Hello, kleets, It's me John could Sire, the voice of the crypt
Keeper, and you're listening to Chronicle from the Crypt. Hello there, I'm
Casualty Chris and this is Father Malone and we are the host of Chronicles from
the Crypt, a twice a month look at the horror anthology series Tales from
the Crypt that aired from nineteen eighty nine to nineteen ninety six. Now,
on each of these podcasts, we do two episodes of the television series,
and if you go back through the catalog, you'll see that between seasons we
used to do episodes about some tangentially related tales of emera. He says,
used to. Because this is the last season. We are on the final
seventh season of Tales from the Crypt, It's it's a little bittersweet, Father
Molan. Wouldn't you say absolutely, because I keep waiting for it to get
better. Oh, get the fuck out of it. I say it's bitter
sweet because I mean I've I've I feel like I've been doing this podcast as
long as the Culture Cast, and that is a that is a reality.
If you've been listening to this podcast recently. In our kind of rebooted run,
I had initially started this podcast in twenty fifteen, and then we got
about I think we I forget Father Molan, when did we start? When
did we reapproach? This was it? Because I remember I asked you if
you wanted to help me finish. Yeah, initially it was I think midway
through season five you had gotten to and I guessed it on one of those
and then we decided maybe we ought to just do it again from the beginning.
This was at least two years ago, maybe three two. We literally
we literally got to the end of that recording and we were like, should
we just redo this from the start. I think we both came to the
realization at the same time, separately and then essentially said the same thing at
the end. So it's it's pretty bittersweet. I mean, you know,
we've we have derided the show a fair amount, and I you know,
again, I want to reinforce to the community because I know that the community
listens. I know that you know, there's a very active Facebook group and
there are a lot of fans of the show. I do want to impress
upon them and the Father Malone. I think I can speak for both of
us. We are fans of this show. We love this show, there
wouldn't be a podcast detailing our grievances of the show not from us. Yeah,
if we didn't like this show, we wouldn't be talking about it.
So, you know, I kind of want to clear the air a little
bit on that, because it feels like sometimes we do pylon on this show
and this season exactly right, that's exactly how I feel a lot, and
I feel bad for doing it. And this season has felt worse than the
last couple so far. I'm gonna I'll say on par Well, it's felt
worse because this is the final season and this is it and it's not changing
its tune. It's it's it's one of those things where it's like you're trying
to get someone to stop doing something, and then once they go off the
cliff, it's like, well, can't do anything about that now. And
that's it's feeling like the show is creeping closer towards its inevitable conclusion and it's
not changing its tune. It's just walking right off the cliff, completely oblivious
that there's a cliff, and it's it's unfortunate, it really is, but
now with English accents exactly so let's talk about some English accents we're gonna be
talking about on this episode of Chronicles. From the Crypt Episode three and four,
Season seven, A Slight Case of Murder and Escape. It looks like
Neptumbe has just moved from virgul to late Capricorn, which would mean you should
avoid any serious romantic and stranglements for a while, at least until the end
of the month when mercury turns retrograde. Something about your horoscope isn't making sense.
Let me see your hand. Yes, interesting, I'm not much at
bleeding palms, but your future seems rather cloudy, kind of like the woman
in Tonight's tale. She's been contemplating her scar sign too. In a nasty
nugget eye call A Slight Case of Murder. So A Slight Case of Murder
aired May third, nineteen ninety six. It is directed by Brian Helgeland,
written by Brian Helgeland. It starts Francesca Anus that is not her name,
Francesca that is really not her name. It starts Francesca Annis, Christopher Cassanov
and Elizabeth Spriggs and it is about a true crime mystery novelist who gets a
mysterio his visitor in the middle of the night. Sure, um boy,
that's a that's what a SUCCINCTA synopsis. I I I genuinely wonder what they
were thinking with this episode. I didn't think it was terrible. I just
it's not a terrible issue. It's just a why why was this story so
compelling you had to devote an episode of Tales from the Crip when there's thirteen
episode this season to this story. I mean, that's that's the bigger issue,
right. It's not a quality question anymore, it's why are you devoting
one episode when there aren't many left to this story? Yeah? You know,
I think sometimes on the show, we've noticed this in past season's a
guest director, filmmaker, writer sort of steps in and they just let them
go and do what they want. And in this case, Brian Helgeland wanted
to tell us a tale, let's say, not very new, you know.
I actually so. I tend to reread the comics for these episodes after
we've watched them. And this Slight Case of Murders based on Vault of Horror
number thirty three, written by Bill Gaines and Al Felstein, and the artwork
was by George Evans. But that's about all I can tell you because could
not find the original issue to read, So we're gonna have to assume that
Brian Helgeland went off on his own and did his own thing. It's all.
I mean. I'm sure the comic couldn't have been much better, but
it's it's a story that to your point. You know, Brian Helgeland doing
his own thing, that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that, but why
this story? And Brian Helgeland is not a bad writer by any stretch of
the imagination, not at all. La Confidential Man on Fire forty two,
that weird Tom Hardy movie where he plays two different people that's actually way better
than it has any right to be. Oh legend, Yeah, it's it's
it's weird to me. The order a film that Have you ever seen that
film? I have the Heath Ledger Mark Addy film. Yeah, it's weird,
right, yeah, but it's not terrible. Is Brian Hilgeland English by
any chance? I don't even know? Uh no, it's not right Providence
low Roadie. Yeah, it's weird that he works so much in England,
But you know, I know, Anglophiles, what are you Gonna do?
And he also he also wrote A Night's Tale? Yeah, he directed that
too, right, he also directed. Yeah, but I mean I'm I'm
talking. I mean again, you know, his directing style is kind of
non existent in this episode. I'm talking more about like the story kind of
you know. Yeah, his his his ability to write is way better than
this episode. Way yeah. I think every writer out there, particularly when
they deal in as much crime as Brian Helgeland does, you know, thinks
they have a who Done It in them and they want to they want to
spring it forth, And unfortunately he did so here it tales from the crypt
because there there's really nothing new in this story at all, and and it
also takes weird leaps where what was like a two character study with this interloper
character who is clearly the antagonist of the tale. I mean, you don't
have such a small cast and not have one of them be the actual sort
of overarching fiend that's going to be revealed because we need the reveal. But
like suddenly that woman's what was he her son? Like? What was going
on there where the I don't know, I mean, I guess she had
been manipulating them the whole time. I get it. Yeah. Yeah.
The character of Elizabeth Spriggs, who plays the nosy neighbor, is a budding
crime writer herself, and so she orchestrates the entire situation of the main character's
ex husband coming back and thinking that he was she was cheating on him,
and then she ropes her own son into it, and it's just fucking dumb.
It's just dumb. It's dumb, it's lazy. And on top of
it being dumb and lazy, like you said, it's it's a story we've
seen before, and we'll see it again, not in this show. But
it's not like this is some novel, new concept that no one has ever
thought of before. It's very on the nose. Yeah, And you know,
I think not maybe five or six years beforehand, there had been a
remake of the film Da where they changed the plot from the original film to
a character murdering another in order to steal their novel and gain their fame.
So like that it was not only a new thought when Helgeland did it,
it wasn't a new thought a couple of years beforehand. It's just, you
know, this home reminds me a lot of secret window you stole my story.
Oh yeah, my goodness, No, I'm just I'm just kidding.
This does not remind me of that at all, because somehow even that movie
is better than this episode. That's fair, that's fair. Look, the
idea that one character who you've been led to believe is a harmless character turning
out to be the mastermind of this entire situation is. It's a fun concept,
don't get me wrong, but yeah, it needs to be more skillfully
achieved than what we're given here, which you know, there might be a
time constraint maybe, or there might I don't know. I'm not going to
make excuses for the episode. It's it is what it is, honestly,
not the worst that we've gotten. As you said, it's it's more a
failure of our expectations that the series is going to go out with a hurrah
instead of a Hey, here's more of what we've been giving you. And
that's and that's really so much of what it feels like is it's just it
is content to go out on such a disappointing note, and these episodes that
we've been seeing have been pushing it in that direction. It's just it feels
almost and this is a more contemporary example. It feels a lot like Game
of Thrones. The show is just rushing to the end. It doesn't even
care about quality. It just wants to be done. Yeah, who knows.
Look, I'm not privy to the behind the scenes machinations over at the
Tales from the Crypt office in the mid nineties, but you know, it
feels like this is a lot of out of trunk material, Like they had
been writing and writing and then scripts got rejected and it's like, well,
we're doing one more season. Let's pull out everything that we didn't get to
do. But there was a reason they didn't get to do those. Yeah,
the reason is is they're not good. So, you know, I
applaud them for wanting to do another season of the show. I completely get
it. You know, this show has made an impact on so many people's
careers, and it really has made an impact on the whore community at large.
But there's a reason this season is not fondly remembered, and it's because
if they were going to move to the UK to work on the show,
you would have thought they would do something different with it, and yet they
just continue to go down the path that they were going down in season six
and it's like, well, if you're going to spend all that time and
effort to move to a foreign country, yeah, continuing the trend of good
enough, it seems like they thought, well, it's going to be you
know, completely alien in that you know, different land, different actors,
different takes on things. But it feels like they've done no rewriting at all.
It's like, this is the what season seven was going to be,
but now it's in England and we'll, you know, we'll throw in a
few sort of English phrases, but that change in locale will be enough.
And it wasn't enough. They needed an entire not a revamp necessarily. I
don't think the actual formula for Tales from the Crypt needs fixing, but just
a shot of adrenaline in some way, and it doesn't fail that. It
feels like we're just hooked up to life support, and the life support is
slowly not working as much as it used to. Yeah. The beeps on
the heart monitor getting a pretty few and far between. Yeah, So,
speaking of the beeps getting few and far between, let's talk about the next
episode escape. Did you hear me? Maggot? I said fall in.
I swear you must be the sorriest bunch of sad set I ever did see.
You're a disgrace to the uniform, all of you, and you call
yourself a scare force. What's your problem? Soldier? You some kind of
mummy's boy that it m I guess you think you're like the man in Tonight's
tale. He's not much of a soldier. It's a nasty little shriek and
destroy mission I call escape. So the episode aired May seventeenth, nineteen ninety
six. It is directed by Peter McDonald, written by This Is Alecats and
Gilbert Adler. I guess I just okay, I guess we haven't seen Alecats
and Gilbert add they're writing a lot of screenplays. And this episode has Martin
Kemp and Nicholas Grace in it. And it's a episode about a Nazi prisoner
of war who turns on his own men who are trying to escape, and
then he gets recaptured. Any attempts to do the same thing. It's a
lot like Yellow. It is a lot like ya. Having said that,
pretty pretty enjoyable. Not a whiff of the supernatural, more more of the
bitter irony from ec. I think it was well made past the time,
didn't didn't feel insulted at all. I did once we got to the the
big reveal at the end, just feel like, well, you guys did
do this episod pisode and it was a little more grand and had Lance Hendrickson
in it. Yeah, you know that. That to me, I think
is the real The real issue is that it is as much as I'm not
a huge fan of Yellow, I mean it's not that I don't like Yellow,
but you know, Yellow is just in my opinion, Yellow is okay.
It's not the amazing episode. I think Zameche's thought it was going to
be. Now it's overlong by half. Oh yeah. But you know the
issue is this episode. You know where it's going, you know what the
twist is, you know what the twist is long before they even do the
twist. And in Yellow, the actors are so good that some of the
issues with the episode I kind of overlook them. In this episode, it's
a lot harder to overlook those issues because the quality of actors on screen is
not the same now, and which isn't to say that they're not doing their
job. I think Martin camp is pretty good. I think for me,
the problem is more that it's all well and good to make the audience accept
a character who's sort of unseemly and let you go with them. But here
what we have is a Nazi and uh and the most cowardly of them,
the one who sells out all of his friends and sells out anyone he can
just to just to save his own hide. So like they're they're asking a
lot from us to kind of begin with, so that you know, when
the final twist comes, it's not it's not unwelcome. Yeah, you know.
In Yellow, the main character is somewhat sympathetic. In this he's not.
It's not he's a fucking Nazi. He's a fucking Nazi. Yeah.
Man. Like in Yellow, we have the son of a like a the
like the head of the US forces, who has been forced into military life,
and it has from the get go said I don't want to do any
of this, and I'm a coward and that's the way it is, and
gets a come up and stead isn't necessarily deserved. But here, like yeah,
it's it's this is this is a this is a Nazi who will sell
out Nazis and Americans no matter what, he's just he's just a despicable guy.
Now, I will point out that this is not based on Tales from
the Crypt Shocking. It's Multipore number sixteen written and the artwork was done by
Al Feldstein. In the original, it's a mob boss in a New York
prison and it's like a heavy labor camp in that they're constantly unloading and toting
these bricks, and the mob boss is sick of this and he wants to
get out of there, so he's going to break out, and he arranges
to have the prison job of the prison morgue, knowing that eventually someone's gonna
die and he's gonna sneak himself into the coffin, and he's set up with
his cohorts that when that happens that they have to come and dig him up,
not realizing that the bricks that he's been toting for the first part of
the issue are for a new crematorium that that they've built. So instead,
so he gets into the coffin and ends up being burned alive. Better,
as far as I'm concerned, Way better, way better. An actually interesting
story with a interesting payoff. Yeah, and and really sort of trafficking and
tails from the CRYPTI kind of avenues where he's going to be buried alive and
you think that that's going to be it, and then he's gonna get double
crossed or something, and then nope, they just put that box right into
a their newly minted furnace. Could have been horrific instead of ironic, which
is the war is already over. You could have been free. I wish
that that worked. I wish that that payoff felt earned, right. It
didn't, because you know, they've set it up so that that character,
the sort of brigadier general character, has been an asshole from the beginning.
Like as the way the episode is played, he's the villain of the piece,
so he's he's exacting revenge on this on our lead. And as much
as I can't get behind the leads motivations, like you're just kind of left
unsatisfied, Well, you don't know who to root for because you're not going
to root for the Nazi, but you're also, like you said, it's
hard to get behind a character who is kind of such a piece of garbage
in his own right, And you know what's funny, like they had they
had this plant character pretending to be a Nazi prisoner of war who's sympathetic to
our lead, convincing him that he needs to forge ahead with this plan of
escape, and you know it ends up being an English soldier. What's funny
about that is like he affects a German accent to like convince this guy.
But like, at no time did Martin Kemp just speak German to him?
Like could the guy speak German? That's something we never really got into,
but like these are little details and always sort of stick in my crawl.
Well, if he had spoken German to him, the jig would have been
up so exactly. But that's an issue. Deal with that issue. Oh,
I completely agree. I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm
just being a smart as you know. It's a it should have been something
that they confronted outright, but of course they didn't, which means when the
twist comes, you know what the twist is going to be. Yeah,
I mean, I guess that guy's the most sympathetic character in it, right,
He's just doing his job, I guess so, But we're also not
given enough from him as a character. To really know anything about him.
Yeah, it's it's weird when they do these episodes that are character pieces.
You only have one or two main characters, and we don't know anything more
about them at the end of than we did when we started. Yeah,
and then you get to the end of the episode and you wonder to yourself,
Okay, who was I supposed to be invested in? Who was I
supposed to be rooting for? Here? Do I care that the main character
gets shot in a coffin? Like I do? I even care? Know
he's a Nazi, so I don't even care. Yeah, it's a matter
of well, I just watched some events occurring and I there it was,
and like, yeah, it's it's well made, it's you know, look,
ultimately, I think this is the episode that would have been made of
yellow. Had Zamakas not said I'm going to do a full blown, one
hour long episode as a pilot for another series, it would have been this
small scale. But I do feel like had they adhered more toward the source
material, it would have been a better payoff. Well, they had the
coffin, even if he was a Nazi, Like, yeah, I mean
burning alive is pretty nightmarish. Well, I think the other thing that they
could have done, if they wanted to still do this story but kind of
do a little bit of course correction, would be make the character a Allied
pow and watch him turn on his own people because he knows he's saving his
own skin. Then he is a character who deserves the punishment, and you
could have been invested in him even slightly. Yeah, that's a that's a
really good point, because something about the Nazi uniform is just off putting from
the get go. Yeah. I mean no, I mean, no one
in their right mind, especially in current day and age, is going to
go out of their way to root toward the Nazis. Yeah, man,
and uh yeah, I mean look tells from the crypt Is. It's no
stranger to unsympathetic leads. We get them all the time, and your mileage
may vary on whether or not they deserve what they get at the end.
But in this case, I'm like, yeah, okay, good shoot him.
Yeah, I mean, I have no why didn't you just do that
to begin with? Not a sympathetic bone in my body. Regarding Martin Kemp's
character, he's dead, good riddens. He gets what he deserves, right,
I mean, he gets what he deserves. Yeah, but you know,
they could have done that in the first five minutes. They could have
done that while they were escaping and just said, oops, we thought he
was running. Well, that's the thing. You pick up this episode right
at the beginning with Martin Kemp and he is running with the rest of his
soldiers escaping from the first prison, and with the way that the episode starts,
it kind of it's kind of just jarring becus like wait, what,
okay, what's going on? And then you don't really get to see him
betray his compatriots. I mean, you see the act, but you don't
see the build up to his betrayal. You don't see any camaraderie between them,
which is what would have I don't know. I mean, maybe that
was a smart move because already we're dealing with the stumbling block of fascism.
So the less we see of him actually betraying people he knows and likes and
like him better. Well. The other funny thing is, similarly to the
episode with the monkeys Paw, it hasn't opening that while it does play into
the final story of the episode, it also takes away time from the final
story of the episode. Yeah, I mean, this is not a James
Bond movie. We don't need to see the last bit of his previous mission.
Right. This cold open shit is getting old, it is. Yeah,
And particularly given how economical they need to be with the amount of time
given, it does seem like a weird left turn to be taking for no
good reason other than confusion. And you know, we don't know anything about
any of the characters or situations coming in anyway, I don't need further muddying
of the waters. Well. And also given the fact that in a TV
show like Tales from the Crypt, a TV show that is an anthology weekly
anthology television series, you have wraparounds already, you can't do a cold open.
That is not how this format works, right. That is a that
is completely against the logic of what a quote anthology TV series is. The
cold open is the fucking crypt Keeper, right, And I've noticed that Kevin
Yeager is back directing the segments, which is welcome. Yeah. I think
the crypt Keeper looks as good as he's ever looked this season. I think
he may have come back for last season as well. But there was a
season there that was maybe five where either Gilkats or Alcats or Gilbert Adler were
directing the crypt Keeper sequences and it it felt stiff, And here it's as
lively as it has ever been. Well, the other thing is, you
know, it's a nice change from the crip Keeper puppet we saw on Ritual.
Oh yeah, I mean, I'm glad we watched that movie in between
seasons, so I can really appreciate, like the dynamic job that the puppeteers
are doing here. Oh yeah, I mean you know this. You know,
while these wrap around segments don't really make a lot of sense, they
seem to be going more and more nonsensical as we have gotten farther with that.
You know that idea with the show where every episode has an opening segment,
and those opening segments sometimes tie in, sometimes they don't. There they
seem to be tying in less and less. Yeah, I mean, it's
a far cry from and All through the House where he trudges in in a
Santa suit and then tells us about Christmas and what's to come. This just
seems to be a bunch of non sequiturs. And oh and by the way,
I have a new tail for you. Yeah, I think is it
which is it one of these episodes where he goes to space? Is that?
Is that one of these Yeah? Yeah, where yes the Countdown rocket
Ship. We don't even get a sci fi episode after Yeah, Like,
I just it's it's so weird to me because it just doesn't work at all
with the rest of the episode and it doesn't have to write. But in
the past it had been kind of setting the tone, and I would personally
argue it's important to set the tone and the theme for the episode with these
wraparounds, oh a hundred percent. I mean that's always been the failing of
any anthology, right that. You know, you get invested in a set
of characters, in a plot line, and then it's gone and now we
have to re up. So it was always nice when the crypt Keeper was
easing us into the tail instead of just throwing it at us. And this
is not what the show is doing anymore. It's just seemingly doing whatever it
wants, and it seems less about whatever it wants and more about what looks
cool, Like, oh, what can we do now? We'll put the
crypt Keeper and Uncle Sam out for it, or we'll put him in a
spaceship. It's like, okay, yeah, I mean it's it seems like
leftover gags, right, like they had wanted to do gas gags. Yeah,
gags for episodes that don't exist. Yeah, that John Carpenter. It's
like that John Carpenter album that came out a couple of years ago, theme
songs for movies that don't exist. Essentially, that's what these are, wraparounds
for episodes that never happened. Yeah, I mean you could literally put anything
after what comes at the beginning. It's it's kind of crazy. Yeah,
other than the fact that they explain what happens in the episode, it has
nothing to do with the episode, and it's buzzare It's just bizarre, and
it doesn't it doesn't. It just doesn't work for me. Again, it's
getting to the point now where I'm watching these crypt keeper segments and this is
gonna sound sacrilegious. I'm watching a him just like I don't really care anymore.
Like you, It's it's hard to care when this has nothing to do
with anything. It certainly has gotten to the point of Okay, just get
to the episode, just start. And what's really sad is the episodes are
you know, since you know what I would say about halfway through season five,
the episodes are starting to and have been really disappointing and feel lazy and
just good enough, and that didn't really bleed into the wraparounds, but all
of a sudden it has been. It's systemic. It is. It is
the malaise baked into this show. At a cellular level, I guess is
that at one point they were just gonna throw their hands up and say,
well, nothing else, this is it. We're just gonna do weird wraparounds
with the crypt Keeper being weird. And have I mentioned that you should skip
the previous episode, do not watch the Murderous Tale, and I'm gonna slight
Case of Murder and I don't know, I'm soft watch maybe on Escape given
what has previously come, I'm going to compare episodes and judge it that way.
I would say skip and watch Yellow instead. Yeah, okay, well
if we're doing that, yeah, I go watch Yellow. You'll at least
get some It's not like you can't watch Yellow, right, and you'll at
least get some grandeur out of that one. And you know, look,
I don't remember this season very well. Frankly, I don't remember it at
all. I think this is the season I may not have ever watched.
Like I've said before, I remember the final episode of this season. But
man, season's bumming me out. Man. Yeah, I had high hopes
coming in. I haven't seen any of these episodes. I did see the
final one, because that was pretty well advertised, I think at the time.
But I think I tuned in one time to Tellson a crypt and saw
that there were English people and it felt entirely different to me, and then
I turned it off. That was years and years ago. So I went
in to this particular season with higher hopes than maybe we're warranted, and higher
hopes than it may be deserved. Oh definitely, definitely that Well, all
I knows is on the next episode of Chronicles from the Rip, we're gonna
be talking about two more episodes from season seven, episode five and six,
Horror in the Night and Cold War and guess who's in Cold War? You
and McGregor yes, and Jane Horrocks from Absolutely Fabulous and Colin Salmon as well.
I believe, oh yeah from Resident Evil should be great right based on
the cast. Sure, but we know it won't be unfortunately. I mean
I have high hopes, but I know they're going to be dashed, just
based on the fact that I guess everybody gave up all of a sudden.
So this is an abusive relationship, but it feels like we just keep coming
back for more. So until then, Father Malone, where can people find
you? You can check me out over at father Malone dot com. I
have a podcast called Dark Destinations. It's a travellog to towns that never existed.
You can check out my YouTube channel at five Films and you can hear
me over on Dreams for Sale, the Twilight Zone eighty five podcast that Chris
and I do with our man in Detroit, Mike White. He's our man
on the streets. He's on the ground in Detroit. It's out there doing
doing the good work. As for me, you can find me on Twitter
at Christmas Clause. I changed my name on Twitter because as much as I
like my name, when it comes to talking about tales from the Crypt,
it's probably not the best optics wise to have your name be in the middle
of a pandemic casualty. Chris, So I have changed my name to something
a lot more holly jolly, and it's Christmas Clause without the tea, so
you can find me on Twitter at Christmas Clause. You can find the podcast
on the Internet at Chronicles FTC and also on the Internet at Chronicles from the
Crypt dot com. We are on Twitter at Chronicles FTC. Big thanks as
always to John Cassire for the intro for the Chronicles from the Crypt podcast,
and we'll catch you on the next episode.