- Release year: 1989–1996
- Creator: Steven Dodd.
- Producers: Richard Donner, Joel Silver, and William Teitler.
- Screenplay by: Steven Dodd, Terry Black, Fred Dekker, Walter Hill, A. Whitney Brown, Battle Davis, Randolph Davis, Michael McDowell, and Robert Reneau.
- Cinematography by: John R. Leonetti.
- Music by: Jay Ferguson, Nicholas Pike, Alan Silvestri, Ry Cooder, and Joe Renzetti.
Synopsis: anthology of horror stories from the 90s based on comics from the 50s.
Shotgun Commentary: retro horror lovers, welcome to your new comfort binge-watch.
Review
Tales From the Crypt is the kind of nostalgic watch you want to have at hand for lazy rainy afternoons. Luckily for you, it is now available for streaming on SHUDDER and AMC+!
For the first time EVER, HBO’s series is now streaming on SHUDDER as part of this year’s “Halfway to Halloween” celebration! The first season came out just this May 1st, but more seasons will be uploaded every Friday through June 12. All seven seasons will be fully uncut and uncensored.
This 90s show is formed by independent horror stories with a moral. Each has its own characters and context. The only thing joining them is the introduction and farewell from the crypt by the Crypt Keeper (John Kassir), a decaying skeleton with more puns at hand than a dad at a barbecue. Still, if you like cheesy lines and want to watch the most wholesome horror ever to be produced, do stick around; this one is a winner.
Good times
The opening episode, “The Man Who Was Death”, follows an executioner (William Sadler) who decides to keep doing his job even after being fired. As expected, a turn of events leads him to a very ironic ending. The perfect story to whet the appetite and set the mood. Humour, tragic irony, and, quite honestly, natural selection, tend to be the main ingredients at play in each and every one of these stories.
The last ingredient is perhaps best explained through episode 2: “And All Through the House”. It follows a woman who murders her husband only to be hunted by a lunatic escaped from a random asylum. Despite the urban legend premise of the story, this is actually a pretty funny episode for 2026 audiences. Yours truly cannot speak for audiences back in the 90s, as one was still in her Teletubbies (1997–2001) era, but nowadays the story is vanilla enough to actually enjoy the humour of her bad-to-worse situation.
Kinda like the meta “turn around” scene in Scream (1996)—or Scream (2022) for those of you sickos who haven’t watched the OG—you will find yourself yelling at the TV like a football fanatic. Still, it is always fun to watch characters make horrible decisions that will inevitably lead to tragedy. After all, stupidity is almost as big of a horror staple as punishing sins. And this woman has plenty of both tropes in her story.
Not so good times
Nevertheless, the show is not just about ironic twists and morons with no common sense. There are also pretty hardcore stories that touch upon topics that are still as relevant as ever even 30 years later. Such is the case of the episode titled “Only Sin Deep”. In it, a sex worker pawns her beauty in exchange for money to survive. The episode is quite patriarchically framed as a harpy doing anything and everything to be rich by leeching of a rich man. However, in 2026, one likes to think that audiences are intelligent enough to see the story for what it is: the horrors women put themselves through in exchange for survival in a world where you are either pretty or nothing at all.
All in all, Tales from the Crypt is a fantastic May watch if you have already started to warm up your engines for Halloween. Too soon? That’s okay; you are allowed to be boring so long as you keep these kooky crypt stories in mind when you’re in the mood for some chill—and chilling—time.
Advice to take from this movie:
- If you plan to get away with murder, you better have a fool-proof plan.
- Always get your contracts in writing.
- It is okay to kill someone who threatens your pet. It really is.
What’s your take? Have you watched Tales From the Crypt? Don’t hesitate to let me know your thoughts in the comments section below, or leave a message on my contact page! For more reviews and cinema-related articles, check out the rest of my blog! 😀