Tales from the Crypt (1972)
Directed by Freddie Francis
When a tourist group become lost within ancient catacombs, they meet the sinister Crypt Keeper, who tells them each their fate. The enigmatic figure's macabre stories involve a wife dabbling in murder, a retired sanitation worker targeted by his suspicious neighbors, and an adulterer who may face a fitting demise if the yarns come true.
22 connections found
View:
22 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Tales from the Crypt to
Ryan Spindell shares his genre influences without shame, from Peter Jackson to Tales From The Crypt to Amicus classics and seventy-billion other references you'll easily connect.
The Mortuary Collection evokes the nostalgia of something like Tales from the Crypt, creating a spooky thread that is fun for any viewer.
The Feature length debut by Ryan Spindell ( The Babysitter Murders ) is an old school Amicus ( Tales from the Crypt / Vault of Horror ) style horror anthology, that transpires at the Raven’s End Mortuary.
The intro is firmly drawing on Tales from the Crypt while this segment is period chic with a dash of A Series of Unfortunate Events .
It’s more of a “Tales from the Crypt” package, all conceived, scripted and directed by Ryan Spindell, but more importantly all sharing a production designer and director of photography.
A variation on the Tales From The Crypt type anthology, the film stars Clancy Brown as Montgomery Dark, the ghoulish Mortician in the New England town of Raven’s End.
In the same way that earlier film paid homage to such classics as " Tales from the Crypt " and " Creepshow " with its anthology format, this film constantly bows at the altar of " Gremlins ," the Joe Dante classic that managed to find the perfect blend of creepiness, subversive humor and genuinely earned sentiment, to make it a seasonal favorite for viewers who prefer their Christmas entertainment to have a little more bite to it.
There’s some satirical edge to its sense of humor and a bit of nastiness in the scarier scenes, but it’s pretty clear that Mr. Dougherty and his collaborators are going for a mid-’80s/Robert Zemeckis/Joe Dante/Tales from the Crypt type of presentation, and speaking as someone who loves all of that stuff, I think they did a damn good job of it.
The stories are rather facile, their ironies unilluminating; contrary to the suggestion of its Oscar validation and overall success (the movie swept Argentina’s equivalent of the Academy Awards, and is the biggest homegrown box-office hit in that country’s history), the film is not an advance, in themes or style, over such predecessors as the omnibus horror thrillers of the 1960s and ’70s (“Black Sabbath,” “Tales from the Crypt”).
That focus places the tone somewhere between The Twilight Zone and Tales from the Crypt , kicking off with the terrific pre-credits prologue, and including an effectively brutal segment about a case of road rage gone over-the-top.
Much like the British horror anthologies (Tales From The Crypt, Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors, etc.) of the late '60s and early '70s, Szifrón's thematically linked tales suggest that the line between humanity and savagery is thinner than we would like to admit.
Fired by “the undeniable pleasure of losing control”, Szifron’s scabrously satirical compendium owes as much to the American TV show Tales from the Crypt as to the scandalous European subversions of Luís Buñuel.
But rather than being straight-up Tales from the Crypt grotesques, these vignettes are tinged with class consciousness and shadowed by the fallacy that revenge is empowering.
His appearance recalls one of those cheesy movies (including, if memory serves, Zemeckis' And All Through the House episode of Tales from the Crypt) where a deranged but undeniably flamboyant killer dresses up as Santa Claus.
Advertisement
I certainly wouldn’t have minded seeing a feature-length adaptation of one of the classics, but what I think would have worked best for a film like this would have been to give it the anthology treatment, similar to how the “Twilight Zone,” “Creepshow,” and “Tales from the Crypt” (the 1972 film, not the more recent ones) films did.
Fans of HBO’s “Tales from the Crypt” (1989 – 1996) should recall a similar antagonist’s drive for disdain, and in both the TV show and here, this particular primal view derives from scars lying terribly deep and but also in plain sight…for “everyone” to see.
Contained and terrifying, The Autopsy of Jane Doe reminds me of the best of Tales From The Crypt.
(The film’s snowbound backdrop recalls fringe Westerns like Lucio Fulci’s Four of the Apocalypse, too; it’s ending has a dash of Tales from the Crypt.)
Advertisement
Sarchie’s personal Tales From The Crypt episode comes to life quite well as far as the horror is concerned, as Derrickson hits a stride akin to his bone-chilling hit from 2012, Sinister.
CHICAGO – Being a hardcore fan of anthology series like “The Twilight Zone” and “Tales From the Crypt,” the simple set-up of “Devil,” the new horror film based on a story by and produced by M. Night Shyamalan, intrigued me — five people are stuck in an elevator and one turns out to be the devil.
The first in producer M. Night Shyamalan’s Night Chronicles series (from his story, written by Brian Nelson and directed by John Erick Dowdle) feels, in fact, just like a Tales From the Crypt episode stretched out to 80 minutes, and the padding results in a number of loose ends and red herrings.