The Best Episodes of Amazing Stories

The only animated episode of the show that's also a backdoor pilot. It has three segments: A family takes out their frustrations on their poor dog, watches their Christmas home movie, and sends the dog to guard dog school after a burglary.

Director: Brad Bird

Writer: Brad Bird

During World War II, men in an air force bomber are caught in a no win scenario when their belly gunner (an amateur artist) is trapped in his seat and the plane has no wheels for landing.

Director: Steven Spielberg

Writer: Menno Meyjes

A teacher's bizarre discipline causes two students to seek revenge with a spell culled from a rock song played backwards. Unfortunately something goes wrong when they cast the spell. When they attempt another spell to fix the problem they accidently remove the head of their teacher.

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Writer: Mick Garris, Bob Gale, Tom McLoughlin

An actor who's playing a mummy in a horror film learns that his wife has gone into labor and rushes to be with her – without removing his costume.

Director: William Dear

Writer: Earl Pomerantz

When a dry well yields treasures, a man cashes in, while his stepdaughter repays the kindness of the “hole people.”

Director: Todd Holland

Writer: Pierre R. Debs

An inmate is struck by lightning. He is given miraculous healing powers that spark a last-minute attempt to save him from the electric chair.

Director: Mick Garris

Writer: Rockne S. O'Bannon

Convinced that his vivid nightmare of a Boeing 747 crashing into his house is a horrific premonition, Earl Sweet desperately tries to alter fate.

Director: Kevin Reynolds

Writer: Stu Krieger

After 40 years in a coma, Ben Dumpfy awakens and discovers that he can communicate with a seven-year-old girl who is in a coma after a bike accident.

Director: Thomas Carter

Writer: Michael De Guzman

The lonely, loveless life of a shy bachelor takes an astounding turn when he buys a special doll, exquisitely hand-crafted by a mysterious German toymaker. He tries to track down the woman who modeled for it.

Director: Phil Joanou

Writer: Richard Matheson

A psychic showman realizes that during a performance that someone in the audience wants to commit murder. Frightened, he calls the police, and the detective shows up to investigate.

Director: Peter Hyams

Writer: Mick Garris

A popular horror novelist is terrorized by a strange figure in his bathroom mirror.

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writer: Joseph Minion

Two police officers try to break up a supermarket robbery, but the younger officer is killed. A new female partner helps the other officer avenge his friends death. He later discovers that his new partner is the ghost of an officer who died 12 years earlier.

Director: Paul Michael Glaser

Writer: Jacob Epstein

A GI tries to be a hero during an amphibious assault in Italy during World War II.

Director: Lesli Linka Glatter

Writer: Mick Garris

One stormy night on a deserted highway, a distraught wife driving toward an impending divorce glimpses her past through the windshield after picking up a mysterious woman who ran out of gas.

Director: Ken Kwapis

Writer: Ali Marie Matheson

Two young boys get the best of every sitter in town, until they meet one who uses voodoo to settle them down.

Director: Joan Darling

Writer: Mick Garris

During the Depression, several bar patrons hope to get insurance money by tricking a man into signing a policy with the hope that he will drink himself to death.

Director: Thomas Carter

Writer: James D. Bissell

On the advice from a mysterious little man, an 18-year-old boy begins to collect rare comics and toys. When he sells them as an old man, he gains wealth and happiness.

Director: Norman Reynolds

Writer: Stu Krieger

Nerdy collegiate Phil unsuccessfully tries every trick in the book to meet girls. Then he discovers a potion that makes gorgeous magazine pin-ups spring to life. Unfortunately, he can't guess the right ratio to use, so his experiments backfire in a freaky way.

Director: Tom Holland

Writer: Michael McDowell

A sitcom scriptwriter, who's suffering from writer's block, discovers that his house plant has miraculously gained sentience and a funny bone after being left in front of a TV while old sitcoms were playing. The plant ghostwrites for him.

Director: Nick Castle

Writer: Bruce Kirschbaum

Ohpa Globe is happy to see his son's new house, but when he sees that the home is built on ghost train tracks, he changes his focus. To his family's chagrin, he is convinced it is his destiny to die in those cornfields, to board a train he inadvertently caused to crash 75 years ago! He tells his nine-year old grandson he still has his ticket for the old "Highball Express", and that arriving train will careen through their house!

Director: Steven Spielberg

Writer: Frank Deese

When an artist is devastated by the death of his wife, he finds a way for her to live on in his painting.

Director: Clint Eastwood

Writer: Steven Spielberg

An elderly college janitor amazes himself, his wife and the scientific community when his brain turns into a sponge that soaks up more and more incredible knowledge of every subject taught at the school - until a shocking event changes everything.

Director: Lesli Linka Glatter

Writer: Richard Matheson

A fading illusionist has a last shot at greatness thanks to a deck of magic playing cards.

Director: Donald Petrie

Writer: Joshua Brand, John Falsey

A henpecked man finds comfort in a unique television set that bring lifelike images to him.

Director: Bob Clark

Writer: N/A

A little boy helps Santa when the legendary man is thrown in jail while delivering presents.

Director: Phil Joanou

Writer: Joshua Brand, John Falsey