While the last couple of episodes have given us some morbid tales concerning the evil that humans like to perform upon one another, it’s high time that Tales From The Crypt went back to offering a fiendish taste of monster madness. Cue Manny Coto, the director of Dr. Giggles, who has come along to fulfill all of our sinister needs with “Mournin’ Mess”, an especially creepy episode that delivers a cool and fun coda to its carnivorous conspiracy.
Getting down and dirty with extreme gore, over the top reveals and a sleazy lead character who’s just aching to wander into a gruesome comeuppance, the show replies to the innovation of the previous week’s “Undertaking Palor” with a showing that delves right into those horror roots. In fact, this is one of Tales From The Crypt that you’d wish was a little longer in order to beef up those already present chills even further. Will that being said, it’s time to uncover a conspiracy most grave…
Scumbag ink-slinger Dale Sweeny is on very thin ice with the editor of the newspaper he writes for. Beyond the fact that his booze intake is alarmingly high – even for someone in his profession – his fuck ’em and chuck ’em attitude to women hardly marks him out as a shining example of his gender. However, while Sweeny lopes and gropes his way through life, a prolific slayer of vagrants dubbed the Homeless Killer has been mutilating drop outs and winos all over the city with impunity.
After a particularly virulent bender, Sweeny is accosted in his apartment by Robert, a terrified tramp whom the authorities have labelled the slasher after he was in the vicinity when one of his buddies was murdered. At gun point, he angrily demands that the reporter look into a conspiracy surrounding an organisation known as the Grateful Homeless Outcasts and Unwanted Layaway Society who has been doing charitable work providing money for a local cemetery. Quite why a society for the homeless is so eager to pay more attention to the dead than the living certainly seems strange.
However, instead of staking out the cemetery properly like Robert asked, Sweeny instead beds the Grateful Society spokesperson, Jess Gilchrist, in order to “pump her for information”, but when she makes out like the rest of women in Dale’s life and walks out in disgust, his shitty lifestyle finally catches up with him. Finding himself fired and locked out of his apartment, all he has left in his life is his weird story.
However, once he finally breaks the story of the secret goings on with the Grateful Homeless Outcasts and Unwanted Layaway Society, he soon finds himself trapped under the graveyard, stuck with Robert’s mangled corpse and a gathers terrible understanding of what the organisation’s acronym (G.H.O.U.L.) really means.
Pulpy, mean spirited and gleefully nasty, Mournin’ Mess wastes no time in driving us into the sleazier ends of the Crypt catalogue thanks to the episode’s freakish fallout and a memorable, shitheel performance by Steven Weber. Most people remember Weber either as Bridget Fonda’s bed hopping fiancé from Single White Female or the non-Jack Nicholson version of Jack Torrance in the 90s TV movie take on The Shining, but weirdly, he’s far more memorable as the boozing, womanising reporter from Manny Coto’s hugely entertaining offering. One of those rare Crypts that defiantly goes for the scares instead of the camp, the concept of the homeless falling foul of murderous creatures while a punchy acronym plays a large part, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Mournin’ Mess is taking a few tips from C.H.U.D., but when you remember that the original story debuted in the 50s, there may actually be a chance that the influence may be mutual.
One of the reasons that I wished the episode was around ten or fifteen minutes longer, was so the main arc of the story could have a bit more to breathe. I mean, the twist that G.H.O.U.L. is being run by actual, flesh-eating ghouls in disguise is a legitimate cracker, but real meat here (so to speak) comes from watching Weber’s sleezoid gradually going from a rumpled, humping reporter to closely resembling the derelicts he’s reporting on is fairly fascinating, especially because Weber looks legitimately haggard even before he realises he’s uncovered a coven of flesh consuming monsters.
Mournin’ Mess is also one of those episodes that benefits from having something of a recognisable cast, as the presence of Ally (Universal Soldier) Walker, Vincent (Ghost, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest) Schiavelli and even Mrs. Tom Hanks herself, Rita (Sleepless In Seattle) Wilson leads you to think that such a cast could never be in a show about corpse stealing ghouls. However, once the preamble is dispensed with director Coto is free to deliver a legitimately unnerving finale that doesn’t hold anything back.
Spotting that the soil on Robert’s grave is shifting, Sweeny discovers that there’s a series of tunnels underneath, but as he creeps around the subterranean lair, shadows in the dark reveal that he isn’t alone. Leaping into the nearest coffin in a panic to hide, our not-so daring reporter discovers that the casket he’s picked belongs to the ravaged Robert and it’s fair to say that the guy has seen better days as he’s virtually been shredded. Before we know it, the horror ups another notch as unseen hands lift the coffin a speedily carry it to what looks like an ornate dining room (naturally ensuring to jiggle Robert’s hollowed-out carcass as they go to guarantee maximum distress for their guest) and upon escaping, Sweeny is finally exposed to the horrific truth. The members of the charitable society, including Jess whom he’s had sex with, and even a rival from work pull off rubber masks to reveal bald heads, pointy ears, scarred lips and mangled teeth (quite how a mask would disguise fucked-up chompers is quite the question) and to the reporter’s horror, they reveal that their next meal will be him.
Weber fucking sells it big time and we even get the sight of Tom Hanks’ wife revealing herself to be an inhuman member of a fiendish secret society, so actual conspiracy theorists will probably cream their shorts, and while we’re spared the sight of the ghouls properly tucking in, they do playfully remove an ear off the hapless reporter while regaling him with eating puns. Completely stupendous.
A rare Crypt venture I could have stood being stretched into a feature length horror show, Mournin’ Mess is a healthy reminder that for all it’s jokes and usage of tongue in cheek, meta-camp, Tales From The Crypt can still deliver something seedier, nastier and more vicious than anyone around. Mournin’ glory.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 