Last episode, I brought up the fact that for all the episodes that have emerged from the Crypt, a surprisingly small number of them featured that horror mainstay, killer puppets. Well, season 4 apparently isn’t done with devoting some overdue screen time to other, classic horror tropes as Werewolf Concerto is only the second episode I can remember thus far that’s featured a lycanthrope predominately in its story. However, after watching the episode, I’m thinking that maybe the show shouldn’t have bothered.
Directed by producer Steve Perry (The Adventures Of Ford Fairlane, True Romance), we find that the show is stepping a paw into a weirdly precise sub-sub-genre – the werewolf whodunit. Obviously anyone who is clued in on their lycanthrope cinema will already know that that several instances of these exist, with the most prominent being bizarre 70s cheese-fest,The Beast Must Die, however, even with a freshly ousted Bond involved, Werewolf Concerto is decidedly out of tune.
A remote, luxury resort starts experiencing something of a novel problem when guests start turning up ripped limb from limb. However, as this episode seems to be set in a world where mentioning that a werewolf is the culprit won’t immediately get you sectioned, all the guests agree that a marauding wolf man is the only acceptable explanation with a minimum of fuss. However, what’s to be done about the situation – especially seeing as the only road leading to the resort has been blocked by a landslide.
To keep panic to a minimum, flamboyant resort manager Antoine reveals that he’s been anonymously contacted by a werewolf hunter who is already staying at the hotel. In payment for sniffing out and slaying the beast, all the hunter wishes is for their identity to remain a mystery – which leads us to an introduction with the roguish Lokai. Dashing and crafty, he immediately begins his investigation by casually questioning various guests, such as the nervous Rechek, the bullish Hertz and a wealthy couple who seem to be loving the mystery of it all. Taking time out from smugly asking questions with a minimum of three shirt buttons undone at all times, Lokai also takes time to make moves on sultry pianist Janice Baird, who seems more than happy to invite him upstairs at midnight.
However, his prey isn’t going to hunt itself, and after discoing a few suspicious things about Hertz, he gives chase when he sees the German fleeing into the woods. Convinced that the fact that Herz confesses to killing Rechek is all the proof he needs, Lokai shoots him dead, but it turns out that we’re not in possession of the full facts. You see, Hertz was actually a Nazi war criminal on the run, which means he couldn’t have been the werewolf hunter.
Wait, werewolf hunter? Isn’t Lokai the werewolf hunter? It seems that we’ve made some fatal assumptions – but not half as fatal as Lokai – the actual werewolf – has made.
Despite being fairly derivative of both The Beast Must Die and 1989’s Howling V: The Rebirth, there was a great chance for Werewolf Concerto to be a wonderful little mystery tale that kept us guessing. However, in order to to do that, it helps if your mystery is scripted tighter than a duck’s asshole with similar direction to boot, but unfortunately Steve Perry just doesn’t have the necessary storytelling skills to pull it off. As a result, the denouement ends up being frustratingly muddled and confusing and the only way I actually got the entirety of the twist was actually from reading a synopsis about it, rather than the show itself. Simply put, we’re supposed to think Timothy Dalton’s charismatic scoundrel is the hunter when he’s actually the werewolf himself. When he’s going around, interrogating the other guests, he’s actually trying to discern the identity of the actual hunter, who ultimately turns out to be Beverly D’Angelo’s vampish pianist. I say vampish, because in a further twist, it’s revealed that she’s also a vampire who moonlights as a werewolf hunter (perfectly not confusing) – which is extra weird when you consider that season 2’s “The Secret” has a simliar twist that’s the complete opposite (vampires unwittingly adopted a werewolf child). While the set up is perfectly fine, I think the main issue is that some vital dialogue is delivered while Dalton is in the midst of transforming, which means I missed the whole detail of Janice actually being the hunter.
But that’s the danger of trying to go full Miss Marple if you don’t have the directing prowess to pull it off – which made all the more worse because, aside from some rather slapdash storytelling, the episode is crammed with rather odd details that distract from things even further. Everyone seems to be playing their characters to such an extreme, it creates something of a schism throughout the episode with some (Dalton’s scoundrel, D’Angelo’s femme fatale) making more sense than others. Charles Fleischer (Roger Rabbit himself) and Bond regular Walter Gotell both get lost in extravagant accents while who knows what Dennis Farina was trying for by ditching his usual tough guy act to play an openly camp hotel manager. Weirder yet, even Reginald VelJohnson (Sergeant Al Powell from Die Hard) shows up as a guest only to play things relatively straight and it all feels like something of a mess.
It’s not all bad, however. Considering the budget and time constraints involved, the episode delivers an exceptionally passable werewolf transformation and lycanthrope design that’s more humanoid than most other takes. Plus, you can’t fully discard an episode that opens with its creature, silhouetted against the night sky, brandishing a severed head and howling at the sky. However, when we really come down to it, if you have a werewolf whodunit loaded with famous faces and it’s still struggling to even compete with even the impressively bad Howling V, you know something’s gone horribly wrong. I consider myself quite forgiving of Tales Of The Crypt as a show in general, so for me to denounce an episode as much as this – even when it gives me a werewolf James Bond – it means that it refuses to work on multiple levels; but to botch such a fun concept is frankly unforgivable. If you truly want to see how it’s done, you could try The Beast Must Die, but if you’re adverse to the idea of the werewolf being played by a dog in a shaggy overcoat (no, really), then maybe give the incredibly fun Werewolves Within a shot to see how entertaining such a silly premise can be.
As we hurtle towards the end of the season, Tales From The Crypt shits the bed to a fairly disappointing degree despite this penultimate episode featuring a fun concept and a cast loaded with potential. Maybe season 4’s predominantly consistent run was due at least one out and out stinker, but it’s a genuine shame it was this one.
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