Through a gate shaped like a monster, through the sea of fog enfolding a wayward old house shrouded in darkness and on its way to dilapidation, under the persistent slash of lighting, through the front door and various rooms decorated antiquatedly (surely this place must harbor ghosts), down halls and into a hidden door ushering us down a stone staircase spiraling ever deeper into the catacombs amid the cobwebs and shadows—all set to bouncing, fun-creepy music that is unmistakably the work of Danny Elfman—there lurks a cackling, guffawing corpse with a penchant for puns. He is the Cryptkeeper, animated by superb puppetry work and voiced by John Kassir. He tells macabre stories, and we, the gleeful viewers, listen with rapt attention. With a voice like that, and stories like these, how could you not?
Tales From the Crypt aired on HBO from 1989 to 1996, and was based on stories from EC Comics (originally Educational Comics), published by Maxwell Gaines initially as a shell company for All-American Publications and then, when All-American merged with DC Comics, in earnest as its own independent entity with Picture Stories From the Bible in 1945. After Gaines’s death in 1947, Educational Comics transmogrified into EC, a bastion of glorious horror and sci-fi schlock, under the guidance of Gaines’ son, Bill, an eccentric visionary who would also go on to publish MAD magazine. EC thrived until 1954, when Fredric Wertham published his absurd, nefarious Seduction of the Innocent, mottling the comic book medium with a moral stain it wouldn’t clean off for years. Parents clutched pearls, and a generation of children had to hide their comics under their mattresses. But EC remained ingrained in the minds of the young and young-at-heart. Like a creature torn from its pages, it wouldn’t die.
After Stephen King and George Romero’s Creepshow in 1982, EC made an inspired comeback, undoubtedly paving the way for Tales From the Crypt. Though HBO hadn’t yet evolved into the cultural juggernaut it would become after Oz at the turn of the millennium, the talent involved in the series is staggeringly robust. Directors included Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, Richard Donner, Pretty in Pink’s Howard Deutch (OK, that’s a weird one), Fright Night’s Tom Holland, Pet Sematary’s Mary Lambert, and veritable auteurs William Friedkin and Tobe Hooper. And the array of guest performers is an eclectic, insane roster of A-listers, B-movie veterans, and beloved character actors. Look it up. Say “Wow.” Some episodes were even helmed by actors not known for their directing, like Kyle MacLachlan and Zemeckis consorts Michael J. Fox and Tom Hanks, or behind-the-scenes crew members such as Freddy Krueger make-up man Kevin Yagher.
Most fascinating of all, perhaps, is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who directed “The Switch,” in which a lonely old rich man proposes to his unreciprocating crush and, through experimental surgery, switches bodies with an East German refugee to appear younger and win over his love, only for the series’ sick sense of irony to betray him. Arnold also makes a cameo in the episode, his testosterone a bit jarring to witness in contrast with the Cryptkeeper. Beyond this episode, the show feels like an extended Arnold universe, as Richard Alan Greenberg, who was nominated for an Oscar for his special effects on Predator, directed an episode, and Robert Winley, the biker whose clothes Arnold purloins in Terminator 2, makes an appearance in the first episode, “The Man Who Was Death,” as a murderous biker who gets his comeuppance when he’s electrocuted (director Hill gives us a humorous dolly-zoom on his frying face). The Terminator’s Lance Henriksen and Earl Boen also appear in the show, as does Total Recall villain Michael Ironside.
Tales From the Crypt is an important part of the storied history of the anthology series, whose distinct eras are bound by recurring tendencies. At best, the shows are defined by the singular ways they play with the classic format, both rooted in and treacherous to the standards of the time. Kraft TV (1947-1958) and Studio One (1948-1958) crafted the template for weekly anthology programs. Then Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1965) and Playhouse 90 (1956-1960) changed television (we say that a lot about a lot of shows, but these ones really did). Hitchcock brought an air of artistic seriousness to TV, which was then known for variety shows and sitcoms. Playhouse took it further: Previously, anthology shows tended to be hour-long plays (like Paddy Chayefsky’s Marty, which predates the Oscar-winning film), with Playhouse building off of Hitchcock to make weekly 90-minute dramas. TV was further legitimized by directors like Sidney Lumet and John Frankenheimer, the latter of whom got his start directing 152 TV plays between 1954 and 1960 (including 27 episodes of Playhouse). He would later work on Tales From the Crypt, too.
Rod Serling’s twists are transmuted wickedly and with a sense of irony more mean in its trenchant humor, a delectable mix of moral and amoral—moral consequences depicted with amoral relish.
Rod Serling’s eternal The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) is probably the most popular anthology show, with its intelligent, moral, and sociopolitically astute twists. Leslie Stevens’ The Outer Limits (1963-1965) is the natural successor to Serling’s show, albeit more focused on sci-fi. Other genres got their own shows, too, such as the forgotten western Death Valley Days (1952-1970). Night Gallery (1970-1973) is my personal favorite, with Serling—however restrained by producers—finding the pulse of modern America and summoning from the country’s soul some darkly galvanizing stories with his patented twists. Here they’re a little more tenebrous, a little meaner, with a ravishing, smart aesthetic, looking and sounding just as good as most Hollywood movies of the era. Steven Spielberg’s episode, “Eyes,” starring Joan Crawford, is one of television’s finest works. Serling’s twists are, in Tales From the Crypt, transmuted wickedly and with a sense of irony more mean in its trenchant humor, a delectable mix of moral and amoral—moral consequences depicted with amoral relish.
After Creepshow, Romero’s Tales From the Dark Side helped rejuvenate the horror anthology show in 1983 (the 1990 film was directed by John Harrison, who would contribute to Crypt the next year). It was followed by reboots of The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (both 1985), Amazing Stories (1985, rebooted—poorly— in 2020), and Spielberg’s blighted 1983 omnibus Twilight Zone: The Movie, now notorious for the deaths of Vic Morrow and two young children due to John Landis’ egregious negligence. Two slasher franchises tried to get in on the anthology TV trend, too: Freddy’s Nightmares, each episode of which being introduced by Robert Englund, and Friday the 13th: The Series, which has nothing at all except for some shared crew members to do with the films. There was also Shelley Duvall’s Nightmare Classics, which came out one month after Tales From the Crypt and only lasted four episodes.
Tales From the Crypt had the privilege of airing on HBO, and thus was not shackled by the confines of network TV restrictions like its predecessors. It also benefited from intricate special and make-up effects and production values previous shows couldn’t afford. It eschews moral seriousness but takes its childishly nasty sense of humor seriously. Here, death is life’s punchline, and the wicked—the many wicked—are punished, as is a pervasive theme of anthologies, but in far more grotesque, mean-spirited, and thoroughly satisfying ways. Their punishments are lurid. People scheme, and their schemes fail, or their schemes succeed but the schemers aren’t allowed to enjoy their spoils. They become victims of their own insidious plottings.
Introducing the fourth episode, starring Lea Thompson (another Zemeckis vet), our host quips: “It’s a story about greed, death, and a girl who learned that beauty is only sin deep.” Cue the ghastly guffaws. There’s so much greed and death here, especially the kinds which arise from romantic betrayal: a woman wedges an ax in her husband’s head and is then punished by a psycho in Santa garb; a bride axes her new husband, who married her with the intention of killing her for her money, but doesn’t get the chance; a grumpy retiree slaughters the pets his wife fawns over, so she bludgeons him to death; a nasty gold-digger marries a fat, ugly, smitten man when a fortune teller predicts that he’ll soon be rich and is not long for this world (which is true, but not in the way she assumes). Here, more so than in previous anthologies, you’re inclined to do the Nelson Muntz “Ha ha!” at these dastardly scapegraces’ fitting ends. Real crowd-pleasing stuff.
In Hooper’s “Dead Wait,” a labile thug played by James Remar double-crosses and shoots his partner at the four-minute mark, then duplicitously teams up with a plantation owner played by John Rhys-Davis in order to steal his valuable black pearl. He then partners up with the man’s wife, and they bang under a mosquito-net-shrouded bed as moonlight lays stripes across the room—a dreamy image. Whoopi Goldberg plays an enigmatic priestess who seems to know more than anyone else, and then joins the Cryptkeeper for the outro. Hooper suffuses the half hour with lustrous colors (Remar’s hair and underwear the color of hot blood, blue light pouring through windows) and noir lighting, like in his supremely gorgeous Spontaneous Combustion. There’s lots of chitchat about life’s meanings and lack thereof. Chess is used throughout the episode as a metaphor for the stratagems the characters all plan for their own diabolical desires. Money taints all. The episode is slow for a while, but ends up becoming gnarly, even cruel, with Hooper showing that he still had the chops during a period when he was considered washed.
It eschews moral seriousness but takes its childishly nasty sense of humor seriously. Here, death is life’s punchline, and the wicked—the many wicked—are punished.
Tales From The Crypt producer Gil Adler helmed the absolutely dreadful film Bordello of Blood, but you can see why he got the gig: His “Death of Some Salesmen” is another of the series’ best episodes. Tim Curry plays three members of a deranged family through ingenious blocking and use of doubles, a trick that, with the excellent make-up effects, shows how deft the show’s production was by the fifth season. A guileful salesman played by Ed Begley, Jr., who scams people into giving him money for burial plots in a nonexistent cemetery, meets an ostensibly stupid redneck family—all of them played by Curry, a national treasure. They have some rather nice entertainment set-up that belies the nature one associates with such people; maybe they’ll make an easy and lucrative mark. But they may have their own plans for our confidence man. Another one who gets what’s coming to him. With gusto. The episode twists the show’s frequent proclivity with the treachery of the spouse, as the salesman’s fate is up to the unfortunate-looking daughter and whether she wants to take him as a lover.
“Only Skin Deep” opens with the Cryptkeeper likening relationships to gambling, and gambling is, of course, often a losing endeavor. Directed by William Malone (who would go on to make 1999’s House on Haunted Hill remake), the episode is about a volatile, abusive man who, after striking out with (and then threatening) his ex at a costume party, meets a mysterious masked woman who lives in a vast, vacuous apartment, spartanly decorated, not exactly a sweet home. But there’s booze in the fridge, and she takes off her costume—everything but the mask—making lubricious invitations. They forgo the getting-to-know-you part, agree on anonymity (the masks stay on), and get to the hot and sweaty stuff on the floor. She begs for his violence. But there’s something odd about her mask, as if it’s a physical, intrinsic part of her. He scours the apartment for a hint to her identity, but finds none.
The show tended to be more funny than scary, but this episode is deeply unsettling. Malone brings the surreal sense of everything being just a little off, the world looking and feeling somehow wrong, like it’s been tainted by an ethereal evil. Love, the Cryptkeeper might opine, hurts. And oh boy, do we love watching the pain. FL
