TV-Reviewed

Not many shows these days contain a mere six episodes, but that was the case with Tales From The Crypt. This series would prove to be a rather popular one so it makes sense that future seasons were much longer, offering over a hundred spooky tales from the Crypt Keeper’s collection.

In the first season finale, we find a 65-year old man named Jonas (M. Emmet Walsh) who has been forced to retire and come home to his wife, Anita (Audra Lindley), who has turned out to be quite an animal collector. With Jonas working hard for forty-seven years, Anita hasn’t really had a man around to talk to. She’s become an animal lover and some may say collector. She’s got birds, fish, cats, dogs, etc. In fact, those big catfish that she has need to be moved to a bigger fish tank. They’re far too large for that tank in my opinion.

Jonas doesn’t look so good since he retired

Anyway, Anita seems to see Jonas as one of her pets. When Jonas asks for an aspirin, Anita gives him one, inside a brownie. It’s like she thinks she has to hide the medicine in food, like you would an animal.

As Jonas finds himself spending a lot of time at home, he grows angry at his wife’s obsession with animals and does something about it. Feeding these animals is an expensive thing. I can’t believe she was giving a dog an entire steak which I swear was big enough to feed three people.

Jonas would eventually take up the art of taxidermy, killing nearly every animal Anita had except for her favorite cat. He saved that one for last. Anita wouldn’t let him kill her, so she instead killed Jonas and stuffed him. I guess his new hobby was rather self-fulfilling, eh? Haha.

I can’t say that this was necessarily a scary episode, but it was disturbing as hell. I can’t imagine someone killing pets like this. I mean I knew it was going to happen, but you really have to lose your mind in order to do that sort of thing. There wasn’t a whole lot to enjoy with this episode. It was creepy, but it wasn’t scary, funny, or particularly well written. I’m a big fan of M. Emmet Walsh and thought he did a terrific job of playing Jonas as he got crazier and crazier as the episode went on. That was the only highlight in my view.

Rating: 5