Inside the Closet

We'll preface this by stating that "Inside the Closet" is one of the best episodes of Tales from the Darkside. It was directed by Tom Savini, the makeup-effects virtuoso from the golden age of practical horror.

Being "in the closet" carries a very different meaning today than it once did. Long ago, people spoke of "skeletons in the closet." Children trembled at the thought of "monsters in the closet," which they believed in with absolute conviction.

That childhood terror forms the fulcrum of "Inside the Closet," a first-season episode that wears its buried symbolism openly. Or, to put it another way, it flings open the closet door of our deepest fears and phobias, revealing the darkness within—a vulva-like, cold, dark womb of terrors where monsters dwell.

Remember how, in Poltergeist, the closet became a portal for spirits from another dimension. Here, grad student Gail Aynsley hears scuffling sounds—not from hungry ghosts, but something more like an infestation of ravenous mice.

Her room is stark and uninviting. The closet is a pint-sized door that cannot be opened. Fenner, the elderly veterinary zoologist who rents out the room—played with chilling precision by the incomparable Fritz Weaver—has already warned her against making any undue noise. As a professor, he requires absolute quiet: "No radio, no television, no... boys." The message is clear. Gail, focused on studying for her exams, understands.

Yet the sounds persist. She feels eyes upon her—the twin, burning eyes of something waiting, breathing softly in the darkness. Its respiration is a susurrus of terror, perched on the edge of the void, ready to spring.\

Fritz Weaver's character collects rare specimens in jars. He might have been preserving fetuses or biological refuse for later study. His passion for containing the dead remnants of animal wombs hints at a deeper, dissociative cruelty—a gallery of easily subdued pollution.

Gail, of course, represents the missing daughter. What happened to her? Did she flee the crib to escape Father Fritz? What lies beneath the surface? Something suggestive of buried secrets and old sins—whatever is hidden in the closet.

The dark, dead space beyond. And out of this womb emerges something hungering, waiting to be fed, nourished... loved.

In the darkness, it breathes. It waits, searching the shadows with hungry eyes.

Gail, so studious and resolute, is gradually unhinged by her terror. Father Fritz reassures her there is nothing to worry about. The sacred daughter vacated the premises long ago. Maybe she died. Maybe she ran away. Maybe she merged with the mother. Somehow.

The last possibility suggests the primal sin that gives birth to the monster—the crawling thing lurking in the dark. Slavering jaws might well feast upon Gail. ...What if it extended one scaly hand from the shadows to gingerly touch her leg? She would kick and scream. The beast might leave trail marks across her pretty, white, unbruised thigh. It would seek the soft, plump flesh it so desired. It would seek communion.

Mama.

Fritz reassures Gail's mother that her daughter is no longer there in the attic room, no longer sleeping in the old bed with its cold, stark iron bedstead. Now she, like the daughter/wife before her, has departed. All that remains is whatever lives in the closet—in that dead, wooden womb of blackness, that constructed vaginal orifice of cold, smooth, death-like exterior. ...And inside, red eyes gleam out of the black. And they see.\

Believe me, they see.

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