Nightmare Cafe

When I was a kid I would go to my Dad's every other weekend and few times I would spend Friday nights at my step-grandparents home.  It was one of the these Friday nights that I first stumbled across Nightmare Cafe.  I can't recall what I was doing but I was in bed just not paying attention to the TV when the voice of Robert Englund's Blackie came across the TV with:

"Now that I've got your attention here's the deal.  See those two people, that's Frank and that's Fay, strangers when they met.  Turns out they have a lot in common.  Both died in the same night, both ended up in the same body of water and both took refuge in the same all night cafe.  Me, I run the place, names Blackie.  I've been here from the beginning.  Now I know say Frank and Fay are dead, but the Cafe needed a new cook and waitress so it gave them a second chance at life.  They do their job they get to stick around and help unsuspecting customers turn their lives around.  Of course anything can happen to those that wander in, their worst nightmares or their forbidden dreams.  Yeah it all happens here, this little place we call the Nightmare Cafe."

Needless the say I was intrigued and was sucked right into the episode.  I only managed to watch three or four episodes and then it just wasn't on.  I searched the TV Guide for a few months and it just didn't find it.  This was 1992 I couldn't just do a Google search to find out what happened to it.

Once the internet became a thing I would search for it and all I could ever find was issue 28 of Epi-log Magazine and the soundtrack on CD & Cassette.  In fact this show has never been commercially released.  Epi-Log was essentially a televisions show episode guide magazine.  Again, before the internet this is how people found this information out.

Eventually it was through the internet that I was able to locate and acquire the episodes.  I was a bit concerned that I had romanticized just how good the show was over the years and that it wouldn't hold up to hype that I had built in my mind.  To me, it was everything I recalled and more.

Aired January 29 - April 3, 1992 on NBC
Wes Craven Films & MGM/UA Television

1 hour episodes

Blackie - Robert Englund

Frank - Jack Coleman

Fay - Lindsay Frost

Episode 1 Pilot

This episode introduces us to Frank, Fay, Blackie, and the Cafe, who is just as much a character in the show as everyone else.  Fay and Frank have both died but find themselves at the Cafe.  Blackie explains they are alive because of the Cafe who gave them a second chance.  In exchange they must now work at the Cafe helping all those who come into the Cafe get what they deserve.

Episode 2 Dying Well is the Best Revenge

Frank tries to help a married woman with an obsessive husband

Episode 3 Fay & Ivy

Fay's sister Ivy comes to visit her with along with her boyfriend Jesse

Episode 4 The Heart of the Mystery

The cafe slows down time to aid a detective in cracking the case of an unsolved murder before his death

Episode 5 Sanctuary for a Child

The Cafe acts as a Tardis in this episode bringing the gang to Frank's hometown where he can help a comatose boy.

Episode 6 Aliens Ate My Lunch

In what would be the final episode, a tabloid reporter makes up a story about an alien invasion resulting in his fiction becoming fact.
Until Next Time!