This "TFTD" episode titled a little odd "My Own Place" was one of the OK and spooky episodes of the series. It features Perry Lang as an investment banker named Sandy who takes an upstairs apartment in New York City for a bargain at $285 a month. It may not be the best or have the most elegant, yet for the first time he's alone and has space or so he believes. As later on a strange foreign man named Ram(Harsh Nayyar)appears and he seems to occupy the time and thoughts of Sandy it becomes more and more of a distraction on his freedom. Simply a new force and a different culture is present and wickedly a little black magic and witchcraft is found within this apartment proving that it has a hidden past and that none of it's occupants will be alone! Also look for Nancy Travis(future TV star)who has a role as Laura who's Sandy's love interest. Overall pretty well done episode that shows a place has it's own hidden evil secrets and it proves no one is alone.
7 Reviews
Did you like my cheese balls?
sol121829 October 2010
Warning: Spoilers
***SPOILERS*** Getting a rent-controlled apartment, for $285.00 a month, on the upper West Side of Manhattan no less was just too good to be true for yuppie investment banker Sandy,Perry Lang, who never had a place of his own in his entire young, 26 year old, life. As things turned out Sandy had an unwelcome guest, or room-mate, show up who soon became a royal pain in his butt Ram, Harsh Nayyar, that only Sandy and no one else seems to be able to see!
Ram a native of Calcutta India seemed to have gotten to New York and into Sandy's apartment through some kind of supernatural means as if through a black hole, not the one in Calcutta, that ripped through the time space continuum! Angry at Ram for first sharing his dream apartment, that had a view of the eastern tip of Central Park, and then interfering with his love life with his girlfriend Laura, Nancy Travis, whom he was shacked up with Sandy tried to get Ram evicted but to no avail! Not only was Ram invisible to everyone but Sanday but his landlady Mrs. Maya, Bina Sharif, told him that it would take months for the city agencies, that control rents, to get Ram evicted! That's if they can find him!
***SPOILERS*** With him going slowly out of his skull over Ram Sandy is also hit with a stock,or currency, market collapse that just about wiped him out! It's then that Sandy is confronted with the awful truth in what he's been suffering through since he rented the apartment from Mrs. Maya. Somehow the spirit of Ram has been haunting the place since he died from either starvation or disease on the streets of Calcutta Indnia some time ago! An with Ram haunting the apartment Mr. Maya was lucky to even get $285.00 a month rent for it! In the fact that the renters like Sandy weren't going to stay there long enough to get a rent increase when their two year lease expired!
Ram a native of Calcutta India seemed to have gotten to New York and into Sandy's apartment through some kind of supernatural means as if through a black hole, not the one in Calcutta, that ripped through the time space continuum! Angry at Ram for first sharing his dream apartment, that had a view of the eastern tip of Central Park, and then interfering with his love life with his girlfriend Laura, Nancy Travis, whom he was shacked up with Sandy tried to get Ram evicted but to no avail! Not only was Ram invisible to everyone but Sanday but his landlady Mrs. Maya, Bina Sharif, told him that it would take months for the city agencies, that control rents, to get Ram evicted! That's if they can find him!
***SPOILERS*** With him going slowly out of his skull over Ram Sandy is also hit with a stock,or currency, market collapse that just about wiped him out! It's then that Sandy is confronted with the awful truth in what he's been suffering through since he rented the apartment from Mrs. Maya. Somehow the spirit of Ram has been haunting the place since he died from either starvation or disease on the streets of Calcutta Indnia some time ago! An with Ram haunting the apartment Mr. Maya was lucky to even get $285.00 a month rent for it! In the fact that the renters like Sandy weren't going to stay there long enough to get a rent increase when their two year lease expired!
Tales from the Darkside: My Own Place
Scarecrow-8826 September 2015
Warning: Spoilers
I honestly don't know what to say about this one. It is truly a quirky oddball episode. So this investment banker (Perry Lang; I know this guy from The Hearse (1980)) is struggling to make it at Wall Street, finds an apartment (with a window that can just see a square of Central Park) that seems just a bit too cheap considering its rooms and space, and soon encounters a happy-go-lucky Indian named Ram (Harsh Nayyar) who just emerges from *somewhere* on night. Ram doesn't know exactly how he wound up in the banker's apartment, but he's appreciative of the *unwelcome* accommodations. When Lang's Sandy grows increasingly tired of Ram's presence (and the fact that he seems to stay rent-free, disappearing when people around, much to Sandy's frustration and infuriation), he is demanding the Indian to just leave. When Sandy actually does *leave* (perhaps out a window after Sandy uses wooden planks to hammer across double doors, enclosing him inside a room), Sandy is in for a rude awakening
he *travels* to where Ram came from, and he's just as unwelcome there as Ram was in the New York apartment.
While not exactly a breakout role, it was nice to see an early part for Nancy Travis during this year she appears in the smash hit comedy, 3 Men and a Baby. She is Lang's fiancé, quickly tiring of his ravings about Ram. When the chance perhaps appears for Travis to meet this guy, Lang refuses to allow this, with her storming off, ending the relationship. Then to make matters worse, Sandy wakes up late, realizes that the market is not going his way, locks away Ram, and returns to the apartment after a brutal day at work where he is left broke but that isn't even the end of it.
I didn't like the racial angle at all, and the plot comments on the uneasy atmosphere created between the worlds of the white money-conscious Wall Streeter riding a bike back and forth to work and the sunny, jovial Indian who tells of his living on the streets penniless until this *big break* landed him in an apartment where the opportunity to escape poverty presents itself. Sorry, but it is hard for me to look at Ram as a nuisance when he never causes any trouble while Sandy barks orders at him, ridiculing him with "saheeb", and constantly berates him. Sure, Ram shouldn't be in the apartment he bought, but that doesn't mean Sandy has to denigrate him so. What rescues Sandy from pure douchebaggery is that Ram seems to be growing on him. But the room incident kind of leaves Sandy doomed to suffer a Tales from the Darkside bad ending.
For once, though, we see outside a set as Sandy rides on a bike to the apartment sometimes the little things matter. When you spend most of a running time cooped up in one setting, outside can be a bit refreshing. The unexplained method behind how Ram and Sandy move from one place to another does provide the episode with an enigmatic quality. However, the racism of the plot just left me rather uncomfortable.
While not exactly a breakout role, it was nice to see an early part for Nancy Travis during this year she appears in the smash hit comedy, 3 Men and a Baby. She is Lang's fiancé, quickly tiring of his ravings about Ram. When the chance perhaps appears for Travis to meet this guy, Lang refuses to allow this, with her storming off, ending the relationship. Then to make matters worse, Sandy wakes up late, realizes that the market is not going his way, locks away Ram, and returns to the apartment after a brutal day at work where he is left broke but that isn't even the end of it.
I didn't like the racial angle at all, and the plot comments on the uneasy atmosphere created between the worlds of the white money-conscious Wall Streeter riding a bike back and forth to work and the sunny, jovial Indian who tells of his living on the streets penniless until this *big break* landed him in an apartment where the opportunity to escape poverty presents itself. Sorry, but it is hard for me to look at Ram as a nuisance when he never causes any trouble while Sandy barks orders at him, ridiculing him with "saheeb", and constantly berates him. Sure, Ram shouldn't be in the apartment he bought, but that doesn't mean Sandy has to denigrate him so. What rescues Sandy from pure douchebaggery is that Ram seems to be growing on him. But the room incident kind of leaves Sandy doomed to suffer a Tales from the Darkside bad ending.
For once, though, we see outside a set as Sandy rides on a bike to the apartment sometimes the little things matter. When you spend most of a running time cooped up in one setting, outside can be a bit refreshing. The unexplained method behind how Ram and Sandy move from one place to another does provide the episode with an enigmatic quality. However, the racism of the plot just left me rather uncomfortable.
Weird
shellytwade4 February 2022
This is a pretty bad and weird episode. It's cool to see a young Nancy Travis but that's about where the entertainment factor fades. Even after it ended I'm not sure what this episode was trying to say. Was the landlord in on it? If so, why? To be honest, it's not even worth your time thinking about the answers.
Another poor one.
poolandrews27 April 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Tales from the Darkside: My Own Place is set in New York & starts as investment banker Sandy (co-writer Perry Lang) moves into a suspiciously cheap apartment, at only $285 a month he couldn't turn it down. However he soon finds out that he isn't the only one living in the apartment as Sandy discovers he has an unwanted & unusual squatter...
Episode 15 from season 3 this Tales from the Darkside story originally aired in the US during February 1987, co-written & directed by Ted Gershuny this is yet another strange & seemingly pointless way to spend twenty odd minutes. The script by Gershuny & star Perry Lang starts off almost identically to another Tales from the Darkside episode A New Lease on Life (1986) from season two, in fact the set-up is exactly the same with some poor schmuck thinking he has got a great deal on a New York apartment but finds out to his cost that there is a much higher price to pay other than money. The story does differ in the sense that he finds he has some sort of squatter & at the end it predictably all ends in tears for Sandy. The twist isn't much of twist at all, nothing is really explained which I find frustrating & at even only twenty minutes in length I was pretty bored by it.
Like a lot of Tales from the Darkside episodes the majority of the story takes place in a single simple location, there are no special effects or scares or horror or anything particularly memorable here at all. The acting is alright if nothing special.
My Own Place feels a little samey & didn't do anything for me. Like so many episodes from this series I just don't see what it's meant to be doing.
Episode 15 from season 3 this Tales from the Darkside story originally aired in the US during February 1987, co-written & directed by Ted Gershuny this is yet another strange & seemingly pointless way to spend twenty odd minutes. The script by Gershuny & star Perry Lang starts off almost identically to another Tales from the Darkside episode A New Lease on Life (1986) from season two, in fact the set-up is exactly the same with some poor schmuck thinking he has got a great deal on a New York apartment but finds out to his cost that there is a much higher price to pay other than money. The story does differ in the sense that he finds he has some sort of squatter & at the end it predictably all ends in tears for Sandy. The twist isn't much of twist at all, nothing is really explained which I find frustrating & at even only twenty minutes in length I was pretty bored by it.
Like a lot of Tales from the Darkside episodes the majority of the story takes place in a single simple location, there are no special effects or scares or horror or anything particularly memorable here at all. The acting is alright if nothing special.
My Own Place feels a little samey & didn't do anything for me. Like so many episodes from this series I just don't see what it's meant to be doing.
Unlikeable racial comedy
Leofwine_draca17 June 2015
MY OWN PLACE is a unique but fairly awful episode of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE which came towards the end of season three. It involves a guy who rents a new apartment only to discover that his roommate is this mysterious Indian guy who's been dabbling in black magic and who plans to make the protagonist his new victim.
This story is played for broad racial laughs with an over the top and stereotyped portrayal of an Indian mystic. The main actor, Perry Lang, was a one-time minor star who appeared in the likes of THE HEARSE, so it's no surprise seeing him trying his luck in this show. Sadly, MY OWN PLACE is as dumbly written as many others from this season.
This story is played for broad racial laughs with an over the top and stereotyped portrayal of an Indian mystic. The main actor, Perry Lang, was a one-time minor star who appeared in the likes of THE HEARSE, so it's no surprise seeing him trying his luck in this show. Sadly, MY OWN PLACE is as dumbly written as many others from this season.
Neat quirky episode
Woodyanders24 October 2014
Warning: Spoilers
Investment banker Sandy (a solid and likable performance by Perry Lang) thinks he's got himself a real bargain when he finds a spacious apartment in New York City that only costs $285 dollars a month. However, there's a catch: The place is also occupied by amiable, yet pesky squatter Ram (robustly played to the amusingly annoying hilt by Harsh Nayyar). Director Theodore Gershuny relates the compelling idiosyncratic story at a brisk pace and does a sound job of crafting an intriguing mysterious atmosphere that keeps the viewer guessing about what's going on (it appears to have to do something with a tear in the space time continuum which causes Sandy's and Ram's lives to cross paths at the most inopportune moments). The offbeat script by Lang and Gershuny neatly addresses the pertinent themes of urban angst, fear of poverty, and invasion of privacy. Lang and especially Nayyar do sound work in the leads, with sturdy support from Nancy Travis as Sandy's fiancé Laura and Bina Sharif as landlady Maya. Robert Draper's fluid cinematography provides a pleasing stylish look. A cool little show.
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