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.