Wow! This episode is directed by Freddie Francis, who knows something about horror! He also directed Trog, The Psychopath, Legend of the Werewolf and most importantly, the original Tales from the Crypt. This episode was written by Scott Nimerfro.

“Greetings infesters! I’ll be with you in a moment. I was just putting these gross profits away for safekeeping. You see, boils and ghouls, at Crypt Keeper Financial, we can help you get morgue for your money. Whether it’s mutual fiends you want or cold, horrid cash, we can guarantee you’ll coroner the market. Hmm. I bet you’d be the type who’s interested in boo chips, like tonight’s tale. It’s about three girls who are chopping around for a tax fright-off of their own in a nasty shock option I call “Last Respects.”:

Yvonne, Dolores, and Marlys Finger (Emma Samms, Kerry Fox and Julie Cox) are three sisters who work at the House of Curios and hate one another, although only Marlys is the owner. Then they find a monkey’s paw — the actual one the story was based on — and it does what the paw always does. People die and no one can outsmart the thing. Only one of the sisters can get the shop and all the money that somehow it suddenly starts making.

The original owners of the paw, Mr. and Mrs. Wilder, are played by Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray in their last roles. Married for nearly sixty years, they always appeared together. Dulcie was also a short story writer with several of her stories showing up in the Pan Book of Horror Stories. 

This story was based on “Last Respects!” from Tales from the Crypt #23. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Graham Ingels. That story is very different, as a man gets locked inside a mausoleum and survives nearly a month by catching leaking rain water and eating a dead body, but dies because of formaldehyde poisoning.