Tales From The Crypt “The Thing From The Grave”

One of the things I like about these anthology shows, even the older ones, is seeing actors before they were really big doing their thing.

There’s a couple of prime examples in this episode here.

Supermodel Stacy (young Teri Hatcher) is way too hot and popular for her controlling fiancee and manager Mitch (young Miguel Ferrer), so when photographer Devlin gives her his card if she needs a place to hide out, she takes advantage of that.  Things go poorly for Devlin as a result, but I know all that because the episode opens with him speeding down a dark highway to find Mitch, who promptly puts some bullets into him and buries him in the woods.

Boo!

Actually, the flashback that then shows how Devlin got killed and buried shows Mitch sucks, Stacy wants better, and Mitch gave her a pendant with the Mayan goddess of luck on it or something.  Said pendant doesn’t really amount to much, but when Mitch takes Stacy back to the same cabin in the woods where it looks like he might sexually assault her while she’s tied to a bed, Devlin rises from the dead as a pissed-off zombie, one of the worst kinds of zombies if you’re the target, and things go badly for Mitch since Devlin drags him back to the grave that the two will now share.  This comes after Devlin chops the fingers off Mitch’s one hand and writes “SHE’S MINE” in Mitch’s blood on a nearby rock, probably not the best of tombstones.

However, I want to say I dig the casting here.  Hatcher is here in, I suspect, her pre-“they’re real and they’re spectacular” days.  She’s attractive and alluring, and that’s basically all she needs to be.  But Ferrer, spouting more hair than I think I ever saw on the guy’s head before, made a career out of playing sleazy guys, and Mitch certainly makes the list.  Considering Ferrer (who was George Clooney’s cousin) was perhaps at his least sleazy as the corporate executive who had Officer Murphy rebuilt as Robocop, and that guy was doing blow and hiring multiple hookers at the same time, it’s worth saying that the only time I think the episode gets questionable is when I stop to wonder how this guy got engaged to Hatcher’s Stacy in the first place.  Is he capable of being charming without setting off every alarm bell in the system?

Oh well.  Sure was nice seeing him get his just desserts.

What about the Cryptkeeper?  He’s looking at a girlie magazine with undead models in it.  Or, as he calls it, a “ghoulie magazine.”

Notable names:  Secor, Hatcher, Ferrer, writer/director Fred Dekker, whose name seems to come up quite a bit.