Favorite Tales From the Crypt Episode

[Ash]

Most of you will agree that Tales From the Crypt was a kickass show!

My all time favorite episode was "Abra Cadaver" starring Beau Bridges.
Remember that one?
He invents this flourescent green serum and injects his younger brother with it.
The younger brother on the outside appears to have all the symptoms of death but he is not dead!

You see and hear most of the story through the younger brother in his paralysis as he dreads the inevitable autopsy.
He is supposedly hanged on a meathook in the autopsy room freezer and you hear his voice/thoughts.
He thinks he is dead but he is actually still alive, paralyzed by the serum he was injected with.

He comes "alive" right at the moment he thinks his skull is about to be sawed into by a surgeon to remove his brain.
The joke was on him!
His older brother played by Bridges and everyone else who was in on it have a big laugh but the younger brother has a heart attack right then & there and "supposedly dies".
He isn't dead yet.
The end comes when his REAL autopsy is performed and you can still hear him speaking his thoughts as the surgeon REALLY does cut into his head with a saw!

That was a fantastic episode!

What is your all-time favorite Tales From the Crypt episode?



Post Edited (02-09-04 02:32)

[Evil Matt]

There was one where Harry Anderson from "Night Court" played a writer (or artist...I don't remember which) for "Tales From the Crypt" comics, and everything he wrote (drew?) came to life.  That episode was so self-awarely tongue in cheek that I couldn't help but enjoy it.

[Brother Ragnarok]

The one with Sam Kinnison as the voice inside the evil band manager's head.

Brother R

[Sam]

My favorite is the one with Morton Downey Jr. going into the haunted house.

[Ash]

My second all-time favorite would be the episode with David Warner titled "The New Arrival"  

Here's the synopsis I took from tvtome.com:  
"An arrogant radio child psychologist (Warner) is obsessed with proving to his manager that he is the best. He gets a new patient, a woman and her daughter. When he goes to her room, he assumes that the daughter is the woman's imaginary friend. He learns that her daughter died years ago but her mother's love keeps her alive."

Remember that one?
It had the girl named Millicent ( I think that was her name) running around all over that huge house wearing a white mask while her mother played by Zelda Rubenstein (short lady from Poltergeist) professes her love for her.
When the daughter removes her mask it turns out she's a long dead ghoul!
And in the attic are the skeletons of all the other child psychologists that thought they could help Millicent over the years.
That was a creepy one!



Post Edited (02-09-04 19:21)

[Susan]

I used to love the show - I don't know that I have a favorite. The Tim Curry one where he played all the family members and the very ugly girl who was seducing a travelling salesman always gave me the willies. Mostly because curry is too good at these type of characters. What I loved about the show was it's diversity in actors.

I liked the one with the lunatic Santa going after the woman in the house.

What was the one with Christopher Reeve, meat loaf, Judd Nelson...I remember something about making people into steaks at a roadside diner and Reeve I think was the killer

Now there's two ventriloquist shows I get mixed up and one of them i'm not even sure is a tales from the crypt. The first has don rickles in it and bobcat goldthwait and the plot involves the ventriloquists hand is really his conjoined evil twin which at the end he tries to put in a meat grinder or something. Another one - help me place this, has a scene with the ventriloquist looking in the mirror and seeing his dummy 'move', eventually it talks I think saying nasty things. I think he threatened to quit or something, but in the end i wanna think the dummy had his hand shoved up the guys back making HIM talk. Does this ring a bell?

[Genetic Mishap]

That's the only episode I've ever seen. I loved it because of certain scenes that capture the "haunted house" feel- a pitch black room, with only a swaying flashlight for illumination...I remember thinking "people need to use that in movies more often!"

But it's been several years since I've seen that...

[JohnL]

>What was the one with Christopher Reeve, meat loaf, Judd Nelson...I remember
>something about making people into steaks at a roadside diner and Reeve I
>think was the killer

Meatloaf is threatening Reeve with something (money owed I think) and Nelson kills him and starts serving him up to the diner customers. Reeve finds out and is horrified, but he has to keep the secret or he'll be in trouble. Nelson eventually tries to doublecross reeve with his wife, Bess Armstrong, but they're onto him and it ends with them making a deal with a cop who has developed a taste for their special steaks. As they hold Nelson down, the cop says "Fire up the grill, I'm starving!"

As for favorite episodes, I like the haunted house one already mentioned. Also the one about the fraternity trying to scare its members by making them go into a fake haunted house, but then they discover that a nearby sorority is really a pack of ghouls and they're killing the pledges. Then there's the one about the home for the blind, run by a sadistic director. All the people gang up on him and do some nasty things to him. This was a remake of one of the stories from the movies.

[Evil Matt]

The one with the guy watching the dummy move in the mirror was actually a Twilight Zone episode.  Great, scary show.

[Mr_Vindictive]

My favorite was the one about the guy who gets shot while stealing a suitcase of either diamonds or money-can't remember exactly which.

He stays the night in a hotel and he meets a woman there that he ends up having sex with.  During the sex she turns into some type of monster.  He then starts to have hallucinations about blood and the hotel among other things.

I remember it ended with him being in a dirty hotel room in a hotel that was obviously condemed.  He dies there and everything that had happened was a hallucination due to fever/infection from the gunshot wound.

Great stuff.

[Susan]

Evil Matt wrote:

> The one with the guy watching the dummy move in the mirror was
> actually a Twilight Zone episode.  Great, scary show.
>

my god was that in black and white? I'm really losing it

[Lee]

Yeah the one about the fraternity is a cool one. Another cool one is "The Pit" about two kickboxers and their bithchy women. I think I like this one because it's basically a martial arts b-movie with a bizare since of humor.

[eeeee5]

     "Cutting Cards."  Remember, I think that's the title, no! no!  I'm wrong, I guess I lose the bet, be real carefull, I don't want your drunk a-- to miss, only a finger per hand lost, right.  How 'bout best of three?  Oh, Russian Roulette, but this time load the gun you freakin' wuss.
     "Oils Well That Ends Well."  Sucked, but John Kassir actually made an appearence in that one.
    The episode with the guy who needed facial surgery, or something like that, and had to consult a "voodoo" doctor.  And ended up having to have his face cut in half.  That was the one that disturbed me the most, as a kid.
    But, which was a better series of adaptations (I realy mean set of narratives) "Tales from the Crypt," "The Vault of Horror," or "Shock Suspense Stories?"  (They list from which of these three Crypt mags each ep is based on in the opening credits.)
   Or ever catch the Saturday morning cartoon of TFtC?  Ahh, Killer Tomatoes, Toxic Crusaders, and TFtC, what were they smoking over at ABC, or whoever had these great ideas.
   HBO, home of "Cosmic Slop," "TFtC," "The Hitchhiker," "Perversions of Science," and that other weird sexual comedic show that had the animations about the gnome who was visited by other gnomes who would make dildos for him for shoes, or something like that.

[Neon Noodle]

"Dig That Cat...He's Real Gone"

Joe Pantoliano played Ulric the Undying - He got a gland from a cat that gave him 9 lives, and he became the main attraction in a circus sideshow.

I loved the last little narration while he was in the casket:

"Too bad that cat died."

"Wait....."
[flashback to kitty's death]

"The cat died...."
[flashback to all other deaths during the episode]

"THAT MEANS I DON'T HAVE NINE LIVES!!!!!!"

Ahhh....such a good show!