31 Days of Tales From the Crypt S:02 E:03

Yee-haw kiddies, it’s day 17 of our 31 Days of Tales From the Crypt and I’m still your host Cryptkeeper Bubbawheat back for another guest blogger to take a look at another episode of our favorite show. Today’s guest is Jason Soto from Your Face! who is taking a look at a very fun, but also pretty simple tale, so much so that he decided to continue on and look at a bunch of other horror TV shows including some more recent ones. But here’s the deal, we’re going to stick with the hand that’s dealt us and before you shuffle off this mortal coil, ante up, shuffle the deck and it’s time for Cutting Cards.

Episode Title: Cutting Cards
Original Airdate: 4-21-90

“Tales From The Crypt”, I’m sure you know, was an anthology horror show from the 90’s that ran on HBO. I have many fond memories of watching it as a kid, even though I’m sure I wasn’t suppose to but what the fuck why not? Anyway, while thinking back on it, I can’t recall any episodes I seen back then. I just knew it blew my 10-13 year old mind. So when Bubbawheat politely asked me a bunch of times if I wanted to participate in his blogathon, I did some research on specific episodes and I took a look at a list James “The Angry Video Game Nerd” Rolfe did a few years ago where he counted down his ten favorite episodes. The one that I picked (and was also the only one available) is called “Cutting Cards” and it stars Lance Hendriksen and Kevin Tighe.

Lance Hendriksen is a gambler named Reno who returns to some town after being gone for a year and finds that his spot as most awesome gambler has been taken over by Kevin Tighe’s character Sam. Sam, also a good gambler, doesn’t like Reno and he feels the same way about Sam. Deciding this town isn’t big enough for the both of them, they decide to play Russian Roulette to see who’ll get to leave town, whether it be them giving up or getting a bullet in the head. We watch them go through all six rounds of the gun, each moment more intense than the other, until they reveal something is wrong with the bullet in the gun cause nothing happens when it gets to the 6th turn.

So they decide to play “chop poker”, where they play poker but the loser gets a finger chopped off by the winner. Sam loses the first two hands (by losing two fingers on a hand…confusing word play here I should get a Pulitzer for this) then Reno eventually loses and he loses a hand by losing a finger on a hand. (I’d like to thank God for this award first and foremost…) The ending takes place sometime later, maybe later that week who knows, where both Sam and Reno are in a hospital, missing all of their limbs and playing checkers, while still trash talking each other.

It’s a great fun episode that’s rather tense cause you wonder who’s gonna lose the worse and the fact these two guys hate each other to such a insane level that they’ll risk their own lives just so the other person can lose. But it’s a great episode. And it’s literally only 20 minutes long so it’s a great horror/comedy fix if you’re in a hurry, like I am cause I got a LOT of other TV shows to get through.