An ode to Tales from the Crypt at its best

Tales from the Crypt is a show I'd seen a few episodes of a few years back but for whatever reason didn't stick with. I was recently looking for something to watch and having it lying around, figured why not, and it quickly became one of my new favorite shows. A particular season deserves special mention though.

For those who don't know, the show was a collaboration of several heavyweight Hollywood directors including Richard Donner (known for the Lethal Weapon franchise), Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future), Walter Hill (The Warriors, Streets of Fire), David Giler (he produced the Alien films with Hill), and Joel Silver (a longtime producer of major films and frequent collaborator with the other men). It would feature big-name directors and actors, or those who would go on to be, and was known for taking advantage of the censorship-free environment at HBO to fully embrace sex, nudity, violence, and gore. It was a popular franchise for years, with multiple spin-offs and several motion pictures under its name. It's not a show I'd heard much about in a long time though, and searching online, I could find little on it and almost nothing new, which gives me the sense that it's been forgotten about, which is unfortunate considering how great it can be.

Though I was familiar with the show, it hadn't occurred to me that I'd love it as much as I do, and it may help to understand how people may come away with different perspectives on it. Tales from the Crypt lasted for seven seasons and it can safely be said that it doesn't completely hold up. The show is really hit-and-miss throughout. All of its stories are drawn from the original Tales from the Crypt and similar EC Comics. Some of them are quite good, and talented directors and actors often make great use of that material, but it doesn't seem like there was so much to work with and a lot of the episodes are poor. There seems to be a consensus that the last season where they moved production to the UK is the clear worst. Having watched now through all of the first six seasons, I'd say that the show peaks in season two, with several of the episodes being among the best television I've ever seen — and there being a fairly consistently high quality — followed by a clear decline in quality in later seasons. There's still plenty of great stuff to see in the following seasons, but it doesn't get back to the illustrious heights of the second season again and the show becomes even less consistently interesting. It's therefore the second season that the show should be recognized for as its greatest achievement.

If you're considering watching it from the beginning though you'll be happy to know that the show starts off great. The first season is a short one at only six episodes but is pretty strong. The premier has William Sadler (Colonel Stuart from Die Hard 2) playing a laid-off executioner who finds criminals who've escaped justice to kill (that sounds familiar). Sadler puts in a great performance — his southern drawl-voiced monologues are a highlight — and there's a film-like quality that defined the show at its best. There's little horror, but the killings, including electric chair executions (electric chairs would go on to be one of the show's favorite recurring motifs) are graphically depicted and there's the show's signature comeuppance — immoral people engaging in bad behavior getting their just desserts, in devastating ways — that we learn here doesn't spare even sympathetic characters.

The first three episodes are all very strong in fact. The second is And All Through The House, a Robert Zemeckis directed Christmas-set horror short about a woman who kills her husband and is stalked by a killer lunatic dressed as Santa Claus. It's basically a mini-movie, again with film-like quality and atmosphere. It's great, and very well done, but it still feels like a bit of a special to the show and not what I think of as a core Tales from the Crypt episode. There is a comeuppance and it's Tales from the Crypt in that, but it's something about how it comes across like a mini-movie that makes me say that the first truly great, original Tales from the Crypt episode is the next one, Dig That Cat... He's Real Gone.

This episode, the third, stars Joe Pantoliano of The Matrix and The Sopranos fame and is my most recommended of the season. Pantoliano plays a homeless man named Ulric who's subjected to an experiment carried out by a mad scientist to inject the nine lives of a cat into a person. It works — which the scientist demonstrates by shooting him in the head, only for him to wake up soon after — and the two men share in the profits as he performs in a circus act as Ulric the Undying where he's killed in different ways by the audience only to be resurrected to do it again. Ulric gets greedy, as do others around him, and he eventually finds that a fatal mistake will cost him. It's the first truly great, core Tales from the Crypt episode I'd argue. It seems to be a popular choice in "best of" retrospectives too. There's a unique funhouse direction (tilted camera work and a dream-like atmosphere) from series heavy Richard Donner, a supernatural power, gore in all the different ways he's killed, and a memorable comeuppance for the character's transgressions.

I've seen some people mention the season finale, Collection Completed, starring M. Emmet Walsh as a man who retires and clashes with his wife and her habit of adopting animals into their home, as a favorite. Regardless, with the small number of episodes and high quality of at least half of them, season one of Tales from the Crypt is a worthwhile watch, if not completely mind-blowing. As I've said though, it's the second season where the show peaks and reaches legendary status. It's a fairly consistently strong season but what really sells it is the four or so best episodes that are all among the best of the show's entire run, if not the clear best. There are a lot of good to great Tales from the Crypt episodes but it's these masterpiece episodes that really make the show something special. Three of these I don't think would be controversial at all — Cutting Cards, The Ventriloquist's Dummy, and Television Terror — while the fourth so impressed me I'd insist on its inclusion — For Cryin' Out Loud. Detailed reviews of these four episodes follow.

There's no way to really talk about what makes these episodes so great without spoiling what happens so expect spoilers. For each episode I'll review the basic plot in a spoiler-free paragraph before getting into things, so use that as a guide. The episodes are listed in chronological order.

Cutting Cards

This episode stars Lance Henriksen (I've always seen him as Bishop the android from Aliens. He proved to be a remarkably versatile actor on Tales from the Crypt though, playing a roughneck sergeant in the season three episode Yellow too) as Reno Crevice and Kevin Tighe as Sam Forney, two rival high-stakes gamblers, and is directed by one of the show's big producing directors, Walter Hill, who also directed the season one premier The Man Who Was Death. Reno's just returned from around a year's stay in Las Vegas and finds Sam playing solitaire at a no-limit table in a bar-like casino, having cleared out all the other gamblers in town. Both men have previously won something off the other and their hatred is mutual. An exchange of taunts between the men leads to a new contest defined by increasingly risky and violent games of chance.

This is a fan favorite episode, and for good reason. The performances are fantastic, the quality movie-like, and the action intense and unforgettable. It's a joy watching these two characters play off each other right from the beginning. "They all laugh at you! They laugh at your wife, they laugh at your clothes, they laugh at this dumb redneck cowboy way you've got of talking and thinking," mocks Sam, in what he admits is him working Reno. Reno prefers a simple roll of dice over a card game and when he gets two sixes on his first roll he assumes he's won. Sam's no less eager to have a go at it though and rolls two sixes himself. "Ohhh, I'm red hot now!" he says beaming like a child. Reno though, annoyed, says he's got a better way of settling things and suggests a game of Russian roulette.

As much as I enjoyed this episode on my first viewing I wondered if it truly counted as a Tales from the Crypt story given the lack of supernatural or even traditional horror elements, but it could be argued that the improbable luck of the two men, demonstrated clearly in them both rolling two sixes, but also in the next scene with the gun, is that. Interestingly enough though, their incredible luck actually serves to spare the men from suffering a more merciful if ignominious fate as there being no winner leads them to take an increasingly destructive path. Cutting Cards can therefore be said to be more subtle in its comeuppance with fate itself removing all safeguards and allowing the two men to destroy themselves through their own will and determination.

Sam tells Reno he has a .44 in his car's glove compartment and the action moves to the casino's parking lot. Sam volunteers to go first but Reno insists on being the one that loads the bullet and spins the chamber. What follows has to be one of the most intense depictions of Russian roulette ever put on screen (I'm not sure I've seen enough examples to confidently say so though). "5:1 odds," Reno tells Sam as he holds the snub-nosed revolver to his head and cocks it. The sound the gun makes each time they pull the trigger and the hammer strikes — what turns out to be nothing — is startling and the actors again do a great job at carrying the tension of the scene, a testament to their skill and the direction given how little actually happens.

With each missed shot one man mocks the other with their diminishing odds. At one point, as Sam is working up to taking a 1:1 shot a man and a woman drive up and honk at them thinking them to be valets. We see an interesting side of their characters here as they team up, with Sam pulling the gun on the man in defense of what he calls his "friend." After the man speeds away in fear Reno turns to Sam to remind him it's his turn. Deep down the men may really like each other a bit, or it could just be them closing ranks to defend the sanctity of their game. Either way, it's not enough to put a stop to things. Sam lucks out on his 1:1 shot and gleefully mocks the seemingly hopeless situation it leads Reno to be in: "it's a shame you are such a strong believer in odds...'cause you haven't got any." Reno goes through with the shot, demanding that no one should say that he didn't have the balls to do it and that it be known that he "went out strong." The last shot fails to go off too though, to Reno's frustration, and they reason the bullet was a dud, with Sam explaining that the bullets were two to three years old and that they may have gotten wet. When Reno accuses him of cheating somehow, Sam ups the stakes once again, challenging him this time to a game of "chop poker."

This game has them at a table in a dimly lit room with a dealer and doctors with bandages and what I presume is disinfectant standing behind on both sides. The game is draw poker where the player with the winning hand cuts off his opponent's fingers with a cleaver. This is a brutal scene, and for a show known for its gore, probably one of the most difficult to watch in its entire run. Reno wins the first hand with his three-of-a-kind beating Sam's two pair. Both men will end up pleading with the other to be careful with the knife and only sever one finger but it's Sam who's to face it first. The camera tilts down to show the full force and result of the swing before panning up to show Sam crying out in pain, and it's very convincingly done.

Sam doesn't quit though and when Reno shows a full house on the next hand he realizes he's going to lose another finger. At this point he's sweating and trembling badly. "C'mon, c'mon, deal 'em good this time!" he orders the dealer, agitated but determined to fight on. This time Reno comes up short, and he tries to negotiate with Sam, promising him he'll have the doctor sow back on one finger if he lets him go. Sam though cares more about hurting his rival than self-preservation — they both do.

The scene cuts here to a hospital, which is merciful given how hard it is to watch. The episode ends with both men sitting together on the floor with their arms and legs missing still competing with each other in a game of checkers, pointing out moves with their noses.

It's a very well done, unforgettable episode. It's actually one of the shorter ones but doesn't feel like it due to the stripped down plot. There's no fluff at all here. As stated above, it's unique in that its comeuppance and supernatural elements are more subtle, and arguably more thought-provoking because of that. Like any great Tales episode it's very rewatchable, exciting, and has highly memorable, well-developed characters. It's one of the most perfect episodes, without a single flaw I can think of. There's even a really cool jazzy (I guess is the term, it's very unique and I find it hard to pin down) score with a digital instrument used for effective sound design too. As great as it is though, I wouldn't say it's my absolute favorite episode. There are just things I personally prefer about some of the others reviewed below.

For Cryin' Out Loud

Now here's an episode that doesn't get near enough credit, at least from what I've seen. The lead's performance alone elevates it to top-tier status. For Cryin' Out Loud stars Lee Arenberg as concert promoter Marty Slash who's plan to steal $1 million of charity money is thwarted by his increasingly antagonistic voice of conscience. I've seen this described as a not-all-that-unique Twilight Zone-like plot but I'm personally not aware of anything it may be based on. Certainly the handling of his voice of conscience (there's an interesting question if it can even be called that, as we'll see), and the back-and-forth between it and Marty, is brilliant and unforgettable in a way only Tales from the Crypt could manage.

The episode opens with Marty pushing past a priest and prison guards to his execution by electric chair, yelling at them to get it over with as they wonder who he's arguing with. It then flashes back two years to Marty at an ear doctor he's gone to to get a sound in his ear checked out. You won't pick up on it on a first viewing but the sound in his ear he describes as something like muffled yelling we learn later is his conscience trying to break through to him. The doctor though dismisses the sound as an aberration and believes it to just be a result of Marty suffering ear damage from years of being at rock concerts. He's given some medicine and the advice that he should retire while he still has his hearing left. It turns out that Marty does plan to retire, that night, as part of his plan to steal the charity money.

Later we find Marty at a charity concert he put together to raise money for an Amazon tribe, with Iggy Pop playing himself as the front man for the band. The band calls Marty up on stage to thank him for putting things together and he thanks the audience and vows that the tribe will get the $1 million shown on the oversized check. It turns out he withdrew the money from the bank earlier and as he goes to take it out of the safe in his office his conscience breaks through to him for the first time.

"What am I, talk radio?" it jokingly asks when he doubts it. His conscience tries to get him to reconsider, telling him that he's committing a serious crime, and that he's not smart enough to get away with it. Marty though hates his job and rejects the pleas of the voice. It should be said here that the performance of the voice actor for Marty's conscience, Sam Kinison (he died not long after this episode premiered and I think he may have been known best for his stand-up), is fantastic too. His coarse voice and piercing scream are perfect for the role and the dialog between the two actors is great.

When Marty hears a knock at the door the voice warns him that he has a bad feeling about it. It's Katey Segal as a groupie, who comes on to Marty but reveals herself to be his banker. She noticed him withdraw the money earlier and is on to him. She demands half of it or she'll report him to the police. Something interesting happens with the voice here where it appears to play both good and bad angel, offering contradictory advice. It's one of a few signs that the voice, which described itself as his conscience, may be something else. Marty tells Katey Segal's character that she can have half, which the voice mocks him for, but decides to kill her by clubbing her with an electric guitar, against the pleas of his internal companion.

Now the voice, frustrated with Marty for not listening to him, screams in his ear out of spite just as he gets a visit from a police officer with one of the roadies over noise complaints they've been having. Marty, happy it's not about anything more, gladly agrees to have the music turned down. As the cop turns to leave though the voice somehow manages to shoot one of the ear plugs in Marty's ears out at him, with it bouncing off his face before landing on the drum case where he stuffed the body of his banker. There's great tension here as the men all stare at the case for a while but the cop is only interested in the "Property of Donny Osmond" marked on it — "Now him, I like."

After they leave the voice completely loses its patience with him and starts screaming non-stop. Marty responds by cramming the ear medicine and cotton swabs the doctor gave him earlier into his ears to shut it up. There's actually another hint here that the voice doesn't have Marty's best interests at heart, as the cause for frustration is him having not turned himself in to the cop.

Then, having gotten away with things this far, when it's just a matter of slipping out through the venue door, the voice tries a new trick. It appears to be able to talk to other people. "They hear me, Marty!" the voice gloats after it tells a group of women about Marty killing his banker and they pull away in disgust. Marty denies that it's possible, but isn't willing to try slipping past the cop from earlier. He instead heads for the bathroom, where the voice appears to scare people there off too, one-by-one.

Marty then has the idea to turn the music up so that no one will be able to hear the voice. The cop hears this just as he's about to leave and comes back. As Marty gets up on stage with the band, banging his head against a large speaker, the music is abruptly shut off by the cop and the voice screams out "I killed my banker" to dead silence, convincing Marty that they definitely heard him that time. Marty then confesses to everything, in humorous fashion. "I didn't mean to kill my banker. All I wanted to do was steal the Amazon money," he says before throwing the cash to the audience. "I couldn't let her do that. I had to smash her in the head with my guitar. You can understand that can't you!?" he asks as they all look on in horror.

Here comes the twist. The camera pans around and reveals one of those cotton swabs from earlier protruding out of his other ear, all bloody as he removes it, and the voice wonders if people couldn't really hear him after all and they were only reacting to that grisly sight. It tells him that if he just kept his mouth shut he probably would have gotten away with it. Needless to say, I loved this twist, and the whole episode. 

Thinking about it afterwards it occurred to me how well they carried things through the whole episode. As mentioned, the sound that Marty describes to the doctor at the start of the episode as what he hears in his ear, what he's treated as crazy for, seems to be the muffled voice of his conscience prior to fully breaking through. Even the protruding cotton swab I think was handled pretty consistently well, with the director managing to avoid showing one side of Marty's face from then on. This was not some half-assed, plothole-suffering twist.

It's a brilliant episode, made to a very high quality in general. As said, Lee Arenberg's performance as Marty is phenomenal, and you couldn't imagine it with any other actor. The conscience character is fantastic too, and perfectly cast as well. The banter between the two of them is great and its continuation through the episode gives it a uniquely exciting pace that makes it so enjoyable to watch and re-watch.

For Cryin' Out Loud is definitely one of the best Tales from the Crypt episodes. It even looks great, with bold colors used throughout — at one point Marty's flushed purplish-red face sits against a sort of dark green from the stage background behind, just one cool use of color in the episode. It's a very interesting episode too when you think about just what the voice is, and the genuine horror in being stuck with an enemy like it in your head. Oh, and there's even a cool opening and closing segment with the Crypt Keeper decked out in long rock star hair carrying a guitar.

The episode ends with Marty sitting still, completely ignoring his last meal before his execution as the voice continues to torment him. "Oh I know, in our last remaining moments, let's go over those Ten Commandments a few more times." The voice begins anyway, "Thou shall not kill, thou shall not steal — boy you've done all these haven't you, Marty?" We now know why he was so eager to die. Great stuff.

The Ventriloquist's Dummy

This was the episode that so impressed me that I had to immediately after go online and start raving about it. The Ventriloquist's Dummy stars legendary comedian Don Rickles as Mr. Ingles (or Ingels, I'm not sure), a successful performer who's sought after by aspiring ventriloquist Billy Goldman, played by Bobcat Goldthwait (who I know as the guy from Scrooged with the funny-sounding voice who loses it after getting laid off), who's idolized him since he saw him as a kid. It's directed by series heavyweight Richard Donner, so knowing that you'd expect a quality episode, but not this.

The episode opens with the young Billy Goldman attending what turns out to be Mr. Ingles last performance.  Their bit is actually fairly funny and Rickles is perfect for the role. After the show a woman visits Ingles in his dressing room to remind him of their date. Ingles tries to get out of it at first but the dummy contradicts him and tells her they'll go. As she leaves Rickles turns to and shakes the dummy in frustration. This is actually the second sign that something is off. The first is during the performance when Ingles appears to go a little too far in his banter with the audience members, showing flashes of genuine anger, though it's played very subtly by Rickles. The episode carries its twist very well and to me it seemed as if it could go either way: the dummy is real or Rickles is crazy.

That night there's a fire in the area —  in a scene with some cool atmosphere, as if it were part of a feature-length movie — and we find out later that that woman who was with him died and Ingles' career ended with the accident. Seeking his help for his ventriloquism act 15 years later, Billy tracks Ingles down to a rustic house. He's excited to be there but is met with a cold shoulder. When Billy spots Morty's case and tries to grab it Ingles gets upset with him and insists that they're retired. The accident appears to have damaged Ingles' performing hand and Billy asks why he doesn't just use the other one, upsetting him further. "That's good for opening doors and swatting flies. This is the hand that had the magic," he angrily explains. Billy tells Ingles he just wanted him to stop by for his first performance on the same stage he saw him perform 15 years earlier, to offer some critiques and pointers. After he makes a heartfelt plea Ingles relents and tells him he'll think about it, which is enough for Billy.

Billy's amateur night act goes terribly and he's booed off the stage as Ingles watches. Already you've got more to this episode than most, with Billy's experience being truly pitiable. He finds Ingles at the bar after the show and after prodding him is given the honest advice that he "had no technique, no concentration, and no material." He suggests Billy give up trying to be a ventriloquist, consoling him by letting him know that he knows what it's like to have your life's dream fall apart. After Billy leaves, Ingles appears in conflict with himself, as the episode's signature windpipe-based (or an instrument like it) horror score plays, before going over to the woman on the other end of the bar who'd expressed interest in him earlier.

While Billy is leaving dejected he hears a woman screaming and runs to the source where he and others find the woman dead in a car. The other people there say they saw an old man with her and the vehicle has been covered in gasoline, with the culprit intending to burn the evidence, just like happened 15 years earlier. Billy reasons that Ingles is the killer and rushes to his place to confront him. As he barges in he sees Ingles preparing to inject himself with morphine, which Billy grabs from him and smashes against a wall. He accuses Ingles of being a "junkie" killer but while Ingles admits he set the fires, he says it was "Morty" who killed them.

This is where the fun really starts. Ingles explains that Morty hates women because he's never been able to have one in a normal way, and informs Billy that he's very psychotic. Billy assumes Ingles to be crazy, and tells him that he can get him some help. Ingles then tells Billy that he better leave before Morty tries to hurt him. Billy takes Morty's case down to prove to him that he isn't real while Ingles grabs a cleaver off the wall and approaches him. The two men wrestle with the knife while Ingles berates Billy as a "know-it-all little shit," before revealing that Morty is flesh and blood, he's his brother, a sort of evil Siamese twin attached to the end of Ingles' right arm.

What ensues can only be described as very graphic Sam Raimi-style horror-comedy, and some of the best I've ever seen. Ingles explains that rather than go through life as freaks, they decided on a career in show business. As Morty puts it, they decided to put their heads together. "That's a joke, son, I don't see you laughing," he says as Ingles pats him on the head, both of them laughing. The morphine that Billy destroyed had been used by Ingles to keep Morty drugged up to calm him down. Now there's no stopping him.

They approach Billy with the cleaver as he shifts backwards on his back. "What are you going to do, talk him to death? Slice him!" Morty orders Ingles. Billy tells Ingles that Morty doesn't control him, that "[he's] the ventriloquist, and "[Morty's] just the dummy," which leads to a funny speech from Morty where he explains that he's really "the brains of [the] outfit," that he wrote all the material, that he even "wrote his ad-libs," and that "[Ingles is] just the straight man, [he's] the funny one." Morty then laments being stuck with his brother. This leads to Ingles deciding which of them to use the knife on. Rejecting Morty's pleas that he'll tell everybody about them and "lock [them] up with all the other freaks," Ingles cuts off his own hand with the cleaver, in several gory, dramatically depicted blows that I found hard to watch on first viewing. Now this is censorship-free TV.

As Ingles holds up his bloody arm with severed hand they at least reason that they're done with it, until Morty corrects them: "Au contraire, mes frere," (I think is the quote) it's actually him who's now free. There's yet more serious gore as Morty flies at Ingles' neck and kills him by tearing off a chunk of flesh. It's brutal. Billy, now pissed off, grabs a baseball bat that's handy and resolves to smash Morty with it. Morty hides for a bit behind appliances while insulting him. "You're a real schmuck" being one of many funny things he says. Morty slips out in between Billy's feet as he swings and misses before climbing up on the shoulder of Ingles' body and taunting Billy to hit him. I actually laughed out loud the first time I saw this as Billy misses and hits Ingles in the head with the bat, knocking him over and further desecrating his body, only to be mocked by Morty: "The batter's blind!"

He eventually hits his mark and Morty goes flying into a meat grinder. Billy turns the handle as Morty cries out in pain, "not the meat grinder!" It's at this point that the character, who'd been ugly and disturbingly evil, actually comes across as cute. There are so many different genres it alternates between here, and it's all done so well. Morty pleads that he'll do anything if Billy stops turning the device, which eventually catches Billy's interest. "Anything?" he asks, before it cuts to Morty getting ready to perform with Billy at the club, showing his outfit being placed over him.

We hear from the announcer that they're direct from Las Vegas, "Morty and Billy" (Morty seemingly gets first billing), presumably a successful act. The performance is going great, the audience loves them — and the act is genuinely funny again, it seems Morty really is the real talent — until Morty notices an attractive woman in the audience. His come-ons get more and more aggressive as he derails the act. They argue and the audience goes along with it for a bit, until Billy threatens to "shove [him] back into that meat grinder" and they start to get disturbed. Morty then tells him that he's renegotiating their deal as he somehow begins to surgically attach himself to Billy's arm. Billy cries out in pain and the audience begins to leave. He then pulls off Morty's outfit to reveal the sickening sight of Billy's fingers sticking out of their fused skin. "Looks like we're stuck with each other," the last thing he says.

The first word that came to me on seeing this was demented. That's as great a Tales ending as any, twisted, memorable, and disturbing. I love the character Morty. I believe he's voiced and puppeteered by Don Rickles himself (though I'm not sure how his expressive eyes worked, there may have been some other help or technology in there), making the performance even more impressive. He's simultaneously disturbing, funny, and even cute. Even as just an appendage he's one of the show's more memorable characters. 

The chemistry between the two actors is great. Gothwait plays a great loser. This is some of the best horror-comedy I've ever seen, in a TV show or movie. It's top-tier Tales in its great humor — much of which is told naturally through the characters' acts — the sheer fun of it, and its unforgettable ending. I found the way the audience is disturbed by what happens with Billy and Morty at the end to be so affecting. Like the in-show audience, the viewer doesn't know what to make of it all too. It's really incredible, one-of-a-kind TV, that left me floored. It's definitely one of the best episodes and a personal favorite.

Television Terror

Television Terror is a masterpiece. By this point in my first watch-through of the season I'd had more than enough of my fill of greatness. I had heard about this episode before but was too busy raving about the other amazing episodes I'd already seen in the season to be that excited for it. How ignorant I was. There's a strong case that can be made that Television Terror is the absolute best episode of Tales from the Crypt, based on the fact it so effectively represents what the show was about, it's very well done, it does more with the format and has more to say to say than arguably any other episode, and it avoids the excessive camp and lightheartedness that maybe holds some other episodes back from being truly unforgettable.

The episode stars real-life television host Morton Downey Jr. as the host of Horton Rivers Live in a special investigation of a house where several murders took place and that's said to be haunted. His The Morton Downey Jr. Show was unfortunately a little before my time so I wasn't familiar with the man going in. I understand it to have been a Jerry Springer-like talk show that ran for a few years in the late '80s and is said to have pioneered that sort of "trash TV" format. The in-episode show is more of a trash investigative journalism thing. At one point they make reference to the infamous Geraldo Rivera special on Al Capone's vault, with one of the producers telling Horton that the networks are worried their show is going to be a bust like it. Horton Rivers Live seems to be based on that sort of thing, but with maybe more of the trashiness of the talk show Morton Downey Jr. was famous for. He's absolutely perfect for the role though.

The episode begins with the opening credits rolling over a still shot of the darkened exterior of the murder house with an out-of-tune piano playing the spooky theme, before panning down to reveal the circus-like atmosphere of the TV production crew outside. The episode makes brilliant use of this juxtaposition — between real horror and the phony, over-produced television perspective on it — throughout. After Horton does his introductory segment he barks at his female producer Sam (played by Dorothy Parke) to come outside. We learn that that the production crew dislikes Horton and that he's an unscrupulous man who believes that "people will believe what [he] tells them." When his producer gives him pushback he reminds her that just because she's sleeping with him doesn't give him the right to talk back to him, insulting her further.

They interview a psychic who's "expert testimony" that the house has a haunted energy is dramatically defied by Horton for the show. As workers remove the panels used to board up the house Horton delivers a monologue with cheesy music playing over the footage while another producer, Booth (played by Peter Van Norden), berates Horton to get going and get inside. The whole team hates and has little patience for Horton.

The house itself is excellent. It's a real house in LA, and apparently something of a landmark building. It's also been a popular film location for TV and movies. It's a testament to the direction that this home that looks very beautiful in real-life is so convincingly done up as a haunted house. Sound cues and the creepy score help the viewer to feel like something is wrong about what they're doing, making entertainment out of this tomb. It just doesn't feel right as Horton walks through the hallway speaking to his cameraman as they make their way to the kitchen.

There in the kitchen Horton gets a scare as a rat that creeps up on him on the counter causes him to drop a jar. The producers all have a good laugh at this, with Booth explaining, "it's his fucking family!" After the kitchen they head for the parlor where we're shown a flashback of one of the murders. As Horton plays some keys on the piano he suddenly asks, "what's that?" as the camera and its attached light are pointed at some furniture covered in sheets on the other side of the room. Turns out Horton was just playing for the cameras. Still, the tension is great.

Next they head for the basement where the bodies were found, as Horton explains to the viewers. It feels even worse what they're doing now, desecrating the final resting place of the men with their camera and tasteless show. They find their way to an alcove in the basement with a hole in the wall that leads to a dark space — a truly unnerving place — while Horton wonders what drove the killer, Ada Ritter, the manager of the home for the elderly where the killings took place, to do what she did. Horton theorizes that it was "perhaps an insatiable bloodlust" as he's told they cut to commercial in ten seconds and we're actually shown the start of what looks like a baby commercial with a talking teddy bear. It's actually fortunate that we're taken out of the scene here and shown things through the lens of the TV show because we're spared the full dread of the setting.

They make their way upstairs happy with the course of the show so far. Horton says that he told them so, but Sam responds that they're worried that the show is starting to drag and that "it's going to be another Al Capone's vault," the infamous much-hyped Giraldo Riviera special that turned out to be a bust mentioned above. When Horton, frustrated, asks what he can possibly do to spice it up, they hear an audible groan from upstairs.

Horton is now convinced that "something is going on in [the] house." He and the cameraman head upstairs to check it out. The direction here is great as the light attached to the camera, the only lighting there is, casts moving shadows over sheet-covered furniture as the camera pans around the area (what I guess is an upstairs foyer). It's great atmosphere created from realistic lighting and a simple, commonplace setting.

When the feed starts breaking up through static, the cameraman sets to fixing the problem while Morton is asked to check out the sound of dripping water they hear. In the bathroom he sees one of the elderly victims with his throat cut in the bathtub. Sam asks the cameraman if he caught any of it and he says he didn't, but the doubt isn't to last long.

Now the doors start to open and close on their own and the house shakes. "Are you getting this!?" Horton asks. They get the feed back and manage to capture the phenomenon for their viewers. The shaking of the house gets more violent as a chandelier and other furnishings crash to the floor. There's banging at the doors now as blood drips through them. We're shown the producers watching this, speechless to see that the place really is haunted. This is another little thing I loved about this episode, the depiction of people experiencing supernatural phenomena in the gritty (in the sense of its realism where characters face gory ends), dark-humored world of Tales from the Crypt. There was just something so cool, so believable about these reactions.

When the shaking stops Sam excitedly demands that Horton get in front of the camera and do a stand-up. Horton, composed and professional on camera, describes this as the first case of paranormal phenomena caught on tape. They hurriedly get the psychic from earlier to explain to viewers what they've seen. He describes it as two things, "common in the world of psy-phenomena": the first, a psychic impression of a traumatic past event, that Horton explains as being like an instant replay, to the psychic's agreement, and the second, poltergeist activity, from what he describes as a "malevolent earth-bound spirit." To Horton's follow-up question, "are we in any danger?" the psychic bluntly replies that "you were in danger the second you stepped through the threshold of that house." 

This minor twist, that the psychic who you'd assume to be a crank actually knows what he's talking about, and that he even kicks off the dark tone of the climax, is yet another thing I loved about this episode. A door near them suddenly opens and closes and we hear a laughing voice. Horton is now convinced that there's someone else in the house with them. He spots some blood on the carpet nearby. As he crouches to check it out the hanging body of his cameraman drops down next to him. "Who's holding the camera?" Sam asks in horror as one of the ghosts lunges at him. He tries to escape downstairs but is cut off on the stairs by several other ghosts. 

He screams for help, for them to get him out of there. The production team deliberates over what to do. It's Sam's decision to "pull it" and send in a security team, or not. They're told that the networks love whatever it is they're doing and the ratings are incredible. As Horton escapes into a master bedroom he pleads for them to get him out of there one last time, only for Sam to inform him that they have to keep him in there because the ratings are too good, telling him that he just needs to have that "killer spirit" he insultingly told her she needed earlier as he dismissed her concerns.

The ghost of the killer, Ada Ritter, is with him in the bedroom and comes at him with a chainsaw (kind of silly I guess, but it's typical of how Tales from the Crypt doesn't mess around, with even the ghosts meaning to get right to killing). He fights it off for a bit but is soon fatally cut as he's tangled up in the cords of the curtains and thrown through the window, with his body left hanging outside the window for the cameras to see. There's a brilliant scene here where Sam, seeing this on TV, runs out of the crew truck to see Horton's hanging body for herself, as if breaking the threshold between television and reality, for her and the viewers' sake (i.e. us) one last time. The episode ends with Horton post-mortem announcing the next episode of Horton Rivers Live as his lifeless, bloody body hangs there: "Do you want to know what it's like to have sex with the Devil? Meet four women, and one man, who have."

This is arguably one of the cruelest episodes, which makes it interesting to talk about. Horton's transgressions are much more minor than most on a show where characters tend to find comeuppance for murders, vile thefts, and other serious crimes. Horton is dishonest with his viewers, and makes a show of the sacred — their special effectively amounts to desecration of a final resting place — but unlike a lot of other bad Tales from the Crypt characters, but we don't see him do anything else wrong through the episode. He doesn't abandon his cameraman or put anyone in further danger, beyond the initial decision to do the show — which though it may have seemed dumb to others, could not have reasonably been seen as putting anyone in any danger. His producers on the other hand straight-up murder him. I didn't understand why they couldn't have kept the cameras rolling as they sent in a security team to rescue him but I guess that's just as it's written.

Television Terror is of course one of the clearest examples of straight satire they did on Tales from the Crypt. The people who made this obviously didn't take kindly to this kind of TV, that must have been popular around the first airing of the episode in summer 1990. It may come across as a bit heavy-handed in its message, and overly cruel, based on this review, but I thought there were interesting issues it raised regardless. It was wrong of them to treat this sacred place — a tomb — with the disrespect they did, and their comeuppance consequently has a religious element to it (the psychic describes the house as "a pit of seething evil").

Morton Downey Jr. does an fantastic job at playing Horton Rivers. It's been described as him just playing himself but another more insightful way I've seen it put is that what he did on his talk show was always a form of acting, and that he's just a naturally talented actor. He's definitely one of the more memorable characters on the show. The supporting cast, especially the production crew, do a great job at rounding out the episode too. It should be noted as well that Horton's narrations of things to the in-universe audience are highly efficient deliveries of exposition. It's a very well done episode in general, basically.

This episode is also said to be notable as a pioneer in the found footage genre (usually a sub-genre of horror). Found footage isn't the best way to put it here but you can see how it could have been influential, or was groundbreaking without the recognition at least, on that. In the episode the footage hasn't been found because it's being streamed to audiences live. What Television Terror does is tell the story simultaneously through two different lenses, as noted: the phony world of TV and the real-life horror of the house. That juxtaposition is brilliantly played throughout. 

This is a very good episode but if I had to knock it for something that could be improved I'd say that the ghosts could have been scarier. They're just old men with white paint on their faces and a little bit of gore makeup. It may have been expecting too much of special effects at the time to make much out of ghosts in human form, and regardless, Television Terror does a fantastic job building tension as they explore the house. It is a little scary, but it's also funny, exciting, and masterfully done. It's an incredible episode.

***

The second season is the longest at 18 episodes. Even aside from the truly fantastic episodes gone over above, it's a pretty consistently great season. There are several other good to great episodes and I'm not sure one you can call a complete stinker in every sense.

This season also has one of my personal favorites, Korman's Kolamity, a cute episode that stars Harry Anderson as Jim Korman, a cartoonist for the Tales from the Crypt comic — this is one of a few meta episodes, and probably the best. When his ballbreaking wife forces Korman to take experimental fertility drugs, dismissing the side effects, the monsters he draws come to life. After being saved from an armed rapist in the laundromat by one of these monsters, Lorelei Phelps (played by Cynthia Gibb) — who we find out to be a cop after — notices a monster on a Tales from the Crypt comic she sees at a vendor looks just like the one she saw and she tracks down Jim Korman by his signature.

Tales from the Crypt can have the problem of leaning too much on humor but this episode is a lot of fun, and I thought a welcome change of pace. Cynthia Gibb is pretty cute in it and *spoilers* the happy ending between them is nice to see on such a bleak show. Lorelei has Jim draw a monster to test her theory that his drawings are bringing monsters to life. Long story short, they do, and it eventually solves his problems for him. The monsters are masterworks in the art of practical effects, there's a fun and effective style to it, with accompanying score, and it's just well done and really enjoyable in general. It deserves more words but this can't go on forever.

The season starts off pretty well too, enough I think to grab most people's attention. The first episode has Demi Moore marrying a disgustingly done up Jeffrey Tamoor because a fortune teller tells her that the she'll get a rich inheritance from her husband when he dies, and he won't live long. It seems a classic Twilight Zone/Monkey's Paw type story, but it's great to see these actors in their roles and it's fun and suitably bloody in the ending.

The second episode, The Switch, is the one Arnold Schwarzenegger directed — it even features him in the Crypt Keeper segment, a rarity. I've seen this listed as a favorite of some people but I wonder if that's biased by Arnold's role in it. It's very standard Twilight Zone fare this time, without anything to justify its inclusion in Tales from the Crypt, meaning gore and/or horror usually. I guess the direction was good enough for what it was, but it's not the sort of episode I have much interest in rewatching like the others.

Next is Cutting Cards, a solid sell for the season early on. Then 'Til Death, about a Caribbean landowner who uses his ex-local lover's voodoo to win the heart of a visiting wealthy heiress but uses too much that she continues to love him even in death. After comes There's a Crowd, an episode I honestly hated at first, about a man who thinks his wife is cheating on him with another man. I thought it was a bit distasteful and disliked the lead moping around, acting like a bum the whole episode (he wasn't sympathetic to me), but I suppose it is a reasonably well done original slasher-horror story based on domestic breakdown.

Teri Hatcher stars as a model with an abusive boyfriend, played by the cokehead from RoboCop, in the next episode, The Thing From the Grave. It's okay. The good guy she falls for is killed by the bad guy, but he made a promise to help her and the special necklace a family member gave to him brings him back from the dead to protect her. After that is The Sacrifice where an insurance agent conspires with his wealthy client's wife to kill him, take his money, and be with her, only to be found out and blackmailed by his lover's ex, played by Michael Ironside. There's not much to say about these episodes. At this point in the show the production values were still impressive, the actors captivating enough, and/or the stories still interesting to keep things humming. 

Next up is the showstopper For Cryin' Out Loud. This is an episode I think I went into blind and came out blown away. It was the first episode I couldn't stop rewatching, and as noted above, you can see how well crafted it is once you know what happens. Coming off a high from that episode, the next I saw was Four-Sided Triangle, which has Patricia Arquette as a fugitive on the run who's forced into labor on the farm of an abusive couple. There's a hint of something interesting in this episode with Arquette's hallucination of a scarecrow coming alive, but I just found it too dumb and with too little to be interesting, what with the simple husband bumbling and leering at Arquette. Not to be disappointed for long though, next up was The Ventriloquist's Dummy, an episode that knocked my socks off and sent me immediately online to rave about it.

Unfortunately, the episode after that is one of the weaker ones of the season. Judy, You're Not Yourself Today is about what turns out to be a witch, played by Frances Bay (the old lady of Seinfeld, Happy Gilmore, and other fame I'm sure), who visits the pliable wife of a man — who's depicted ridiculously as an on-edge gun nut — while he's away, and uses a necklace to swap bodies and steal her youthful beauty. I could have done without it. Then comes Fitting Punishment, with an all-black cast. It's actually pretty good, with one of the more interesting settings on the show, and nice atmosphere. A funeral home director takes in his nephew, Bobby, as his next closest of kin when the teenager's parents die. He cuts corners in his work and abuses Bobby. There's some nice horror atmosphere in the basement where they work on the bodies. I thought the ending to be a bit lame though, holding it back a bit for me, but it's definitely a worthy addition to the season.

After that's Korman's Kalamity, keeping the bar high as I got to the end of the season. The next episode, Lower Berth, is one I've seen mentioned a lot in retrospectives, but that may be due to its tie-in with the Crypt Keeper: it unexpectedly ends up telling how the show's mascot character, the Crypt Keeper, was born. His crying at the end is funny, and a nice bit of character, but the episode itself is just okay. After that comes Mute Witness to Murder. Call me soft but I actually liked the atmosphere in the opening and his lovely wife. It's okay, and that counts for something. 

Then we've got Television Terror. At this point I had caught my fill of greatness from this season and wasn't looking for any more, as I've said. I had read "best of" lists that included this one, so I knew it was highly regarded. It still managed to floor me. It doesn't even end there though. The next episode is My Brother's Keeper. I've actually seen this on at least one "best of" list, so it deserves some attention. It's about as crass as Tales can get: two grown men are Siamese twins with clashing personalities. They're joined above the hip, and it's explained that because they share a circulatory system (I think?), it's very difficult to separate them. They visit a doctor who can perform the risky surgery but he says the odds are only 50:50 they survive and the nice twin balks at it. The bad twin comes up with an elaborate plan to pressure his brother to sign the surgery. When it doesn't work, he resorts to murder — he's confident that nothing could be done about him because they're attached and they can't execute (or is it just jail?) one without the other. It doesn't work out that way, needless to say. It's maybe a bit dumb but also a lot of fun. It's classic Tales.

The season finale, The Secret, is...good enough, I guess. It's about a boy, always wearing a Davy Crockett raccoon hat, who's adopted from an orphanage by a wealthy but distant couple. He's given a room full of amazing toys and an endless supply of desserts but the only companion he finds is the butler (who interestingly enough happens to be the same actor who played the crazed killer Santa in the season one episode And All Through The House). It could have ended better but it's a passable finale to an overall great season.

***

Tales from the Crypt is a great show as a whole, and should be remembered as such. It doesn't exactly fall off a cliff after the second season, it just doesn't manage to return to those lofty heights again. The third season actually has some of my favorite episodes and there are standouts still in the seasons after. It's just that one of the things that makes Tales from the Crypt so notable is the absolute level of greatness it achieved through much of the second season. It's some of the best TV of all time — arguably the best in all of TV and movies, given the advantages of the format (I'm not sure something like Cutting Cards could even work in a longer format, and the rapid plotting and short runtime I think often help to create more interesting, better-focused stories — an argument shouldn't have to be made for the TV format these days though). There's simply nothing else like it, with the big four episodes reviewed above being the ultimate examples of the show at its best.

It's an interesting exercise to consider what the greatest of the episodes have in common, and what makes them so special. They're all based on genuinely great, unforgettable stories of course (there are a lot of weak episodes deriving I think from the fact that they relied too much on the comics for material) but also the actors are perfect for their roles — so much so that you couldn't imagine anyone else doing it — and there's a unique style and direction, expertly executed, in the score, cinematography, etc. It's top-tier directors, producers, and actors letting loose and making incredible, riotous stuff. It's some of the most fun you can have watching TV.

So with all this in mind, I find it odd that we rarely hear about Tales from the Crypt. The franchise has been in the news in recent years with talk of an M. Night Shyamalan reboot (which apparently is dead for now), but it's not a show that comes up a lot in discussions of the greatest TV shows. I've found two possible explanations for this. The first is that it's from another era, long before what most people these days see as the rise of premium TV through, ironically, other HBO shows The Sopranos and The Wire. Tales from the Crypt is all on its own as premium TV released around the same time as excellent network TV like The Simpsons and Seinfeld. It may not have distinguished itself well too due to the gore and dark humor that only a limited audience would be interested in. That's unfortunate because it really is an historically great show. The second explanation is that they screwed up the DVD release and other resale, with copyright issues playing some role I understand. It did occur to me on reading about this that I'd never seen DVDs for the show, and it doesn't seem like good-quality ones are easy to find. That would explain how the show could have slipped from being a hit franchise to falling mostly out of the popular consciousness, in an era of nostalgia for '90s (in this case mostly early '90s) content.

Regardless of how the show slipped from public memory or why, it shouldn't have. Consider this a vote in favor of Tales from the Crypt being among the greatest television shows of all time. I highly recommend it, with the best episodes reviewed above being must-watches for everyone.