While season 2 of Tales From The Crypt has substantially delivered more good than bad, the misfire of the previous episode managed to rattle me a little bit. While the credentials of those involved with “Judy, You’re Not Yourself Today” were impeccable, that didn’t stop the episode misjudging it’s humour to a truly annoying degree. Despite the fact that it’s hosted by a literally moldering corpse, was the rot beginning to set in already on Tales From The Crypt?
Thankfully, with the arrival of Jack Sholder’s “Fitting Punishment”, the answer is a resounding no as the man who queer-coded Freddy with A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 and delivered the criminally underseen The Hidden seemed to fully understand the assignment.
Taking some classic, supernatural, EC brand comeuppance and mixing it with an all African American cast, Tales From The Crypt gets firmly back on track with an episode that sees revenge afoot…
After his parents are pancaked in a head-on collision, basketball loving Bobby Davis is sent to live with his only living relative? grumpy uncle, Ezra Thornbury. Now, Ezra has a whole bunch of character defects that’s worth pointing out: he’s two-faced, he’s stern and the hypocritical old bastard constantly misquotes the bible at every given opportunity in an attempt as some ill-gotten moral superiority – but surely the worst thing about him is that he’s also a miserly old soul who has no problems cutting major corners at his job in order to score a buck or two to line his own greedy pockets. Why exactly is this such an issue? Because stingy Ezra runs the local funeral home and delights in conning everyone by charging full price to bury their loved ones when he’s only spending a fraction of the amount.
Needless to say, he’s pissed about being saddled with his orphaned nephew, which is a shame seeing as he’s a legitimately good kid. However, Ezra puts him to work for a roof over his head and soon Bobby is embalming bodies with water (chemicals cost money, don’t you know), and ordering cut price coffins from Taiwan – but when Ezra mistakenly believes that Bobby costs him business by ordering the wrong casket, his verbal abuse and bullying soon escalates to physical violence. But after permanently crippling his nephew with a crowbar, the boy has to kiss his dreams of becoming a basketball player goodbye after needing to walk with the aid of crutches. Of course, paying the escalating medical bills only angers the mortician more who soon resorts to more murderous methods to keep costs down.
But after arranging an “accident” to get Bobby out of his hair for good and subsequently bandsawing off the kid’s feet off in order to get him to fit in that mistakenly ordered coffin, it’s time for the bitter old man to get what’s coming to him when Bobby’s spirit – and his feet – come to get some payback.
Once again, Tales From The Crypt goes back to basics in order to dole out a classic story of revenge from beyond the grave and while it does so, it remembers that old storytelling adage: if you’re going to kill a man in the third act, have him slap a woman in the first. How that basically translates here is that the entire episode is dedicated to allowing Moses Gunn (Shaft) to have enough space in order be the biggest piece of shit imaginable to the point where you’re practically begging for him to get his. Genre veteran Jack Sholder fully understands that the entire episode hinges on how much of a ruthless bastard Gunn can portray in order for his inevitable demise to really slam dunk the audience, so the plot is essentially a darkly comic laundry list of misdeeds that sees Ezra pull all sorts of low down tricks in order to save cash.
Gunn is more than up to the task and subsequently deliver an asshole for the ages as he milks Ezra dishonesty for all its worth. Switching from kindly funeral director to hard as nails skinflint the second outside eyes are off him, he’s truly an odious man even before poor Bobby enters his life. From here, Gunn steps it up a notch, bad-mouthing Bobby’s dead parents instantly upon hearing they’re dead, forcing the boy to sleep on a gurney in a closet and even selling his beloved Air Jordans after he’s paralysed him from the waist down in a fit of rage and finally sawing off the dead boy’s as one final insult and there’s a genuinely argument to be made that Gunn delivers the best villain of the season. In comparison, Gunn is so good, Jon Clair doesn’t even really have to try to elicit sympathy from us as his tyrannical uncle systematically ruins – and then ends – his life. However, the young actor does put some good work in as his miserable existence gets a tiny bit of recompense after he dies.
However, another major aspect that makes Fitting Punishment stand out from the Crypt crowd is the fact that for a predominantly white show, the all-black cast proves to be a magnificent breath of fresh air and gives the episode an extra burst of character not found elsewhere. While the sight of the Crypt Keeper dressed in basketball gear initially suggests a potentially tone-deaf take, Sholder and a script co-written by Chucky creator Fon Mancini simply tells a gripping story that finally brings some diversity to a show that would usually cast black actors as Voodoo priestesses.
Of course, a great central performance, a solid story and the fact that the season is finally offering up a non-white cast is all exemplary, but to really take Crypt gold, you really need to round things out with a bang – and Fitting Punishment proves to make good on that title. Yes, it’s the typical EC Comics “cop out” of a character suddenly rising from the grave for no other reason that some supernatural fair play needs to occur, and those new to the days when ghosts, zombies and poetic justice would suddenly just happen because the story demands it to may feel that it’s a tad underwritten. However, this is just how horror comics of 50s used to roll and you can’t deny that Fitting Punishment wraps things up in style. As horror spreads across Ezra’s disbelieving face and he starts praying to a God he frequently misquotes, the sight of a ghostly, footless Bobby coming down the stairs solely supported by his crutches proves to be a near-perfect, Crypt image. But even better, Bobby is added by the ghoulish sight of his own, severed feet as they hop down the basement steps to get even with the guy who severed them in the first place. Gunn even gets to bellow one final “NOOOOOOO!” before the screen cuts to black, so if that doesn’t make this the ideal close to a perfect damn episode, I don’t know what will.
Tales From The Crypt’s pendulum of quality swings defiantly back into the superlative range with an episode that not only ticks all the classic boxes, but does it with legitimate style. Magnificently hissable villain, memorable senario and a perfectly themed payoff equals yet another installment that fits that EC tone far better than one of Ezra’s cheap-ass coffins.
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