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Reel world: Tales from the Crypt
Tales filled with frights, delights
By Nicholas Dewart
dewart@mscd.edu

Tales from the Crypt Not rated 380 minutes $39.98

Season five of Tales from the Crypt originally aired 13 years ago, but time hasn’t buried the series’ macabre appeal.

The Cryptkeeper, the dessicated, ghoulish puppet that hosts the series, succinctly sums up the show in one of his introductions.

“Good evening, creeps,” he coos. “And welcome aboard Tales from the Crypt’s scarelines flight 666, offering direct service from your living room straight to hell.”

The complete fifth season on DVD comprises 13 stories marked by murder, fraught with twists and – -thanks to the Cryptkeeper – sprinkled with cynical humor. The fifth season’s star-studded cast, which includes Lou Diamond Phillips, Martin Sheen, Billy Zane and John Stamos, is a testimony to the series’ excellence in gore-filled storytelling.

Episode one, “Death of Some Salesmen,” is a hot way to start the series’ hellish season. A steamy love scene opens the episode, but the lovers’ relationship ends almost as fast as their capricious lust began.

A chauvinistic salesman, played by Ed Begley Jr., gets up to flee from his one-night stand. As he reaches for the door, his lover says, “But you said you loved me.”

He replies, “It’s called salesmanship.”

The character’s callous reply serves as the episode’s ironic catch line. While on the road he uses his charm to separate hapless victims from their hard-earned cash. His sales streak ends, however, when he reaches a dilapidated house on Maple Drive.

The old couple that owns the house and their child – all three characters played by Tim Curry – aren’t duped by the salesman’s cunning ways.

Begley finds this out the hard way when the old man hits him with a baseball bat and takes him hostage.

The plot teeters back and forth as the salesman fights for his freedom. His struggle to
escape is resolved in the show’s final, gruesome twist, in which the phrase, “It’s called salesmanship” finds a new, disturbing meaning.

In Episode 10, “Come the Dawn,” Brooke Shields plays a tough, anonymous drifter with a checkered past.

Shields doesn’t allow her natural beauty to detract from her nameless character’s wrong-side-of-the-tracks demeanor. She smacks gum, wears flannel and grittily squints with the best of them.
The episode begins with the bloody murder of a woman in a bathroom stall. In the next scene, a man named Roger, played by Perry King, drives his Porsche past the downtrodden Shields. When her truck breaks down in the pouring rain, she flags down Roger for help. After entering his car and chatting, it’s decided she will stay the night with him at his cabin. On the way to the cabin, Roger stops at a grocery, whose proprietor tells Roger that a truck had been stolen nearby and a woman murdered that evening. Roger takes the suspicious Shields up to the cabin where, once again, the story ends with a murderous twist.

The biggest disappointment of the three-disc set is its lack of extras. The lone special feature is a virtual comic book for “Death of Some Salesmen.”

Presented as a series of comic-book panels narrated by the Cryptkeeper, it provides an intriguing glimpse into the story’s history and evolution, from a William Gaines Tales From the Crypt comic to a half-hour TV episode. It’s a great comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of both mediums, as the TV show packs in more plot, while the comic displays more visual freedom.

Despite a lack of extras, the collection is a solid purchase for horror fans. The ’90s might be dead, but season five of Tales From the Crypt is worth reliving.