M h, Hello, creep, it's me John can Fear, the voice
of the crypt Keeper and you're listening to Chronicle from the Crypt. Hello,
kiddies, it's me Casualty Chris. Yeah, he's corpsing over there real hard.
I'm trying not to laugh. I was unprepared for the crypt Keeper voice.
I know it's okay. It's not as good as John Cassire, but
then again, as long as he's not doing a Jamaican accent, what is
true. We are the host of Chronicles from the Crypt to 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 our podcast
we do two episodes of the television series Tales from the Crypt, and along
the way, in between seasons we do tales related to Phemera And we've got
one coming up after this and that'll be it's for bonus episodes. And as
for season six is the end. Like Father Malone said, we normally do
two episodes, but because we didn't want to just do one episode on one
episode, we're doing three episodes. So we're rounding out season six with a
look at episode thirteen, fourteen and fifteen, Comes the Dawn, and we'll
get to that fucking title nine and another title. God the titles these first
two titles, the second one is a fucking trash can atrocious ninety nine and
forty four pure horror, and you Murderer. Oh hello, Creets, it's
your old pal, the big Scahouna enjoying a little surf and sand. Hey,
babe, want me to rub a little suntan lution on you? Boy?
Do I love the beach? Hey? Hey, hey, you watch
it? Good boy? I hate getting sand kicked in my face. I'm
not your average ninety pound weakling, you know. But one thing, I
don't wait that much. I tell you, kiddies, I'm going to get
that guy, which brings to mind the two men in Tonight's a Tale.
They're on a little shriek and destroy mission of their own in a nasty undertaking
icle. Comes the Dawn. So, if you're asking yourself, comes the
Dawn? Isn't there an episode of the show called Came the Dawn? Yes?
There is? Um, I don't get it. Um before we talk
about comes it on? Do you understand why there's an episode of the same
name. Came the Dawn was last season? Yeah, well, I suspect
that was that Brookshield episode. I think yeah, oh yeah, yeah,
it certainly was with the Cabin. Oh yeah, where the guys you know
where it's it's the JK Rolling Fever Dream where it's a trans man killing transwoman
killing people. Right, great, what a good one. I suspect to
that. Well. With each of the episodes, and like, no matter
how much they go afield as far as the plot or characters go, they
always retain the title except one time. I guess Revenge is the Nuts,
which was anyway anyway, I'm diagrassing, So I'm assuming because there were so
many titles at EC that came the Dawn was from I think, came the
Domas from Shock Suspense Stories, and comes the Donas from Haunt of Fear.
So they when they were writing them assumed people were getting different issues of different
comics, so it wasn't that big an issue. But it kind of becomes
an issue when you have a straight ahead television series and you kind of keep
naming episodes effectively the same thing, and you know, come on, Eileen
was already taken. So but ump bump that was a thing. So this
episode is directed by John Hertzfeld. It is written by Scott Nimmerfro again he
wrote eleven episodes of the show. Um, he's the MVP. He is,
he has shown up more than anyone else. Yeah, I'm not sure
I would go as far as to say MVP. And this episode has Michael
Ironside in it and Susan Tyrrell, who if you're a fan of Oingo Boengo
like I am, like Father Malone is, you'll recognize her from Oingo Bongos
The Forbidden Zone And it's about vampires I think in Alaska, so you know,
you know Thirty Days of Night. It's like that, but really bad.
And also with a character whose name is Colonel Parker un ironically true,
which is interesting. Yeah, I'm I'm sure that was a choice of Scott
imofros the the comic book come it has to be. Yeah, that comes
to Dawn as a comic. It is from Haunt of Fear twenty six,
written by Auto Binder and drawn by the amazing and impressive and there are not
enough superlatives for Jack Davis. Now here is a freely adapted story in that
what we get in. The episode is two former military guys wanting to hunt
bears. Is it just grizzlies right, which is illegal? In the original
comic, it is three gentlemen who have come to Alaska to find uranium.
They are uranium prospectors and they have a guide who takes them out to this
place. They've already flown over the area and the Geiger counter went crazy,
so they know there's a there's a motherload of uranium and they're all going to
be rich beyond belief. When they land. They have an Inuit guide who
takes them there. But before they get in the dog sled to head out
to the cabin. There is a coffin encased in ice near the landing strip
for the for their makeshift airport, and the Inuit guide says, don't don't
touch. Don't touch the coffin. The vampires in there. Every year it
thaws out and it causes havoc. But we've got it frozen and we don't
want it to get out. So they go off to the cabin and then
one guy decides he wants to bump off the other two so he can have
all the money for himself. He goes and releases the vampire, and then
it chases him back to the cabin. He calls the other two out and
says the vampire is coming, and then he runs in the cabin and closes
the door in. The vampire kills those other two guys, and the whole
thing is told in flashback because he's already in the cabin barricaded himself in when
the vampires trying to get in at him, and of course he thinks,
I just have to wait this out till dawn and then I'm a rich man,
and just like thirty Days of Night, just like the episode we see,
he realizes it's winter now and there's not going to be a sunrise for
you know, a month or so. Kind of can we point out for
a second that not remembering the sun doesn't come out in Alaska is like forgetting
that San Francisco is on the coast. Yeah, like what fucking university.
Of all the things in this episode that bug me, the fact that the
entire finale of this episode is predicated on the character being so stupid he forgot
that the sun does come up for like six months in Alaska. Yeah.
No, with the comic, at least it's a bunch of uranium prospectors and
effectively idiots who are you know, aimless people and have gone up there because
they heard about it. But with the episode, we're given a he's a
colonel or a general, and his aid is like a lieutenant, and the
third the guide that they that they procure is also military and they would know,
they would just know. So yeah, it doesn't. It's it's a
payoff that is unearned because it makes the lead character really, really dumb.
Well, I can't even tell who the main character is because at one point
I'm assuming it's Bruce Payne playing Colonel Parker because he's the one who ends up
being the final character to die, but it should be Michael Ironside because he's
the one pushing the narrative along. And then ultimately it's neither of them.
It becomes Jerry Drumbeaterer. Yeah, she is the titular vampire. Although it's
not on the title. It's it's really disappointing to me to see an idea
like this one again, you know, not not talking about the fact that
the movie is essential or this episode that's touching, not touch on the fact
that this episode essentially is Thirty Days of Night, that same concept that would
end up being mined a lot more by Stephen Niles I believe his name is.
It's just not a good episode, no, and well I think it's
I think it's shot pretty well as far as the look of it, but
it doesn't deliver the scares. Which this is a built in, uh scare
factory. It's it's you know the thing, but with vampires in the wilderness
and they're in a erect former military hut out in the middle of nowhere,
like it like all the elements are there for a really good either scary or
gory. I mean, we get some core, but as far as tension
goes, like it's all there and it pays off not at all. And
I gotta say, like in the comic book, at least it was like
the guy and the vampires out there like scrabbling around outside trying to force his
way in, and that the comic worked, like I thought, that's a
pretty tense situation, and this they eskew all that, so they can,
you know, have this boring narrative with the you know, their military service.
This is like directly after the Gulf War when they made this episode so
I'm sure Scott was trying to make a comment on that or something, but
where he takes the story is boring and it's it just doesn't I don't know.
It's not the worst one of the season, clearly, but it certainly
isn't the payoff that we were hoping. But yet it feels like to me,
another entry into Scott and Froze middle of the road to bad entries in
this show. And look, Scott nimberfro passed away, you know, unfortunately,
And so you know, I hate to speak ill of the Dead's talents,
but I feel like a lot of the episodes that we've seen that he's
written have been not very good. No, I mean, at least we
were spared the comedy because Scott tended to write the comedic episodes of Tales from
the Crypt. This one is at least straight ahead, which is always preferable.
And but yeah, I mean, his best writing was not done on
this series. Like he wrote a really good episode of the television series Hannibal,
which I would recommend to people if they want to see what he can
actually do. This one just feels of a kind with everything else we've been
given this season. Like the idea is solid, but you know, we
don't really care that much. Well, and then again, you have interesting
looking creature design that is essentially just the characters from DAWNA not DNA, the
the characters from the vampires from Dusk Till Dawn. Yeah, like, it's
not even original. Like it's it's so wholly unoriginal that no part of it
works in the absence of the unoriginality. You know, even if this wasn't
an unoriginal, even if this was an original episode, nothing works anyways.
No, because Michael Ironside's criminally wasted. I mean, he gives a typical
Michael Ironside's performance, you know, gruff. Yeah, he's I mean,
Michael Ironside is amazing brain a Starship Trooper see you with the potty Rick the
like, I mean, fuck man, come on, He's been in some
of the greatest sci fi films of all time, Scanners, Starship Troopers.
Wow, he plays um Sam Fisher in splinter Cell. Like, whenever I
hear Michael Ironside, I hear his voice, I think of Sam Fisher and
splinter Cell, I think of his character in Starship Troopers. I'm never going
to think of this and it's a fucking shame because this is for me,
this is the biggest problem with Tales from the Crypt. You have a lot
of really talented actors who are wasted in like every episode they're in. It
seems like it's few and far between now with this show that actors are not
being wasted when they come on and do a guest appearance on this show.
I think, Yeah, I think Susan Terrell. You mentioned her at the
top, like, I think she acquits herself nicely, she gives a perfect
Susan Terrell performance and always good to see her whatever that whatever that means.
Unfortunately, yeah, well you know it's Susan Terrell. Um. She gets
shot in the first five minutes episode right up until and she's not wasted.
That character does what she needs to do, and she does it well.
So I'll give it that. You know, I can't recommend to the episode
overall, but if I were too, it's because Susan Terrell is in it,
because I just love her tiny bones she is. If if for Dawn
of the Dead fans out there, there was a documentary Roy Frumpkey made back
in the day, like while they were filming Gone in the day. It's
called Document of the Dead, and Susan Terrell is the narrator and what a
voice, man, She's she's spectacular, and you know, she tends to
play really grimy characters and this is no exception, but like I love her
anyway, there you go, her characters. Her characters look in this episode
is buzzare Oh certainly with the blacked out teeth which they're supposed to be broken,
but they didn't bother to go ahead and make dentsures or anything, so
it just looks like the putty you would get in like a novelty shop like
missing. I was about to say, you and I could probably do better
makeup on someone. Yeah. It does have a pretty good line though,
which is, yeah, it does have a pretty good line, which is
it's going to take a lot more than a lesbian vampire biker whore to ruin
my day. That's quality. And the only reason it's a good line is
because of how many superlatives there are in that fucking sentence. Lesbian biker vampire
horse excuse me, lesbian vampire biker horror works for me? Yeah, boy,
Yeah, this episode un skip skip it, Let skip it skip its
big skip big Skip. Speaking of Big Ski, let's talk about the next
UPO. Yeah, talk about Big Skip. Let's talk about nine Terror.
Yeah. Greetings, Hack and Field fans. I hope you're in the mood
for a little friendly competition. It's that time of fear again, the annual
All crypt Die Catalan. I've been working out like crazy to get ready this
year. I'm really going for the cold, kind of like the woman in
Tonight's tail. It's a putrid portrait of an up and coming young artist that's
sure to leave a nasty taste on your palette. I call it ninety nine
and forty four one pure horror. So it's directed by Rodman Flender. It's
written by Rodman Flender. It stars Bruce Davison. Speaking of Scott and himerfro
An x men, this episode stars Bruce Davison and Christi Conaway. Yeah it
does. They're in it, Yes, Anna and Ricky Dean Logan is in
it. The horror fans out there will recognize him as the character nice hearing
from your Carlos from eight Marion elm Street, the kid who gets his ears
blown up right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, he's in this
for like two seconds. Uh, Christi Conaway plays a gold digging wife who
kills her husband who owns a soap company, and she turns him into soap
and then she melts. And that's literally the entire fucking episode. It is
the fastest episode of this show I have ever seen. It gets in there,
does what it wants, and then it gets out. What it wants
to give us is pure direct though, and it does nothing very well.
Now, I do want to say nine pure Terror is a mouthful, but
I really like it. I mean, clearly it's based on the soap Bad,
but the episode is based on a not talis from the crypt Can you
believe it? It's based on Vault of Horror number twenty three, written by
Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines and again drawn by the amazing Jack Davis. It's
it's similar to what we get and that it involves a soap company and a
murder. But the comic is about a guy who is the assistant to the
general manager of this plant that makes soap, and the guy the boss just
is gives him nothing but a hard time and it's always on him, and
he realizes that if the manager is gone, he'll take his job, so
he he kills him, chops him into pieces, throws him in the vat
of soap. He makes an entire palette of soap of his boss and then
gets the job, moves into his apartment. It's sold in flashback, I
should point out, and one day goes to shower and realize that he doesn't
have any soap, so he uses one of the bars. Now in the
episode, they go full gore and they say that the you know, the
the acid is melting them in this a little more interesting where it's it's the
shower. You know, it's one of these stand up showers with the with
the door that closes and the guys. Let's just say it for what it
is. It's the kind of shower rich people have. Yeah, exactly.
So he's in it and he's washing with the soap of his boss, and
he blinds himself with it, although he not totally blind, it's just he's
got soap in his eyes. The bar of soap drops to the ground,
he slips on it breaks his leg. The soap covers the drain and he
slowly drowns. It's much better than what we get here. I mean,
I love gore, and anytime I can watch a person melt her. But
this is much more diabolical what they came up with in the comic. I
think I think I would have really liked the alternate version of this if they
had gone with what the comic book had me too, like, that's that.
I mean, we talk about come upances all the time. This one's
pretty brutal. Like he's he's at the bottom of this shower, the water
is slowly filling up. There's nothing he can do. He can't really move.
So bravo Feldstein and Gaines and Jack Davis in the comic, Not so
much in the televisual experience we received based on it. Yeah. No.
The way that this episode concludes is it feels like they're trying to just go
yeah, well look there's gore. Look. Oh and by the way,
we have an actress in this episode. Again similarly to another thing that we're
going to talk about on the next episode, another episode of the show where
you have a character who is not naked but yet they're but they are nude,
and it's like, what are you doing show again We're not. It's
not that I'd want nudity, it's just why are you not showing it?
This is Tales from the crypt. Yeah that, I mean, there's sort
of a pact between viewer and maker that this show is about excess and extremes
and we should delve into those because we're going to go where the comic book
couldn't and and ending up giving us sort of softcore cinemax, which I would
say even with the softcore cinemax, you get more out of it. It
gives you exactly what this is just sort of titillation. But who cares because
I don't like the character or the actress or anyone involved, So I don't
know. Would it have made it better? Probably, but yeah, that's
definitely a failing. We noticed that this season more than any season I think,
where they sort of hint at things but don't actually deliver, and it's
like, are you crazy? This is what we came for. I mean,
you know, I won't go as far as to say it's what I
came for, but it's what I expect from this show. Well, I
just mean, I mean, put up until this season, we had gotten
a lot of it. YEA, yeah, yeah, no exactly, Yeah,
sure, sure, it's you know, it's it's a it's a pup
poor novel, Like if they could have shown nudity when they originally wrote the
comic, they probably would have. They totally would have. Yeah, But
in the show, it's like this is on HBO and like you should be
pushing the boundaries and kind of being edgy, and it's like you're just gonna
show a character in the towel. But she melts at the end. So
maybe that's kind of the happy middle ground, but it's not even happy middle
ground. Yeah, I mean, you know, that could have been a
clever way to go where they they're teasing us the entire time about showing her
nude and then when they do reveal it, it's because she's melting, Like
that could have been a comment or something, but it wasn't that. It
was just another route. It's kind of a love triangle, although the character
doesn't really care about either of the guys, and you know, we get
that, and we get you know, some psychodrama that really goes nowhere,
and we learned a little bit about soap and then she falls to pieces,
so you know, hooray, Well she's dead at the end. So as
the audience member the show thinks that that's all you need to do is kill
the kill the villain and everyone's happy and everyone can go home happy. It's
like, no, I want more from this show than that, and the
show has become complacent at this point. I think we can both agree.
Oh yeah, like the complacency that this show has is just not shocking,
because again, it's been on for six seasons. But you would think with
the names involved Zemeckis, Geyler, Hill, they would be giving a shit
more because their names are still connected to it, right, But at this
point they're just cashing the checks. Although one of the original titans of Tales
from the Crypt is on deck with the with the final episode, yeah,
so it doesn't. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But let's
talk about the final episode of season six, and again, let's just say,
for sake of argument, because season seven's kind of its own thing.
For all intents and purposes, this is technically the end of the show.
Yeah, certainly, I don't think if they had intended, I don't think
anyone's gonna argue with us on that. Now. If they had intended to
do another one, it was not going to be what we got, right,
they did something that was so different with the seventh season by going overseas,
by focusing on you know, an international cast, and you know they
did a lot of the folks that worked on the show before weren't involved.
So this is, for all intents and purposes, the final episode of the
show. We're still going to cover season seven, don't get us wrong,
but to put you in the mindset, You Murderer is technically the final episode
of the show. Hello, Hi you, I'm fierst Goop. Care for
a shock Colette? Mummy always sad. Life is like a box of shockolettes.
You never know what you're gonna get. Know what else mummy said?
She said, scary is as scary does, which brings to mind the man
in Tonight's Terror Tale. He's just dying to get out of the mess he's
in. Literally, it's a little piece of horrid candy. I call you
Murderer. So, like Father Malan mentioned, it's directed by Bob's mecas our
good friend Bob's a friend of the Chronicles from the Crypt podcast Bob's Mecasum.
It stars Humphrey Bogart and no, you didn't misshear me say that. But
there's no way. There's no way if you watch the show, you don't
know about this episode, because this an episode for me, is kind of
notorious. Um, certainly good and bad. Also starts John lyfco Isabella Rosselini
and uh, you know Sherilyn Fenn Fenn, I mean, come on,
give her her ad, Yeah, give her a wide berth because Twin Peaks
Rylyn Fenn, I think, and uh, fuck you? I mean,
is Sherilyn Fenn known for a lot of things other than Twin Peaks. When
I think of her, I think of her very brief but super powerful and
amazing performance in Wild at Heart. Yeah, but what about Twin Peaks?
Oh yeah, no, I built Look, man, I think, Okay,
of course she's spectacular. I think if you point, if you hold
up a picture of her, everyone's gonna say Twin Peaks, no question.
Yeah, they're not gonna say this episode. No, Why would they?
Right? I mean, so this so this, this episode's so you have
a It kind of reminds me of a noir film that I watched earlier this
year, featuring Humphrey Bogart. It's very close, actually, right down to
the first person perspective. What's the name of that film? Again? The
desperate hours, the what the desperate hours? No, it's not. I
can't actually remember what it's not. It's called Dark Passage. Dark is that
what it is? Yeah, he's trying to escape. So this episode reminds
me of a film that I watched earlier this year called Dark Passage that we
did on another podcast that I do when we're talking about noir films. And
it's a film in first person perspective part of it where you have Humphrey Bogart
changing his face too. Humphrey Bogart's face in that film as well, and
this is very similar. But the whole crux of this episode is pulling out
your CGI wiener and slapping it on the screen. I mean, that's what
it feels like. I mean, it kind of does. I mean,
I mean, look, that's I have no problem saying that. That's what
James Cameron has been trafficking in recently in his career. Look at my seat.
Look how big I can make my CGI penis me slap it against you
a couple of times for you to understand how big and girthy it is.
Like what the This episode's not that bad. There are good parts in this
episode, but anytime they cut to Humphrey Bogart, CGI, what a night
boy. Run, don't walk, Run for the exits, because that thing
is going to come out of the screen and haunt your dreams. They you
know, they may in a lot of the shots that they may as well
have just had a cardboard cutout of him on the set, like it would
have been. They should have just had Robert Zacki. They had him on
there anyways, and already looks like Humphrey fucking Bogart. Yeah, I mean,
look, clearly Zemeckis is high off of Forrest Gump and what you can
do with a computer, and you can manipulate that. Clearly Zemeckis is high.
Yeah, well this is I think this episode actually marks his slow descent
into CG everything, because they were for a while there he was only making
CG movies and had sort of, you know, not officially announced, but
certainly said that that's the only way he wanted to make movies from now on,
and that has now reversed itself years later. But this was the first
kind of attempt to take it further and see what they could do, and
what they could do is garbage. It's the technology was not there for this
and you know, having just the I don't know, the voice is not
spot on, and the certainly the visuals are absolute and nightmare. Just it
really seems like you could have just like green screened in a shot from any
of the movies and it was going to look better somehow, somehow, it
always looks like just the tone of the image doesn't match. And you know,
it's just eye. It's yeah, it's he's dead eyes like adult eye.
It's a very good This is an odd experience watching this. It was
super cool. I gotta say, like back in the day when this episode
first aired and the credits come up and it says starring harm Frey Bogart,
it was like, oh, that's cool. And forty years man, forty
years since he had been building anything. Yeah, so it was kind of,
you know, a bit of giddiness when when you saw that. But
then what we end up getting it's just so bad lifeless ghoul, the lifeless
ghoul of Humphrey Bogard is stinking up the screen. And you know, to
that end, like why not make it a horror thing because you know,
look, this is as one might expect given the subject matter you mentioned,
it's very noir, and it is very noir. You Murder is from Shock
Suspense Stories Shock Suspense Stories fourteen, written by Auto Binder, who also wrote
Comes the Dawn, And this was actually drawn by Bernie Kriegstein, who's not
my favorite. His style is a little bit wacky, but I will point
out that in this particular comic he chose to credit himself as doctor Caligary Kriegstein.
Interesting the comic is, it's right, yeah, The comic is as
the episode is first person, which is interesting, and it's this guy just
walking home and he ends up running into a mesmerist who hypnotizes him and convinces
him that he has to go kill his wife's lover in front of her.
If there's any sort of drama in the episode, it's that the guy is
morally incapable of committing murder, so he refuses, even under the sway of
hypnotism, and the mesmerist ends up convincing him that the guy is a Fifth
Columnist here to set off a nuclear bomb and he has to and this all
pays out. He goes and he does it. He beats the guy to
death with a chain, which is pretty brutal. I think he I don't
know if he kills the wife as well, but she doesn't seem well when
he leaves them. And then the last couple of panels are him waking up
and the mesmerist is in the guy's apartment and he's saying, haven't you read
the paper? You killed two people and they have your fingerprints on the chain
and they're coming to get you now, and then that's the end. Imagine
if that was their plan for the end of a Tales from the Crypt season
and potentially the whole series. There's like, it's so beyond the pale sort
of morally. This poor guy just gets roped into this scheme and then he
has to pay for it at the end. That could have been much more
interesting. Not that I wanted them to do another hypnosis or you know,
a failed showman like committing murder on his wife or whatever, but it would
have been better than what we got, because we got just kind of boilerplate
noir tropes and attempts at said it, and you know, some of the
look Isabella Rossellini's fucking great, she's always good. John Lythgo, what can
you say? It's John Lythgo, and even Cherylyn Fenn holds her own in
the mousey kind of way, and then they do the stupidest thing ever with
her character at the end, where she basically just walks up and hands them
the gun. It's I don't know, this episode is a huge failure.
Like Across the Park, It's got some things to recommend it. I just
mentioned there the actor's names. But and I guess it's skillfully shot. I
mean, you can't say Robert Semeckis doesn't know how to move a camera around.
But anytime we have to join it up with the horrible living corpse of
Humphrey Bogart, it just knows dives. Yet again, like you end up
wondering what the hell we're doing here? Why are we doing this other than
as an experiment, that's all it is. I mean it is a literal
experiment in it is experimental filmmaking because this, this level of repurposing the dead,
would not really become a thing until like five years ago. True,
I mean this is when they did when they did Rogue one, right,
Yeah, where they actually sort of having the cars. I mean there had
been little gasps of it here and there where they were cgiing, like you
know, Fred Astaire dancing with a with a vacuum cleaner back. Wasn't there
a Humphrey Bogart commercial where he was like in a Zales ad. No,
he was in a Coca Cola ad where they I think they repurposed a shot
from Casablanca with him sitting at the bar and they put a coke in front
of him. So it's not like it was completely unknown at the time that
they did this, And certainly Zamagas had just done it with Forrest Gump where
he has Tom Hanks interacting with John Kennedy, uh and John Lennon and you
know, so this is sort of the birthing ground of this kind of thing.
And it's how many years later, twenty five years later, it's still
the uncanny valley is undeniable. You know, Well, I don't even think
there's anything uncanny about it. It's just the ghoulish visage of Humphrey Bogart with
dead, soulless eyes and a mouth that moves like a puppet's mouth. Yeah,
you can see they tried to find lines where they didn't have to manipulate
the mouth at all, like so it would fit into the plot. But
it's always the most generic thing. It's not like he looks at the camera
and gives us a speech. It's always someone asks a question, the camera
pans to a mirror, and he says like one thing, and then back
to the horrible narration and glimpses of him in mirrors for the rest of the
episode. It's I've never seen so many I've never seen a character look into
a fucking reflective surface so many times. Yea, I have in this episode.
It's real bad. If this is the way this show ended, Okay,
Let's let's play a theoretical thought experiment here, right, Let's say this
is how the show ended. Okay, this show would have been an abject
failure as a show. Yeah, I mean, look, we can't you
know, I haven't seen how the series actually ends yet, but this would
be an ignominious way to go out no matter how you slice it, considering
how one of the episodes of the show is still one of my favorite twenty
three minutes of television, The first episode of the show, Yeah there you
go. I mean, look from that to this, like all the potential,
all of the every sort of element that can make the show great and
right in the first episode and then by the time we get here, it's
just like, oh boy, what the fuck are you guys doing? Like,
yeah, we go from a William Sadler episode where he plays an executioner
who gets executed because he's taking the law into his own hands too cgi Humphrey
Bogart, how far we've fallen? Yeah, precipitous drop at best. It's
yeah, shocking, you know. And the thing is, when you look
at, say, the first season of the show, you can say that,
you know, these guys are just playing around, these filmmakers, like,
you know, this is a chance to explore and experiment and things,
so like, it's not an unprecedented move that one of these filmmakers would use
this smaller format to do that, but it seemed to be serving the material.
No matter how masturbatory some of those episodes ended up being. This one
is pure masturbation. It's just like, I have a budget because it's an
episode of the show, and there's something I want to try, and let's
let's go ahead and do that, and you know, find me a story
that that you know can make that happen. And then they did. It's
not even laziness, it's it's it's more of an affront because it's, like
I said, it's just a filmmaker, like having no regard whatever other than
he wanted to do this. Well, he didn't want to do anything other
than show you something quote unquote cool. And that was my whole analogy or
kind of my you know, gibe my jab at the beginning of this talking
about this episode was it's just him. It's Zamaca's flaunting his CGI penis,
Like look how much money I can look how much money and time I can
get people to throw at something, like someone spent time and effort making a
CGI. Humphrey Bogart move his mouth like a sock puppet Like if I put
my if I put my thumb underneath my fingers and move my thumb, my
thumb moves more like a human mouth. Yeah, it's just it's it's just
it's bizarre because you could have done this episode without showing Humphrey Bogart's fucking face.
You could have done like nose up or just his eyes in the mirror
of the car. You didn't have to show his entire face, and you
could have had the final shot of the episode be his face. But he's
not talking anyways. So it doesn't matter, right, I mean, they
if they could have spent all their budget on one le fantastic shot instead of
trying to give us all of these, yeah, I mean, you know,
just just just realistically, you know, does this guy look at himself
this much? It's a lot. He must. And you know, it
goes into any sort of first person point of view when you when you choose
that as your format for your film or television series whatever, it always ends
up feeling wildly unnatural, like where the camera just always pans down to what
they're doing, you know, like I'm getting my keys out of my pocket,
so the camera pans down, looks at the pocket in the hand going
in and whatever, and it's just like for that, who does that?
It's insane. Well, Humphrey Bogart does in this episode. He sure does
and will forever and always as this is the capstone, the headstone for the
American involvement with Tales from the Crypt. What a Danum was It was just
the final just the kiss of shit on top of an otherwise uneven show.
Have I said skip it because skip this one, skip this one and don't
look back, Yeah, or no, look back back to the first season.
Yeah right, yeah it um yeah, what an ignominious way to go
out. Really, just what a shame. There's like, there's so few
things that this episode does write that for me, it is the total skip.
It is just a bizarre exercise in flaunting your CGI in your budget,
and it hasn't aged well in twenty twenty because now we have CGI so good
that they can make fur look realistic, and even even taking that out of
it, it's still not a good episode because it doesn't do anything, because
it's so worried about showing you Humphrey Bogart's face over and over again that it
doesn't even do anything else. As clumsy in episode as comes to Dawn is
I know it's tales from the cript while I'm watching it. This one,
it's tails in a crip because of the people involved, because they got the
banner title on it, but doesn't feel like anything of a piece with everything
that we've gotten before, and it's a skip for me. Give it hard.
So that's the end of season six, folks. So you know what
we do at the end of every season, We give our favorite and our
least favorite episode. Yes, indeed, so Father Malone, which episode in
season six stuck out to you as your least favorite episode. Oh, not
the worst, just your least favorite. Probably. I'm gonna say it's kind
of a tie between The Pit and Revenges the Nuts. It might be Revenges
the Nuts just comparatively, which we do a lot here, given that we
already received a film version of that particular story, and it is harrowing and
wonderful, and what we got here is let's say not so I'll say Revenge
is the Nuts is the worst of this for me. It is also a
tie. It is a tie between Operation Friendship featuring Peter Dobson, who is
a terrible actor and I'm not going to change my opinion on that until I
see something that he's in that's good, and another episode that is just as
bizarre as it is tone deaf The Assassin featuring a sex changed CIA agent.
Yeah, that's almost fucks Carrot Corey. Oh he almost, he being Corey
Feldman almost fucks the person he's trying to kill. It's just fucking weird.
I also believe that it's another Scott number fro episode. It is so great.
Um, which episode of season six stuck out to you as your favorite,
though that would be only skin deep. That one. Uh. I
don't know how, I don't know how great it is, but it uh
it uh I. If I think about any of the episode of the season,
that one sticks out of my mind. I liked it sort of visually
and it had this weirdo kind of you know, we talk a lot about
the show not pushing boundaries and taboos, and I think that one felt like
I want to tales from the Crypt episode to be I'm not saying it's great,
but of this season, that's the one I'm actually going even farther back
in season six, I'm going to talk about the first episode. My favorite
episode of this season is let the Punishment Fit the Crime because it has Catherine
O'Hara in it, and it has Peter nichol in it. Peter McNichol in
it. Yeah, that I agree that. I mean, it's it's it's
a bad It has bad moments, namely the ending is just bogus to say
the least. Yeah, but Catherine O'Hara is always great and Peter McNichol,
I mean, we await the word of vegle like Peter McNichol. Yeah,
Peter McNichol is always good in anything. So you know, here's the thing,
there's like only two or three good episodes this season. Yeah, hard
one race to figure out what was really good here. It's they're only a
handful. Yeah, And I feel like if you hadn't said only skin deep,
you would have said let the punishment fit the crime. I might have
said Doctor of Horror because I like that one. Really. Yeah, I
like that one. Yeah, what can I tell you? It's okay?
Yeah, I mean again, it's better than these last three, certainly better
than most of them. Like, like I said, it's maybe two or
three episodes this season, I really enjoyed. It's it's a real shame to
me because thinking about season five, season five had some really good episodes in
it. Yeah, death of some salesman forever ambergreed, well cooked Hams has
its moments. But like, man, this season, even the episode I
like from this season, the episodes that I would go to bat for,
are nowhere near as good as anything we saw in season one, two or
three. No, like, not even close. And it's just a damn
shame because the show has fallen off so hard by this point. Yes,
this is why I'm I'm actually hopeful for season seven. I mean, it
can't be worse, right, I couldn't tell you, Yeah exactly, I
legit can't tell you it could it could be worse. But I feel like
that bar Is set solo. There's not a whole lot that they have to
do to be better, you know, I would I would like to just
remember back to the days of season four with you know, Christopher Reeve,
Joe Peshi, anything but where we are now, David Warner getting a David
Warner getting a dummy throat at. Yeah, Like that's the thing. Like
it's not like the series got too self serious or something, but there was
a level of play at work in previous seasons even if it wasn't the best
plotted or shot, like you could still have a bit of fun with it.
And this season in particularly, didn't feel that way, like even when
they were shooting, in fact, especially when they were shooting for sort of
a lighthearted episode. Not that any of the ones I'm mentioning necessarily were,
but I'm just saying there seemed to be an attempt at entertainment in some way.
Well, and again, it also feels like in the previous seasons at
least one through four or five. To some extent, it also felt like
there was a lot more oversight when it came to the scripts and the quality
of the show that was being put out, because those first five seasons are
pretty damn good television from a scripts quality standpoint, and then as soon as
you get to season six and later parts of season five, boy, it
just starts nosediving. That's you know, I don't think that's an uncommon problem
with any television series. You start off and you've got to know, most
of the time, they just get too big for their britches. That's not
even what happened. Here's always like a corps of writers, and as the
show gets more popular, they go off to do their own thing, as
anyone would, and you're left with the people they hired, as you know,
assistants and stuff, and they kind of take over the ship, and
their vision isn't necessarily what the original guys who kind of came to it to
deliver what it's supposed to be. You have people who are just like involved
and they know the formula, and so they keep churning them out. And
that's what the past couple of seasons it felt like I can't agree more so.
On that note, on the next episode of Chronicles from the Crypt,
we're gonna be taking a look at the final Tales from the Crypt film,
though it's an official Tales from the Crypt film, but technically the name has
just slapped on Thereafter the fact, we're gonna be talking about two thousand and
sixes Tales from the Crypt presents ritual. So if you haven't seen it,
don't don't, but listen to us talk about it and you'll get a pretty
good idea as to why you shouldn't watch it. There's a lot of things
in that movie that are not great, and the way the film ends is
kind of the that's the worst bit of them all. Until then, Okay,
I don't even want to bring it up again. So until then,
where can people find you? Father Malone? Find me over on father Malone
dot com. I have a new podcast up called Dark Destinations. It's a
travelogue of frightening fictional towns. You can also check out my YouTube channel Ought
five Films O U G H T F I V E f I l MS
for a bunch of content there, and you can also hear me over on
Dreams for sale. The Twilight Zone eighty five podcasts, which I do with
Casualty Chris here and our friend, our man in Detroit, mister Mike White.
As for me, you can find me on Twitter at Casualty Underscore Chris.
You can find the podcast on Twitter at Chronicles FTC. I do a
movie podcast called The Culture Cast and a spooky paranormal true crime podcast called Scary
Stories We Tell if you want to check those out. We are also on
the internet at Chronicles ftc dot com. Big thanks to you, our listener,
and to John because here for doing the intro for the podcast, and
we'll catch you in the next episode.