and serve him up at a dinner party. In the style of Scheherazade, the boy stalls the woman by telling her three horror stories.
Lot 249
A graduate student, Bellingham, reanimates a mummy and uses it to take revenge on a pair of crooked college students, Susan and Lee, who conspired to cheat Bellingham out of a scholarship. Their actions 'framed' him for theft from a museum, which results in his expulsion from the college. In vengeance for his master, the reanimated corpse kills both in rather gruesome ways. After discovering the cause, Susan's brother Andy kidnaps Bellingham, and burns the parchment and mummy that was the cause of it all. It is later discovered that Andy had burned the incorrect scroll, as the reanimated corpses of Susan and Lee close in on Andy in his dorm room, controlled by Bellingham.
The Cat From Hell
The wealthy, wheelchair-bound and elderly Mr. Drogan hires a hitman, Halston for one of the strangest jobs of his career: kill a black cat, which Drogan believes is murderously evil. Drogan explains that there were three other occupants of his house before the cat arrived: his sister, Amanda, her friend Carolyn, and the family's butler, Richard Gage.
The cat was adopted by Carolyn and Amanda, who ignore Drogan's claim that he can sense that the cat is evil. Drogan claims that one by one, the cat killed the other three: first it tripped Amanda, causing her to fall down a flight of stairs; then it clamped on to Carolyn's face until she suffocated; and finally, after Gage managed to capture the beast and tried to take it to the vet to put it down, it scratched his face, causing Gage to get into a fatal car crash.
Drogan believes that he is being punished because his pharmaceutical company killed 5,000 cats while testing a new drug. Halston doesn't believe the story, but is more than willing to eliminate the cat since Drogan is offering $100,000. Halston soon discovers that the cat is extremely difficult to kill after he tries to kill it several times. Eventually the cat kills the hitman, forcing itself down his throat and into his stomach. Drogan returns and finds the hitman's body; the cat climbs out of the hitman's mouth and jumps at Drogan, which causes him to have a fatal heart attack.
Lover's Vow
A despondent artist named Preston witnesses a gruesome murder by a gargoyle-like monster. The monster gets Preston to swear to never speak of what he saw in exchange for a promise to spare his life. After making the promise, Preston meets a beautiful woman named Caroline. Preston marries Caroline, the two have kids, and Preston has a revival of his art career. But Preston is still tormented by guilt about his silence, and reconsiders the promise he made to the monster.
Preston then tells Caroline about that night ten years ago when they met after he had witnessed the killing of a man by a monster which he sculpted to show her. After releasing a heartbroken screech, Caroline reveals herself to be the very same creature he made the promise with, lamenting that the promise Preston made to the monster had been broken. As such, she reverts to her previous form, and their children transform into similar monsters as well. Within the shock and despair of such revelations, Preston is killed at 'her' hands, and she escapes through a skylight with their children. The final scene shows that the gargoyle and children have turned to stone upon a building ledge, staring down at Preston's body in remorse.
Epilogue
The woman is about to cook Timmy and he throws some marbles on the floor. The woman slips, accidentally stabs herself, Timmy reaches for the keys to the chains, releases himself and pushes the woman into the oven. The story then ends with Timmy breaking the fourth-wall and asking: "Don't you just love happy endings?"