Originally airing as another attempt to make an E.C. Comics anthology, Two-Fisted Tales, “Yellow” was taken from the first issue of Shock SuspenStories and was written by Al Feldstein and illustrated by Jack Davis. After the movie that had three of those stories aired once, all of the stories made their way into Tales from the Crypt.

“Yellow,” directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Jim and John Thomas (Predator), A. L. Katz and Gilbert Adler, is about a soldier who keeps letting down his military man father. It’s super tense and filled with gore, plus great acting by Kirk and Eric Douglas, Lance Henriksen and Dan Aykroyd.

“Hello, creeps. I was just about to fire off tonight’s dead-time story. It’s about a young soldier who doesn’t want to be in the army anymore. I can’t imagine why not. I mean, war’s a great equal opportunity destroyer. Now, where was I? Oh yes.Ready! Maim! And here’s my favorite part. Fire! I call tonight’s tale: Yellow.”

In France during World War I, American soldiers are in the trenches and trying to take a hill for 49 days in a row. Sgt. Ripper (Lance Henriksen) leads his men with courage in the middle of the fight while his superior Lt. Martin Calthrop (Eric Douglas) hides and gets drunk. Instead of allowing Ripper to push on, Calthrop asks him to retreat.

The hill is crucial to the plans of both General Calthrop (Kirk Douglas) — Martin’s father — and German commander General von Furstenburg. As Captain Milligan (Dan Aykroyd) listens, the elder soldier orders his son to take Ripper and two men to repair communications. If he does this mission, he will be transferred away from combat, as he’s a coward. Martin screws it up, dropping the whistle he’s been given to warn his men, which causes all of them to be killed. Ripper barely hangs on — guts all over the place — to call Cathrop yellow before he dies. This causes an instant court martial and death by firing squad once the evidence is examined.

As he waits to die, Cathrop tells his father that all he cared about was the military and not his son. The general tells his son that he’d never let him die and has loaded the guns with blanks. That allows his son to stand up in the face of death and make a speech, saying , “I tried. But I’m not the man my father is. I’m sorry, and I apologize. My fear of dying got in the way of my responsibility to my men, and the obligations of my commanding officers. I know now what Shakespeare meant: “Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.”” The men are moved by his bravery and then he realizes that his father lied. This allows him to have a son who wasn’t yellow and his military record can continue without any stain on it.

No one realizes that the Germans have taken the hill.

This is the last episode of season 3. There are four seasons left. Are you enjoying these articles so far?

In the world of E.C. Comics, there is no shortage of cheating spouses or the price they pay for giving into sin.

“Hello, golfing fiends, and welcome to the Crypt. Oh, don’t mind him. That’s just my caddie, Juan. He got me teed off while I was playing a round…so I shot a hole in Juan! Which brings to mind the young woman in tonight’s tale. She’s also playing around, except that her game isn’t golf. It’s love. I call this disgusting drama “Spoiled.””

This episode is so meta that there’s an argument for buying cable in it.  “The picture is so much better. Plus, you get HBO and everything. It would really improve the quality of your life,” says Louise (Annabelle Gurwitch) to her put-upon friend, soap opera obsessive Janet (Faye Grant). And once our heroine actually does get the cable, her husband Leon (Alan Rachins) demands that she turn off the Crypt Keeper!

Janet loves Fuchsia (Anita Morris), the star of her favorite daytime show There’s Always Tomorrow. When Fuschia’s husband ignores her, she gets the passion she needs from younger and way more desirable men. So you can understand when cable guy Abel (Anthony LaPaglia) comes into her home that she wants nothing more to pound his brains out while all her mad scientist hubby cares about is taking brains and moving them from body to body.

Well, not exactly. He actually switches the heads on the bodies and by the end of this story, he’s done that to Janet and Abel with some of the worst effects that 1991 can deliver.

Directed by Andy Wolk, who has mostly been in episodic television, and written by Connie Johnson (who assisted producers on this show for 17 episodes) and Doug Ronning (who also wrote another episode, “The Secret”), this is what happens when this show tries to be too cute. Sure, humor is part of E.C. but it’s not all of it. It’s why I prefer the Amicus version to so many of the HBO episodes.

Grant and Rachins would play another married couple — and the parents to Brian Austin Green — in the TV movie Unwed Father.

This is based on “Spoiled” from The Haunt of Fear #26. It was written by Otto Binder (who wrote more than half of the Captain Marvel family stories and created Supergirl) and drawn by Jack Kamen.

Charlie McKenzie (Richard Jordan) was a reporter once. But now, he’s a drunk that can barely survive. Then he meets Vicki (Marg Helgenberger) and one night of love with her has him fixing his life and trying to get his job back, even if his boss Phil Stone (Richard Herd) and sister Mildred (Rutanya Alda) don’t believe that he can ever get back off the booze. Even his bartender wants him to stop drinking.

“So, what’ll it be, stranger? Can I interest you in a mai die? Or would you prefer a rum and choke? Or maybe you’d like something a little stronger. I’ve got just the thing. It’s a nasty little snootfull about a newshound named Charlie who needs a murder story and a drink. But not necessarily in that order. Ah, what some people won’t do for a good stiff one. I call this little eye-opener “Deadline.””

Charlie has to bring in a murder story. He finds it in a diner, as Nikos Stavo (Jon Polito) argues with his unseen wife in the kitchen. Charlie runs in for his story, only to learn that the woman who is getting him back on his feet was just sleeping with drunks to upset her husband. So our protagonist kills her and calls in his story, ending this episode in a sanitarium.

This episode is directed and co-written by one of Tales from the Crypt‘s producers, Walter Hill. It’s as good as you hoped it would be. He wrote it with his assistant, Mae Woods, who would go on to be a producer of movies such as Streets of Fire, Red Heat and Crossroads.

This episode is based on “Deadline” from Shock SuspenStories #12. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Kamen. This episode feels like it could run along with “Mournin’ Mess” as they are so close to each other.

“Sometimes, life can be such a grind. Know what I mean? That’s why I like to get out every now and then and swing a little. So much for his family tree! Tonight’s tale concerns a young woman who’s about to do a little swinging of her own. She wants to prove that a good man is hard to find, but easy to get rid of. I think you’ll like this little chopping spree I call: “Split Second.””

Liz Kelly (Michelle Wilson) is stranded in a logging town, working in a bar to earn enough money to get a bus ticket. The camp manager Steve Dixon (Brion James) saves her from Banjo (Tony Pierce), a loud and rude drunk, and she ends up married the much older man that very night. They seem to have a good marriage until his men see her all dressed up and he reveals just how jealous he is. That only increases when a new lumberjack named Ted Morgan (Billy Wirth) appears and takes over his wife’s imagination.

Liz is a horrible person, to be honest, and she just doesn’t want to be bored. That ends up costing her life, her husband’s and Ted’s vision. Steve was such a nice guy before all this or so his men say. But now they’re killing him, so there’s that. You have to love an episode that doesn’t just have a blind man saw two people to death but has the Crypt Keeper chainsaw Joel Silver.

Directed by Russell Mulcahy (Highlander, The Shadow), written by Richard Christian Matheson and filmed on the sets of Twin Peaks by cinematographer Rick Bota (who would go on to direct Hellraiser: Hellseeker, Hellraiser: Deader and Hellraiser: Hellworld), this is a pretty good episode.

It’s based on “Split Second!” from Shock SuspenStories #4, which was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Kamen.

Directed and written by Manny Coto, who still writes for American Horror Stories and directed Star Kid, Dr. Giggles and Zenon: The Zequel, “Mournin’ Mess” is about Dale Sweeney (Steven Weber), one of those drunken and scummy reporters that movies always have. He works for The Evening Globe who has assigned him to cover the Grateful Homeless, Outcasts, and Unwanteds Layaway Society and the new cemetery they are opening. He has the hots for their spokeswoman Jess Gilchrist (Rita Wilson) and buys int their goal of giving dead people a proper burial.

“Ah, there you are! You’re just in time! I’m trying out a few recipes from my new Betty Croaker cookbook. I hope you like shish-ka-bob. Damn! It isn’t ready yet! Bob’s still moving! Tonight’s foul feast will begin with mashed potatoes, then move onto some shrieking duck, and finish with a nice kill-basa. I call this tasty tidbit: “Mournin’ Mess.””

The issue is that Dale is a mess. He loses his job and soon meets an unhoused man named Roebuck (Vincent Schiavelli) who tells him that all of the city’s poor are being targeted by a serial killer. As it is, Roebuck is the prime suspect, but he claims that if Dale goes to the new cemetery at night, he will discover the truth, which will allow him to get his job back. Dale of course screws all this up and gets Roebuck killed and buried in that same cemetery, as he was too busy sleeping with Jess to meet him. He also loses his house and has to beg his old boss Elaine Tillman (Ally Walker) for his job.

That’s when he realizes that the Grateful Homeless, Outcasts, and Unwanteds Layaway Society spells ghouls and they eat his ear as he escapes. He finds Jess and tries to save her, only for her to eat his face.

Oh Dale. If you just stayed in the cemetery and met him Roebuck, you could have had the story that let you expose everything and be a success all over again, Roebuck would clear his name and you’d both be alive. Hope that sex was worth it.

The original story was in Tales from the Crypt #38 and was also called “Mournin’ Mess.” Written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Graham Ingels.

Directed by Michael Thou (who edited the Donner cut of Superman II, another EC adaption Two-Fisted Tales and Small Soldiers) and written by Ron Finley, this episode finds four boys — Aaron (Aron Eisenberg), Norm (Scott Fults), Jess (Jason Marsden) and Josh (Ke Huy Quan) — discover that the town’s pharmacist Nate Grundy (Graham Jarvis) and undertaker Sebastian Esbrook (John Glover) are murdering people and making money off their funerals.

“Quiet on the set! Deathly quiet. Fond felicitations, fiends and welcome to the Crypt. Tonight’s sordid saga is about a couple of kids with time to kill. See, they’re just dying to get into the horror movie business. And if they’re lucky, that’s exactly what’ll happen to ’em. Lights! Camera! Action!”

This episode is filled with Richard Donner moments, like the boys leaving a theater showing Radio Flyer and a poster for Lethal Weapon being up. It’s also quite like another of his films, The Goonies. There’s also an element of found footage in this as the kids try to capture the crimes on a video camera after Josh’s father is one of the victims of the scheme.

It’s based on the story “Undertaking Palor” from Tales From the Crypt #39. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Davis.

You can also watch this narrated version of the original comic book.

This episode is directed by John Harrison, who directed eight episodes of Tales from the Dark Side, the movie of that film, the Dune miniseries on SyFy and oh yeah, wrote the theme for Creepshow. You can learn more about him in this interview we did last year. It was written by Larry Wilson, who wrote five episodes of this show as well as Beetlejuice and The Little Vampire.

“Greetings, art lovers. Vincent van Ghoul here with another morbid masterpiece sure to paint you into a coroner. (cackles) Hmmmmm. Something’s not quite right. Ah, yes. (stabs the beating heart next to his fruit bowl) Now that’s a still life. (cackles) Tonight’s tale concerns a painter who’s tired of people giving his work the brush. I call this pestilent portrait of the artist as a young mangler: “Easel Kill Ya.””

Jack Craig (Tim Roth), whose name is a combination of EC Comics artists Jack Davis and Johnny Craig, is a starving artist who drinks and has rage issues that he hopes to solve with a support group, Obsessives Anonymous. That’s where he meets Sharon (Roya Megnot) and hopes that she too can save him. Of course, he still gets angry all the time and ends up killing a neighbor, but uses the photo of the crime scene to finally sell his artwork. Malcolm Mayflower (William Atherton) loves gore and he wants more of Craig’s art.

Sharon needs an operation, so he keeps killing and selling art. Sadly, the first person he kills is the man who was rushing through a parking lot to get to the hospital to operate on her. Oh EC, your endings.

This story is based on “Easel Kill Ya” from Vault of Horror #31.It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Johnny Craig. In the original story, an artist makes money from painting violence but when he’s married, he starts to paint beautiful things. When she becomes sick, he brings a painting to his patron and he won’t buy it. He kills the man, who ends up being the doctor who could save his wife.

“I want to suck… Oh, hello kiddies. You caught me in the middle of my homework. Your old pal the Crypt Keeper’s a real believer in continuing dead-ucation. Which brings us to tonight’s murderous morsel. It’s a juicy little tale about a real blood sucker who never learned to go for the jugular. I call this plasma play “The Reluctant Vampire.””

Directed by Elliot Silverstein (The Car, A Man Called Horse) and written by Terry Black (Dead Heat), this stars Malcolm McDowell as Daniel Longtooth, a vampire who choose to get his fix from the blood bank he works at. It’s run by Mr. Crosswhite (George Wendt) and he takes every chance to be rude and mean to his workforce, saving his sexual harassment for Sally (Sandra Dickinson).

It turns out that Daniel is drinking so much that the blood bank is in danger of going out of business. He decides that he must use his vampire abilities to get victims and refill the plasma to save the job of Sally, who he is in love with.

Meanwhile, the police — led by Detective Robinson (Paul Gleason, forever a jerk in every movie) — have brought in Rupert Van Helsing (Michael Berryman, looking like Judge Doom) to hunt down the vampire who they believe is haunting the streets, draining muggers and low level criminals of their blood. What complicates matters is that Mr. Crosswhite knows that Daniel is a vampire and is using him to fix his business.

Maybe Sally knows too, as we find out in this episode’s happy ending.

Terry Black wrote five episodes of this show, including three using the name Donald Longtooth. Yes, the same last name as the character in this episode.

I’m not a fan of the total comedy episodes of this show, but what can you do?

This episode is based on “The Reluctant Vampire!” from Vault of Horror #20. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Davis.