Tales From the Crypt Pt. 3

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!