31 Days of Tales From the Crypt: S:02 E:07

We’re almost at the end of our run kiddies, but Cryptkeeper Bubbawheat is here once again to introduce yet another guest blogger for day 29 of our 31 Days of Tales From the Crypt. He’s Markus who runs his site called The Marckoguy who tends to have a similar penchant for superhero movies that I do, but also mixes it up with plenty of classics and some current movies as well. Interestingly enough, I didn’t even realize until today that we had a Michael Ironside double feature as he also appeared in yesterday’s Comes the Dawn. As Markus was a Tales From the Crypt virgin, I had a few suggestions of some of my favorites, watching television isn’t always fun and games, sometimes you have a little fun, and sometimes it doesn’t always turn out quite the way you want it to and you just have to make The Sacrifice.

Episode Title: The Sacrifice
Original Airdate: 5-15-90

Before we officially begin, hello people. My name is Markus and I am here to present you with my take on an episode of the show “Tales From The Crypt”. Now to be honest, before I got the invitation to do this I had never seen an episode of the show. I had heard of it, but never witnessed any of it myself. So I picked one of the episodes recommended by our host as one of the “Newbie” episodes. So now it’s time to see what this is all about.

So in this episode we follow insurance agent James Reed (Kevin Kilner) who first off wants to sell insurance to a man by the name of Sebastian Fielding (Don Hood). But then James kills him so he and Fielding’s wife (Kim Delaney) can be together and to get all of Fielding’s money.

However they run into a bit of trouble when a man (Michael Ironside) apparently saw how James tossed Fielding over the balcony. Oh yeah I forgot to mention that, James killed the man by basically throwing over the balcony edge. Anyhow, the man saw it and now he wants to blackmail them by threatening them with pictures he has taken that he can leave to the police. What does he want in exchange for keeping the pictures to himself? Money? No, that he apparently got enough of according to his amazing voice. No he wants to “share” Gloria (A.K.A. the wife). And by share I mean he wants to have her for his lust during certain parts of the day while James gets her the rest of the time… that’s terrible.

If you ask me, so far this is actually a pretty intriguing episode with drama, death, blackmail and one very attractive woman. And the acting is pretty good in the episode. Sure, not the greatest ever, but they didn’t really get some superstar actors here. The only actor I knew of before I saw this episode was Michael Ironside, and despite loving the hell out of his voice, even I know he’s not one of the greatest actors ever. But I do think everybody does a fine job in the episode with the material that they’ve been given.

And I guess it’s time to talk about the ever so exciting end twist. So as we have established: Insurance agent wants the beautiful woman and her husbands money, husband takes a fall Humpy Humpty style, Ironside sees it, Ironside turns out to be a terrible person. We got that established now? Good! So what’s the twist? Well close to the end we see Gloria finding James committing suicide by swallowing a a shit-load of pills. He left a note admitting to killing Fielding while at the same time clearing Gloria’s name from the crime. Then we cut to Gloria walking up to and entering a car where Michael Ironside sits. And here’s the twist: They planned everything. The death of James and everything that happened. If you ask me, it makes no fucking sense what-so-ever. Really, it’s just weird.

Overall I think it’s a pretty good episode up until the reveal of the twist, then it just makes no sense at all. Would I say it’s a good entry in the show? Eh.