There’s a sense that with every other episode (eg. the ones that go all out to push the envelope), Tales From The Crypt is still discovering how far it should take things and with every episode that tends to take a more sensible and restrained (read: boring) tone, we’re almost certainly due to get one that goes absolutely mental. Well, absolutely mental is a great start when it comes to describing Jeffrey Price’s rambunctious For Cryin’ Out Loud; an episode that adds bit of rock n’ roll flair to Crypt’s usual tone and after a previous installment that played things way too safe, it’s great to get right back to an episode that isn’t afraid to get absolutely fucking nuts.
Sure, there’s the usual bouts of greed and murder that go hand in hand with your typical Crypt episode, but with big performances, wild swings and evenIggy fuckin’ Pop on hand for the fun, For Cryin’ Out Loud goes out of its way to be precisely that – LOUD.
Marty Slash is a rock promoter whose weasly attitude and sweaty demeanor accurately singles him out as bring a bit of a sleazy operator – however, while Iggy Pop and his band, Leather Weazl, rock the crowds on stage, the baying fans in the audience seem convinced that Marty is something of a humanitarian. After all, has the promoter not just raised a million dollars through a charity concert to save the amazon and therefore ensured that more trees will be planted to help bring more oxygen to the world? Yeah, about that. Despite his benevolent act, Marty couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Amazon and has already set plans in motion to withdraw the money from the bank and sneak out of the gig to retire for good on top of a huge pile of money.
However, while Marty tries to carry out his plan, the strange mumbling sound he’s been hearing for the last couple of days takes a bizarre twist. It seems that his conscience has been unable to make itself heard throughout a lifetime of Marty’s misdeeds, but now that it’s finally found its voice (so to speak), it’s going to take every opportunity it can to mock, jibe, yell and holler as Loud as it can in order to get Marty finally do the right thing.
However, things get even more twisted when a busy groupie reveals herself to be Ms. Kilbasser, Marty’s banker, who has figured out his scheme and wants in on it, claiming she wants half of his ill-gotten gains to keep her mouth shut. But while Marty’s conscience screams at him to turn himself in and stop things before they go too far, the desperate promoter settles things the nasty way, bashing in Kilbasser’s brains in with a guitar. But with embezzlement and murder under his belt now, Marty’s conscience turns up the heat, trying to turn it’s owner crazy before he can make his escape. Can Marty slip away before the nagging voice in his head gives the entire game away.
I love it when Tales From The Crypt goes berserk and while plenty of episodes have lunged into eccentric territory, For Cryin’ Out Loud is probably the most crazed, deranged entry since Richard Donner’s “Dig That Cat… He’s Real Gone” back in season 1. Literally pumped full of energy and gleefully silly to boot, For Cryin’ Out Loud not only benefits from a zany, sweaty tone that perfectly mirrors Marty Slash’s paranoid mania, but it’s got some sweet fucking casting to boot. But first, real props have to go to director Jeffrey Price who is probably most famous for scripting such films as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and How The Grinch Stole Christmas and who also scripted this episode. Surprisingly, as fun as this installment is, it’s the only time that Price ever directed anything which proves to be something of a real shame.
The rock music aspect of the episode keeps things moving fast and weird and it’s something of a relief for an episode to focus on such a different kind of scuzzball, but best of all, Price knows to throw subtlety clean out of the window when it comes to a tale about a man literally being driven mad by his own conscience. In fact, giving a headbanging makeover to an Edgar Allan Poe style story of guilt is exactly the sort of chaotic tricks this show should be trying to pull off every week and matters are made all the more frenzied thanks to Lee Arenberg seizing the lead role and throttling the living shit out of it. For those of you who can’t quite place the name, throw some scurvy on him and rotten up those teeth and he’s best known as Pintel the pirate from Pirates Of The Carribean (“Ello poppet.”) – although, if it helps, he also played the perpetually fire farting Eternal Flame in Alex Winter and Tom Stern’s Freaked.
Anyway, watching him gurn, scream, eyeroll and perspire his way through the episode is a joy to watch and what makes things even wilder is that his conscience is voiced by notoriously shouty comedian, Sam Kinison, who not only adds to that steadily rising decibel level, but proves to be perfect casting. Rounding out the episode is Katey Sagal, who gets to ensure that she adds herself to the steadily growing pantheon of female money grabbers featured in the show, but while she’s nowhere near as abrasive as some of the other cast members, watching her rock a goth look before having her skull smashed in with Pete Townsend’s guitar and her body stored in Donny Osmand’s drum cajón adds to the unpredictable cartoon energy even more.
However, while the episode trades heavily in sweaty screaming men, it also ensures that it fills its squeamish quota when Marty tries to silence his conscience by shoving cotton buds worryingly deep into his ear canals. And if that doesn’t prove to be nauseating enough, the desperate sleazebag upgrades to a sharpened pencil which is what ultimately proves to be his undoing. While he finally confesses because he believes that everyone can now hear the bellowed accusations of his untethered conscience, it turns out that their wide-eyed stares are actually aimed at the pencil buried deep into his ear – a mistake that lands him in the electric chair. However, For Cryin’ Out Loud manages to do something fairly original for the show and actually starts the episode with an eager Marty getting taken to his execution, begging his captors to hurry up. As a result, we head into the episode knowing full well that Marty will get caught, but having no idea how he slips up. It’s a nice little twist on the twist and adds even further to the unhinged nature of an episode that mostly wants to do business as noisily as it possibly can.
An undisputed season highpoint, For Cryin’ Out Loud’s only issue is that some may find Price’s whacked-out vision far too loud and obnoxious for it’s own good. However, screw those people, we’ve got Iggy Pop dropping f-bombs everywhere, we’ve got Arenberg epically freaking out, we’ve got a smolderingly salacious Sagal free of Peggy Bundy’s beehive, and we’ve got Kinison hollering for all he’s worth. Admittedly not every episode needs to be quite so deranged, but every subsequent Crypt director should certainly listen to the voice in their head that demands their episode should up the crazy by at least 40%.
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