Photos: Shudder, Shutter Stock ; Illustration: Dillen Phelps

The incomparable Walter Hill, along with producing partner David Giler, bigtime blockbuster producer Joel Silver, and blockbuster Amblin directors Robert Zemeckis and Richard Donner, found themselves at the forefront of original pay-cable programming with their seven-season, 93-episode hit Tales from the Crypt. First airing in weekly installments in 1989, each episode is a mini-movie unto itself, based largely on stories taken from the legendary run of adult-themed comics from publisher William Gaines’s EC Comics (first “Educational Comics,” then “Entertaining Comics” though I would argue they never stopped being “educational”). These entertainments were so offensive to the status quo that they singlehandedly “inspired” the comics’ version of the Hayes Code: the Comics Code, natch. EC was so outre, they forced the entire industry to police itself.

Hill directed three episodes of Tales from the Crypt, one apiece for the first three seasons. He’s just one of dozens of A-list directors and stars to dip their toe in this turbulent, turbid river during its run. In addition to being syndicated in a heavily edited incarnation,  the series spawned an animated kids show, three feature films (though only two received the “Tales from the Crypt” imprimatur upon release), a kid’s game show, a radio series, a role-playing game sourcebook, and spin-offs in Two-Fisted Tales and Perversions of Science, an installment of which Hill helmed as well. There were also three albums inspired by the show: an original soundtrack featuring instrumental cuts from various composers; a Christmas album, Have Yourself a Scary Little Christmas, that was essentially a spoof in the Dr. Demento vein; and a compilation of heavy-metal tunes with occasional soundbites from series host the Cryptkeeper (voiced, as always, by John Kassir). By the end of its run, Tales from the Crypt had the distinction of having a version of itself aired on HBO, CBS, ABC, and FOX. A recent attempt at a reboot for TNT by M. Night Shyamalan fell through in June 2017 after rights issues stalled negotiations. Over the next several weeks, though, SHUDDER will be releasing all episodes of Tales from the Crypt for the first time in fully uncensored form. 

Cause for celebration as Tales from the Crypt the TV show similarly corrupted a generation of creators. Testament to its influence just look at the stable of talent it was able to attract, a partial list of luminaries that include Michael J. Fox, Demi Moore, special effects god Chris Walas, Don Rickles, David Hemmings, Whoopi Goldberg, Jonathan Ke Quan, Dan Aykroyd, Lance Henriksen, Sugar Ray Leonard, William Friedkin, Meat Loaf, Donald O’Connor, Tim Curry (in triplicate), Joan Chen, Roger Daltry, Priscilla Presley, Lou Diamond Phillips, Isabella Rossellini, John Lithgow, Natasha Richardson, Bob Hoskins, Ewan McGregor, Eddie Izzard, Steve Buscemi, Treat Williams. Iggy Pop, Christopher Reeve, Brooke Shields, Benicio Del Toro, Tom Hanks (as director of the Season 4 premiere), Kirk Douglas and Arnold Schwarzenegger offering an assist in a Valentine’s day intro — and on and on. It broke barriers in television — arguably paving the way for the “prestige” era of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. It had about it the element of taboo, directly responsible for HBO’s tagline of that moment: “It’s not TV, it’s HBO,” which debuted the year Tales was cancelled. Would television have transcended the perception of it being the weaker creative medium compared to film without Crypt‘s influence? 

Tales from the Crypt is counter-cultural programming. It presented recognizable domestic scenarios and subverted them with cheap sex, dirty revenge, and gloriously lurid depictions of the same. Hill said about it:

“They were fun to do because you get to do it about nasty characters doing terrible things and then them getting their comeuppance. It’s a kind of blueprint that works very well in short form television; doesn’t seem to work very well in pictures. Can’t get pictures made around that idea, whether it’s the old Hitchcock show or something like that, nasty people doing nasty things with sudden and violent justice at the end. They were comic books. That’s another thing I liked about them is they were quite comic book-y.” 

Hill’s pilot episode, “The Man Who Was Death,” first aired on June 10, 1989, along with the second and third episodes directed by Zemeckis and Donner, respectively. At the time, Zemeckis was coming off shooting back-to-back Back to the Future sequels, and he and Donner, himself just a month away from the release of his Lethal Weapon 2 (the second in the blockbuster franchise most beholden to 48Hrs), were arguably the hottest non-Spielberg directors in town. Hill, too, was in the middle of a productive period. Hard to imagine now, but it was a revolution — there was palpable outrage that titans like this would “debase” themselves in a medium like television. Per Hill’s recollection, one of the prime lures of the HBO anthology series was complete creative freedom each episode offered. The result is some of the greatest half-hours of television in the history of the medium. As each season drops, I’m gonna offer up my opinion of the top three for that season. 

If you read between the lines, though, what I’m really recommending is you watch all of them. 

At least once. Some, two or three times.

Now, in order of broadcast:

1. “The Man Who Was Death” (Season 1, Episode 1)

   DIRECTOR: Walter Hill
   WRITTEN BY: Robert Renau & Walter Hill

   “The Man Who Was Death” is one of the best installments of this or any season of Tales From The Crypt. It opens with silhouettes in a jail cell and our hero, Niles Talbot (William Sadler, here “Bill” Sadler), delivering a brilliant, sardonic, hard-boiled voiceover about poor old Charlie Ledbetter (J.W. Smith), who, after having a “half-pint of vodka for lunch,” started thinking about how he got passed over for a raise at work (a racial/class sting) and so opened fire on his boss, picking off a secretary (“Got her right behind the ear… kinda lucky shot, really, ’bout the only kind of luck Charlie Ledbetter ever had”) by accident—the bitter cherry on top of the crap sundae. Ry Cooder’s raucous, carnival-infused score sets the rhythm of the piece as sardonic and bemused. Immediately, Hill establishes his themes of suffocating financial caste, the indifference of fate, and the plight of the “working class,” embodied by not just poor Charlie, who will be dead soon, but also Niles, the guy who throws the switch on Old Sparky for a living and loves his job very much. Maybe too much? Definitely too much. Especially when Niles gets a little too enthusiastic in expressing his displeasure with shifting attitudes around capital punishment and landing on the wrong side of his beloved state-sanctioned murder device. The patter is fourth wall-breaking jazz. The one-liners outtakes from classic hard-boiled noir – the kind Robert Mitchum used to drawl out of the corner of his mouth. And the smart social satire? Well, that part’s 100% Walter Hill allowed not just to play in this sandbox, but design it and invite just the buddies he wants to invite.

   Watch “THE MAN WHO WAS DEATH” on SHUDDER

2. “And All Through The House” (Season 1, Episode 2)

   DIRECTOR: Robert Zemeckis
   WRITTEN BY: Fred Dekker

   “And All Through the House” might be the most iconic episode of this series — just for having the audacity to cast Larry Drake, who played one of the most beloved characters on huge TV hit L.A. Law, as a psycho-killer in a Santa outfit. (Fans of Sam Raimi’s superlative Darkman might have this episode to thank for the casting of Drake as its own deeply-unhinged, gleefully-sadistic, finger-collecting villain.) A perverse corruption of America’s favorite capitalist Bacchanal, it opens with inconstant Elizabeth (Mary Ellen Trainor) murdering her husband Joseph (Marshall “Kuato” Bell) on Christmas Eve while their adorable moppet Carrie Ann (Lindsay Whitney Barry) tries to tell everyone that Santa has arrived. Alas, Santa (Larry Drake) is, naturally, an escaped mental patient with an unnatural attraction to hatchets who thwarts Elizabeth’s attempts to hide the recently-departed’s body in a well and then proceeds to terrorize her by trying to gain entry into her lovingly-decorated home. Meanwhile, Carrie Ann refuses to stay in bed and Elizabeth, fatally, refuses to tell Carrie Ann the truth about who this Santa Claus really is (lest the kid find out what happened to step-dad). A child-in-peril piece, a home invasion thriller, gory, hilarious, paced like a heart-attack and exuberantly cathartic when Santa finally gets to drop his signature catch phrase. It is, in other words, evergreen no matter how many Black Christmas remakes or Terrifier 3’s come creeping down the chimney. Really, the best whet to the appetite this film might inspire is René Manzor’s just nuts Deadly Games (1989). For “And All Through the House,” credit its humor to screenwriter Fred The Monster Squad and Night of the Creeps Dekker and its visual beauty to John Carpenter’s favorite, genius-level, cinematographer Dean Cundey. It’s twitchy. And mean. Ho ho ho. 

   Watch “and all through the house” on shudder

3. “Dig That Cat … He’s Real Gone” (Season 1, Episode 3)

   DIRECTOR: Richard Donner
   WRITTEN BY: Terry Black

   “Dig That Cat… He’s Real Gone” features Joe Pantoliano as Ulric, a sideshow magician who exploits his supernatural ability for resurrection for the pleasure of a nightly gaggle of rubberneckers and other suburban miscreants. There are so many ways to profit from being able to come back from the dead, just the fact that Ulric has chosen this as his means to fame and fortune says a lot about the gallows humor of this series. Watch when lovely assistant Coralee, excited by Ulrich in a Victorian swim-onesie as the water slowly rises on a drowning gag, asks him out for a date after he’s done dying. An hour later, waterlogged but not the worse for the wear, Ulrich floats to the surface. “I’m RESURRECTED, BABY!” he exults, looking around to see if Coralee’s still on for a little courting. She is.

   Tales from the Crypt broke ground in not just violence and nihilism, but in sexytime, too. Ulrich’s power is limited, though, to just nine reanimations. Yes, you guessed it, he’s received a glandular transplant from a housecat. Easily the funniest episode of the first season — and all of the episodes are at least a little funny — credit the script by Terry Black, screenwriter for one of my favorite cult zombie flicks, the Treat Williams/Joe Piscapo buddy horror comedy Dead Heat. And credit, too, veteran Lethal Weapon director Donner who, lest we forget, also directed the Christopher Reeve Superman I & II. He has a way with comics, is what I’m saying. “Dig That Cat… He’s Real Gone” will become the template for the best moments of this show: sublimely ridiculous, unapologetically lawless and, above all, in love with puns, dad jokes, and bleak twists that are less O’Henry than they are Michael Haneke. Buckle up, ladies and gentle-fiends, we got six more seasons to go.

   watch “dig that cat … he’s real gone” on shudder

Walter Chaw is the Senior Film Critic for filmfreakcentral.net. His book on the films of Walter Hill, with introduction by James Ellroy, is now available for purchase.