I remember being a fan of the HBO series Tales from the Crypt back in the 90s. That animatronic Crypt Keeper would come out, make some bad puns, and then there’d be some pulpy, often lurid story where someone gets some sort of poetic justice, mostly with a supernatural twist. There’d be some recognizable actors there, and it was often played not quite straight. I knew it was based on an old comic book series from the long-since defunct publisher EC Comics.
But apparently, HBO wasn’t the first to adapt that series to a live action medium. The British movie production company Amicus Productions got there first in 1972 with actor Sir Ralph Richardson playing the Crypt Keeper, here just an old man in a hooded robe.
A group of five people, one woman and four men, are taking a tour of an old tomb when they wander off away from the rest of the group and encounter the mysterious Crypt Keeper. None seem to know quite how they got there, but the Crypt Keeper then points to each in turn and tells a story about each of them. Each of these stories was a straight adaptation of an actual Tales from the Crypt or similar such EC Comics story. And, as fits Tales from the Crypt, each one shows someone doing something they shouldn’t and then paying some sort of price.
What kind of stories are at play here? Well, a woman (Joan Collins) murdered her older, wealthy husband around Christmas as a homicidal lunatic in a Santa suit is running around loose. A philandering husband (Ian Hendry) goes out with his young mistress only to be involved in a car accident, but then he seems to be wandering around later. A wealthy father-and-son plot to get a harmless old man (Peter Cushing) to sell his home through a variety of dirty tricks. A failed businessman (Richard Greene) suffers when his wife (Barbara Murray) makes some wishes on a Monkey’s Paw style totem (and they actually reference that story). And a stingy man (Nigel Patrick) cuts the budget at a home for the blind until the residents decide to get some back on their own.
While tonally about as different from the HBO series as it is possible to be, this movie does have a classy look to it, and while most of the cast aren’t what I would call super-famous, they are often familiar-looking. The various characters appearing in the crypt with the Crypt Keeper (except, arguably, the failed businessman) all deserve what they got, and even if the blood doesn’t look right, the stories work. That goes especially for the one with Peter Cushing, playing the most harmless old man possible who doesn’t deserve the slightest bit of what happened to him.
Oh, and it wouldn’t be Tales from the Crypt if there wasn’t a final twist involving the Crypt Keeper and his five visitors. I wouldn’t say I like this movie as much as the old series, but I haven’t seen the old show in quite some time and have no idea how much it holds up. This one was a lot of fun and was one of the better horror anthologies I’ve seen.
Grade: B
0 Comments