After a first season that changed the face of televised horror by (surprise, surprise) treating its source material with respect, season 2 of HBO’s robust anthology series came back with all engines firing. A major part of the first, six episode, season was that aside from the way more graphic gore, violence and sex (gotta love cable, right?), the various adaptations of William Gaines and Steven Dodd’s EC Comics were lovingly adapted by rather big directors (Robert Zemeckis, Walter Hill, Richard Donner) and featured some top tier talent in front of the camera too.
Well, because of its success, it meant season 2 could hit the ground running with more episodes (18 of the fuckers) and even bigger names being allowed to kick off their serious shoes and have a little fun. Hell, even the Crypt Keeper had benefited from something of an overhaul, with the old rotter boasting a wider range of expressions and some better lip syncing. So without further ado, it’s time to ponder the big question: can season 2 match it’s predecessor? On the strength of the premier, a “yes” would be dead right…
It’s 1950 and inpatient gold digger Cathy Finch visits fortune teller Madame Vorna in order to find out if she’s ever going to set up residence on easy street. However, it seems that Vorna and her beloved dog, Trotsky, seems to be too much on the eccentric side for Cathy as her predictions that she’ll lose her job but will find other employment before the day is out.
A scoffing Cathy leaves assuming that the fortune teller is a fraud, but upon arriving back at work, her boss fires her on the spot for being twenty minutes late. But, just as Vorna predicted, she almost get rehired as a waitress in a titty bar barely an hour later. Now a 100% believer, the excited woman demands to know if she’ll ever be rich and is told that she will indeed meet a man who will inherit a lot of money from a dead loved-one and then will himself die a terrible death – however, the catch is that the man in question is Charlie Marno.
A regular patron at Cathy’s bar, not only is Charlie something of an odious creep, but he’s grossly overweight, sweats constantly, stinks and his generally unpleasant, but seeing as Vorna has insisted that he’ll die soon after their wedding, Cathy takes the plunge with those ever present dollar signs leading the way. However, after three months has passed, not only is the vulgar Charlie still alive and well, he’s still no richer than when Cathy first met him and she doesn’t know how much more she can stand of this slob.
But when fortune finally strikes, it’s Cathy it ultimately hits, not her grimy husband and after assuming Vorna had gotten her wires crossed, gleefully goes to tell her lesser half that the wedding is off. However, Vorna didn’t say exactly who Charlie was going to inherit his money from and he proves to quite unhinged when it comes to rejection…
For Tales Of The Crypt’s glorious return, we find that it delivers an episode that’s virtually a perfect example of the format. For a start, returning director Howard Deutch really does seem to have a thing for ruthless gold diggers suffering a terrible comeuppance due to the fact that he gave Lea Thompson the same treatment in season 1’s “Only Sin Deep”. But where he gave Marty McFly’s mom the Crypt treatment by having her beauty bartered away, here he has something far more terrible in store for Demi Moore. That’s right, long before The Substance, G.I. Jane herself was on possibly one of the most satisfying episodes that the show ever produced as she forms quite the memorable double act with Jeffrey Tambor in essentially a romance made in Hell.
While I’d probably admit that looking with modern eyes, “Dead Right” is unapologetically fattest, you also have to give Charlie Marno credit for being a sleezy guy no matter how much he tipped the scales at. It also helps that Tambor, buried under layers of prosthetics and a mountainous fat suit, decides to fully go for it in true, Crypt tradition and in his chubby hands, Charlie is a truly repellant creation.
Creepy, possessive and curiously un-self aware about his obnoxious demeanor (the loud table slapping after every joke is just as much a turn off as the sweat plastering his stringy hair to his scalp), he proves to be the ideal foil for Moore’s Cathy who, much like any women in both the show’s past and future, would undoubtedly sell her mother down the river for ten bucks and change. However, the best thing is that director Deutch, sees the sadistic promise in pairing up one of Hollywood’s most beautiful women with a mouth breathing red flag and because both characters are pretty terrible people, their union is all the more amusing.
As a cherry on the cake, Deutch is free to add plenty of little quirks he maybe wasn’t able to do in his previous episode. Not only do we have a fantasy dance routine between Moore and Tambor that’s wonderfully intercut with her miserable married life, but the episode also has great fun with Natalia Nogulich’s unflappable Vorna, enjoying her home life and indulging in aerobics while Cathy complains that her life sucks.
But once we get to the final twist…. ooh baby, it’s a doozy that reveals that Vorna’s predictions have something of a monkey’s paw effect about them – or do they? One thing I never noticed about the fortune teller until now is that there’s a very good chance that she’s orchestrated the whole thing simply by admission. Sure, she may have only seen the outline of what’s to befall Cathy which leaves out some major details (Cathy’s the loved one who comes into money and she dies because a jealous Charlie knifes her to death before dying as predicted after a trip to the electric chair), but you can just as easily believe that she knew everything from the start and just gave her customer enough rope to hang herself with. It is her slow clock that gets Cathy fired in the first place, after all…
While I really liked Deutch previous venture into the Crypt, Dead Right takes a vaguely similar premise (gold digger with looks coming a cropper) and runs with it to an impressive degree. It feels far more confident, there’s a lot more style and it’s bolstered by a truly great dynamic by both Moore and Tambor who fully embody their lowlife characters to the hilt – what more do you want? An Earl Boen cameo? Baby, you got that too.
The Crypt Keeper’s second coming kicks off in appropriately cruel fashion that proves that when it comes to blackly funny twists and famous faces letting their hair down, the show hasn’t lost it’s knack. In fact, on the strength of Dead Right alone, with Moore leading and the copious effects needed to turn Tambor into the wheezing Charlie, there’s a sense that the show (and it’s cackling host) has a stronger confidence than before.
Imagine what that could mean for the remaining 17 episodes?
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