While I’ve had it out for any Crypt entry that leans too far into the realms of broad comedy, the reverse turns out to be also true because an episode that wades a little too deep into serious waters runs the risk of ending up playing a little dry. It seems what fully distinguishes the Crypt Keeper’s flurry of turgid tales from the rest of the anthology pack (aside from those production values) is that pitch black humour that chuckles bitterly at the macabre as its subjects inflict unimaginable horrors on each other.
A good example of an episode that wanders out a little too far into the neighbourhood of po-faced is John Harrison’s “Easel Kill Ya”, a stressful story that sees a pre-Reservoir Dogs Tim Roth as a struggling, tormented artist who discovers that death sells. But even though the cynical chuckles are few and far between, is Easel Kill Ya’s more straight-faced efforts really a buzz-kill, or could this season actyally stand to use a few more sober shifts in tone?
Jack Craig is the very definition of a struggling, tormented artist. Flat broke, living in a squalid studio apartment and attending Alcoholics Anonymous to curb a previous drinking problem, his raw talent is constantly being usurped by the fact that he’s painting subjects no one wants to buy. His agent is no help as she callously suggests that he was a more bankable talent and at his AA meeting that night, he confesses to the group that he fantasised about killing her with a hammer. While this might be a red flag to most people, wide-eyed Sharon obviously hasn’t kicked her addiction to obsessive relationships as she flirts with the troubled artist and pumps out impressive “I can change him energy” post meeting.
However, Jack’s luck is about to change and after an altercation with a neighbour about loud music results in the dude accidently falling to his death, rather than calling the authorities, Craig instead takes reference photos and gets the entire grisly tableau onto canvass with impressive results. But now what? Where can Jack possibly sell such a grim work of art – especially as it suggests he’s participated in a cold-blooded act of manslaughter (at least). Enter art collector Malcolm Mayflower, a man of seemingly limitless funds who obsessively collects the most morbid works of art he can find and is desperate to find a piece that has an artistic flair to go along with its distressing subject matter.
Needless to say, Mayflower loves Jack’s painting and waves a sizable payday in his face if the artist can provide another. One impaled landlady later and Jack has fallen off the wagon, but is sizable wealthier for it. But still Mayflower wants more and after Sharon is struck by a car after learning of Jack’s murderous muses, the only way he can pay for the neurosurgeon to save her live is to rush out into the hospital parking lot, beat a man to death and hastily scrawl another piece of artwork out of his blood. But while Mayflower is ecstatic to pay an inordinate sum for this latest painting, Jack soon finds out that the nan he murdered was fairly important for the saving of Sharon’s life…
There are many things about Easel Kill Ya that totally work. For a start, seeing an embryonic Tim Roth in action before he globally blew up as the duplicitous Mr. Orange in Reservoir Dogs is proof that the Crypt also had a knack for attracting future stars as well as current ones. Similarly, the almost slasher-like plot is significantly different than anything we’ve seen thus far this season and the shift to muted colours and a more hard-edged tone is, again, a welcome change of pace. It also helps that the episode delivers a string of varied kills to keep things interesting as Jack spirals deeper and deeper into his own murderous rabbit hole.
Indeed, there’s a sense of maturity here that we don’t often get in the often simplistic world of Tales From The Crypt that gives you the sneaking suspicion that Easel Kill Ya may have been better off shooting for something a bit more feature length in order to give Roth a bit more time to fully flesh out his typically tormented character. There’s nothing tongue in cheek about his performance, nor does the episode spend much time winking at the audience as it feels more in line with grotty psycho-slashers such as Driller Killer and the remake of Maniac than the type of fare we usually get from a EC Comics adaptation.
The result is an episode that isn’t so much good or bad, but instead just feels weirdly out of place when placed alongside episodes such as “Top Billing” or “The Reluctant Vampire”. Variety is certainly key when it comes to any anthology show, but even though we get that classic, climactic blast of EC karma when Jack discovered that he’s murdered the only neurosurgeon who can save Sharon’s life (maybe not pick your final victim from the car park of the very hospital your lover is dying in), it’s missing the acidic humour the best of the Crypt has to offer.
Roth is predictably intense – he probably was Jack at this point in his career – and the late Roya Megnot is suitably adorable as the tragic Sharon, but the real catch here is William Atherton’s decidedly odd art collector, who adds to his faintly slimy rogues gallery another weirdo who, like Walter Peck from Ghostbuster and Thornberg from Die Hard, just makes everything worse for everyone.
It’s also probably worth mentioning that director John Harrison is something of a storied anthology veteran, having not only provided the score for George Romero’s Creepshow (itself a homage to EC Comic) and regularly helming episodes for Tales From The Darkside, but he also provided segments for four seasons for the Creepshow TV series that resurrected the brand back on Shudder in 2019. To find him toiling away in the Crypt is oddly fitting, but despite his efforts to bring a bit more of a grounded feeling to the show (AA meetings are a bit too real world for the camp stylings of the Crypt Keeper), Easel Kill Ya refuses to stand out no matter how strained and strung out Tim Roth manages to look. Still, the gore is plentiful (death by shears and a battering by tire iron are appropriately nasty) and that irony laced ending is nicely vicious – if a little convenient considering the more grounded tone – but stripping the camp from Tales From The Crypt feels a little bit like removing the spite from an Evil Dead film; it’s part and parcel of what makes the show work.
The cast and story prove to ensure that Easel Kill Ya is a brooding and oh-so-serious entry to the Crypt cannon. But while it’s great to watch Roth agonise and Atherton creep, there’s a feeling that John Harrison has delivered an offering that doesn’t quite fit with the Crypt Keeper’s aesthetic. Hence why the horrendous host turns up at the with a little, goofy artist’s mustache at the end…
It ain’t a masterpiece, but it’ll do.
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