Tales from the Darkside Christmas Trilogy Part 3: The Yattering and Jack

With the new year just around the corner, it's time for one more adventure to the Darkside. The final season once again returned to offering up both Halloween and Christmas episodes. Sadly, while that autumn special was quite enjoyable, the holiday tale was the weakest so far.

“The Yattering and Jack” is based on a story by Clive Barker, but don't think for a ,inute that it's filled with the usual religious symbolism and gore. This is a silly tale about a man named, you guessed it, Jack. Old Jack has a problem. Shit keeps going south in his house. Electronics blow up, fish boil in their tank. Anything that can go wrong usually does. Much as this would torment normal folk, Jack keeps the blues away with the old song “que sera sera. Whatever will be, will be.” Before long we're treated to the cause of all this trouble. A tiny demon called a yattering played by Phil Fondacaro. It's always great to see Phil in action. Perhaps it's a sloppy choice of words but he's one of the titans of little actors.

 

So the Yattering is doing his damnedest to Drive Jack crazy so the guy will curse god. This is all a ruse by the devil who really wants Jacks' soul for some reason. Yattering feels like he's making zero progress. No matter what he does to Jack, the old fool just repeats that same damn song. If only the little devil could up his game and strike at Jack directly. The devil notes that physical contact is a big no no.

 

Before too long, Jack's Daughter shows up. She wants to spend Christmas with her dad though she notices that his house is a disaster. Jack tries his best to come up with excuses and draw her away from the house to do some grocery shopping. This leads to the best part of the whole episode where the yattering takes control of an uncooked turkey, making it wear pearls and fly about the room before finally settling on top of the Christmas tree and gobbling the whole time.

Jack continues to ignore most of the irritations which makes the yattering go crazy in his quest to terrorize the old man. In his fury he mistakenly breaks that special rule and touches his pray which makes him Jack's slave, forever.

 

We learn that Jack knew about the Yattering, the bid for his soul, everything. And he'd been trying to make the demon screw up this whole time. Apparently the devil wanted his soul because his mom or grandma, or whoever (can't remember) was a high end witch and screwed the devil out on a deal. Jack doesn't care about any of that though. He's got a supernatural slave for a all of eternity. The yattering remarks that Jack probably won't get into heaven with a demon slave but you can guess the old dudes response.

 

Notice how I hardly mentioned Christmas? Yea, this one uses the holiday more as set dressing than anything else. That's a shame as a little more merriment would've helped immensely. Darkside tried its hand at comedy every now and then, usually with lackluster results. While this one isn't terrible, it's not all the special either. It tries to be funny without much luck and is only scary for those awful people who get freaked out by dwarfs. Yet there's still a certain charm to the whole endeavor. Maybe it's the simple storyline or Jacks upbeat attitude, Ok, it's probably the possessed turkey. Just keep expectations in check for this episode to not live up to the other Christmas tales. I'd even suggest viewing this one in the middle of the trilogy so you end on a better note.

That's it! More than likely this will be my last post of 2014. I have no plans to recap the year cause frankly, even with everything I accomplished, this year sucked and I'm stoked for a fresh start. Got a nice job interview next week, and I aim to accomplish even more of my big time goals in the coming year. So to my small readership, I hope you all have a decent new year's celebration, and I'll see you in January.