Season Four of Tales from the Crypt keeps the momentum going with another murderer’s row of astonishing, A-list talent in the service of adapting a comic book series of ill-repute from the 1950s. Indeed, we live in an age of miracles. I have a great deal of affection for several episodes from this season, starting with its opener “None but the Lonely Heart,” directed by Tom Hanks, a tale that recalls Stephen King’s “The Man Who Loved Flowers” from his Night Shift collection. (King, an avowed fan of the comics — just look at his Creepshow homage — would probably confess to it being an influence.)

In any case, the great Treat Williams turns in a charming, frightening performance as a Black Widow trying to lure lonesome Frances Sternhagen into his parlor. I also love the elegiac quality of Richard Donner and Frank Darabont’s “Showdown”, an Old West oater about a town full of gunslingers acting as birds come home to roost. A young Brad Pitt as a brash street racer in an episode, “King of the Road” featuring a Warren Zevon soundtrack? Check. William Friedkin pushing even HBO’s limits in terms of sex and violence in an ugly tattoo/metal melodrama (“On a Deadman’s Chest”)? Check, check. Legendary Donald O’Connor as a puppeteer whose marionette Koko might be the real one pulling the strings? Also, check! (I confess that it would have easily made my Top Three for the season if it hadn’t deviated so drastically from the comic’s original ending.)

My favorite episodes of this season, though, dropping on Shudder finally in uncensored form are, in order of broadcast:

• “What’s Cookin” (Season 4 Episode 6)

  DIRECTOR: Gilbert Adler
  WRITTEN BY: William M. Gaines, A L Katz, and Gilbert Adler

  In which Fred (Christopher Reeve) and Irma (Bess Armstrong) work day and night trying to achieve Fred’s goal of making his dream business thrive. Alas, his dream business is a squid-centered short order concept diner. One day, mysterious drifter Gaston (Judd Nelson) shows up with a proposal about a Sweeney Todd-esque menu change that finally wins Fred the success he’s always wanted, but at a terrible cost. Add Meat Loaf as evil landlord Chumley and the always dependable Art LaFleur as the local sheriff and squid shack regular and all the ingredients are there for a classic Tales from the Crypt episode. It’s equal parts hilarious and disgusting.

  Sometimes lost in Reeve’s iconic Superman performance, I think, is how sensitive, uncertain, and tormented he can be in his other roles. He’s incredible as the inconstant Clifford in Sidney Lumet’s Deathtrap; as the desperate, deceptive journalist Fisher in Street Smart (which he traded one last turn as the Man of Steel for the greenlighting of); and especially as the lovelorn Richard in the ravishingly romantic Somewhere in Time. 

  His Fred here is a collection of insecurities, self-deprecation — Reeve is a fine comic actor, see also his Clark Kent — and worry that his bright idea is going to land he and his wife in the poor house. Reeve is the perfect foil against Nelson’s blunt acting instrument. For as weirdly flat as Nelson usually seems, he’s only that much more affected and emotionless next to Reeve. Qualities that are usually a liability for him, for the purposes of “What’s Cookin’”, it’s chef’s kiss. Fred’s humanity makes the episode’s twist more chilling, too; arguably, even more unexpected given how completely we take on Fred’s commitment to keeping his business alive.

  Watch “what’s cookin” on shudder

• “The New Arrival” (Season 4 Episode 7)

  DIRECTOR: Peter Medak
  WRITTEN BY: Ron Finley

  Peter Medak sandwiched this turn on Tales from the Crypt with the exceptional gangster movie The Krays and historical courtroom melodrama Let Him Have It on the one side, with cult classic neo-noir Romeo is Bleeding on the other. A particularly productive period for the director, in other words, “The New Arrival” is steeped in a haunted, claustrophobic mood and a particularly terrifying premise that functions as a shrine to both Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now and Medak’s own horror masterpieces of domestic disturbance The Changeling and made-for-TV The Babysitter. In “The New Arrival,” pop child psychologist Dr. Goetz (David Warner) making his fame and flagging fortune with a call-in radio program where he takes cries for help from struggling parents as opportunities to act like a pretentious jerk. With ratings flagging, Dr. Goetz decides on a stunt: he will broadcast from the home of regular target of his ire Nora (Zelda Rubinstein) whom he takes particular pleasure in demeaning and mocking during her frequent calls. He intends, essentially, to practice his child psychology on Nora’s by-all-accounts horrifically out-of-control kid Felicity live on the air. It doesn’t go as planned.

  I was stricken by how suffocating Nora’s sprawling home feels when Dr. Goetz first arrives. Like in his The Changeling, Medak has a real way with haunted houses. Felicity’s behavioral issues are startling, yes, and the patented Tales from the Crypt twist is shocking, but the real power of this episode for me is a sequence in Nora’s library where Dr. Goetz discovers an extensive collection of child-rearing texts. Nora isn’t nearly as stupid as he has presumed, nor as delinquent a mother. He even discovers a landmark text by his own mentor and flies into a rage when Nora suggests that none of these authors knows what they’re talking about. There’s a lot on this episodes mind, in other words, starting with the class bigotry on display, a gender tension around the notion of expertise, and the question of who in our culture is allowed to be parents and who gets to stand on the sidelines with advice. In the end the twist of the episode highlights the gulf between practical, experiential knowledge vs. clinical scholarship.

• “Maniac At Large” (Season 4 Episode 10)

  DIRECTOR: John Frankenheimer
  WRITTEN BY: Mae Woods

  Frankenheimer comes full circle with “Maniac at Large,” having started his storied career on television and now finding himself back on television. His episode showcases Blythe Danner as mousy librarian Margaret, scared of her own shadow, and terrorized by the stories of a murderer stalking her city. She jumps at every noise, tries to get a creepy custodian (Clarence Williams III, about three years before Tales from the Hood) fired for being creepy, and does her best not to suspect a British patron (Adam Ant) as the fiend given his unsavory interest in books about spree killers. One night, Margaret’s boss Mrs. Pritchard (Salome Jens) asks Margaret to stay after the library closes and, well, Margaret’s imagination starts to get away from her. I’ve been a lifelong fan of Danner’s since an early exposure to her as the long-suffering wife of The Great Santini all the way through a career of warm supporting performances in films like Mr. and Mrs. Bridge and the tragically under-estimated Ben Affleck/Sandra Bullock romantic comedy Forces of Nature. 

  Danner is especially good at “harried” in roles that Melissa Dillon used to get when Danner wasn’t available; that is, roles requiring a certain warmth and nurturing married to steely resolve and touched, maybe, by exasperation and uncertainty. Her Margaret the librarian reads too much news. She’s allowed the poison of the world to enter into her perception of the world and the anxiety jangles her. A scene where she sees the killer’s shadow, wielding a plunging knife in the library’s basement is a shockingly-loaded image symbolic of the unconscious (the basement), the televisual medium (the shadow on the wall) and the unreliability of the narrator. Credit Frankenheimer, who has always been fascinated with perspectives in parallax, surveillance and distorted perceptions, with the Plato’s Cave of it all. Smart and scary in the most delightful way. 

  Watch “Maniac at large” 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.