Tales From The Crypt “Yellow”

What we have here is the one episode to run over 30 minutes, and it may have the most elaborate set so far.  Like, seriously they went all out on this one.

There’s a good reason for that: director Robert Zemeckis wanted to somewhat recreate star Kirk Douglas’s classic film Paths of Glory, where Douglas played a Colonel Dax trying and ultimately failing to keep three of his men away from the firing squad after a few generals, who sat safely behind the front lines, wanted glory for themselves at the expense of the lives of who-knows-how-many men.  Douglas’s Colonel Dax is arguing in vain that the three men, chosen to be made examples of due to a retreat from a bloodbath, are no cowards, but it doesn’t matter, and all three are shot after the trial, one despite the fact a head injury he sustained that prevented him from fighting is obviously killing him anyway.

But that’s Paths of Glory.  Episodes of Tales from the Crypt are basically adaptations of old comic book stories from the original Tales and other comics from the same company’s line.  In Paths of Glory, the impression given is the men don’t deserve this because the generals are awful.  Here, General Calthrob (Kirk Douglas) is a general with an actual strategic plan to beat the Germans in the trenches, but his son Lt Martin Calthrob (Kirk’s son Eric) fouls it up by first ordering a retreat that actually seems reasonable, but the longer the episode plays, the more it comes out that Martin actually is, as the colorfully named Sgt Ripper (returning Crypt cast member Lance Henriksen) states, “yellow.”

To be fair to Eric, he makes it quite plain that he never was cut out to be a soldier, that he only joined the army and became an officer to get a pat on the back from his father, and he doesn’t want to kill anyone or die.  Given one last chance–lead a night mission to repair a cut phone line and then get re-assigned to the rear guard–Martin can’t even bring himself to blow a whistle to warn Ripper and his men of a coming German ambush, and his lies about returning fire are discovered when manly man Ripper gets back to the General and survives just long enough to denounce the son.

Ripper, may he RIP, was the opposite of Martin in every way.

Anyway, Martin is convicted of cowardice and set to die by firing squad.  But the General, he comes in, says he’ll arrange for the guns to be loaded with blanks so Martin can fake his own death and slip away.  All he has to do is face the firing squad like a man.  Can he do that?

Sure!

Is the General lying about the blanks?

Also sure!

This is Tales from the Crypt, and these stories often act as short morality plays.  Martin was a liar and a coward.  Of course his father would lie to get him to face death bravely because Martin didn’t know death was actually coming.

Oh, and the flask he kept sipping from was inscribing by his dad to wish him courage.  The liquid kind, I guess.  Not that it worked…

What about the Cryptkeeper?  He’s in the trenches himself, and even enjoying a firing squad by episode’s end.

Notable Names:  Besides both Douglases and Henriksen, Dan Aykroyd is on-hand as a captain, two of the screenplay writers are Jim and John Thomas, who wrote the original Predator, and Robert Zemeckis did direct the episode.