The Geezenstacks

No, for two reasons.

1. In the end, after he walked into the house, you could hear him saying 'noooo' as he was shaking the house and realized what had happened.

2. When the lady real estate agent opened the doll house, you could see his figure added which implied that he joined the family as a doll.

The thing that I am curious about is if the people in the doll house are alive in their own little reality or if they become lifeless.

I don't think she was in on it. I think she was there to imply that she, like the male real estate agent, takes the dollhouse home to her own family to repeat the cycle. When she inspects the dollhouse she finds the Geezenstack house shrunken down inside a new dollhouse, so I think the idea is that it just keeps repeating itself.

"The 21st century is all flash but no substance." ~ Smog City

I absolutely love this episode, but there's one thing about it that doesn't make much sense to me, and maybe one of our good Tales From the Darkside experts can help me out...

So the dollhouse seems to have a way of taking everything inside of a house, shrinking it down, and putting it all inside of itself.

Apparently, it does this overnight (while everyone is sound asleep), and (as we find out) the Hummels are now the latest victims (just like the Geezenstacks were previously).

Uncle Richard comes in, and (to his horror) finds out what happened to the Hummels (which is exactly the same thing that happened the last time that he found this dollhouse all by itself in a home).

Later when the real-estate lady comes in, we find out that Uncle Richard has been shrunken and added to list of victims (He must've lost his balance and fallen in shock since he's now on the floor).

So is the real-estate lady going to be the next victim? When does the list of victims end?

When I first saw this episode years ago, I thought that Uncle Richard (after seeing what happened to the Hummels) left the house (since he would still be full-size since he would've missed the overnight 'shrinkening'), and that the guy on the floor must be Sam Hummel (running around trying to figure out what happened right before he got his last breath of life sucked out of him and officially became a doll forever).

Fast-forward to the age of the internet where I am now able to read many reviews and find out after all of these years that I've had it all wrong and that it was actually Uncle Richard lying on the floor.

So now I'm trying to make sense of this new-found knowledge. When Uncle Richard found the dollhouse at the previous house, why didn't it add him to that collection?

Is part of the rule that you have to be related to the family? Apparently, you don't have to be living there (as Uncle Richard did not).

Or is the rule that it keeps going until it has at least 4 people (since we all know that you need at least 4 to fill a dollhouse). If so, then Uncle Richard was lucky that there were 4 Geezenstacks!

Or is the rule that it only adds you to the collection if you've figured out what's happening?

I've read the short story by Frederic Brown, but that doesn't help because it's not even about an evil dollhouse--It's about a witch who turns the people into dolls once they give the Geezenstack-dolls up.

So please share your thoughts (whoever you are). I can't wait to hear them!