So when we left off, we were talking about the most fucked up episode of Tales From the Crypt. Or rather, we were talking about how we were going to talk about it. But we can't talk about it unless we know what it is. Now, Tales From the Crypt is the kind of show where it's a little bit funny and then it's a little bit scary or a little bit gross. There's one episode about a writer for Tales From the Crypt starring this guy:
And the staff is talking about great ideas they have for stories, like "a golfer kills his wife and uses her severed head to play the back 9." The episode is called Korman's Kalamity, it's very meta. My mind is fucking blown. Anyway, that pretty much describes their mentality. It's usually a "wouldn't that be fucked up, ironic, and FUCKING AWESOME?!" That's pretty much the show in a nutshell.
But that ain't this episode. No, sir. No, no, no no sir.
Most fucked up episode EVAR: Death of Some Salesmen
No no no no sir. This episode is fucked. It stars Tim Curry in three different roles.
Can't be that bad, amirite? It's got TIM FUCKING CURRY! So, this episode is about a salesman, as the name would imply. He goes around scamming recent widows into giving him money for the promise of a plot of land for their late husband's corpse to eternally rest in peace at. But the only catch is that there is no land. It's bullshit. The dude is bullshit.
So he takes a wrong turn and winds up at the wrong house. Instead of turning him away, the nice old lady invites him inside to hear his sales pitch. Turns out, the old couple is BATSHIT FUCKING CRAZY. This episode takes a turn for the so-fucking-gross-it's-actually-hard-to-watch. Seriously, it's hard to watch. Whoever directed this episode has no mercy. They just plow you with uncomfortable grossness.
I can't really say too much without giving everything away, but there is a really gross sex scene and in the end, you just feel dirty. Just horrible dirty.
I'm not even going to link to it. Go find it yourself if you must. But I'm warning you: you should totally not watch this. Even though you totally should.
Hey there, kiddies! It's time for moar Tales From the Crypt! You're in luck because it's a fun one tonight. I'm going to review my picks for the top two most fucked up episodes ever. Wait, I should bold that. The most fucked up episodes ever. Wait, I should emphasize "most." The most fucked up episodes ever! Let's cue it up.
Remember this? The whole "I love you, honey bunny" shit thing from Pulp Fiction. I don't know that either of these characters have names, but I think he's referred to as both honey bunny and Ringo. But who is Ringo? Ringo is Tim Roth. But who the fuck is Tim Roth? Is that the Hostel guy? No, that's Eli Roth. So who the fuck is Tim Roth? I guess Tim Roth is Ringo.
Oh, and Tim Roth is the guy who stars in the episode of Tales From the Crypt that I'm about to review, in case you were lost. So here goes...
Most Fucked-Up Episode, runner-up: "Easel Kill Ya"
Alright, this is a pretty fucked up episode. Now, I like the term "fucked up" but it's not the easiest term to define. Fucked up usually refers to something that's gross or disturbing or twisted, something that's just plain unsettling. For Tales From the Crypt, fucked up is the status quo. But their variety of fucked up is halfway in between funny and disgusting, like a very masculine male midget having sex with an obese woman. Easel Kill Ya is not anything like a midget having sex. It's disturbing and dark.
Tim Roth stars as an artist who has problems with anger management and alcohol. Immediately, I'm hating this episode. He's at a group meeting talking about how to let out his anger in an appropriate way. This immediately makes me think that some guy in his first year of film school wrote this script and it's going to end with him realizing that the bad guy is himself. It's going to be some Fight Club/Donnie Darko auto-fellate myself while I cry and listen to Radiohead bullshit.
Anyway, Tim Roth needs money and he's a painter with no real prospects. He wants to nail a really wholesome girl who goes to his anger management group. One night, he accidentally kills a neighbor of his and is so inspired by the violence, he promptly paints what looks to be a really shitty portrait and sells it for thousands of dollars to a mysterious art collector.
As the episode goes on, our hero continues to give into his dark side in order to find inspiration and consequently get a paycheck. It's a good premise actually. As my previous paragraphs indicate, I'm not usually impressed by this kind of "dark souled artist" storytelling, I usually find that kind of thing intolerable. But this episode really is pretty fucked up and doesn't let up, it isn't delicate or beautiful or subtle. It's just a head on collision with fucked-up awesome.
Not the best episode ever, but if you like this kind of thing, you should totally watch this. Like I say, it doesn't ever let up, and it's not funny at all, and it's totally fucked up.
Last night I left off before crowning the winner of the best actress award, so I'm going to cut to the chase. Fuck the intro, here it is:
Best Actress: Demi Moore "Dead Right"
Oh, sweet Demi. Why are you married to that guy who plays Kelso? I would rather she be married to John Mayer than that guy, at least John Mayer knows how pathetic he is. Before I start rummaging through Ashton Kutcher's IMDB page to make sure my hatred for him is entirely justified, I'll review this excellent episode of Tales From the Crypt.
"Dead Right" is among the classiest crypt episodes ever. I could actually watch it with my girlfriend's parents and not feel like I was torturing them. The plot concerns a secretary (Demi) who visits a psychic who speaks with that stupid gypsy accent and tells her that she's going to get fired that day, but will immediately be offered a new job. When both events transpire, the former-secretary now-waitress returns to the psychic for seconds and is told that she will meet a man who will become rich after she marries him. Not by working, but by inheriting the money. And best of all, he will die right after he inherits the money! The bad news is that this is the guy she has to marry:
Yeah, it's the dad from Arrested Development... IN A FAT SUIT. Needless to say, Demi is less than thrilled to marry the dad from Arrested Development in a fat suit, but she's willing to put up with it if it means getting rich. Unfortunately, he's not only fat, he's a big fat demanding jerk.
One of the fun things about Tales From the Crypt is that the actors get so much room to work with. In big budget Hollywood films, there's too much going on to differentiate between a very good actor and a great actor. But here, Demi's talent is incredibly obvious. She's fucking amazing. When she vomits immediately after having sex with her husband, I nearly shed a tear.
I'm sure you've all figured this out by now, but I'll state the obvious: you should totally watch this.
Tonight I'd like to continue with my TFTC reviews and this time, we're going to award two of the best female performances of the series. There are a good amount to choose from, but many of the episodes with female stars just plain suck. Look at "Oil's Well That Ends Well," starring Lisa Marie Presley. She's supposed to be cool and witty and wise and cunning, but she comes off as a dumb slut. I mean, her performance sucks more cock than her late ex-husband ever did, and that says a lot. And then there are episodes like "Beauty Rest," about a woman who sacrifices her dignity to win a beauty contest. How good can her performance possibly be? Not good enough to make up for the fact that the story sucks.
I was very tempted to choose "Only Skin Deep" for this award. That episode details a mysterious masked woman who meets a chauvinist asshole at a Halloween party and takes him back to her weird, creepy abandoned house to bang him. That episode is pretty good and I think you should totally watch it. But it's just a nice episode all around. These two stories stand out for being good primarily because of the performances from the female leads, and for that, we salute them. Without further ado...
Best Actress, second runner-up: Cristi Conaway "99 & 44/100 Pure Horror"
Who the fuck is Cristi Conaway? I have no idea either. All I know is that she's great in this classically disgusting episode of Tales From the Crypt. The plot concerns a woman (Conaway) who's husband owns a soap company. She's a horrible human being, a woman who's cheating on her loving and faithful husband and only stays in the marriage because she wants to leach off of his wealth. Her only outlet is her art, which was formerly used in advertising campaigns and packaging for the soap company. Now they're going with a fresh look, and she's pissed.
She cheats on her husband with a mimbo, gets snubbed by a morning talk show host, has a near-meltdown and finally murders her husband before having a passionate make-out session while covered in his blood... and on top of a rolled-up carpet containing his corpse. And she does it all with a dishonest smile. It's a lovely performance, and it almost makes you sad to know that she is going to die a horrible, horrible death at the end. Oh well, she was great while she lasted. Well done, Miss Conaway, whoever the fuck you are.
And now, our next winner!
Best Actress, runner-up: Catherine O'Hara "Let the Punishment Fit the Crime"
Welcome to Stueksville (pronounced "Sticksville" ROTFLMAO ZOMG) home of the country's least constitutional judicial system. Yes, the people here have no concern for the law of the land, and the only clause they're familiar with is Santa. It's a shitty place to be if you're an over-zealous lawyer, but a great place to set an episode of Tales From the Crypt in.
Actually, this episode is very odd for the Cryptkeeper. There's no real gore, there are no titties, no murderous revenge, just an odd little surrealistic story about a grade A bitch who gets to see courtroom C. And that bitch is none other than Catherine O'Hara. I grew up watching her in episodes of SCTV and later became familiar with her as a regular cast member of Christopher Guest's movies (Waiting For Guffman, A Mighty Wind, etc.). She had a number of television appearances in the mid-90s, including an absolutely awful episode of the new Outer Limits, which most people (idealistically) assume wasn't even a television series. Yeah, it existed, she was in an episode about a woman who starts hearing a voice in her head urging her to kill her husband, and it totally sucks. You should totally not watch that.
Luckily, this episode is quite good. It might not blow donkey balls without her presence, but at the same time, she's easily the best part of the story. She winds up in this little town and she's in big trouble for having a license plate with too many digits on it. It's cute storytelling, really. Anyway, she finds out that things are different in this town, and a used car salesman accused of monkeying with mileage meters quickly is thrown in front of a judge and emerges without a nose.
Things don't look good for O'Hara. It's not her license plate, it's the fact that she's a powerful attorney who's made a living screwing over decent people while abusing the legal system to make money and more money for herself and her clients. This does not play well with the judge in courtroom A... or the one in courtroom B, for that matter.
O'Hara is wonderful, all the way through. She's loud and obnoxious and she does everything she can to get out of that town before they decide to hang her on principle. It's a great twenty five minutes. It doesn't fully atone for that episode of the new Outer Limits, but nonetheless, you should totally watch it.
Stay tuned for my choice for best female performance EVAR on the show ZOMG!
And now, the aSWORD for BEAST male performance in an episode of Tales From the Crypt goes to... Jon Lovitz, for his role in "Top Billing." Sorry, I mean:
Best Male Performance: Jon Lovitz - "Top Billing"
There are a lot of things to like about this episode. It would probably fall somewhere in the middle of my list of top ten overall episodes, but what stands out more than anything is Lovitz's performance. It's actually not a great premise. The idea is that a struggling actor (Lovitz) is bested time and time by a jackass named Winton (Bruce Boxleitner) and sets out to prove his worth. Everybody tells Lovitz that he just doesn't have a face for acting, which enrages the trained Shakespearean thespian. Anybody familiar with Jon's work can tell that this role is absolutely perfect for him.
After his wife leaves him, Lovitz's character decides to audition for the role of Hamlet, but there are two problems: the production is taking place in the middle of nowhere for a theater he's never even heard of, and Winton has shown up to prove that acting -- from Axe Body Spray commercials to Shakespeare -- is all about having the right face (I'm paraphrasing, of course).
Again, it's not a great premise, and without Lovitz, this episode would be merely average. To be fair, the second half of the story is actually very good, there are a few really well conceived surprises, and the supporting cast (particularly John Astin as the demanding and flamboyant director) has a few shining moments. However, with Lovitz, you really feel the frustration and anger toward Winton and the other characters who don't believe in his talent. He's so, so good at portraying this lovable, down on his luck loser that the story is a lot of fun to sit through. Lovitz's performance is better than Pesci's, and in my opinion, "Top Billing" is a better episode than "Split Personality." You should totally watch this.
I can't find a copy of this episode that has embedding enabled, but I'll try to figure something out here shortly.
Ahahahahahahaha! It's SHOCKtober and I've decided to review some very scary GOREies from my favorite television shows. So I'm going to review some Tales From the Crypt episodes. Basically, these are the best episodes broken down into different categories, like best stories, best death scenes, etc. For now, here are my favorite male performances from the series.
Best Male Performance - Runner-up Joe Pesci - "Split Personality"
Pesci's performance in "Split Personality" makes the episode what it is. The premise is unremarkable: a con-man's car breaks down outside a mansion and when he goes inside to use the phone, he finds twin girls who are lonely and filthy rich. There is one really nice element to the story, which is that Pesci's character is obsessed with the number two, and things that come in twos. The script includes several very clever instances of this, but also uses the theme of twos to explain why Pesci can't stand to just have one twin -- he is determined to get them both. And that's how he comes up with the idea to invent a twin brother who works in Africa. When his fictional brother is in town, he's away, and when he's away, his new (and ridiculous) alter-ego is present. As disgusting as our anti-hero is, the sisters both fall in love and soon get married, alternately having the time of their life with their husband and longingly awaiting the return of Pesci's other identity. Yes, get out your suspension of disbelief hats, you will need them.
It's actually a very good episode with excellent writing and Pesci's performance is awesome. You love him and you hate him. There's nothing terribly surprising about the story and there's this unusual element about the twin's father that doesn't make a lot of sense if you think too hard about it. But the point here isn't to think, because this story is extremely simple and fun and stupid and, well, you should totally watch this.
