Hello, kleets, it's me John could sear the voice of the crypt Keeper,
and you're listening to Chronicles from the Crypt. Hello kitties, it's me
Casualty Chris, and this is Father Malone and we are the hosts of Chronicles
from the Crypt, a twice a month look at the horror anthology series Tales
from the Crypt that aired on HBO from nineteen eighty nine to nineteen ninety six.
Now, in each of these podcasts, we do two episodes of the
television series. In between seasons we do bonus episodes, but this is the
last season, so there'll be no bonus episode you missed out, or you
could just go listen to it at Chronicles FTC dot com. Oh yeah,
that's a better thing to say. Wow, one of us is thinking ahead,
the other one is being smarmy. It's okay, Yeah, it works
out. Well, that's what I do exactly. So on this episode of
Chronicles from the Crypt, we are taking a look at the first episodes of
season seven, Episode one and two, Fatal Caper and last respects. Greetings,
travel fiends. It's so exciting being here in London. I'm already feeling
right at Toomb can't to join me for a little fright seeing. Oh maybe
we could find a nice cub and tuck into some authentic flesh and chips.
Oh, we could go check out my English heritage. I bet you didn't
know your pal the crypt Keeper was one of the Crown Ghouls, did you,
creeps? I've got all kinds of skeletons in my closet, which is
kind of like the family in Tonight's tale. You could call it Father Knows
Beast, but I before so. Fatal Caper aired April nineteenth, nineteen ninety
six. It is directed by none other than Bob Hoskins. Bob Hoskins actually
stars in the episode as well, along with Natasha Richardson, Greg Wise,
Leslie Phillips, and James Saxon. Episode follows two brothers who are trying to
figure out the fortune of their wealthy father, all the while a woman is
there doing things. Yeah there, This is a problematic episode. If you
are not into virtue signaling or people being upset about things, maybe fast forward
a couple of minutes. If not, this episode does something that an episode
of the show already did, which is not handle the treatment of trans characters
very repensate respectfully, but in a way that makes me feel good. Yeah,
I mean this and the previous episode sort of suffer from this. Oh
and then you didn't realize nobody realized that this was the other person that they've
been talking about for the entire episode, because they've actually changed their gender.
In both of them, it was a guy who becomes a girl. Right,
So the episode that you're talking about, it is a it's a man
who is cross dressing in this fit. In this episode, it is a
man who has transitioned to a woman but didn't have the bottom surgery. Because
that's like what the whole gag at the end of the episode is based around,
is Oh my god, Natasha Richardson's character has a cock. Aren't trans
people fucking weird? That's what this episode should be called. Yeah, I
mean, I agree that it's not handled tastefully necessarily. It's just it's to
me, the worst part of it is that it's it's just so lazy.
That's it's more of a crime because it doesn't seem like they're out to take
down trans people or or say trans people have a problem or anything. I
don't think either of the episodes did I just think that you've got no one
else on screen, Like five characters they're talking about, one of the character
doesn't show up to the entire thing. One of those characters is going to
be the character, but some of the characters are familiar with that character and
know what they look like. So how do we get around that, Oh,
we'll change their gender. It's lazy and stupid. Nobody. I don't
care how much surgery she had, that they the brothers would recognize their brother
like that on a fundamental storytelling level is a fucking failure. Well, it's
kind of like another piece of fiction that uses this kind of trope. It's
kind of like ace Ventura, Like there is no way that you can tell
me that people didn't recognize this character who looked like another character when, like
you've said, plastic surgery is only so good. It cracks me up.
How film like so many things that they kind of misuse. How they misuse
plastic surgery, I mean they misuse it. In the last episode that we
were talking about, this guy all a sudden looks like Humphrey Bogart, you
know. In this episode it's the same thing, but all of a sudden,
a male character who we don't know who he looks like to begin with,
becomes Natasha Richardson. It wasn't going to occur. Well, it's just
it's it's not it's not believable like in any way, it's I mean that
to me, is is, like I said, the true crime of the
episode. Now, I do want to point out weirdly, once we get
to England, they start adapting Tales from the Crypt comics. This is a
Tales from the Crypt. It's number twenty. The script was by Al Feldstein.
Art was by Jack Caman, Amazing artwork. The story in the comic
is has zero to do with this. This is entirely invented by whoever wrote
this episode. I would say, because the Tales from the Crypt was too
close to other episodes that they've done. But then this is just an amalgam
of a dozen episodes we've seen in the comic. It's a bunch of friends,
like college age friends who are bored and and they perform a seance just
as a like a lark, and the room gets all misty and one they
keep the friends keep disappearing until the like there's one guy left, I don't
know many like they end up burying him somehow, and then it turns out
to be a big hoax, like they just wanted to scare this guy really
bad, and so they bury him, and then they've used a coffin that
was previously used. And when the grave digger like approaches them, they say,
you know, you buried our friend. He got buried by the guy.
You buried our friend, You got to dig him up. He's like,
no, no one's going near that. That coffin was covered in leprosy
and anyone who touched it now is a leper, and they had all touched
it. What bearing does that story have on the fucking piece of filmed entertainment?
We were given nothing, nothing at all, same name. Yeah,
like what why say it's adapted at all? It literally has zero to do
with it. Like other ones, you can say, oh, well,
you know, they took it in a zombie direction and they decided to do
a whole other thing here, But that's not the case here. This is
just a free adaptation and wah, and it is a lazy adaptation at the
Actually, I guess it's not even an adaptationism. It's a lazy story that
we've seen told like four times now like variations on this story. When I
was watching this episode, I just kept thinking to myself, Okay, so
they moved to England, but Tales from the Crypt is just back up to
its old bullshit again. Yeah. I mean, I could be wrong,
but you know, I see Scott Nimophro's name as the story editor here.
So I gotta wonder if these scripts weren't like written for a seventh series in
America and then that didn't happen, and then this somehow presented itself, if
they could go make them in England. So you had the same group of
writers who've been churning out the last couple of seasons of the show, giving
us yet another one, except now we're dressed up in old England. Well.
Yeah, the the addition of the show being filmed in the UK does
not seem to do anything other than change the accent of all of the characters.
It does that. I will also say, however, because this I
noticed this and all the episodes I've seen so far, the production value is
through the roof because it's all location filming, because they have all these great
locations to go film at, as opposed to in Los Angeles, where you
know, ninety percent of the episodes were filmed on a sound stage, So
these episodes, as hit or miss as they are, like, they look
better to me. I mean, obviously it looks like an English production.
If you told, if you presented the series to me with a different title
on it, I would believe that it was a whole other thing and not
Tales from the Crypt at all. Oh, I completely agree with that.
Yeah, but I do like the way it's filmed. It's not as sort
of glossy and shiny as the American one was, and it seems a little
more serious it. Actually, the thing it reminds me of is the Tales
from the Crypt movie from seventy one. I would agree with that one.
That's what it feels like. I mean, it really feels like those Amicus
films. Yeah, like, and like there's nothing wrong with that. No,
I think it's not an improvement, but I you know, I think
it's a good you know, separate direction for the series. But you still
have to give us a good goddamn story, and you have a treasure trove
of stories to pull from. Don't give us something like this, particularly not
as the lead off. Well that's the that's the fucking insane thing, right,
And that's something that I think we have really had a hard time kind
of wrapping our heads around. Least I have, and I would assume you
probably have as well. The first episode of the first season of this show
is still our favorite episode. At the same time, it's our favorite episode.
And we came to that conclusion separately. It's not like you said it
and I was like, oh, yeah, me too. It was like,
no, that's my favorite episode, that's your favorite episode. There are
a lot of things playing into why that's the case. And every season's first
episode you would think would be this like fucking grand slam of a story to
really start the season out right, and those episodes have just been getting worse
and worse and worse as the show has gone on, Like the the quality
has fallen off in these first episodes of the season so hard that now we're
at the point where it's just a complete retread of something we've seen before.
I don't think anyone there at the time could recognize a good episode anyway anymore.
Obviously, you're gonna stick Robert Samakis's episode at the end of the season,
like as the big finale because it's Robert Samakis and it's his show.
But as far as being able to like look at what you've been given and
pick what order they should play in, they had no idea. And I
don't know, it's just a continued laziness on the part of the writing staff
of the of the show. I think we are a far cry from cutting
cards, let's just put it that way. Indeed we are. We are
a far cry from the man who was deaf. The entire series has been
a slow progression away from their best episode, and like it's in such a
way that it's so obvious we can't help but mention it. Yeah, it's
not like the quality is like up and down. It is steadily declined with
one or two bright spots. Yeah, And like I said, obviously they
couldn't even see the good ones when they had them because they were always just
sort of crammed in with the rest of them. Not that it's going to
make the series as a whole any better, but give us something awesome to
begin with and something really scary at the end, that's what we need.
We didn't get that here. I wonder do you think we're gonna get that
with the next episode, Last Respects totally greetings, infestas, I'll be with
you in a moment. I was just putting these gross profits away for safekeeping.
You see boils and ghouls At crypt Keeper Financial, we can help you
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horrid cash, we can guarantee your coroner the market. I bet you'd
be the type who's interested in boo chits. Like Tonight's tale. It's about
three girls who are chopping around for a tax fright off of their own in
a nasty shock option I call Last Respects. So. The episode is directed
by Freddie Francis. It is written by Scott namerfro you just mentioned him.
It stars Emma Sam's Carry Fox and Julie Cox and it is about three sisters
who are given a monkey's paw and things happen monkey paw, things happen.
Oh, they also own their father's curiosity shop. That is a complete mcguffin
in the worst way. Yeah, but yeah it is. Um, I'm
curious, what do you think? Not good it is? It is so
bad that I was tempted to turn it off because I knew where it was
going, and it was like, oh, there's another twist and another twist,
Like none of these twists weren't obvious, and we know where this episode
is going. Just look at what the fucking crypt keeper shows you on the
page of the book before the episode starts. That is the ending, and
it is. He does it all the time, but this time it's literally
the last scene and it is the episode's ruined for you. Oh yeah,
that was real bad Um. Okay, were we talking about free adaptation?
Yeah, we were. Here we go again. This is Taylsener Crypt number
twenty three, written by Bill Gaines and Alfellenstein and drawn by Graham Ingles,
another great fucking artist. In the comic, it's a chauffeur for a wealthy
family. He marries the daughter of the millionaire. She's underage. He's going
to have it annulled. At the same time, she was visiting him in
the rain and got sick. The mean father has separated these lovers. She
comes down with a cold that turns into much worse, and then she dies.
The chauffeur returns, kills the millionaire and then goes to her tomb.
It's a tomb. You have to open a door and enter just to tell
her what he has done and how much he misses her. He gets trapped
in there, no one comes to rescue him. Thirty days later, two
people opened the crypt. They discover him, and they figure that he died
maybe a day ago, and he was able to do so by eating the
corpse of his underage bride Monkey's paw. Yeah. I was about to say,
boy, that story was a lot better than this one, wouldn't it.
You know, I feel like because this is something we talked about at
the beginning, right, we would talk about the original comics and I would
kind of seed the floor to you because while I have read them, your
descript you're describing of them. It's always much more robust than I And I
think that comes from you reading it as a kid. Oh yeah, certainly,
versus me reading it as an adult. I mean, I posted it
on our Instagram a while back. I'd like to re mention it once again.
Earlier in the year, Father Malone and I have the same birthday,
and we traded gifts and Father Malone sent me a very thoughtful gift. He
sent me a Tales from the Crypt comic book in paperback form, and that
was something that you had originally read when you were in your like early early
years, right like ten. Yeah, like you have a background with these
comics, and I can't help but wonder, because we've never really talked about
it, how big of a disappointment is it watching this show knowing how little
they actually adapted the goddamn comic. It's interesting because at the time I was
watching it, you know, I can't say that I knew every comic that
had been adapted, and that's partially because majority of Taysom Encrypt episodes are based
on either Vault of Horror or Haunt of Fear or more likely than not,
shock suspense stories. But I kind of gave them pass when I was watching
it initially because you know, I felt that, you know, that's good,
you know, to to take some license with it. Now going back
and realizing just how far afield they were with most of their adaptations, and
as I said, it is a treasure true that the story I just described
for Last Respects it is fucking horrifying, and there was nobody on their staff
it seems, that was leaning into that direction. It's a fundamental like amnesia
that they stopped making a horror show after a little while, and we're just
like basing everything on ironic twists and occasion, and in it occasionally a bit
of gore or a monster to you know, sate the fans. Yeah,
I think at this point in my life now watching it and watching just how
much of a missed opportunity they had to draw some of these stories and put
them on screen and do them justice. That's, yeah, a big problem,
and it's disappointing to me as someone who has read the comics but also
expects it to be a show that leans more into horror, because again,
the show is hosted by a literal fucking corpse. I don't expect all the
stories to be supernatural, but I expect more than one or two a season
to be. And it's a shame that that's where we are now, because
out of the first two episodes of this season, one of them has supernatural
elements, the other one doesn't. And I can tell you with absolute certainty
that the rest of the season may go even less fifty fifty than that,
because the other seasons, especially the later ones that we've talked about, have
as well. You know, It's funny to me, like looking back and
seeing interviews with people, and you know, they would talk about ec comics
and they talk about its sense of humor, and I think, you know,
the makers of this series like use that as an excuse to kind of
camp it up and ham it up and all of the horrors delivered with a
tongue in cheek. But as I said, if you go back and read
those comics, there ain't a fucking thing funny in them. If you if
there's a humor to it, it's that you're reveling in what are usually not
talked about. Dark subject matters like that, to me is where the humor
sort of rises and falls. With the original comics, I think they were
all deadly serious. And I'm not saying I need doom and gloom, you
know, twenty two minutes a week for however many seasons. But it just
seems that as we were just saying, like somebody along the way forgot that
this was a horror show and you should be disturbed, Like, even without
a supernatural element, you can do episodes that like gut you, and these
guys just weren't interested in that. I mean, one of the best episodes
that we saw that has no supernatural element is our favorite episode of the goddamn
show. Yeah or Three's a Company, which also doesn't feature any supernatural elements
whatsoever. It's actually the genre of episodes that we bemoan on a frequent episode
basis because they use them so often. The love triangle, Yeah, and
it just shows that when people give a shit, you can take any trope
and make it awesome and not just sort of say that's enough. And I
know I've said this a lot on the podcast, but it always feels like
it's just enough, Like, yeah, we're giving him this and that,
and here's twist and in this ironic and you know, here's some more jokes
and you know what, man like I want, I want the man who
was dead well, and the other shame here is the involvement of Freddie Francis.
Freddie Francis obviously directed the original Tales from the Crypt film Yeah, and
this is the episode of the show that he ends up directing. Boy,
this is a really bad episode. The monkey's paw is an overused trope and
they don't use it in this episode to any novel or new way. The
three sisters end up using it. One of them dies and then the other
one brings the dead one back to life because it turns out she was murdered
by the third sister the end, Like, you don't even need to know
anything else about the episode. That all happens in the last five minutes.
And this is a twenty minute episode. Twenty five minute episode. Yea,
not only did he direct that original tales from the Crypt film a way way
back, but he directed a better version of the story they were telling here.
Because there's a monkey's paw segment in that movie. It's not great,
but it's but it's a lot better than this. On top of everything else,
the fact that this episode has an intro a cold open is bizarre capital
weird. That it's weird because the show has rarely done it, and when
they do it, those episodes are exactly what I'm about to say here.
It's a twenty six minute long episode. You cannot afford to do that,
no, right, Like, if that's the way you're going to introduce the
monkeys, Paul, you don't have to spend the first five minutes of the
episode doing so. Yeah, we all know it. There's a reason you're
trying to innovate around this story. That's because we all know it, but
they don't. They don't innovate anything, right, No, not not not
not here. Oh I did I mention for the previous episode, um fatal
caper. Skip that one. I just want to to Oh yeah, skip
this one too. Yeah. I just want to say, because I'm gonna
tell you now to skip this one, so you might as well skip the
last one. And it's it's a it's a shame. It's a shame because
I don't think any of the actresses here were given anything to do. No.
Yeah, I mean I don't want to say like people weren't doing their
job here because they were. I think all the acting is fine. Uh,
you know, the direction is good. I still like the look of
the show. But we're just kind of still stuck in season five of Tailsomer
Crypt That's just what we keep getting. What a waste of carry fox right,
Yeah, man, she ain't and much no shallow grave though. Yeah,
this however, real bad. Yeah, what a drag. It's it's
it's it's a shame, it really is. It's it's a total shame.
And you, I mean, you watch an episode like this and you just
have to ask yourself it was anyone in the audience fooled by the twist,
and if they weren't, why did you do such an obvious on the nose
twist to begin with? I mean, I don't know, not spectacular,
lazy, but hey, those English accents, right, I mean, I
like the English accents, and I like the look of the show, but
I don't like anything else. I mean, my hope is that the quality
of the script will catch up to the way the show looks. Now,
yeah, I mean there's got to be one or two, right, I
mean hopefully, you know, I would like to believe so, but I
haven't seen anything yet that would show to the contrary that we're going to get
anything good this season. I mean, again, this season is derided among
fans as the lesser of all the seasons. Well, you know, so
far, I gotta say it's comparable. Like I can't. I couldn't tell
you just based on these two episodes that this is the worst that we've gotten.
Like, I'll let you know, but there have been some pretty bad
ones. I would say the quality of these two episodes so far, and
I have watched the next two, the quality so far is very similar to
season six. So if people are deriding this season specifically, I don't know
why it's not any worse, and you know, speaking to the idea that
like it's well shot and like, you know, for me, like I
wanted to feel like a film, I don't want it to seem like sense.
There are on the American version of the show, you know, there
are episodes that are terribly written, terribly acted, and it all looks like
they're on a set. So as far as I'm concerned, this season already
has a step up. Yeah, it doesn't look like a set. It
looks like it's definitely filmed in the UK. Yeah, because it was exactly
skip this one, big time, skip, big time skip. So on
the next episode of Chronicles from the Crypt, we're gonna be taking a look
at two more episodes, a slight case of murder and escape. Yep,
yeah, can't wait, can't wait until then. Where can people find you,
Father? Yeah? You can check me out over at Father Malone dot
com. You can check out my new podcast, Dark Destinations. It's a
travelog of fictional towns. You can also hear me over on Dreams for Sale,
the Twilight Zone eighty five podcast that Chris and I do with our good
friend Mike White. As for me, you can find me on Twitter,
Casualty, Underscore, Chris. All the podcasts that I work on are there,
Culture Cast, one Season Show, Scary Stories we Tell, They're all
there, Go check them out. Can you find this episode? You can
find this podcast on the internet at Chronicles FTC and we're also at Chronicles from
the crypt dot Com. Big thanks as always to John Casier for the intro
to the podcast, and we'll catch you on the next episode.