Despite spending a good share of its time delivering red hot episodes, it really does seem that season 5 has gone spectacularly off the boil in its final stretch. With a couple of underachievers landing in a row, it’s now down to W. Peter Iliff’s “Till Death Do We Part” to end things on an up note – but even though we’re treated to a story filled with ruthless gangsters, half-naked broads and a genuinely surprising twist here and there, is the fate of a Tales From The Crypt finale really in the hands of *checks notes* John Stamos?
While certainly unpredictable, there’s an issue with this final episode that just too much for a fun cast to overcome, and for much of its runtime, it rarely feels like a Tales From The Crypt episode at all. In fact, I’m not actually sure what kind of existing anthology show would fit such a strange, comedic, crime-centred entry other than Two-Fisted Tales, Crypt’s own defunct spin-off show. Still, it’s time wave goodbye to season 5 by getting harried by the mob.
Lucy Chadwick is a waitress working at a club owned by monstrous mob widow, Ruth Rossi, a woman who had her own husband killed in order to claim his entire empire as his own. However, it seems that the unlucky-in-love server may have bitten off more than she can chew thanks to her affair with Johnny Canapro, the gigalo who currently exists as arm candy to the dangerously jealous Rossi. After their dalliance was sniffed out after Lucy witnessed the murder of fellow mobster, Rossi, Johnny and a couple of goons have have driven her out into the middle of the woods in order to first dispose of that body, and then dispose of her.
As the length of her life shrinks down to mere seconds, we take in the scene: baseball loving goombah Tony complains about his aching back while he chops up the corpse; the far more polite Frank holds Lucy at gunpoint, calmly asking for her clothes and jewelry so he can donate them to his wife and daughters; but while her loyal henchmen go about their grim business, Rossi has no idea what fuckery her boytoy has in store. Tasked with putting a bullet in his lover’s brain to prove himself, Johnny suddenly turns into a one man wrecking crew, turning the gun on both Frank and Tony while Ruth makes a getaway back to her club. Deciding to take this all the way, both Johnny and Lucy become lethal lovers and storm Rossi’s hiding place in a hail of bullets, managing to cut down her men before taking revenge (and a lush mink coat) from the tyrannical criminal.
However, as per usual in a Tales From The Crypt episode – even one as un-Crypty as this one – reality isn’t all that it seems. In actuality, that faintly ludicrous shootout only occured in the imagination of one of our loved-up players, and the truth ends up being far more abrupt and cruel than anything found within a hastily thought-up happy ending.
While certainly weird, twisty and appropriately kooky, there’s just something about “Till Death Do We Part” that just seems a strange fit for Tales From The Crypt. We’ve experienced this mismatched tone before, primarily in the era of recycled episodes from the aformentioned trashed sister-show, Two-Fisted Tales – but while instalments like “Yellow”, “King Of The Road” and “Showdown” felt different because they were meant for another show entirely, this episode has no excuse other than Point Break writer Iliff’s desire to stage a bunch of snazzy shootouts in slow motion. Working for the episode is the fact that it’s trying to stage it’s middle section like it’s a John Woo movie, with Stamos and an underwear clad Kate Vernon taking out the mob with duel-handed gun play and overcranked camera speeds. But while the episode is admittedly fun when taken on its own merits, the fact that it’s the season finale for a long running horror/comedy show just highlights just how strange and ungainly fit it truly is.
As per usual, we get an unsurprisingly eclectic cast that’s lead by Stamos’ hunky gigalo – amusingly a million miles away from his time in Full House – as he clings to the metaphorical teat (or, at least I hope it’s metaphorical) of Eileen Brennan’s matriarchal mob boss. If seeing Stamos play such a role isn’t odd enough, seeing Mrs. Peacock from cult comedy Clue bellow kill orders from the back of a limo certainly adds the surreal nature of the black comedy Iliff is trying to build. Adding even further to the counterintuitive casting is Joe Dante regular, Robert Picardo, as a disarmingly polite hitman and Frank Stallone as baseball obsessed muscle who, with his yellow apron and curly hair, bizarrely resembles a mobbed-up Leatherface as he chops up a body for disposal. However, while the random selection of actors certainly fills the unusual brief of a Tales From The Crypt episode, the tone of it just doesn’t feel right.
It’s not that the episode doesn’t succeed in pulling off what it’s trying to do, it certainly delivers a quirky, kooky, mob comedy that nails you with a last minute rug pull. In fact, Iliff does an admirable job of leading you by the nose, especially when the story shifts gears and becomes a cartoonish action film that has Stamos and Vernon blast their way through disposable henchmen for revenge. You see, it’s something of an effective misdirect, because while you’re puzzling at how unlikely it is that a spineless gigalo and a barely clothed waitress is suddenly able to outshoot the mob like Wyatt Earp merged with Chow Yun Fat, it turns out that the twist has you looking in completely the wrong direction. After defeating Rossi and her men, Lucy goes full femme fatale and turns on Johnny, claiming all the riches for herself – but upon pulling the trigger, we find that all that gunfighting stuff was merely a daydream of a more heroic ending that’s rudely cut short when Johnny follows Rossi’s orders and blows Lucy’s brains out. It’s a legitimately jarring turn up for the books and even proves to be fairly intriguing once you start thinking about it even deeper – you see, we’re never actually sure if that fanciful vision comes from the brain of Johnny or Lucy before the trigger is pulled. If it’s Lucy, it’s a tragic burst of naive hope that her lover will save her in a far-fetched burst of absurd heroism; but if it’s Johnny, then it’s him racing through an idealised account of what might happen if he turns on Rossi. The fact that it ends with Lucy turning on him may actually be the turncoat gigalo justifying his cowardly final desicion to stay safe within the financial bossom of his murderous sugar mommy. As a stand alone episode, “Till Death Do We Part” is actually quite a cool entry as it’s full of eccentric weirdos and it continously doesn’t go where you think it will. However, it just doesn’t feel enough like a Tales From The Crypt episode to send out an entire season, and maybe if it had popped up somewhere in the middle of the run, I’d have been more susceptible to those oddball charms and an amusingly cold-blooded payoff.
A fine episode that – by anyone’s reckoning – is curiously endearing. But it’s ultimately undone by by the fact that it doesn’t feel much like a Tales From The Crypt episode at all – in fact, if we didn’t get the Crypt Keeper mugging his way through the baseball themed intro and outros, “Till Death Do We Part” could easily pass as something else and I’d rather my Tales From The Crypt season finale feel like an actual Tales From The Crypt episode if you don’t mind…
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