Chalmers (Vernon) with some steamy photos of an orchestrated tryst to get him to cough up the cash.
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Other notables: Cathy Moriarty and her smoky voice are legends (having your first acting job ever be a leading role in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull will help with that), and she did an amazing job mixing kid-friendly scares and eye-rolling cynicism in the DEAD-action Casper movie and the thinly-veiled William Castle tribute Matinee, directed by Joe “Why the hell did he never direct an episode?!” Dante.īen Cross played the legendary Barnabas Collins in the less-than-legendary short-lived 1990’s revival of Dark Shadows, and John Vernon has been in everything from Killer Klowns from Outer Space to Alfred Hitchcock’s Topaz.ĭoes It Deliver?: A con artist couple, Alison (Moriarty) and Benny (Cross), are out to hustle the wealthy and married Mr. Especially when you’re dealing with a story that runs less than half an hour, their ear for dialogue can be a real boon. I’ve mentioned it before, and it remains true: If they have any talent at all, I’m a big fan of actors who also write. Working (obviously) predominantly in comedy, the late Anderson dipped his toes into writing horror just this once: here! As someone who was in one of the most famous Stephen King adaptations and had one of his earlier acting roles in an episode of George Romero’s Tales from the Darkside, however, he wasn’t a neophyte to mixing the screaming with the laughing. All that said, this pack reminded me of my childhood quite a bit when I revisited them, and like most of this column, seeing how that hits my adult brain with that nostalgia cloud stuck in there was fun and more than a bit strange. “What’s Cookin'” especially shines, though as someone who revered Christopher Reeve as a Superman-loving kid, seeing him in a scary, darkly funny thing where he was certainly NOT Clark Kent might have seared that a bit more strongly. This torrid triptych stands out in my mind both as episodes I both saw a good amount and loved quite a bit back then. These forbidden nuggets were the edited FOX syndicated episodes, and either they favored certain episodes or my brain stubbornly just knows the ones it likes best, but there’s a handful I remember seeing much, much more often than others. When I first discovered Tales from the Crypt as a shy little girl, fascinated by horror but not allowed to see it, part of its fun was sneaking the episodes while my parents were asleep.
If you were too young to watch it, just missed it when it was on, or only saw the edited episodes, check out a fun early show that helped make HBO a must for cable owners.“Unquiet meals make ill digestions.” – William Shakespeare, Richard III
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It often was bloody but I don’t think it took full advantage of its cable airing most of the time. Tales from the Crypt was a fun anthology series. William Friedkin directed “On a Deadman’s Chest”, Richard Donner did “Showdown”, John Frankenheimer directed “Maniac at Large”, and Joel Silver directed “Split Personality”…oddly enough, I generally like the non-celebrity directed episodes better. Tom Hanks also steps in to direct “None But the Lonely” for his first directing credit (and had a horrible hand show up in a shot with Sugar Ray Leonard…bad editing).
This season sees Tom Hanks, Henry Gibson, Treat Williams, Sugar Ray Leonard, Dylan McDermott, Cleavon Little, Tia Carrera, Kathy Moriarty, John Vernon, Mimi Rogers, Kathy Ireland, Christopher Reeve, Meat Loaf, Judd Nelson, David Warner, Zelda Rubinstein, Twiggy, David Morse, Brad Pitt, Blythe Danner, Joe Pesci, Burt Young, Donald O’Connor, Zach Galligan, Timothy Dalton, Beverly D’Angelo, Dennis Faria, Kevin McCarthy, Margot Kidder, and more. Tales from the Crypt is always loaded with directors and stars…some big, some character actors, some before they were stars…but always fun.