I know I’ve mentioned this before, but whenever one of the Tales From The Crypt “big three” make their presence felt, I sit up and take notice because you just know that things are about to get really good. For example, the last time executive producer/director Richard Donner made his directorial presence felt, we got the magnificently screwy “Dig That Cat… He’s Real Gone” which prove to be a massive highlight of season 1. Well, it seems that the director of Superman: The Movie, The Omen and Lethal Weapon still has a thing for old carny acts because for the tenth episode of season 2, he focused his attentions to the art of ventriloquism to deliver what possibly the show’s most out-there, freaky, what the fuck reveal to date and he does it with the gusto of a gorehound half his age. Thought that the man who gave us the iconic sight of Christopher Reeve in the Superman suit was above flinging gore and bug-eyed rubber monsters around? Prepare to be proven hilariously wrong.
As a child, young Billy Goldman idolised the Ventriloquist act of Mr. Ingles and his smart mouthing dummy, Morty, and he even gets to see them in action in their prime as they fire out lightning fast quips, one-liners and roasts at a speed that affirms Billy adoration. However, the night ultimately ends in tragedy when a mysterious fire burns down the venue later that night and after a woman’s body is discovered in the aftermath, Mr. Ingles drops off the face of the earth, retiring both him and Morty from the spotlight for good.
Years later, Billy has aspirations to follow his idol into the world of ventriloquism and manages to hunt down Ingles as he languishes in his run down home as a grumpy recluse. Confirming that he retired due to an injury his sustained to his puppeteering hand in the fire, Ingles is initially pissed that this perky upstart has bothered to dig him up. But after Billy begs him to come and watch his act, he seems to get through to the burnt out celebrity as Ingles does indeed show up to view his act – but unfortunately Billy proves to be terrible.
However, in the aftermath of Billy’s brutal bombing, Ingles seems to come over a bit strange and before you know it, there’s a dead girl involved and Ingles seems to be to blame. However, when Billy confronts him back at his abode, he accidently stumbles upon the shocking secret that lurks behind the act of Mr. Ingles and Morty. It turns out that Morty isn’t actually a ventriloquist’s dummy after all, but instead is Ingles’ misshapen, conjoined twin who is connected to him at the wrist. Worse yet, due to his extreme condition, Morty despises women and has an unnerving habit of killing them if Ingles doesn’t keep him continuously restrained with morphine. As Ingles and his brother both attack Billy, the tormented ventriloquist soon takes a novel way out when he chops Morty free with a cleaver, however, after Morty takes bloody revenge, Billy attempts to do a deal with the malformed little bastard to restart the act. However, Billy soon finds that Morty likes to hold all the aces.
It’s truly confounding to me that the director of The Goonies also had this truly mind-blowing mixture of Magic and Basket Case in the tank, but when your episode hits the jackpot of being written by a pre-Shawhank Redemption Frank Darabont, I guess you just go where the chaos takes you. In fact, when you realise that Darabont was only a few years on from penning such horror overachievers as A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 3 and the remake of The Blob, it’s actually crazy that he didn’t write more episodes. Still, you take the gold where you can find it and this unholy union of Donner and Darabont is certainly that – but beyond the gobsmacking reveals and Peter Jackson levels of splatstick, there’s another massive plus in the offering.
Usually you wouldn’t expect to see the likes of Don Rickles in such a splattery story such as this, but that’s precisely the magic of Tales From The Crypt in a nutshell – it was a show where all manner of people could show up and let their hair down while being coated with buckets of gore with an animatronic twin fused to their arm. Frankly, Rickles is a fucking delight as he brings his usual brand of caustic wit to the tragic form of Ingles and the addition of a terminally awkward Bobcat Goldthwait sweetens the deal even more. For some reason, watching Zed from Police Academy and the voice of Mr. Potato Head from Toy Story form a fucked-up, desperation fuelled double act before the gnarly shit truly hits the fan ensures that you are fully invested in these characters.
It works because Donner is fully dedicated to give you a twist on the old creepy ventriloquist dummy gag that you’ve never seen before and thanks to the efforts of Rickles and Goldthwait, you just don’t see the true nature of Morty coming. While previous swings have gone from mentally broken ventriloquists who believe that their dummy is guilty of their own crimes all the way over to the puppet actually being alive, the injection of Frank Henelotter style goofy body horror proves to be something that’s as wonderfully original as it is incredibly twisted. Donner admirably doesn’t shy away from it either, fully embracing the weirdness by making the revealed Morty resemble a partially melted Chucky with little, withered lobster arms. He’s a vicious little shit too, adept at ripping a throat out with his teeth as he is delivering a high-pitched punchline from behind a plastic mask and he feels like he’d be right at home alongside other lumpy birth defects such as the killer babies from It’s Alive or Belial Bradley from Basket Case. To complete the full image of the deranged fucker, it turns out that little Morty is psychotically misogynistic too thanks to the fact that his atypical physiology prevents him from enjoying carnal pleasures and it truly is fantastic to see such a legit director swinging for the fucked-up fences back in 1990.
There’s a few niggling issues here and there – the episode is missing a bit of polish so some of the dialogue the latter half of the episode is lost in the chaos – similarly, Donner’s missing the clean snap of a Jackson or a Raimi when it comes to those nasty little visual gags. However, the episode more than makes up for these indiscretions by going full force with the imagery such as Rickles hacking at this own wrist in order to finally be free of his brother, or Goldthwait gaining the upper hand on his feral opponent by trying to run a struggling Morty through a meat grinder.
Once again, one of Crypt’s big three brings home the macabre bacon in impressive style and even manages to deliver an episode that’s cosily in contention to be a season best. It also heartily confirms onve again that the show is at its robust best whenever the episode in question goes balls out in delivering the type of warped horror comedy you once could only find in an unrated cinema release. Bottom line: The Ventriloquist’s Dummy is Crypt confidently finding (and then throwing) it’s voice.
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