Crooks Nick Marvin and T (James Wilby and Ronan Vibert) get an assignment from Mr. Starr (Peter Guinness), who wants them to stage a heist at his jewelry store so that he can grab a hefty insurance settlement. But T betrays Nick by shooting him in the shoulder and then Nick shoots back, getting the jewelry and running away to the Sandoval Hotel.

That’s when it gets strange.

“One small step for man, one giant – oh, hello scar-gazers. You’re just in time. My skeleton crew and I are about to blast off for a little space hackslporation. Care to join us? Good. I hope you’re made of the rot stuff ’cause we’ll be heading fright years from terror firma, boldly going where no ghoul has gaunt before. Hey pal, watch the suit or you’re launch meat! Which is kind of like the man in tonight’s tale. He’s going places too, except his deathstination is a little more earth-bound. It’s a nasty bit of scare-o-dynamics I call “Horror in the Night.””

The hotel has blood everywhere, strange people everywhere and Laura Kendall (Elizabeth McGovern), a woman who only Nick can see. She uses him to move on to the next stage of existence by, well, sending him back in time to shoot himself. As for the hotel, well, it hasn’t been open for years.

This episode was directed by Russell Mulcahy, who has experience in horror, having made Razorback and two other episodes of this series. It was written by John Harrison, who also directed Tales from the Darkside: The Movie.

Inspiration came from “Horror In the Night” from Vault of Horror #12. Written by William Gaines and Al Feldstein and drawn by Harvey Kurtzman, it’s very different than this episode. In the comic story, a woman’s baby is killed by a cat and she goes to war with animals.