For a show that’s regularly dealt in vampires, wolf men, ghouls, ghosts, countless zombies and various other classic horror creatures, Tales From The Crypt’s gone fairly light on Mummys up until now. It’s strange because… well – the Crypt Keeper’s mother is a Mummy if you know Crypt lore, so you’d think that the moldy one would have more than a couple of stories to tell about his kin folk while throwing them a bone. Addressing the balance is “Creep Course”; a fun entry into season 5’s already above average output; but while the episode nicely blends the usual, shuffling, Mummy shenanigans with a familiar college plot that weirdly predates She’s All That, the offering proves to be a fun, kickabout entry. However, thanks to hindsight, it does manage to contain a spot of highly problematic casting that I’m afraid we’re going to have to endure in the form of disgraced actor Jeffery Jones.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with what the veteran of Beetlejuice, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Howard The Duck did, you might want to look it up before viewing – but it’s a shame, because despite this, “Creep Course” is yet another episode that wraps things up pretty damn well.
At a local university, the pompous Professor Finley teaches Egyptology with no tolerance for fools, and as he tells his students about the bloodthirsty history of Ramseth – a lovesick pharaoh who returned after death to search for his beloved Princess Nefra – he singles out cocky football star, Reggie Skulnick, for scorn. Despite needing to pass this course, Skulnick has absolutely no intrest in any history, let alone stuff that happened in Egypt eons ago, so he needs to find a way to avoid flunking the class – and fast.
He seems to find salvation in the nerdy classmate, Stella Bishop, whom he lays his moves on in order to seduce her into helping him; but after she agrees to help him study, he reveals a more questionable side to his plan. Rather than cramming info, he wants Stella to to go to Finley’s house for extra tutoring and distract him while Skulnick sneaks in and steals the answers to the upcoming exam. However, after reluctantly agreeing, Stella discovers that Finley’s love for arcane, Egyptian knowledge stretches far beyond the classroom when we find that he not only has a mock up of Ramseth tomb in his basement, but he has the living corpse of the pharaoh himself, who still annually demands the sacrifice of young maidens.
If Stella thought she was in a bad spot before, matters get instantly worse when it’s revealed that Skulnick is in on the whole deal and has lured her here specifically for her to be offered to the undead Mummy. However, unlike Skulnick, Stella’s been listening in Finley’s classes and using her extensive knowledge, she’s able to get the moldy ruler on her side. But why stop at mere revenge, when her monstrous new boy toy can both smite her enemies and score her a high grade for her college exam?
So, now that we’ve ripped the band aid off Jeffery Jones’ involvement, I’m free and clear to say that despite his presence, “Creep Course” may be one of the breeziest outings we’ve had all season, and carries some genuine surprises. A lot of the time, once you’ve figured out the Tales From The Crypt algorithm, it’s fairly easy to predict where the plot is eventually going to go, but while some of this story goes exactly where you think it does, it also manages to give us a string of surprises as it barrels through its endearingly strange plot. Yes, Jones is a shitty human being, but he was also the gold standard of asshole teachers with slimy intentions and he fits the weasly role of Finley perfectly. But beyond this, director Jeffrey Boam (screenwriter of the likes of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade and The Lost Boys) keeps a tight grip of the tone, keeping things nicely tongue in cheek without things getting too goofy.
To start with, Boam ensures that the episode follows the kind of typical, teen high-school/college film that serves up all the usual archetypes. Alongside the vital inclusion of a stuffy, uptight teacher, we also get the charismatic, underachieving jock who is hoping to score some short cuts in life, and the bespectacled bookworm who is only one glasses removal away from a complete makeover into a smoking fox – but in adopting these well-known characters, the episode uses our overfamiliarity with them to pull a few narrative fast ones. After playing a couple of nerds himself in the likes of The Breakfast Club and Weird Science, Anthony Michael Hall finally becomes one of the cool kids as the amoral Skulnick. In fact, his and Jones’ inclusion all play into the joke quite marvelously thanks to their appearances forming something of a spiritual connection to famous John Hughes high school movies. Finally, Nina Siemaszko’s Stella goes almost full Velma from Scooby-Doo as she sports giant glasses she can’t see without and a sizable brain that gets her out of Egyptian hot water.
The result is fun, well paced and immensely satisfying, as first Finley, and then Skulnick are revealed to be less than stellar members of the community as we discover their plot. It’s bad enough that Finley wants to sacrifice a student to an ancient, love-lorn Mummy in the first place, but the fact that Skulnick is willing to sell her out for mere test answers really does drive home just how sucky the smug jock truly is. However, the big twist ends up being that Stella, with the aid of her sizable nerdness, is able to figure out that if she poses as Nefra, she’ll be able to twist the bandaged goon around her little finger and turn some tables.
The revenge aspect of the episode ends up being pretty sweet too. Finley inevitably double crosses Skulnick, and poisons him with an Egyptian concoction that liquifies his organs and leads to the first time someone on Tales From The Crypt has literally shit themselves to death (although there’s a fair bit of puke too), but rather than Finely managing to reap the benefits of a sated Mummy, Stella orders her adoring Ramseth to remove the Professor’s brain through his nose with an embalming hook. However, when that’s all said and done, we’re left with a rather interesting denouement that sees Stella offering up the freshly mummified bodies of Finley and Skulnick as her final exam and scoring an A+, even though the result is that she’s arrested for it. Weirder yet, Stella seems perfectly OK with it – has her ordeal left her insane? Is she confident in the knowledge that her bandaged beau with ultimately free her with his Mummy brawn? Or am I just taking it all too seriously and we should just accept it as a colourful parting gag? Probably the latter, but it’s fun to speculate, right?
Despite some unfortunate casting, Boam delivers a humorous teen movie parody that confidently treads the fine line between fun and ludicrous. Knowing not to play things too broad means that the script and cast can happily take the piss while not being in danger of upsetting the apple cart, and as a result, we get a winning entry that proves that all’s pharaoh in love and war…
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Where to watch Tales From The Crypt – Season 5, Episode 9: Creep Course: