Tales from the Crypt (1972) and the Comics

[Silver Nemesis]

Special thanks to Azrael for restoring the pictures to this thread.
We haven't had a comic movie analysis since July, so here's a spooky horror-themed feature just in time for Halloween: Amicus Productions' 1972 adaptation of EC Comics' Tales from the Crypt.

Conventional wisdom holds that the first classic 'serious' theatrical comic book adaptation was Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie (1978). But the historical significance of Tales from the Crypt (1972) should not be overlooked. It was directed by two-time Academy Award winning cinematographer Freddie Francis and received considerable acclaim upon its release, earning itself a cult following and an 86% 'Certified Fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This is arguably one of the first – if not the first – legitimately good comic book adaptations to adopt a dark and serious tone.

Many contemporary viewers are accustomed to seeing the Crypt Keeper depicted as a rotting skeleton thanks to the HBO television series of the eighties and nineties. But in the comics he was originally portrayed as a human with white hair and a demented gleam in his eye. In the film he is portrayed by Sir Ralph Richardson and more closely resembles the Vault Keeper, host of the sister publication The Vault of Horror, thanks to his monastic apparel.

From left to right: the Crypt Keeper, the Vault Keeper, Sir Ralph Richardson as the Crypt Keeper in the 1972 film.

The film adopts an anthology structure similar to the original comics, with the Crypt Keeper introducing each segment before we see it play out. At the end of the movie, the Crypt Keeper breaks the fourth wall by directly addressing the audience; something his comic book counterpart did all the time.

Only two of the segments are actually adapted from issues of Tales from the Crypt. The other three are adapted from the sister publications The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear. But be warned, this analysis contains spoilers for all five segments. So if you'd prefer to see the film first, stop reading now.

For those who wish to read on, let's begin with the first story:

'...And All Through the House'

The first segment is an adaptation of 'And All Through the House...' (Vault of Horror #35, February-March 1954). This is one of the most famous stories from the EC catalogue and was adapted a second time by director Robert Zemeckis for the first season of the Tales from the Crypt TV series in 1989. It was also referenced by Homer in The Simpsons fifth season episode '$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)' when he says "And remember when I let that escaped lunatic in the house because he was dressed like Santa Claus?"

The story begins with a housewife (played in the film by Joan Collins) murdering her husband on Christmas Eve.  She does this by striking him over the head with a poker. In both the comic and the film, the wife then says "Merry Christmas" to her husband's corpse.

In the comic the husband is called Joseph, but in the film he's called Richard.

The wife cleans the blood off the poker and replaces it beside the fireplace. She listens to Christmas carols on the radio while doing this.

The wife has to go upstairs when she hears her daughter calling for her. The daughter asks if Santa has visited yet, and the mother tells her no. She tells the little girl to go to sleep or Santa won't come at all. The daughter is called Carol in both the comic and the film.

The wife then goes back downstairs and starts tidying up the evidence of the murder. Suddenly the carol service on the radio is interrupted by an emergency announcement: a "homicidal maniac" has escaped from a nearby mental hospital and is on the loose in the area. In both the comic and the film, the maniac is described as being 6'3, 2'10 lbs, with dark eyes and wearing a Santa Claus costume.

The wife looks out through the window and sees the maniac in the Santa costume lurking outside her house.

She picks up the phone to call the police, but stops when she remembers her husband's body lying on the floor.

Realising she cannot call the police, she puts down the phone and rushes round the house making sure all the doors and windows are locked.

The maniac tries getting in through the front door. When that fails, he goes round the side of the house and tries to get in through the back door. But that is locked too. Once she is confident the house is secure, the wife returns her attention to her dead husband. In the comic she drags his corpse into a closet and hides it there. In the film, she drags it into the cellar and pushes it down the stairs to make it look as if he fell to his death.

In the comic, the wife goes round the house double-checking that all the windows and doors are locked. Eventually she checks on her daughter's room and finds Carol is no longer in bed. In the movie, the wife finishes setting the scene to make it look as if her husband died in an accident, then notices the door to her daughter's room is ajar. She rushes upstairs to check on her. But as in the comic, Carol is no longer in her room.

The wife rushes downstairs in search of her daughter and finds her standing next to the front door, happily announcing that Santa has arrived. And she's let him in.

The comic ends there, but the film shows the maniac chasing the wife into the living room and murdering her in front of the fireplace.

'Reflection of Death'

The second segment in the film is an adaptation of 'Reflection of Death' (Tales From the Crypt #23, April-May 1951). The film version has a slightly more elaborate back story than the original comic. The comic begins with the main protagonist driving at night with his friend Carl. In the film, the protagonist himself is called Carl (played by Ian Hendry) and the segment begins with him saying goodbye to his wife and two kids as he ostensibly departs on a business trip. In reality though, he is leaving his wife and kids to run away with his mistress. This adds a moralistic element to his fate that was lacking in the original comic.

But in both stories, the main protagonist is driving at night with a passenger.

The main character becomes tired and so his passenger takes the wheel while he sleeps. When he awakens he sees the headlights of an oncoming vehicle heading straight for them.

The two cars crash and everything goes black. When the main protagonist awakens he finds himself staring up at the sky. From this point on, the comic art is drawn from the POV of the main character. Likewise the rest of the film segment is shot in first person.

The main protagonist staggers around in a state of confusion until he finds a homeless person sitting beside a campfire beneath a bridge. As the main character draws into the light, the homeless person takes a look at his face, recoils in horror and flees into the night.

The protagonist then attempts to hail a passing vehicle. The driver pulls up, takes one look at the hitchhiker and speeds away in terror.

In the comic, the main character then returns to his house and discovers it has been boarded up, as though abandoned for a long time. In the film, he returns home and knocks on the front door. His wife answers and screams upon seeing him, then slams the door shut in his face.

The main character then goes to the house of the person who was in the car with him during the crash. Strangely, this person doesn't scream when they answer the door. The main character identifies himself to his friend, but they don't believe he is who he claims to be. He enters their home and the other character tells him they are blind, having lost their sight in the car accident earlier in the story.

They also tell the main character that he was killed in the crash. It is then the protagonist checks his reflection in a mirror, only to see a hideous decaying zombie looking back at him. He screams in horror.

Suddenly he awakens back in his car, just like he was at the beginning of the story. The whole thing was a nightmare.

Or was it? For at that moment he sees the headlights of an oncoming vehicle careening towards them. The accident is about to happen, just like it did in his dream.

The film version ends with the crash occurring exactly as it did before. The comic goes on a little longer, repeating the scene where he awakens on the road. Only this time he knows from the beginning that he is dead.

'Poetic Justice'

The third segment is an adaptation of 'Poetic Justice' (Haunt of Fear #12, March-April 1952) and in some ways is the most memorable story of the film, thanks largely to the excellent performance by Peter Cushing. The story revolves around a kind old man played by Cushing. In the comic he's called Abner Elliot. In the film he's called Arthur Edward Grimsdyke. In both versions of the story, he's a garbage man who lives in a modest house with numerous pets. He is a widower, but is very popular with the local children and they frequently come to visit him. In return, he mends broken toys he finds and gives them to the children as gifts.

Opposite Abner/Grimsdyke live a wealthy father and son. In the comic they're called Henry and Harold Burgundy. In the film they're called Edward and James Elliot. In both stories they resent the old man's presence in their neighbourhood. The son says Grimsdyke's home "depreciates the value of our property" and his father explains that he's offered to buy him out, but the old man wishes to die in the house since he and his late wife had lived there together.

Realising the old man will not move without an incentive, the wealthy son engineers a smear campaign to drive him out. He begins by sneaking into his neighbours' gardens at night and ruining their flower beds, making it appear as though dogs are responsible.

The next day the neighbours complain to the police. Abner/Grimsdyke can't afford to pay for licences, and so the police take his pets away from him. He is left with only one dog to keep him company.

The film adds a scene that isn't in the comic where Grimsdyke communicates with his late wife using an Ouija board and she warns him of impending danger.

Meanwhile the father and son who live opposite set to work depriving the old man of his livelihood. In the comic, they invite round a friend and persuade him to start up a rival garbage collection business that will put Abner out of work. In the film, they invite round a friend on the city council and convince him to fire Grimsdyke, thereby leaving the old man jobless and depriving him of the retirement pay he was shortly due to receive.

The father and son also spread rumours amongst the local parents that Abner/Grimsdyke is a dirty old man and that his house is a filthy rat-infested dive. The parents believe this to be true and order their children not to visit him anymore.

The old man is deeply saddened when the children, his only friends, stop visiting him.

He has lost his pets, his job, his retirement pay, and he no longer has any one to make toys for. The father and son come up with a plan to deliver the final blow against the old man by persuading everyone in town to send him cards on Valentine's Day. Abner/Grimsdyke is surprised to receive so much mail on February 14th. But his heart is warmed by the thought they might be letters from the children to let him know they haven't forgotten about him.

One by one, he reads the cards. All of them contain nasty poems telling him to leave town and kill himself. The poems in the film are taken directly from the comic.

"Noisy are children,
Loud is a bell,
Pungent is perfume,
But you only smell."

"A tree is beautiful,
If its owner prunes it,
But our town isn't,
'Cause your presence ruins it."

"Some people live in the country,
Some people live in the town,
Why don't you do us a service,
Jump in the river and..."

The old man is heartbroken.

None of the neighbours see Abner/Grimsdyke for quite some time after that. Eventually they go round to his house to see if he's there. They go inside and are surprised to find the house isn't the dirty, rat-infested dump they all imagined it to be; it's spotlessly clean. But a more shocking revelation awaits them as they search the house further and discover the old man's body hanging from the ceiling. He'd killed himself weeks ago and no one had even noticed.

But the story doesn't end there, for exactly one year later, on the night of February 14th, a cold decaying hand reaches up from the old man's grave.

The zombified form of the old man claws its way out of the dirt and walks to the house of the wealthy father and son who had tormented him. There it attacks the son as he works late in his study.

The next day the father searches for his son. In the comic the son's body has disappeared, but in the film the son is slumped over his desk, covered in blood. In both stories the father finds a package with a Valentine's Day greeting. He opens the package and therein finds his son's bleeding heart.

The film adds a nice extra touch that wasn't in the comic in the form of a poem written in the son's blood:

"You were mean and cruel right from the start,
Now you really have no..."

Poetic justice indeed.

[Silver Nemesis]

'Wish You Were Here'

The fourth segment in the film is an adaptation of 'Wish You Were Here' (Haunt of Fear #22, November-December 1953), which is itself a variation of W. W. Jacobs' short story 'The Monkey's Paw' (1902).

The two main characters are a middle aged husband and wife (played by Richard Greene and Barbara Murray). In the comic the husband is called Jason Logan, but in the film he is called Ralph Jason. In both versions of the story the wife is called Enid. At the beginning of the story the couple are declared broke. They have no option but to sell the precious objets d'art they have accumulated during their years of travel.

One item in particular stirs their memories: a jade statue from the orient. Enid asks her husband if he remembers what the vendor told them when they purchased it, and the husband recalls the words: "Use it... Use it wisely." Enid inspects the statue more closely and discovers some writing inscribed on its base.

"Three wishes I give, and no more,
To each owner of me, so keep score.
Each wish will come true, so take care what you do,
(illegible)... deplore."

The inscription reminds the husband of the tale of the monkey's paw. This appears to be both the writers of the comic and the movie acknowledging the literary influence of Jacobs' writing on this story.

The wife wishes for "lots of money" in the hopes the statue can grant her desires. The next moment the telephone rings and the husband's solicitor tells him he wishes to speak with him.

The husband hangs up and tells Enid the solicitor said something about money, which she interprets as signifying her wish being granted. The husband kisses his wife goodbye, gets into his car and sets off to meet with his solicitor. The film then features a scene that isn't in the comic, where the husband's car is pursued through the countryside by a creepy motorcyclist. As the motorcyclist draws up behind his car, the husband glimpses his pursuer's face in the rear view mirror and sees he is wearing a skull mask.

We don't see what causes the husband to crash in the original comic, but in both versions of the story he is killed in a road accident. The police inform his solicitor and ask him to break the bad news to Enid.

The solicitor goes round to her house and tells her that her husband's car skidded off the road. He tries to console the distraught woman by reassuring her that her husband's life insurance will solve her financial problems. Enid then realises that her wish has been granted, albeit in the most horrible way imaginable. She asks the solicitor if he is familiar with the tale of the monkey's paw. The solicitor recounts the first part of the story and cautions her against wishing for her husband back, pointing out that when the elderly couple in the original story wished for their dead son to return, he came back in the mangled condition in which he had died. Enid tries to avoid this by wishing for her husband to return in the condition he was in "immediately before the accident".

There is a knock at the door and a group of pall-bearers enter carrying a coffin containing Enid's husband.

Enid tries to open the coffin, but the solicitor stops her, telling her that her husband's body was horribly mangled in the crash. One of the pall-bearers overhears this and corrects the solicitor, telling him that her husband died of a heart attack before the crash took place. Enid realises that she has been granted her second wish; her husband is back exactly as he was before the crash, and he was already dead before the crash occurred.

Enid asks the solicitor to leave. Once he has gone, she grips the statue and wishes that her husband was alive again. The next instant her husband begins to writhe and scream in pain from within his coffin. He is once again alive, but his veins are filled with embalming fluid.

The husband is in agony and pleads with his wife to end his suffering. In the comic, Enid tries shooting him with a rifle. When that doesn't kill him, she grabs a knife and chops him into lots of tiny pieces. In the movie she grabs a samurai sword off the wall and uses it to chop him up. But it does no good in either story. Because she wished him back alive, he must stay alive. And every dismembered piece of him will continue to writhe in agony forever.

'Blind Alleys'

The final segment of the film is an adaptation of 'Blind Alleys' (Tales From the Crypt #46, February-March 1955). This story takes place in a home for the blind. The home's director in the original comic is a sleazebag named Gunner Grunwald. In the film he's a former army officer named Major William Rogers, played by Nigel Patrick. In both stories, the director attempts to save money by cutting down on electricity and food for the men under his care. Consequently his charges are forced to endure a food shortage and inadequate heating during the cold winter.

One of the residents, a blind man named George Carter (played by Patrick Magee), complains to the director. He tells him that for blind people the loss of one sense tends to sharpen the other four. His dialogue in this scene is taken almost verbatim from the narration in the original comic.

While the residents live in extreme discomfort, the home's director uses the budget to surround himself with works of art and fine food.

In the comic, Grunwald is a sadist who enjoys frightening the blind people. He even trips them up and plays other pranks on them for his own amusement. In the film, Major Rogers isn't quite as sadistic. Instead he comes across as being more insensitive, arrogant and selfish than deliberately cruel. Both Grunwald and Rogers own a fierce dog which they use to frighten the blind people. The dog is called Brutus in the comic, but in the film he is called Shane.

Eventually the residents tire of the director's cruelty. They gather scraps of meat from their meal and use them to lure the dog away from its master, trapping it in the cellar beneath the home.

They then gang up on Grunwald/Rogers and drag him down into the cellar.

They lock the director in a cellar room adjacent to the one in which the dog is being held. Grunwald/Rogers can hear his dog barking wildly in the next room.

With the director and his dog both locked up, the blind men begin constructing something in the cellar.

Days pass and all the director can hear are the sounds of the dog barking and the blind men working.

The director pleads with them to feed his dog, warning them that the animal will turn wild and dangerous if he is not fed. Carter calmly tells the director that he already knows this.

After seemingly days of captivity, the door to the director's cell opens. The director steps out and discovers that the blind men have constructed a wooden maze leading from his cell to the cellar exit.

The walls of the maze are covered in razor blades.

He has to proceed slowly through the narrow corridors of the maze, taking care not to cut himself on the razors. In the comic he does this successfully, but in the film he sustains a number of small slashes to his face and hands.

The director turns a corner and spots a door at the end of the next corridor. Suddenly the door opens by itself, unleashing the hunger-crazed dog into the maze.

The director runs for his life. He has no choice but to flee down the narrow razor-edged corridor. Only now he cannot afford to proceed slowly, as the blood-thirsty dog is gaining on him. And as if that wasn't horrible enough, the blind men switch off the lights in the maze. The final panel of the comic is complete blackness, and the film likewise fades to black. We are left with the snarls of the animal and the screams of the director to fuel our imaginations.


In the EC Comics tradition, there is a suitably unpleasant plot twist at the end of the wraparound segment. But since the wraparound story isn't adapted from a comic, I shan't spoil it for you. And on that mysterious note, I'll end this analysis.

[Azrael]

This is fantastic. If you have the time I hope it's in your plans to do a series of posts with various stories/episodes of your preference. I especially loved the early 90s TV series.

[Paul (ral)]

I haven't seen this film...definitely one to check out!

[Silver Nemesis]

This is fantastic. If you have the time I hope it's in your plans to do a series of posts with various stories/episodes of your preference. I especially loved the early 90s TV series.

Glad you liked it. And that's a great idea about the TV show. I'll bet a lot of people don't even realise the episodes were adapted from comics.

Since the TV series debuted in 1989, Danny Elfman must have written the theme music round about the same time he was scoring Batman.

I haven't seen this film...definitely one to check out!

I think you'll like it. It's good clean gory fun. And I personally think it's an important piece of comic book movie history, even though most people overlook it when discussing the genre. Amicus produced a sequel called The Vault of Horror (1973) which was also adapted from old EC Comics, but it's not quite as good as this one.

[The Joker]

This is amazing, Silver Nemesis, and I appreciate the work you put into this analysis of the 1972 Tales from the Crypt film and the comic book source material.

The 1972 film was something I first watched on HBO one morning when I was 11 or 12 years old (thankfully I had the foresight to record it on the ol' VHS recorder), and it instantly became a favorite. As it's a movie I've subsequently watched numerous times since.

Once again, this analysis was ALOT of fun to read, and I really enjoyed finally seeing images from the original comic book source that was adapted into the film as well. I remember the local Walden Books (within the local mall) having monthly reprint issues of the original EC comics, but I don't recall ever being lucky enough to pick up an issue that had any of the stories that were adapted for the 1972 film. Though I did recognize material that was adapted for the HBO television series (which I think was still on the air).


Cheers. 

[Silver Nemesis]

Thanks, Joker. I know from our previous conversations that you're one of the most knowledgeable comic fans on the site, so I appreciate your feedback a lot.

Regarding these old EC Comics, I believe a lot of them are now public domain. So you can view some of them (but not all) online for free, legally. I know this site in particular has a lot of them scanned: http://crossgencomicsdatabase.wikia.com/wiki/Crossgen_Comics_Database_Wiki
It's a comic database site, but if you look up specific issues they sometimes have complete scans of the stories that can be viewed for free.

I think of all the comic adaptations we've analysed on this site so far, Tales from the Crypt is the one that adheres most faithfully to the source material. It doesn't just borrow the occasional scene or plot point from these comics; it adapts them practically verbatim, right down to panel recreations and lifting whole sequences of dialogue from the original stories. It's a shame that it's so often overlooked by comic book movie historians. It's got an 86% 'Certified Fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7/10 score on the IMDb (which is unusually high for a cult British horror film). I consider it a landmark film in the comic book movie genre. With any luck this thread might inspire more people to check it out.

[The Joker]

Thanks, Joker. I know from our previous conversations that you're one of the most knowledgeable comic fans on the site, so I appreciate your feedback a lot.

Appreciate the kind words, Sir.

Regarding these old EC Comics, I believe a lot of them are now public domain. So you can view some of them (but not all) online for free, legally. I know this site in particular has a lot of them scanned: http://crossgencomicsdatabase.wikia.com/wiki/Crossgen_Comics_Database_Wiki
It's a comic database site, but if you look up specific issues they sometimes have complete scans of the stories that can be viewed for free.

Outstanding! Thank you! 

I think of all the comic adaptations we've analysed on this site so far, Tales from the Crypt is the one that adheres most faithfully to the source material. It doesn't just borrow the occasional scene or plot point from these comics; it adapts them practically verbatim, right down to panel recreations and lifting whole sequences of dialogue from the original stories. It's a shame that it's so often overlooked by comic book movie historians. It's got an 86% 'Certified Fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7/10 score on the IMDb (which is unusually high for a cult British horror film). I consider it a landmark film in the comic book movie genre. With any luck this thread might inspire more people to check it out.

It is a pretty great film, and it sure would be nice for a company like Shout Factory!, or another company on that level, to give it a really good proper release with extras, retrospective documentaries, and a commentary track or two. Given the name recognition of "TFTC", and the scores for the film being pretty good, I think it's definitely a worthy film for such a release. Personally, and if it's at all feasible, I would love to watch a interview with Joan Collins reminiscing about her experiences on the set and such.

Also, kudos to you on pointing out Sir Ralph Richardson resembling the Vault Keeper. I never made that connection, but there is indeed appears to be some influence there. Years after I first watched the 1972 TFTC, I remember being kinda annoyed when I watched "The Vault of Horror", and there wasn't a Vault Keeper in sight. Recently, and since I'm slowly becoming a bit more knowledgeable about Doctor Who, where before I knew very little of that franchise, the inclusion of Tom Baker in one of the "Vault" tales makes up for the lack of a Vault Keeper to a certain extent. 

[Silver Nemesis]

I haven't seen Vault of Horror in years, but from what I can remember of it the Tom Baker story was easily the best. Unfortunately the British version was butchered by the censors, with still images clumsily inserted to replace certain sequences of footage. It was hilariously badly done. And they definitely should have included a 'host' character – preferably the Vault Keeper – in the wraparound segments. Most of the other Amicus anthologies featured hosts, so I don't know why VoH didn't.

But yes, Vault of Horror should be on our list of future comic analyses, along with the HBO TftC TV series. If anyone else fancies taking a crack at such an analysis, you can probably Google which issues of the comic inspired the film segments/TV episodes and then look them up on that database I mentioned in my previous post. A lot of the TV episodes are up on YouTube, so the resources are all available for anyone who's interested.

[Silver Nemesis]

I hope everyone's enjoying the Christmas season. Around this time of year numerous articles and video essays appear online questioning whether such-and-such a film is a Christmas movie. The answer is usually yes. But what about Tales from the Crypt (1972)? No one ever describes this as a Christmas movie, yet there's an argument to be made that it is.

Many years ago, when I was in my late teens or early twenties, I recall seeing it on TV sometime over the twelve days of Christmas. It was late at night, everyone else in my family had gone to bed, and I sat watching it by the glow of the Christmas tree lights. It made for surprisingly festive viewing, in the same way the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas films do. It was shown on television again just last week for Christmas 2022. But what evidence is there for it being a Christmas movie?

According to online sources, the film was shot during the autumn and winter of 1971, beginning in mid September and running into early 1972. So a big chunk of it would have been shot around December or early January. The first of the five segments, '...And All Through the House', explicitly takes place on Christmas Eve and features a psycho killer dressed as Santa.

This segment is 100% a Christmas horror story. It features Christmas carols, decorations, presents, a tree, and a little girl excited about Santa visiting her house in the night.

The fifth and final segment, 'Blind Alleys', must also take place around the same time of year. Christmas is not mention in that segment, or indeed in any of the other three segments. However 'Blind Alleys' does explicitly take place in the dead of winter, which would be December. The absence of Christmas decorations in the care home could be chalked up to Major Rogers being a skinflint.

We're not told when the second segment, 'Reflection of Death', takes place. But wouldn't it be more tragic if it occurred just before Christmas? It's bad enough that the protagonist is leaving his wife and kids for his mistress, but it would be even crueller if he was leaving them in December during the run-up to Christmas. This segment takes place entirely at night, which makes it difficult to gauge the time of year. But I like to think it takes place just prior to the Christmas season.

The fourth story, 'Wish You Were Here', could take place at any time of year. The landscape during the sequence where the protagonist is pursued by a skull-faced motorcyclist does not look particularly wintery, or even autumnal. My guess is that that particular scene was one of the earliest to be filmed and was probably shot in late summer or early autumn.

The third story, 'Poetic Justice', is the only one that explicitly does not occur around Christmas. Instead it centres on Valentine's Day.

To summarise, Tales from the Crypt begins and ends with wintery tales taking place in December; one of them taking place on Christmas Eve. Of the remaining three stories, only one definitely does not take place around the Christmas season. The other two might. It seems that much of the movie was shot during winter. Admittedly this is a pretty weak argument for calling it a Christmas movie, but it's an argument nonetheless. At the very least, it's certainly a winter horror film.

If you're looking for something seasonal and spooky to watch on these dark Christmas nights, you could do a lot worse than the 1972 Tales from the Crypt.