Tales from the Crypt

Oooh, this one was a treat for me. Last night, I went to a the first of a weekly movie night at my friend's comic book store, AlleyCat Comics (in Chicago, if you're local). It was a real good time, enjoying the movies with a cool, funny audience.

The features for the night were a pair of B-grade 1970's British adaptations of the EC Horror comic books of the 1950's. I never even knew these movies existed, but they were both campy fun, comedic horror that isn't too intense for kids over the age of 9 or so.

The first entry, Tales from the Crypt, is framed by a group of five individuals who all coincidentally cross paths and find themselves trapped in The Crypt. The man known as The Cryptkeeper shuts them in and tells them they can leave when he's good and ready to let them go. It's not the dumb pun spewing corpse puppet from the classic HBO series, it's a guy in a monk's robes and hood. He then tells the five strangers prophecies of how they're going to die. Cue the stories.

First, probably my favorite, Joan Collins murders her husband on Christmas Eve for the insurance, then goes about trying to clean up and make it look like an accident, all the while being terrorized by a maniac dressed like Santa Claus.

Then, a guy abandons his family for a girl, and gets in a car crash on the way. He wakes up in the wreckage and tries to put his life back together... or does he? You can add "or does he?" to a lot of these.

Then these snobs don't like their neighbor, a friendly old man (Peter Cushing) who loves kids and animals, so they come up with a prank in hopes of driving him away. It backfires and he commits suicide. Then, one year later...

Next, this rich guy is on the verge of bankruptcy, so his wife uses an ancient Chinese statue to wish she was rich. Her husband dies and she gets all of his money. And so on. It's a Monkey's Paw thing. They even mention the story of the Monkey's Paw a million times in the short, so it's OK that they're stealing it...?

Finally, a Doctor becomes head of a Home for the Blind. He begins tightening the budget on things like food and heat, while continuing to live well himself, much to their resentment. They plot their revenge.

Some stories are better than others. There's always an ironic twist at the end. There are laughs in all of them. The acting isn't bad, and both the acting and directing seem pretty self aware. The director, Freddie Francis, seemed like a pretty clever filmmaker. His other film I've seen is Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly; a quirky horror comedy satire. He also got an Oscar nomination or two in his day as a Cinematographer.

The movie isn't long, but it feels a little too long, because of the division into five segments. I think four is probably a better number. Even if the running time was the same, it wouldn't have dragged with one less story. Some of the stories' twists don't really make much sense, but I don't think the children who comprised the movie's target audience really cared. And for we adults, it's part of the fun. The ending of the last story is projected to us for so long, that we just have to wait and wait for it to happen. Luckily, there's an even more interesting element to the ending than the twist itself (involving razor blades).

After the five stories are told, we return to the Cryptkeeper who gives us one final twist: (Highlight for SPOILER) They were dead all along! Well, four of them were. One of them not only doesn't die in his story, but becomes immortal. Yet he winds up in hell with everyone else anyway. (END SPOILER) That's right, everyone, the funniest bit is saved for the very end.

Follow this link for my review of the sequel: Vault of Horror!