10 Scariest Episodes of Tales From The Crypt

One of HBO’s first masterpiece shows, Tales from the Crypt is nonetheless like any other anthology series in that some episodes are far better than others. And, as a horror anthology show, it’s also a case where some episodes are far scarier than others. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to watch these episodes just as it’s almost impossible to watch the worst of the show, because Tales from the Crypt has long been at the center of a mystery over who exactly owns the rights. That said, the seven-season boxset is on Amazon for about fifty bucks, and it’s worth it.

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Tales from the Crypt‘s earlier years were its best years, and the England-set final season is an outright trainwreck, but it was like The Twilight Zone (a show where all of the seasons were basically equal) in that it balanced comedic narratives with spooky narratives. What follows are the spookiest of the spooky narratives.

1) “And All Through the House” (Season 1, Episode 2)

It only took two episodes for Tales from the Crypt to drop a fantastic episode, and that was “And All Through the House,” directed by Back to the Future‘s Robert Zemeckis (who also served as one of Tales from the Crypt‘s executive producers) and written by The Monster Squad‘s Fred Dekker.

The narrative follows Mary Ellen Trainor as Elizabeth, a cheating housewife who kills her husband for the insurance payout. While in the process of disposing of his corpse, she misses a report that an insane man has broken out of the nearby mental hospital, dressed as Santa Claus and wielding an axe. But she learns of him soon enough, in a tense cat-and-mouse game that doesn’t end well for her.

2) “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy” (Season 2, Episode 10)

Many of Tales from the Crypt Season 2’s episodes skew comedic, e.g. “Cutting Cards,” “For Cryin’ Out Loud,” and “Korman’s Kalamity.” But the episode that actually has a focus on dummy prop-utilizing stand-up comedy, “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy,” directed by Lethal Weapon‘s Richard Donner and written by frequent Stephen King adapter Frank Darabont, is about as scary as the sophomore season got.

We follow ventriloquist Billy Goldman, played by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait. He’s an up-and-comer with nothing but reverence for Mr. Ingels (insult comic master Don Rickles). But Mr. Ingels isn’t who Goldman has made him out to be and soon, Goldman learns his idol made it in the business not through talent, but through a deformity.

3) “Television Terror” (Season 2, Episode 16)

This list may not be ranked but, if it were, most Tales from the Crypt fans would agree that “Television Terror” would nab the number one spot. It stars Morton Downey Jr. essentially playing a heightened version of his real-life trash TV talk show host persona. He’s such a jerk that we almost don’t care what happens to him…but even someone as contemptable as his Horton Rivers gets it pretty rough.

Rivers has made a name for himself investigating crime scenes and looking for paranormal activity within them. He’s been tipped off that there are supposedly ghosts in the house of Ada Ritter, an elderly woman who took care of elderly men only to murder them and collected their social security checks. As Rivers and his cameraman investigate the dusty home, they find that strange occurrences are indeed present, as opposed to the phony ones they typically broadcast to the world. Too bad for Rivers and his cameraman, it will be their final investigation.

4) “Top Billing” (Season 3, Episode 5)

Like “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy,” “Top Billing” has comedic performers portraying comedic performers and, also like that Bobcat Goldthwait and Don Rickles episode, this story is far more scary than funny. It also features one of the better performances of Jon Lovitz’s (one year off his tenure at Saturday Night Live) career.

Lovitz plays Barry Blye, a broke actor looking for his big break. Now he’s been fired by his agent, dumped by his girlfriend, and looking at homelessness in his near future. But things seem to turn around when he learns of a new production of Hamlet. After the title role goes to fellow actor Winton Robbins (Tron‘s Bruce Boxleitner), Blye murders Robbins, but finds out that the production is taking place in an asylum, and the inmates are now running it.

5) “The New Arrival” (Season 4, Episode 7)

“The New Arrival” is Tales from the Crypt at its single locale best. David Warner plays Dr. Alan Goetz, a radio show child psychologist who meets his match in Felicity and her mother, Nora. Nora (Poltergeist‘s Zelda Rubenstein) calls the show and invites Goetz to her home, claiming that her child is completely unmanageable.

Given his worsening ratings, Goetz takes the opportunity, but upon arrival he begins to suspect that Felicity, whom he, his producer, and his assistant hear scurrying around upstairs, is nothing more than Nora playing around. But, no, Felicity is quite real, and Goetz is just the most recent doctor to try and help her. He knows this because he’s now tied to a chair in front of all their corpses.

6) “Split Personality” (Season 4, Episode 11)

“Split Personality” has one of the key elements of what made Tales from the Crypt work at its best: a smarmy character that gets his comeuppance in a truly bizarre (and bloody) way. Joe Pesci plays Vic Stetson, a swindler whose car breaks down in front of a lavish mansion.

There, he meets twin sisters April and June Blair, whose ultra-rich father recently passed. Stetson sees an opportunity (Well, two), so he makes up a twin brother, Jack, and begins to play that role so he can ultimately marry both women and steal both of their chunks of the inheritance. Too bad for Vic, he learns how their father died, and they’ve found out he’s full of it.

7) “Death of Some Salesmen” (Season 5, Episode 1)

Tales from the Crypt‘s scariest episodes typically dialed the dark comedy way back in favor of, well, horror. But Season 5’s opening episode, “Death of Some Salesmen” is a perfect merger of the two, and the triple performance by Tim Curry is the best acting work of the series.

Ed Begley Jr. plays Judd Campbell, a con artist who convinces people to buy burial plots at a graveyard that doesn’t exist. When he meets the Bracketts, he thinks he has his next perfect mark. But, in reality, he’s their mark, and he’s not getting out of their house in one piece.

8) “People Who Live in Brass Hearses” (Season 5, Episode 5)

The first two thirds of “People Who Live in Brass Hearses,” from Season 5, isn’t scary. It’s just the tale of two poor brothers who want to rob an ice cream warehouse. The “mastermind” behind this grand crime is Billy DeLuca (the late Bill Paxton), who is as interested in revenge as he is money. Kindly ice cream man Earl Byrd (Michael Lerner) fired Billy for stealing from his truck. Billy served two years and is now out.

Billy and his little brother, Virgil (Chucky himself, Brad Dourif) make it into the warehouse, where Virgil happens to work these days, but they’re caught by Virgil’s boss. After killing her, they learn there’s no money in the warehouse’s safe, so they head to the home of Byrd. Once there, they find a ton of cash in his freezer, but they also learn how this ice cream man is able to entertain kids with his puppeteer tricks: he’s one half of a set of conjoined twins. It’s the type of episode that’s darkly funny, and it has the best final scene of the series in that regard, but it’s also the type of narrative where you can feel a noose tightening around the troublesome protagonists’ necks. Once they’re in Byrd’s home, the tension is unbearable, and the twist is done in a way that’s truly shocking.

9) “House of Horror” (Season 5, Episode 7)

Like “Television Terror,” Season 5’s “House of Horror” showed that Tales from the Crypt could really make a single locale spookfest work. This episode follows three fraternity pledges who continuously suffer the wrath of their mega-jerk pledge master’s abusive arrogance. He’s Les Wilton (Kevin Dillon, who steals the episode), and he tells the three pledges that their final initiation is simple: get to the top floor of a local abandoned house called the Cougher House.

It’s called that because there’s supposedly a ghost in there who just can’t shake his hacking cough. The good news is there’s not ghost. Wilton just has one of his brothers outside with him with a sound machine. And, yet, there are noises heard that the sound machine can’t make. There may not be a ghost, but there are sorority sister ghouls, and Wilton is their dinner.

10) “Only Skin Deep” (Season 6, Episode 2)

One of the more underrated episodes of Tales from the Crypt‘s sixth season, “Only Skin Deep” doesn’t come equipped with any big names in front of or behind the camera, but it’s a tightly constructed little intimate episode. Intimate in more ways than one. On one hand, while Tales from the Crypt never feared embracing sexuality, this episode practically oozes it. Two, it’s intimate in the sense that it really just focuses on two characters.

We meet Carl Schlag, an angry man who goes to a Halloween party where he’s clearly not welcome. He runs into his ex-girlfriend there, and it’s clear that, one, she’s the reason why he went and, two, all of their friends chose her. It’s easy to see why, as he’s abrasive as can be. But then he meets Molly, a woman with an odd white mask who came to the party morbidly dressed as a body bag. The two go back to her place and repeatedly engage with one another. But it turns out she both is and is not wearing a mask. The one on her face is no mask, it’s just her face. But she isn’t as sane as she’s let on…she’s a serial killer, and Schlag has just walked into her trap.