Did you know that before the long-running horror TV series on HBO that started in 1989 with the iconic Crypt Keeper that everyone recognized and before the popularity of that series helped spawn several full-length films with the goofy puppet acting as the MC for the story, there was a full-length movie already made in 1972? It was something I was not entirely aware of until last year when I watched it for the first time. 2021 accidentally became the year of horror anthologies for me when I watched Cat’s Eye, Trick ‘r Treat, and other forgettable anthologies for the first time. Of all that I saw, this one stuck with me the most. Don’t take that as a winning endorsement, but merely as a suggestion that there is something of an interesting little horror film that people may have forgotten existed.

Despite me (or perhaps you) being unaware of this film’s existence prior to 2021, it’s actually a popular film amongst some notable directors and authors. For example, George A Romero and Stephen King wanted to do a remake of it at some point, but would later go on to make Creepshow instead—which I consider my favorite of the horror anthology films. You can certainly see the inspiration for this and the comic series Tales from the Crypt in just the opening scenes of Creepshow, so it’s not hard to imagine this as the starting point for the project. Robert Zemeckis (director of Back to the Future & Forest Gump) considers the Tales from the Crypt film from 1972 a personal favorite horror film. According to IDMB, it is his favorite horror film to watch during Halloween. In fact, that little TV series I mentioned was produced by Zemeckis, if you want any further indication as to how much enjoyed it.

But how does it all hold up? As someone who didn’t see this movie when it was first released or had any interest in the comics when they were the most active, I don’t have any bias in its favor beyond my appreciation for Peter Cushing. Even so, Peter Cushing is only in one story of the five that are featured in this movie. If you have your own biases, you might have a difference of opinion with me on this. If you haven’t seen it, then I suggest you skip to the end of this review because I will go into spoiler territory. The twists and endings of each story play a major role in my overall satisfaction in watching the movie so be forewarned.

Plots & Thoughts

Five strangers find themselves walking through a graveyard and soon wander into a crypt led by a tour guide for seemingly no reason at all. It takes no time at all for them to get separated from the tour group and find themselves locked in a tomb with a mysterious man in a black cloak. Despite not being a goofy puppet of a decaying corpse with a disturbed grin, this is the Crypt Keeper. He informs the five strangers that their sins are heavy upon their souls and provides a warning to them in the form of visions of the different stories that make up the film. One by one, each person denies their own failings as a person until confronted with a vision of their demise.

I’ll go through each segment and break down the points of interest and provide a small snippet of what I thought. Spoilers ahead.

“…And All Through the House”

It’s a perfectly fine short that has some effective tense moments. It’s a good premise that is only hindered by the stupidity of the characters. Of the five stories, I rank it 4th place.

Mr. Clayton (Martin Boddey) settles in to read his newspaper on the night of Christmas Eve when he’s struck over the back of the head with a fireplace poker by his beloved wife Joanne (Joan Collins). Her motivations for doing so are not entirely clear, but we have to assume that she was hoping to benefit from his death in some way or another. Upstairs, her daughter is tucked in but still anxiously awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus. Joanne, doing her best to make sure she doesn’t see the blood or dead body, comforts the child back to sleep before heading back downstairs to clean up the mess. As she starts to clean the crime scene, the radio announces that a deranged, murderous maniac dressed in a Santa Claus outfit had escaped his facility and was in the general area. It doesn’t take long for her to realize that the maniac is, in fact, outside her house.
The real conundrum of the story is the fact that this woman could call the police for help, but there’s a dead body in her house. At least, that’s what the story is going for. It’s a good enough premise, but I think the film makes the mistake of making the woman aware that there is a maniac outside too early in the segment. The reason being that the crime scene with her dead husband wasn’t even remotely cleaned up before she knew he was there. It took my girlfriend and I only a matter of seconds to come up with her alibi to say over the phone: “The maniac killed my husband and chased after me but I tricked him and lead him outside. Please send help before he gets back in.” Had she already cleaned the crime scene, this alibi would make less sense, but the film decided to try to make the scene as tense as possible for as long as possible at the expense of logic.

“Reflection of Death”

Short, sweet, and to the point. Of the five stories, I rank it 3rd place.

Carl (Ian Hendry) gives his wife and children some goodbye kisses before heading out on his presumed business trip. On his way to the airport, he stops by the home of his mistress Susan (Angela Grant). Carl’s not going on a business trip at all. Instead, he’s actually running away to start a new life with his mistress. He lets her drive to the airport and attempts to rest a little bit on the way there in the passenger seat. He’s startled awake by a terrible nightmare only moments before the two of them go off the road and crash the car. Somehow, Carl manages to stumble away from the crash and make his way back to his home where his wife and children are, only to be met by their screams when he attempts to ask for help. Confused and distraught, he seeks out his mistress again. She’s surprised but welcomes him into her home without fear. While it takes Carl a while to figure it out, the audience can already see the writing on the wall at this point. The car crash happened some time ago and Susan is now blind as a result of her injuries. And Carl? Well, Carl realizes to his horror when he looks into a reflective piece of glass that he is actually a corpse, walking among the living. His screams of horror are then interrupted as he wakes up in the car, moments before the crash, only to relive it all over again.
This story is short and straightforward, but I tend to like it overall. If it were not for the final scene, indicating that he would continue to wake from his nightmare only to relive it again, it wouldn’t be quite so interesting a story. It would just be the story of how a cheating husband became a zombie for no apparent reason. Instead, with the twist ending of him waking up in the car and the car swerving off the road once again, it adds a little more flavor to the story of a man experiencing something of a Promethian fate.

“Poetic Justice”

All around, this story is a surprisingly emotional experience for how short it is. Robin Phillips is quite good at being a pompous scumbag that acts as the polar opposite to the lonely, kind-hearted, old widower. You can’t help but feel bad for Grimsdyke and Peter Cushing’s performance makes the character only that much more sympathetic. Of the five stories, I rank it in 1st place.

Mr. Grimsdyke (Peter Cushing) is a kind old widower living by himself in the home he once shared with his deceased wife. The neighborhood children visit him often as he manages to find and repair toys for them from the various dumps around town. He’s an impoverished-looking fellow with a somewhat dumpy home, but his kind and gentle soul who takes joy in spreading joy to his neighborhood. He’s like by most people around, except for his neighbors across the street. Elliot (Robin Phillips) is a pretentious, smug, erudite who can’t stand the disgusting appearance of Grimsdyke’s property or its proximity to his family’s home. He believes the lack of physical appeal of the property is making the whole neighborhood ugly, and he can’t stand it. So, in a cruel attempt to get Grimsdyke to move away, in the hopes of buying the property and fixing it up or letting someone cleaner move in, Elliot begins a smear campaign against Grimsdyke. First he spreads rumors to the parents of the neighborhood that Grimsdyke is not to be trusted with their children. Then he writes sadistic and hateful letters with return addresses belonging to various people in the neighborhood, and sends them to Grimsdyke under the assumption that when he realizes the whole neighborhood hates him, he’d move away. After communicating with his dead wife via a Ouija board, Grimsdyke opens the letters, but does not decide to move away. A year after his body was found, Elliot still feels guilt and paranoid over the fact that he figuratively ripped Grimsdyke’s heart from his chest, only to finally meet a fate he deserved.
This is one of the longer stories in the film and it’s probably the best one overall. Obviously, my bias towards Peter Cushing helps add to the opinion. Nonetheless, Cushing’s performance in this segment is superb. It might be one of his best performances, which is saying a lot because the man always gave 100%, regardless of how bad the movie was. In reality, Cushing’s real wife had passed away shortly before this film started production, so he was able to channel his own personal depression he was feeling at the time into the role, and it shows. It’s also very likely that his sadness at the time was what made him prefer to play Grimsdyke instead of the original intended character of Ralph in the Wish You Were Here story. Grimsdyke was originally supposed to not have any lines, but Cushing’s insistence on playing the role brought more dialogue to the character. He was so insistent on doing the film, he was willing to charge less for the job.

“Wish You Were Here”

At least this story is short. Of the five stories, I rank this 5th.

Ralph Jason (Richard Green) and his wife Enid (Barbara Murray) are a wealthy couple who have run into a spot of money trouble. Whether it be through gambling, mismanagement of funds, or getting scammed out of their fortune, they're about to lose everything they own and have collected over the years of adventurous travel and a posh lifestyle. That is, until Enid makes a wish with a totem that Ralph had purchased years ago. He noticed it on their counter and told her that there was a legend about the trinket that it would grant three wishes to a person, but those wishes would come at a cost. Ignoring the warning, Enid made a wish that they would come into a lot of money very suddenly. Her wish was granted, and, as expected, it came at a price. The life insurance policy on her husband would be sufficient to pay off their debts, and he just so happens to die on his way to their accountant. Whoops. Despite the fact that Enid realized that her wish is what killed her husband, when they bring his body in a casket to their home to prepare for the funeral, she makes another wish and words it in the worst way possible. She wishes that her husband came back to life and wouldn’t die. So, an embalmed corpse is revived and Ralph has to suffer and writhe in pain as the poisonous fluids pulse through his body, burning his insides. Dumbass Enid, who just made her husband immortal, tries to kill him with a sword to put him out of his misery. As you might expect, that does nothing more than cause more pain and suffering. Then the story just ends.
It’s your typical “monkey’s paw” type story: a person finds some sort of object or bauble that grants wishes and, whether it be due to the wisher not phrasing their wishes correctly to avoid confusion, or due to some inherent evil nature in the item, the wishes turn out to be curses more than blessings. This story is pretty short and uninspired. There is no real twist and anyone with two brain cells could see how each wish from Enid would end. The acting of Barbara Murray is over the top and exceedingly dramatic. In some ways, I think the movie would have been better off just cutting this story out to give the other stories more time to breathe. The only reason I think this one was included was just to have a bit of excess gore with the final scene.

“Blind Alleys”

Of the five stories, this one had the least predictable series of events leading to its conclusion. You could certainly guess how the villain meets his end, but the story manages to keep you in the dark (pun intended) about how everything is going to happen right up to the end. Of the five stories, I rank it 2nd.

A facility that provides housing and food for the disabled members of society, the blind in particular, has gone through a leadership change. A former high-ranking member of the military named Rogers (Nigel Patrick) has stepped in as the head administrator of the facility. He has a pet German Shepard that follows him everywhere and obeys his every command, proving to be a formidable threat if Rogers felt the need to sic his dog on someone. And that’s pretty handy for him, considering the fact that Rogers is extremely corrupt and immediately starts taking advantage of his position. He starts cutting the heat in the dorms and reducing the use of quality food in the cafeteria with the excuse that it’s being done to save money and keep the facility going. Meanwhile, he’s enjoying a warm room to himself with some quality wine and food that he shares with his dog. The leader of the group, Carter (Patrick Magee), tries to get Rogers to improve the services for the tenants, but to no avail. When one of the people in the dorm dies from the cold and lack of medical care, the group comes up with an ironic method of capturing and killing Rogers.
Rogers is placed in a cell, as he dog is held in another cell and kept from food to make him hungry enough to eat whatever he could catch. After days of being trapped in the cell and listening to the sound of the blind tenants hammering away at something, he finally is released only to find a narrow alley with razor blades and other sharp objects on the wall. As soon as the dog is released to hunt down his master, the lights are shut off.
Unlike the monkey paw story, this one is a little less predictable. You know that Rogers is corrupt and you know that things are going to come to a head with him and Carter at some point. You just don’t know exactly how it’s going to play out. I admit that I audibly said “ah-ha” when I saw the maze revealed. They could have just thrown the dog into his cell and let him get ripped to shreds, but they went the extra mile to make sure he suffered before he died and experienced blindness in the process. This is one of those stories where the antagonist gets his just desserts and it’s satisfying when it happens. Acting is all pretty good in this story as well, though Magee’s performance seems a little weird at times.

TL;DR

Pros

Good acting in some of the stories, with the middle story starring Peter Cushing being a highlight
Satisfying conclusions to some stories where the jerks get what they deserve
Some interesting premises for certain stories
No story is actively bad or overstays its welcome

Cons

One story is a little too predictable and uninteresting; it could be cut completely without hurting the overall anthology package
Not clear why one of the ‘sinners’ is actually the victim of a story
Crypt Keeper segments don’t do much to add personality to the film

Worth a Watch?

When I first sat down to write this review, I wouldn’t say I was all the impressed by Tales from the Crypt. However, upon reflecting on the various stories that make up the film, I realize it’s actually a pretty good anthology horror movie. It’s not going to blow your mind with any of the twist endings. And if you already have your own favorite anthology, I doubt this film would unseat it from its throne. However, I do believe that this forgotten gem from 1972 is still worth a watch today if you haven’t seen it.

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