In June of 1989, HBO premiered the morbid horror anthology Tales From The Crypt, and like the EC comics series on which it was based, each episode featured an entirely new cast and story. Only the shrill-voiced puppet known as the Crypt Keeper would appear in every episode. Aside from the iconic host and the pulpy horror stories, the show is perhaps best remembered for drawing in big-name talent to TV at a time when the medium was thought to be beneath silver-screen celebrities.
With all the excitement over the news that the beloved horror anthology will be rebooted on the TNT network with M. Night Shyamalan at the helm and the buzz about the possibility that the Crypt Keeper may be sitting this one out, we decided to look back at some of the behind-the-scenes facts about the series that started it all.
John Kassir’s audition was love at first sound.
Voice actor John Kassir came to his audition for the voice of the show’s marionette host, the Crypt Keeper, with the voice already planned out. The producers loved it so much that he was chosen for the role almost immediately, beating out Charles Fleischer, best known as the voice of Roger Rabbit, and Michael Winslow, best known as the voice of every sound effect from the Police Academy movies. Being the only member of the cast to appear in each episode, Kassir would call radio shows in-character to help drum up publicity. Of course, this would all strain his voice, and he’d have to keep lemon slices and honey to help soothe it afterward. By the end of the show, Kassir would end up making one appearance with the rest of his body, in the episode “Oils Well That Ends Well.”
The Crypt Keeper only had eyes for “two.”
Controlling the Crypt Keeper took six puppeteers, four for his facial expressions alone. The character was designed by Kevin Yagher, a veteran of horror movie effects, having worked on the Nightmare on Elm St. series, 976-EVIL, and Child’s Play. When putting together the character’s unique look, Yagher used the eyes from the iconic Chucky doll and gave them to the Crypt Keeper. When it came time to find the character’s perfect nose, Yagher thought none of them seemed to look quite right. It was producer Robert Zemeckis who suggested that the puppet, clearly patterned after a rotting corpse, didn’t necessarily need a nose at all.
It helped legitimize television as a viable, creative platform.
Horror anthologies weren’t exactly a hot property in 1989 after big-screen features like Creepshow and Twilight Zone: The Movie didn’t perform all that well at the box office. Regardless, producer Joel Silver was still interested in developing the comic book adaptation, as were Richard Donner and Zemeckis. And with three of the biggest names in Hollywood backing the project, HBO agreed to give the show a home. While episodes were given a fairly extravagant budget of $1 million in order to attract top-tier talent, it promised directors they’d have free reign creatively with little or no interference. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had just been paid $10 million for Total Recall, accepted a payment $15,000 to direct an episode of Crypt that same year, which he called “the greatest joy I’ve ever had in the movie business.”
Two versions of every episode were cut.
As a premium network, HBO allowed the show to push boundaries in terms of explicit content, which helped lead to the ‘It’s Not TV, It’s HBO’ tagline they’d become famous for. Though, for Silver and company, the real goal was syndication. Unfortunately, airing episodes on a network with more conventional restrictions meant that they’d be re-cut absent certain scenes of gore and nudity. It was these watered-down scenes that were used when it debuted on Fox’s late night schedule back in 1994.
It inspired two Saturday morning series.
In 1993, ABC premiered Tales From The Cryptkeeper, an animated series that took the same storytelling approach, only without any of the death or dismemberment. The G-rated horror anthology failed to catch on, and it was canceled after two seasons, although many of the episodes are on YouTube.
Later, in 1996, CBS aired Secrets Of The Cryptkeeper’s Haunted House, a game show of sorts, littered with dated computer graphics and constant production problems. It was canceled after its first season, the same year Tales From The Crypt itself went off the air. John Kassir voiced the Crypt Keeper in both adaptations, meaning his character had, by then, appeared on four different channels HBO, FOX, ABC, and CBS. Kassir would go on to appear in the show’s two big-screen adaptations, Bordello of Blood and Demon Knight. He also appeared in the direct-to-video release Ritual, as well as the TV special New Year’s Shockin’ Eve in 2012.
It has two ‘unofficial’ film adaptations.
The idea of a Tales From The Crypt movie trilogy goes back to the earliest days of development, two years before it would premiere on HBO. After the first Crypt movie, Demon Knight, was released in 1995, it was intended to be followed by a movie directed by Zemeckis, a horror/comedy called The Frighteners. After reading the script, written by Peter Jackson and his wife, Fran Walsh, Zemeckis decided it would be better on its own merit, and was released in 1996 without any affiliation to the show. Jackson was hired to direct with Michael J. Fox appearing in his last leading film role. In 1991, Fox directed and co-starred in the Crypt episode “The Trap”.
Another film, the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez collaboration From Dusk Til Dawn, also started off as a Tales From The Crypt movie adaptation, though disagreements with producers prompted Tarantino and Rodriguez to shop their project around elsewhere, hooking up with Miramax for a 1996 release. That same year, the second Tales From The Crypt movie also hit theaters, the vampire/detective yarn Bordello of Blood.
Only one episode wasn’t based on an EC horror comic.
Many of the stories from the show weren’t based on Tales From The Crypt comic books directly, but they did borrow from a number of horror titles published by E.C. comics. However, the very last episode, 1996’s “The Third Pig,” was the only script not based from any title under the publisher. Instead, it was based on the nursery rhyme The Three Little Pigs, but with a Frankenstein-like twist. It was also the show’s only animated episode.
The Forrest Gump Connection
Tales From the Crypt was the first TV show to digitally insert actors into scenes thanks to 1995’s “You, Murderer.” The episode was directed by Zemeckis, who’d utilized the same technique in Forrest Gump the year before.
