Tales from the Crypt: The Complete First Season

In the early 1950s, as a post-World War II reaction to the general puerility of comic books, publisher William Gaines started a line of horror comics that pushed the envelope by presenting grisly, tongue-in-cheek stories illustrated with stomach-churning realism but told with great panache. Tales from the Crypt was the flagship of Gaines' EC Comics line, and it became a nostalgic favorite of kids who grew up during the Eisenhower years. Too dicey for adaptation on a network-TV show, the best yarns eventually made their way to less-restrictive HBO, which in 1989 launched an anthology series based on the four-color frightmares served up by Gaines' writers and artists. This two-disc DVD set includes all six first-season episodes, produced by such Hollywood heavyweights as Richard Donner, Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Walter Hill. My favorite is “And All Through the House,” which finds a philandering wife being chased around her house on Christmas Eve by an axe-wielding lunatic dressed as Santa Claus. Lea Thompson stars in my second-favorite, “Only Sin Deep,” which revolves around a classy call girl who pawns her beauty in exchange for a killer wardrobe. Each show is introduced by the Crypt Keeper, an animatronic representation of the comic book's ghoulish gatekeeper. Featuring decent if unexceptional transfers, the episodes are all featured on the first disc, with the second disc containing a brief featurette and the fine standalone documentary Tales from the Crypt: From Comic Books to Television (VL Online, 5/05), which offers a history of EC's horror comics and includes interviews with genre legends George Romero, John Carpenter, and R.L. Stine. Highly recommended. (E. Hulse)