While season three of Tales From The Crypt certainly has had its fair share of name directors (Tobe Hooper, Stephen Hopkins and Russell Mulcahy to name just three), there’s been precious little in the form of offerings when it comes to the series’ “big three”. Not only did the trio of Walter Hill, Robert Zemekis and Richard Donner kick the entire thing off back in 1989 with an unfeasibly strong triptych of episodes that merged to form a magnificent pilot, but Hill and Donner also returned in season two to deliver two of the strongest episodes – however, season three has thus far been conspicuous by their absence.
Well, wait no longer, because Walter Hill is back with yet another noir-tinged episode thanks to Deadline, a hard-bitten tale of a desperate reporter struggling with the bottle as he stops at nothing to try and reclaim his former glory. Can Walter Hill do the same with his third trip to the Crypt?
Charles McKenzie used to be something in the world of reporting, breaking stories left and right and claiming countless headlines in various papers; however, these days he’s a shadow of his former self as he steadily slips down the treacherous slope of alcoholism. Broke, desperate, but still clinging to his glory days, Charles frequently tells anyone within earshot that he used to be a bigshot, but his epic consumption of booze usually leads to him either getting pity or derision for his troubles.
However, it seems that Charlie’s life may be picking up when the sultry Vicky walks into his life. Red of hair and gutsy as Hell she catches the old jorno’s eye immediately, Charles wastes no time turning on that old charm and to his surprise, Vicky reciprocates. However, the woman has rules and the main one is that this relationship can’t get serious as she’s not in this for the warm, fluffy feelings. However, after sharing a bed with her a couple of times energises him for the first time in years, Charlie vows to kick the booze and get back in the game in order to win his respect back.
Pleading with the editor of a newspaper to give him a chance, Charles gets a deadline for his troubles: deliver a juicy murder story by the end of the night and he’s hired. However, as he pounds the pavement looking for leads, all of his old informants prove to be dryer than the inside of his mouth. Dying for a drink, he’s instead shuffled off to a diner where fortune manages to work it’s terrible magic as he overhears the owner first have an argument with his wife that soon turns to sounds of a struggle. As “luck” would have it, Charlie’s wandered into a fatal domestic argument that’s seen the owner of the diner lose his temper with a young wife that humiliates him by sleeping around and strangle her to death in a rage. However, as Charlie is phoning the story in, the young woman not only proves not to be death, but it turns out that the wife is Vicky. How dar will Charlie go to get his story, and what will it do to his sanity if he takes that darker path?
I’m sorry to admit that I just didn’t get on that well with “Deadline” for various reasons and considering that it’s been directed by one of the show’s leading lights, I have to say that my expectations were pretty damn high. In the past, Walter Hill gave us the very first episode with the marvelously gritty “The Man Who Was Death” and he even managed to top that one with the superlative season two offering, “Cutting Cards”, that arguably still stands as one of the best Tales of all time. However, with such a high bar to clear, third time doesn’t seem to be the charm for the veteran director as his tale of booze and murder not only lacks the punch of his earlier efforts, but it’s a strangely unfocused event considering Hill’s previous form.
Fitting into a similar format as the director’s previous episodes, Deadline sees a dark, noir-ish story play out through the eyes of an immensely flawed individual and while previous lead characters have been addicted to both death and gambling, here we find a much more prevalent monkey crawling over our protagonist’s back. Booze sodden and at the end of his rope, we get Richard Jordan convincingly tasting desperate as the low life journalist fallen on hard times. Despite the fact that the actor passed away only two years later, he delivers a honest, wretched performance of a man at his lowest ebb and there’s a hint of the same desperation you’d find in something more like Glengary Glen Ross than Tales From The Crypt. However, once Marg Helgenberger’s promiscuous Vicky shows up, you think that things will start to gradually take more of a classic, Crypt turn – but to our surprise, it sticks to it’s more drama-based tone as McKenzie starts to clean up his act despite the fact Vicky’s warned him not to get too attached.
From here, it’s now a race against the clock as Charles has precious little time to bring in a juicy murder story before his deadline runs out and in an attempt to heighten the tension, Hill magnifies the sounds of any ticking clocks in the room. The problem is that even when it finally drops the big twist (which you’ll probably see coming anyway), Deadline in this form just doesn’t feel like a good fit for Tales From The Crypt with its over-reliance on down-to-earth drama over crazy shocks.
It also doesn’t help that we’ve already had a boozy reporter story only two weeks ago, and that one had bald, fanged, corpse-eating ghouls in it which leaves Hill’s version looking more than a little bland. Worse yet, the ending ends up being a bit confusing as the story tries to tee up a coda that just doesn’t work. Discovering that the “murdered” wife of the owner of the diner is Vicky might have hit harder if they both were in love – but at this point we already know Vicky is a user. Similarly, Charles choice to kill her might have carried more wallop if she was in love with his and he decides to choose his career over her, but as it stands, his actions don’t make much sense when he already has to know that she’s bad news. However, things get extra confusing when we then suddenly cut to Charlie in an insane asylum as he tells us he lost his mind over the event. But being random told this in the dying seconds of the episode just feels like we skipped over vastly important parts of a far bigger story and thus feels tacked on and unearned. What’s even more frustrating is that this would be the last Tales From The Crypt episode that Hill would ever direct, so the fact that he doesn’t nail the hat trick proves to be yet another mark in the negative column for an episode that’s way too scrappy to satisfy, yet way too mature for a show hosted by a zombie puppet.
While Deadline has all the makings of a typically hard boiled Walter Hill episode, a strong central performance and a more grown up tone are rapidly undone by a weak ending and a slow burn that isn’t quite worth the wait. That’s a wrap on Hill’s time in the Crypt director’s chair; it’s just a shame that after being one of the show’s most consistent contributors, he couldn’t finish on a high.
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