From June 10, 1989, to July 19, 1996, HBO aired Tales from the Crypt, which was based on the EC Comics series. Ah, Tales from the Crypt, the scourge of parents in the 50s, which somehow ran for only 27 issues and yet we’re still discussing it today.
EC publisher William Gaines and editor Al Feldstein loved horror, so they published a story called “Return from the Grave!” in the comic Crime Patrol #15. This was the first appearance of the Crypt-Keeper and a few issues later, the title became The Crypt of Terror — in my high school art club, this is what we named our haunted house and yes, it totally was an EC Comics reference, I was the hugest nerd — and then took on its real title a few issues afterward.
Drawn by Johnny Craig, Feldstein, Wallace Wood, Al Davis, George Evans, Jack Kamen, “Ghastly” Graham Ingels, Harvey Kurtzman, Al Williamson, Joe Orlando, Reed Crandall, Bernard Krigstein, Will Elder, Fred Peters and Howard Larsen, the look of Tales from the Crypt — and its sister comics The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear — may have the greatest line-up of artists ever.
Gaines often was inspired by — outright ripped off — other stories and movies for the tales inside the comic. Those include the works of H.P. Lovecraft as well as the films The Man in Half Moon Street, Vampyr, The Beast with Five Fingers and several Ray Bradbury b0oks. Unlike nearly everyone else, Bradbury actually read EC Comics and wrote to them: ““You have not as of yet sent on the check for $50.00 to cover the use of secondary rights on my two stories THE ROCKET MAN and KALEIDOSCOPE which appeared in your WEIRD-FANTASY May-June ’52, #13, with the cover-all title of HOME TO STAY,” he wrote to EC. “I feel this was probably overlooked in the general confusion of office-work, and look forward to your payment in the near future.”
EC did more than thirty Bradbury stories and yes, paid him. They appear in the Fantagraphics collection Home to Stay!: The Complete Ray Bradbury EC Stories.
But it was not to last.
Dr. Fredric Wertham had already written an article in Collier’s entitled “Horror in the Nursery” and for the American Journal of Psychotherapy he turned in “The Psychopathology of Comic Books.” In 1954, the next book by Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, and a highly publicized Congressional hearing on juvenile delinquency made comics look so bad — not to mention a government breakup of the monopoly that distributed magazines — ruined the industry.
Gaines wanted the surviving companies fight outside censorship and repair the industry’s damaged reputation with the Comics Magazine Association of America and its Comics Code Authority. There had to be a comics code on every cover of every comic published, which isn’t what Gaines wanted. He also learned that other companies pushed for the words horror, weird and terror to not be allowed on the covers. This basically was everything he published.
All three horror books and the SuspenStory comics were canceled in 1954.
Incredible Science Fiction #33 was the last EC comic book to be published and a reprint of the story “Judgement Day” was nearly censored because at the end, the hero is revealed to be black. Gaines went nuclear.
By the 1960s, EC was sold — MAD Magazine was all they published — and became part of Warner Communications. You may know the two Amicus movies that were licensed — Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror. And because Warner also owned HBO, that brings us to this show.
Thanks to an incredible group of producers — David Filer, Walter Hill, Richard Donner, Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver — and aired on HBO. This meant that hardly anything got censored.
With A-listers in the casts, great special effects and an original Danny Elfman song, Tales from the Crypt was a big deal.
A lot of credit goes to the Cryptkeeper, who was performed by a team of puppeteers — Van Snowden, David Arthur Nelson, Anton Rupprecht, Shaun Smith, Mike Elizalde, Frank Charles Lutkus, Patty Maloney, David Stinnent, Mike Trcic and Brock Winkless — and voiced by John Kassir. Even kids loved him, which led to toys and a cartoon based on this bloody horror show, making the children of the parents who lost their EC Comics upset that their kids were watching such a program.
On June 10, 1989, the first episode “The Man Who Was Death” aired. It was based on a story that originally appeared in The Crypt of Terror #17.
“Aww, poor little fellas. When I think of their childhood, all those cute little maggots. Hahahahaha. Our story is about a man with nobler ambitions. He likes to kill human pests and he does it in front of an audience. Now that’s entertainment! Hahahaha. So hang onto your hats kiddies, this one’s a real shocker.”
The Cryptkeeper was here and he was ready to share a story directed by Walter Hill, who wrote the script with Steven Dodd and Robert Reneau.
Niles Talbot (William Sadler) has been promoted to being the man who flips the switch on the electric chair. But when the death penalty is abolished, he becomes a vigilante who punishes criminals who get away with it. All until, well, he gets caught and the death penalty returns.
Biker Jimmy Flood (Robert Winley), Theodore Carne (Gerrit Graham) and Cynthia Baldwin (Cindi Minnick) are all executed until the idea of killing the guilty goes to Niles’ brain and he starts wiping out exotic dancers.
That’s the first episode! It aired the same evening as “All Through the House,” but let’s get to that one next week.
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