Sure, it’s unlikely that critics will be eating their stetsons after all these years but hopefully I can neutralize some of the acidic bile spewed its way consistently. It is indeed pulpy, anything less would have been disappointing, but it steers clear of outright parody and still manages to bring the noise.
Neither is it a force to be reckoned with but, considering how lean the nineties were when it came to horror, this had no right to be vilified so harshly. The time has now come Grueheads as I have once again ventured into the Bordello and, the good news is that it is, in no way, the dud it has been so shamefully branded. Many aficionados swept it back into the crypt and carried on with their everyday existences whereas Keeper kept a vigilant eye on it for all that time, until which time I felt necessary to resurrect it. As for Bordello, it was poorly received by critics, went limp in the theaters and ultimately fell foul to the Alka-Seltzer effect. Suddenly the name Tales From the Crypt was considered blasphemous and, while Ritual did surface in 2001, it did so without the attached moniker. The first, Demon Knight, appeared in 1995 and performed relatively well, with plans in place to complete the trinity with Ritual, before Bordello of Blood came along in the interim and fell flatter than Karen Carpenter on a varnished floor.
Before long there were board games and pinball tables based on the series and Universal Studios planned an upcoming trilogy of films based on its folklore. Then in 1989 HBO launched Tales From the Crypt as a television series and the hype once again began to build. Although the curtain came down in March 1955 it remained a firm favorite with fans of pulp fiction and Amicus adapted its short stories into a full-length anthology in 1972.
It started out in the early fifties as a bi-monthly comic and was published by EC Comics for five years until controversy about its influence leading to potential juvenile delinquency and hilariously illiteracy. It’s over sixty years since Tales From the Crypt first reared its decomposing head.