Review By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

Since its inception, HBO has changed the world of television by offering ambitiously-created, high-quality programming that pushed the boundaries of the restrictive standards set down by the FCC. In 1989, HBO created one of their first successful original TV series with Tales from the Crypt.

It was a horror anthology series which usually involved a weekly horror tale presented by the ghoulishly macabre Cryptkeeper (Jon Kassir). The tales are adapted from early 1950’s EC horror comics such as The Haunt of Fear, The Vault Of Horror, Shocking Super-Stories, as well as the original comics bearing the title. Usually, they involve characters that engage in some form of immorality that end in some sort of horrific grave misfortune. Now, the fifth season of the series has been released on DVD. The venerable HBO series starts to show some age here, but still puts out often very effective tales overall.

While Tales from the Crypt season-by-season is still a mixed bag of the truly frightening and not so frightening, there’s still plenty of episodes that are particularly noteworthy. One is the premiere episode “Death of Some Salesman”. The story is about a conniving funeral home salesman (Ed Begley, Jr.) who meets his match when he comes across a salesman-detesting country family, which is played in astonishing multiple roles by the venerable Tim Curry.

Another highlight is the amazingly gruesome “Forever Ambergris”. It tells the tale of a photographer (Roger Daltrey of The Who) who, after tricking a fellow photographer (Steve Buscemi) into shooting in a disease-ridden warfare zone, soon realizes that the disease has followed him home.

Another particularly effective tale “House of Horror” tells the tale of a sadistic fraternity leader (Entourage’s Kevin Dillon) who, after hazing pledges in a haunted house, soon finds out that the legend behind it is more than just a legend. “Came The Dawn” is a Psycho-like tale about a thieving woman (Brooke Shields) who is taken in by a wealthy, adulterous philanderer (Perry King), only to come face-to-face with his potentially psychotic wife.

These are some of the tales that are in the fifth season, delving into many different types of horror such as murder, voodoo, curses, and the supernatural. Not every tale is as effective as the ones highlighted, particularly on the second disc. However, the series was still unique in the world of horror anthology television, as it told essentially morality tales in often unflinchingly gruesome fashion.

For anybody who criticizes horror today as exploitative, amoral, and gross trash, Tales from the Crypt, even at this stage, shows horror has the potential to reflect the consequences of bad behavior. Ironically, the comics that Tales from the Crypt were adapted from were controversial in their day and seen as corruptive to America’s youth, despite the target audience being adults.

The Cryptkeeper segments that open and close the show are still fun and amusing introductions to each tale, despite getting sillier and more gimmicky by this ...