Do you know what I’m in the mood for right now? A Tales From The Crypt episode that decides to take a fairly wild swing into some noticably odd territory. Maybe because it’s that the previous episode was uncommonly serious, but I fancy an installment that’s fairly light on it’s feet that still retains the macabre nature of the Crypt Keeper at his cackling best.
As if by some dark twist of fate, the show decided to drop “Undertaking Palor” into my lap which may be the most strategic bout of scheduling the show ever managed, because this youthful blast of energy proves to be the perfect antidote to the rather po-faced “Easel Kill Ya” by going full Goonies on our asses. But wait, there’s more; not only do we have a group of overstimulated kids uncovering a crime at the local funeral home like a totally rad episode of Scooby-Doo, but we also have a scenery chomping John Glover on hand to really nail that mixture of creepy and camp.
We’re introduced to the excitable bunch of Jess, Norm and Aaron as they exit a movie loudly proclaiming about their knowledge of fright flicks. However, they get a quick lesson about fear thanks to their fourth member, Josh, who puts his new camcorder to good use by stalking the group dressed in a shroub as scaring the shit out of the boorish Norm. However, the quarter’s leader, Jess (denoted by the fact that he wears a leather jacket), suggests that they make a real scary movie and film themselves breaking into the Esbrook Funeral Home in order to see what messed-up stuff they can get on camera.
While logic dictates that filming yourself breaking and entering isn’t exactly the smartest thing you could do, the group gain entrance and marvel at the body of a recently deceased local librarian. However, when the owner, Sebastian Estbrook, arrives, the kids all quickly choose makeshift hiding places and almost immediately discover that something rotton is occuring – and it’s not the corpses. It seems that Estbrook is pulling a murderous scam with local pharmacist, Mr. Grundy, where he kills townsfolk with poisoned medicine while Estbrook vastly over charges the relatives for the funeral while the crooks split the profit.
After escaping with this knowledge, the boys are rocked when one of their fathers end up becoming Estbrook & Grundy’s next victim. Realising that they have to put a stop to this murderous scam by breaking back into the funeral home and recording the perpetrators dead-handed, the kids soon discover that the two villains aren’t quite as friendly as they first seemed.
After revealing themselves and their recording equipment to show Estbrook that the jig is up, the grisly karma that falls upon the psychotic mortician pleases everyone – even one of his victims apparently…
There’s something about Undertaking Palor that feels less like a standard episode of Tales From The Crypt and more like a wildly unhinged entry from Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories it it had been more into murder and the violent abuse of dead bodies. As it stands, it proves to be perfectly placed among the more adult fare of Season 3 and at times goes full Goonies with its premise despite Richard Donner not actually being directly involved beyond that overarching Producer’s credit. Instead, editor Michael Thau takes the helm and considering this was one of his directing jobs, he manages to infuse the episode with the appropriate youthful energy it demands. OK, some of the constant 90s slang may feel a little forced these days (not even the Ninja Turtles are as energetic as this lot), but if your were to assume the gang of Jess, Norm, Aaron and Josh were some backwards cap wearing version of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, their crime fighting shtick actually fits quite well.
It genuinely helps that an actual member of the Goonies is at hand to legitimise the whole shebang as Ke Huy Quan appears as Josh – yes, it’s a tad reductive to have the Asian member of the team once again be the tech expert, but what do you want me to say, it was the damn nineties. Joining him are Aron Eisenburg (best known as Nog from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but he also earned his genre stripes from playing the son in House III: The Horror Show) and Jason Marsden (the voice of Thackery Binx from Hocus Pocus) and the group have good chemistry, even if most of their energies are taken up with mercilessly teasing the weight of their fourth member (Scott Fults). However, while these seemingly vapid kids may test the patience of some with their endless obsessing about pornography, once the plot gets into full swing, it manages to hit all the right notes.
It helps that the crime they stumble across (while committing a fellony of their own, don’t forget), is genuinely skin crawling as John Glover’s flamboyant undertaker not only has his heartless scam locked firmly in place, but it’s strongly implied that he’s (under)taking liberties with the bodies under his care (Amazing Stories would never). Whether smashing in the face of his former crush in order to force her corpse to pull a smile, or the slapdash way he cheaply prepares to bodies, Estbrook is truly an odious Tales From The Crypt villain worth booing at. He genuinely seems to despise the living residents of the town and even violent turns on his partner in crime (Graham Jarvis) when things go sour by strapping him to a gurney and pouring acid down his throat.
Adding to the the energetic feel to proceedings is the fact that virtually the final third of the episode is seen through the cameras of the kids as they attempt to spring their trap and while it’s a little reminiscent of the edgy chaos that closed out Season 2’s “Television Terror” it ensures that the energy is nice and high for that final denouement.
And what a denouement. While Estbrook’s demise could have been a tad more graphic, having his insides sucked out by what seems to be a mortician’s cadaver hoover (just go with it), the boys point out that in the struggle, a blow to the dead librarian’s face has finally gotten the dead woman to smile, which proves to be the perfectly morbid (yet strangely wholesome) ending and episode like this is crying out for. Maybe a lot of Undertaking Parlor doesn’t make a lot of logical sense when you stop to take a closer look – the death of Josh’s father might have hit harder if we’d actually met him; how was Estbrook going to continue his scam if he’s murdered Grundy; where did all those camcorders come from in the finale – but when judged on pure enjoyment, this is one episode that’s worth undertaking.
While shooting for a more adolescent episode might seem counterintuitive at first, it helps to remember that kids this age probably would have been the target audience for the original comics in the first place, so there’s a feeling of things nicely coming full circle. Fun, frisky and not adverse to getting nice and freaky, this rave before the grave certainly puts the fun in funeral…
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