YMMV / Tales from the Crypt

YMMV for the comic can be found here.

TV series

• Adaptation Displacement: Most modern audiences are more familiar with the TV series than the original 1950's comics (or even the 1972 film), especially the portrayal of the Crypt Keeper as a wisecracking revenant rather than a large, ghoulish but very much alive old man. It doesn't help that reprinted collections of the original comics are ungodly expensive.
• Anvilicious: A pretty intentional and self-aware version of it. Many of the episodes are morality plays whose protagonists are bad people brought down by their selfishness and hubris.
  • "The Man Who Was Death": Even if the verdict isn't what you like, circumventing the law and playing judge, jury, and executioner is not okay.
  • "Cutting Cards": Obsession with petty grudges isn't worth it and they will destroy you.
  • "The Thing From the Grave": Domestic abuse is vile and will come back to bite you.
  • "Top Billing": Getting the spotlight isn't worth it if you sacrifice your morals.
• Awesome Music:
  • The intro. Even the animated series knew this!
  • The episode “King of the Road” featured original songs written and performed by Warren Zevon, the most memorable being “Roll With the Punches”.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Creepy Awesome: The Crypt Keeper, oh so very, very much. His Faux Affably Evil nature and twisted sense of humor certainly help.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The series has a very tongue-in-cheek tone when it comes to its horror, frequently making situations so absurd they go from grim to darkly funny. In "Collection Completed" Jonas stuffing one of his wife's pets is genuinely horrifying. Then the eyes of dog's stuffed corpse starts blinking from a remote control and it's instantly hilarious.
• Designated Villain:
  • The husband from "Collection Completed", while not a genuinely good person, it's quite understandable as to why he'd snap the way that he did. See Jerkass Has a Point for further details.
  • Charlie from "Dead Right" also comes to mind, taken the fact that his wife was a no-good gold digger with little to no sympathetic traits, yet is our viewpoint character for the episode. While Charlie was in the wrong to murder her, his only sins up to that point were being a bit slovenly and a Big Eater.
  • The husband from "Three's a Crowd" could count as well. The episode tries to portray him as paranoid and overreacting, but considering how his wife and best friend act during the episode one can't really blame him for thinking they were having an affair.
• Draco in Leather Pants: The main character of "The Man Who Was Death" gets this, as lots of people agreed with what he was doing!
• Esoteric Happy Ending:
  • Inverted in "The Switch", where a rich old man spends all his money on a new, youthful body, only to have the woman he was pursuing leave him for the now-wealthy donor who underwent the body exchange operations with him. It's presented as a Downer Ending for him, even though A: his intended lover was an obvious Gold Digger he's much better off without, B: he's essentially purchased a do-over on life itself, something many, many people would happily trade a fortune to have, and C: since he has regained his youth but retained his years of accumulated experience and knowledge, he could potentially still rebuild his fortune.
  • In retrospect, the reason why this episode's "bad ending" felt "not too bad" is clearly because the director (Arnold Schwarzenegger) wanted to add more depth to the story - The original source material was brief and lacked the nuance of the main character enjoying the perks of a newer body, and thus the TV adaptation added two scenes of the main character showing off his newfound physical capabilities.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • "Yellow" features Kirk Douglas and his son Eric as a general and his cowardly son, the latter being executed for abandoning his fellow men in the field. Sadly, as Eric died in 2004 of an accidental drug overdose, Kirk ended up outliving his son in real life as well.
  • At the end of "Dead Right," Jeffrey Tambor's character going to jail for a crime against a female character is now a bit more uncomfortable due to Tambor suffering from sexual harassment allegations in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and #MeToo movement.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • William Sadler played the title character of the series' first episode "The Man Who Was Death". Two years later, Sadler would also be Death in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. Later, he cameos in the wraparound segments of Season 6's "The Assassin" as the Bill and Ted version of Death.
  • In "Confession," Suzy Eddie Izzard's character talks about his new story idea about Satan being reincarnated as a serial killer. The twist? He's a serial killer that only kills other serial killers.
• It Was His Sled: The twist to "Lower Berth" which shows the origin of the Crypt Keeper was surprising at the time, but not so much anymore. Many episode descriptions reveal the twist so casually, as does the Season 2 documentary featurette on the DVD.
• Jerkass Woobie:

• Leo Burns in "As Ye Sow" who, whilst fundamentally a decent person, was driven to insane rage when he suspects his wife (whom he is deeply in love with) is cheating on him. Even if you don't sympathise with him after he crosses the Moral Event Horizon by ordering a hitman to kill the other man in question, by the time it ends you will certainly wish it had turned out differently.
• Lt. Martin Calthrop from "Yellow" is a Dirty Coward whose cowardice results in the deaths of many men and the failure of a crucial mission. However, he grew up with a father who constantly refused to give him his approval, and who ignored obvious warnings that Martin was not fit to be a soldier. If Martin had been given more unconditional love, then perhaps the tragedy would have been averted.

• Magnificent Bastard: With its heavy twist-based format, some characters in this EC Comics-based series show themselves as truly ingenious masterminds.
  • "The Sacrifice'': Gloria Fielding and her secret lover Jerry Jasper arranged for Gloria to marry rich dullard Sebastian Fielding, while directing the easily-influenced James to Sebastian so Gloria could seduce him. Luring him into murdering her husband, Gloria fakes not knowing Jasper who "blackmails" James to have sex with Gloria whenever he wishes. Consumed by guilt, James eventually kills himself with a note taking the blame that Gloria burns, she and Jasper complimenting one another on his brilliant planning and her brilliant acting before heading off.
  • "Two for the Show": Police officer Barney Fine centers in on the ostensible protagonist when he murders his unfaithful wife Emma and places the pieces of her body in a suitcase. Fine manipulates him, making him panic while promising that teams of agents will arrive to search the bags. After he disposes of the suitcase and switches tags, it turns out that Fine left an identical bag on the train with the corpse of his own wife, who was having the affair with Emma, framing someone else for his crime and escaping scot-free.
  • "Comes the Dawn": Corporal Jeri Drumbeater lives a solitary life in Alaska when Colonel Parker and his right-hand Burrows show up, desiring her help for illegal poaching. When she learns Parker unknowingly shelled her unit in Desert Storm, Jeri lures the two into the local nest of vampires who serve her, her own poisonous blood inedible to them. Jeri attempts to turn Burrows against Parker, while also withholding the vital fact that the sun the far north in Alaska will not rise for another two months just in case one believes he has escaped.
  • "Fatal Caper": Fiona Havisham is the beautiful lawyer for the Amberson family. When old Mycroft Amberson has it in his will that his disowned child Frank must be found before he seemingly dies, Fiona plays his sons Justin and Evelyn against one another, clandestinely working with Mycroft to eliminate them. When Mycroft tries to seduce her after, Fiona reveals she is "Frank", actually a transgender woman who transitioned after being disowned, before having Mycroft executed with her partner in crime to inherit the fortune.
  • "A Slight Case of Murder": Mrs. Trask is an aspiring murder writer who bounces ideas off her callous neighbor, bestselling mystery writer Sharon Bannister. To get real life research for her own book, she fakes letters from Sharon to her son to lure the man into falling for her, making it look like Sharon is having an affair to her jealous husband, poisons the cookies she sends her son to take over and sets them all against one another to eliminate themselves while remaining totally free of suspicion, ending by taking Sharon's latest manuscript for herself.
  • "Escape": Major Nicholson is a British officer disgusted by the venal, treacherous POW Luger after Luger leads his own companions into a trap in exchange for reward. Sneaking a British spy into the prison camp and letting Luger see manufactured coffins while also placing a survivor of Luger's treachery nearby to panic him, Nicholson ensures the desperate Luger places himself into his grasp just when the war has ended so Nicholson will not have to endure releasing him, having decided Luger is "definitely worth a bullet".
  • "The Assassin": Janet is a somewhat ditzy housewife held hostage in her home by three murderous government agents who believe her husband is Ronald Wald, a CIA assassin gone rogue who disappeared before the agency could "retire" him. They attempt to kill Janet, who accidentally kills two of them, before gleefully revealing to the third agent (a woman, and Ronald's former lover), that Janet herself is the assassin after a sex change. She easily murders her ex-lover, resumes her quiet suburban life... and disposes of the corpses by serving them up at a dinner party with no one the wiser.
• Memetic Mutation: People have taken the clip of Joe Pesci's character from Split Personality describing the Blair twin's house ("What the fuck is this piece of shit?") and overlaid it over other images.

• Nausea Fuel: "Forever Ambergris", by a freakin' mile. Ike's corpse rotting to the point that his eye falls out, Bobbi's veins bursting open, Dalton's nose falling off... word of advice for when you watch this episode; sick bags on standby.
• Nightmare Retardant: The ending of Three's A Crowd loses a lot of it's sting when you realize that aside from the by-comparison miniscule inconvenience of ruining the surprise, there was absolutely zero reason for the wife and guy's best friend to NOT spill the beans to the homicidal husband while he was trying to kill him while thinking they were having an affair, especially when the wife found the best friend freshly murdered and herself next on the list. This trope could have been averted if she did tell him she is pregnant and he didn't believe her, thinking she was just lying to save her ass and then found out the hard way she was telling the truth.
• Recycled Script:
  • The host segments in Bordello of Blood are almost the same as the ones from "The Assassin" - even reusing guest star William Sadler!
  • Both "Top Billing" and "Beauty Rest" are pretty much the exact same plot and twist- just with the gender of their main protagonists and their goals changed. One was getting the leading role in Hamlet in the former story and the other was becoming a pageant winner.
• Retroactive Recognition: A 28 year old Daniel Craig in the 1996 episode "Smoke Wrings". The device his character uses in the episode would make Q proud.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The Crypt Keeper puppet itself still looks good today, but the slight audio delay required to operate it meant that John Kassir can sometimes be heard cackling off-stage before the puppet starts talking.
  • At the beginning of "Abra Cadaver", you can see the sound mic at the top of the screen.
  • At the end of "Carrion Death", when the vulture kills Diggs by ripping his eye out, while the initial effect still looks pretty good it's clearly a dummy head switched out for Kyle MacLachlan's in the final shot. Many of the shots with the dead cop are also very clearly MacLachlan carrying a dummy.

• Ugly Cute: Baby Crypt Keeper to some while for others, the older Crypt Keeper himself. Must be something about those baby-blue eyes...
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The episode "Three's a Crowd" has a man kill his old friend and his own wife due to be driven mad by what he thought was an affair. It turns out that the old friend and the man's wife were setting up a surprise anniversary party where she would reveal that she was pregnant with his child. The problem is that for all of the episode, the wife and the old friend do nothing but act suspicious when they both know the man is violently paranoid and yet constantly do nothing to dissuade him from his mania. They're less innocents tragically killed than two people Too Dumb to Live. It also didn't help that the two were very flirtatious with each other leading up to it. Which just encourages the husband's paranoia.
• The Woobie: Quite a few:
  • It takes a lot to make viewers sympathize with someone pulling a verbatim "If I Can't Have You…" moment, but by the time Charlie in "Dead Right" snaps and stabs his cruel, openly spiteful gold-digger of a wife to death, you still can't help but feel sorry for him, especially when he's convicted and executed for the murder itself.
  • Dudley from The Third Pig, being framed for the murder of his brothers and his attempt at revenge against the wolf who really killed them backfiring on him.
  • Patricia Arquette's character in "Four-Sided Triangle." The way she tells old man Yates in a near-cry that she'd rather die than stay on his farm says the most about the way he and his wife abuse her.

The film:

• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Or at least as bad, since Maitland suffers the same fate as the other individuals, despite the fact that his actions (having an adulterous affair with a young woman and abandoning his family) are sleazy rather than illegal (barring the financial obligations of having to provide and pay alimony), whereas most of the other characters are either outright murderers or took actions that caused another person's death. When his actions are contrasted with a first-degree murderer like Joanna, Maitland's fate seems like a case of Karmic Overkill.
• Retroactive Recognition: A blind man is played by John Louis Mansi, who would later be best known for playing Von Smallhausen in 'Allo 'Allo!.
• The Woobie:
  • Arthur Grimsdyke, a kindly old garbageman and widower who loves to entertain children with toys he made himself out of trash and and takes care of a bunch of stray dogs, who has his life systematically ruined by two rich Jerkasses because they thought he looked scruffy, to the point of driving him to suicide.
  • Also Joanne's husband. In his brief scene, he's shown to be nothing worse than a Nice Guy who loves his wife and daughter but made the mistake of marrying a psychopathic Gold Digger who murdered him for his life insurance policy.

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