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Reviews >> Television Review Index >> Tales from the Crypt

:: Tales from the Crypt season 1 ::

by Dweller

It was a dark and stormy mid afternoon, I was reading a magazine.  I turn the page and find an ad. To my ghoulish delight, I see that Tales from the Crypt is released on DVD, and I had to change my pants.

This was the show:
After one of the best opening credit sequences ever, with music by the maestro Danny Elfman, the lovable undead Crypt Keeper introduces us to tonight’s Tale with a fond, “Hello Boils and Ghouls….” And the puns continue.

The first season includes six dead time stories; in The Man who was Death William Sadler (Shawshank’s Heywood) plays an executioner who goes freelance and gives crooks watts coming to them.  In And All Through the House, Larry Drake (Darkman’s Durant) plays an escaped psycho psantaclause who pstalkes a naughty widow.  In Dig that Cat… He’s Real Gone, Joey Pants (Risky Business’s Guido) has the nine lives of a feline implanted into him so he doesn’t have to pussyfoot around Death.  Only Sin Deep is that classic story where Lea Thompson (Back to the Future) sells her beauty only to find out she is a pawn in the shopkeeper’s plan.   Lover Come Hack to Me stars the surprisingly sexy Amanda Plummer (Pulp Fiction’s Honey Bunny) as a mousey newlywed on a haunting honeymoon.  And finally Collection Completed stars M Emmet Walsh (Blood Simple’s Visser) as a retiree with a hobby sure to scare the stuffing out of his wife.

There are two featurettes; "From Comic Books to Television" is a well done documentary featuring John Carpenter, RL Stine, and George Romero (I shouldn’t have to tell you who these people are.) tells the fascinating history of horror comics. "Crypt Keeper’s History of Season One" is a thrown together crapfest with re-voiced stock footage of the crypt keeper puppet that was edited with a meat cleaver.

My Thoughts:
There were no episode commentaries, which is just too bad. There is a new introduction with the Crypt Keeper, and unfortunately you could tell that they couldn’t  get the proper puppet.  The good defiantly outweighs the bad here. This anthology series was originally published in comic book form in the 50s by William M  Gaines (Mad Magazine) and EC comics. I loved the comics and the transition to TV is awesome. This is an HBO show, so they could give the eps an R rating and do justice to the subject matter. The absolute best thing is that the episodes keep getting better season after season, and we have a total of seven seasons to look forward to. 

The Whatwhat:
I Love this show. It’s like Twilight Zone, but with puns, gore, swearing, and boobs.

B+

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