Tales from the Darkside S2 E15: A New Lease on Life (1986)

Archie Fenton (Robert Knepper, Cards of Death and T-Bag on Prison Break) thinks he’s scored the real estate deal of the century: a swanky, high-tech room in the St. George Apartments for $200 a month. The catch? The landlady, Madame Angler (Marie Windsor, who was in everything from Commando Squad and Salem’s Lot to Chamber of HorrorsAbbott and Costello Meet the Mummy and Cat-Women of the Moon), has some weird house rules. No nails in the walls, no microwaves and most importantly, he has to provide organic garbage with no bags.

That’s because the building is alive. And it’s quite sensitive. When Archie nails a picture to the wall, the building bleeds. When he tries to feed the disposal unit a bag of chemicals and broken glass, his domicile gets a nasty case of indigestion.

Archie figures out that the previous tenant, Helen (Patricia Pelham), didn’t move out. She was the main course. Madame Angler and her dragon-jacket-wearing goons, Al and Mac (Ben Frank and Robert Sutton), explain that the building needs to be respected. Archie tries to fight back, but this ends with a giant reptilian tongue slithering out of the disposal chute to drag him into the building’s digestive tract.

This was directed by John Strysik (who also wrote several episodes) and written by Harvey Jacobs and Michael McDowell from a story by Adam K. Jacobs.

Get it? There’s a dragon in a building called the St. George.

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