While the third season of HBOs horror extravaganza certainly delivered its fair share of the goods, there was a lingering feeling that Tales From The Crypt still had a bit of trouble figuring what kind of show it actually wanted to be. Often veering wildly between tones, one week you’d get a magnificently spiteful offering, only to get a weak, dull and often unfunny one the next. Even one of the show’s leading lights, Walter Hill, turned in his weakest (and final) episode after delivering a couple of all-time greats in previous seasons. Simply put: if the Crypt Keeper wanted to stay in business, he’d have to exercise a bit more quality control with his stories in the future if he still wanted to be kept in cobwebs and quips.
On first glance, it seems that season four opener, “None But The Lonely Heart”, is in danger of going down that overly jokey route that bugs me so much thanks to its plot of a man wedding and deading mature ladies for their money. However, we find season 4 ultimately getting off to an impressively strong start thanks to the most unlikely of saviours. Tom frickin’ Hanks.
Howard Prince has something of a sociopathic scheme to make money. Constantly needing new funds to keep the light on with the various cons, investments and ponzi schemes that he and his equally shifty partner, Morty, have in action, Howard has taken to frequenting dating agencies and marrying lonely, mature women only to bump them off once their savings have been signed over to him. However, with the authorities closing in on some of their financial escapades, both Howard and Morty need the former to bleed more biddies dry if they’re going to need enough capital to flee and start new lives.
After poisoning his latest doting victim and moving onto the next, Howard selects the widowed Effie Gluckman as his latest, potentially last, victim. Still mourning the death of her beloved husband, Effie is only looking for a companion, but when Prince turns on his charm to the fullest and claims to be impotent, she not only falls in love with him, but makes it her purpose to “cure” him of his problem.
Yes it, it seems like Howard’s got another one in the bag, but paranoia starts to rear it’s head when he starts getting a series of accusatory notes threatening to out his devilish deeds. But who could know about the string of elderly women he’s managed to all plant in the same cemetery and use it to extort him? The obvious choice would be Morty, but then there’s Baxter, the man who runs the dating agency, Effie’s protective butler, Stanhope and even the gravedigger who has provided the holes for all of Prince’s victims. However, after sealing the deal on Effie and callously wiping out his suspect list, it seems that Howard’s finally on easy street. But when the blackmailer finally shows themselves Prince discovers that his various conquests may be down, but they’re certainly not out.
There’s something wonderfully perverse about the fact that only three years before gaining animated immortality as Woody from Toy Story and two years before he claimed an Oscar as Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks was kicking season 4 of Tales From The Crypt off with style with a directorial debut that hits every right note you’d want from a season opener. While we’ve had famous actors use the show to try their hand at directing before (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael J. Fox in seasons 2 and 3 respectively), none of them have quite managed to grasp the Crypt tone as well as the dude from Splash. Maybe it’s because he’d recently worked with Joe Dante on The Burbs and some of that tongue in cheek absurdity rubbed off on him, but out of all the stars to try their hand at a Tale, Hanks just gets it.
While the show’s history often suggested that the episodes featuring con artists and inheritance related homicide had to be spoofy, ludicrous affairs with over the top performances and a goofy tone, None But The Lonely Heart manages to come to the admittedly familiar material with the same hard-edged smirk you’d more normally find in some of the harsher entries. Refreshingly, Hanks has no interest in pulling punches, presumably because he’s reasoned that you don’t go and direct a Tales Of The Crypt episode unless you plan to go a little crazy, and as a result we get an offering that not only has an impressively high body count (Prince kills six people including a cameoing Hanks himself), but even ends in an enjoyable (if illogical) explosion of some classic, undead justice.
Hanks isn’t treating anything overtly flashy here. He isn’t trying to swoop the camera everywhere or slap Dutch angles on every other shot, primarily because he knows he doesn’t have to when you’ve got Treat Williams acting the callous bastard in virtually every scene. While there was always the sense that the actor’s career wasn’t as big as it should have been, it’s certainly fun watching Williams charm his way through the elderly cast before switching on them with killer results. Be it callously watching his carefully selected lovers writhe on the ground as poison courses through them, or switching up to make a panicked phone call for an ambulance, he may not be a particularly original example of Tales From The Crypt villainy, but he certainly can step up the pace when he needs to off the entirety of the rest of the cast. In fact, while it’s rather novel to watch Hanks bite the big one by having his skull rammed through a television set and then electrocuted, the rest of the varied cast also get to shine. Raising Cane and The Mist’s Frances Sternhagen gets to flesh out Effie nicely before her inevitable demise and Henry Gibson joins Hanks once more after trying to kill him in The Burbs, but most bizarre of all is the appearance of Sugar Ray Leonard (yes, that Sugar Ray Leonard) as the gravedigger who has been sending those damning letters to Howard in the first place.
This brings us to the ending which, if I’m being honest, is a pretty standard Tales From The Crypt wrap up insofar that it uses a sudden, attack of the supernatural to neatly tie every up with barely a hint of foreshadowing. I mean, who would have thought that Tom Hanks is going to sic a bunch of flesh eating zombie wives upon us (and upon Treat Williams too); however, while such an ending could have felt lazy, Hanks redeems it by going all out and delivering some of the best last-act, EC Comics inspired, zombie designs the show has ever seen – and if you’ve been reading my other Crypt reviews, you’ll know I love my last-act, EC Comics inspired, zombie designs. Mutilated, gooey and featuring mouths full of earthworms and popping out eyeballs, these brides of the damned somehow can’t rest until the “death do us part” part of their wedding vows are sated. Sure, it doesn’t make a lick of sense why the story would suddenly handbrake turn into the supernatural (some additional details about the gravedigger’s dealings with the dead could have been nice), but the zombies are appropriately grotesque and Hanks is having fun – which vitally crosses through the screen and into your living room.
After that relatively weak start for season 3, season 4 comes out of the gates strong thanks to a guest director that isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. Solid direction, great performances, mean tone and kick-ass zombies means that both we and the Crypt Keeper owe the director one big debt of Hanks…
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