Entertainment
Raunchy, R-Rated Sequel Runs Beloved Franchise Into The Ground
By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated
As an elder millennial, I have a lot of respect for Kevin Smith. When the filmmaker has something to say, he often creates weirdly profound movies. Clerks is funny, sure, but it also perfectly captured the malaise of getting older and still not knowing what you want to do when you grow up. Chasing Amy had some of the best sex jokes ever put on film, but it also shone a spotlight on the insecurities that can destroy even the strongest relationships. Heck, beneath its many sacrilegious punchlines, even Dogma had powerful things to say about faith, redemption, and embracing the divinity within our flawed, human shells.
When Smith doesn’t have much to say, you are left with self-indulgence and little else. Beyond its charming characters, for example, Mallrats had little to offer but verbose jokes aimed squarely at pot-smoking English majors. One of the worst offenders was Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, a movie whose only redeeming quality was its banger of a soundtrack. As a fan of the director, I was really hoping that earlier outing would be as bad as it could possibly get, but Smith later outdid himself in the worst possible way. The follow-up film, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019), is an absolutely awful sequel that barely deserves to be called a movie.
Coming Down From The High
The plot of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is that Bluntman and Chronic are getting a reboot film from director Kevin Smith. Because of this and a surprise court ruling, Jay and Silent Bob have lost the rights to their own name. The two erstwhile stoners hatch an insane plan to head to California and keep the film from being made, thus winning back their names. Once these not-so-young men head west, they discover something shocking: Jay has a daughter he never knew about from a previous girlfriend. With the help of this gal and her band of enthusiastic weirdoes, our heroes hope to blaze (in every sense of the word) their way through Hollywood.
There’s no gentle way to say this, but Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is a hot mess from top to bottom. To start with, our titular duo is played by Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith, neither of whom is a very good actor. They work as zany side characters in movies like Clerks, where their lack of skill as performers gives them a kind of rough-around-the-edges authenticity. But as leading performers, they are seriously lacking, something that is made even clearer by the sheer number of big-name cameos in this film.
Nepo Avengers, Assemble!
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot has appearances from just about everyone in Smith’s beloved Viewaskewniverse. The movie features cameos by Ben Affleck, Jason Lee, Justin Long, Rosario Dawson, and more. Several franchise newcomers are also big names, including Joe Manganiello, Fred Armisen, and Val Kilmer. While most of these established stars aren’t in the film for very long, they don’t need much screen time to act absolute circles around Mewes and Smith. Conversely, our dimwitted duo seems like Oscar winners compared to Harley Quinn Smith. She plays Jay’s daughter in the movie, but in real life, her father is Kevin Smith.
As a family guy myself (and not just because I’m working on a Peter Griffin waistline), I understand the director’s impulse to try to make his child a star. Unfortunately, the result is a perfect storm of sh*t: the collective talent of the bigger stars of this film leaves the younger Smith looking even more out of place than her famous father. But even if she were the best actor in the world, performing in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot would be an uphill battle because she is dealing with one of the worst comedy scripts ever written.
He Needs To Talk About Kevin
Sadly, this isn’t a so-bad-it’s-sometimes-good sequel like Mallrats. Nor does it descend into full schlock like Tusk, which might have made it perfect to watch when imbibing Jay and Silent Bob’s favorite drug. Instead, this reboot is just kind of there: most scenes just feel like excuses to bring old characters back, and the result is less like a feature film and more like a series of shorts held together by forced punchlines. Beyond allowing for reunions with many of his previous actors, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot exists for one reason: so Kevin Smith can offer half-baked (pun very much intended) homages to his own life and career.
Unfortunately, this is another area where this sequel falls flat. Smith’s later film Clerks III does a much better job of looking back on his life and wringing something heartfelt out of all the d*ck and fart jokes. But Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is the worst of both worlds because its broad, deeply unfunny comedy flattens every emotional moment into something flat and brittle. At the same time, the director’s attempts at poignant depth keep the movie from fully embracing stupid slapstick that might, at the very least, earn a smile from time to time.
Let’s Blow This Joint
You won’t smile much while watching Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. You won’t frown, either. Instead, you’ll spend most of your time looking at the screen, head tilted in horrified anticipation at each new scene. Who will be the next famous actor Smith trots out instead of telling a story? What ‘90s-ass punchline will he drop on you next with the full force of your best friend’s pog collection? How else will he screw up the pacing while giving us the cinematic equivalent of a 12-year-old’s “isn’t this so deep” fanfiction?
These are just a few of the questions you’ll ask while watching this film. This is a natural side effect of your mind wandering in its naked attempt to escape the once-funny world of Kevin Smith. Still, there’s a lot here for superfans to glom onto, and it provides unexpected closure to several of this universe’s most beloved characters. Maybe that sounds like something you’d enjoy, or maybe you just want to give your brain a chance to get away from it all. Either way, it’s time to grab the remote and practice your best “snootchy-bootchies!” war cry, because Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is currently streaming for free on Tubi.
JAY AND SILENT BOB REVIEW SCORE
Entertainment
Time for a new smartwatch? Snag the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic for 51% off ahead of Samsung Unpacked.
SAVE $280: As of July 21, get the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic for $269.99 at Woot, down from its usual price of $549.99. That’s a discount of 51%.
$269.99
at Amazon
$549.99
Save $280
If you’re looking to kit your wrist out with a new smartwatch, now’s a great time to do so. Samsung is on the verge of debuting several new models, and that means the old ones are going down in price. Case in point: the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, which you can get for an excellent discount right now if you don’t want to wait for the new crop of devices.
As of July 21, get the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic for $269.99 at Woot, down from its usual price of $549.99. That’s $280 off and a discount of 51%.
This classy smartwatch opts to keep things traditional while offering a variety of modern features that you’ll appreciate. That includes a bright, easy-to-read display, a rotating bezel you use to select apps and navigate menus, and several health-tracking abilities so you can stay on top of what’s happening with your body and fitness at all times.
From a heart rate and sleep score monitor to a daily Energy Score calculated from your heart rate, sleep, activity, and rest this watch can make sure you’re ready for the day in all the ways that count. It can also be used to help track blood pressure.
Mashable Deals
Beyond all its health-centric features, this is a great smartwatch for day-to-day functionality and staying on top of your schedule. It has a built-in AI assistant as well as the option to use voice commands to navigate, which means you never have to use your hand to get things done if you don’t want to.
If you’re ready to debut a new smartwatch without breaking the bank, now’s a good time to buy in.
Entertainment
The Latest Poster For Avengers: Doomsday Secretly Spoils The Plot
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
With less than five months left until the film’s release, Marvel has taken their marketing for Avengers: Doomsday to the next level. Right now, fans are mostly focused on the trailer that dropped today, which is no surprise; after all, it’s not every day that you see the reunion of Thor and Steve Rogers or, for that matter, a battle between Shang-Chi and Gambit. Amid all the breathless hype over the trailer, however, a more powerful advertisement is lurking in plain sight. At the same time Marvel launched the trailer, they also released a new Avengers: Doomsday poster.
Compared to that crowded character poster, the new poster is downright subdued. It features Doctor Doom staring at a huge tapestry with a broken world and two characters: a woman and a boy. Some comics fans think this image is Doom and his mother, a character who is eventually damned to Hell. However, other fans are convinced that this is actually an image of Doom’s wife and child; if true, this would effectively ruin the biggest plot twist. How does it do that? If you don’t mind some potential spoilers for this year’s biggest film, just keep reading!
You Can’t Spell “Painting” Without “Pain”
So, let’s start this story in reverse (just don’t let the TVA get me!): why do some fans think the woman in this poster is Doctor Doom’s mother? In the comics, she’s a big deal. To defeat an evil dictator who was ruling her country with an iron fist (an actual fist, not the kung-fu guy), she made a deal with the devil. As usual, the deal went wrong, and she lost control of the powers that she gained from Mephisto. She renounced those powers, got killed, and was then dragged into Hell. To see her again, Doom later mastered magic, visited Mephisto, and conducted an experiment that ruined his own face.
However, all of the lore behind this origin story is too dense to fit into Avengers: Doomsday, a movie which is already crowded with endless character cameos. It seems the movie is taking a different direction, as multiple reports have claimed that the two figures are actually Doom’s wife and child. An unconfirmed leak of the movie’s plot (don’t say I didn’t warn you about spoilers, kids!) claims that Doom actually lost his family to one of the incursions, which is when one reality collides with another. This motivates Doom to learn more about the incursions and to plot his revenge.
A Hero Will Be Broken
Revenge against whom, you ask? According to the leaked plot, Steve Rogers! Reportedly, Loki visits the former Captain America in the past and warns him that the TVA will prune his entire timeline because he’s not supposed to be there. In an act of seeming kindness, Loki brings Cap, Peggy, and their young son to the Fantastic Four’s universe. However, the leak claims that Steve’s presence in this universe somehow triggers an incursion and that Doom disfigured himself and killed his own wife and son trying to stop it. In a shocking twist, Doom reportedly kills Steve’s son in front of the hero in an act of vengeance.
Now, again, all of this comes from a leaked plot summary that hasn’t been confirmed, so all of this could be an Ego-sized bottle of hogwash. But it’s worth noting that the Avengers: Doomsday teasers last year prominently focused on both Captain America and Thor becoming fathers. This potentially adds credence to the idea that this is a film about family and how far someone will go to protect the ones they love. If the leaks are true, this innocuous poster featuring Doctor Doom is spoiling the motivation the villain will have to cross time and space and cross countless moral event horizons along the way.
A movie where costumed vigilantes (like Batman, Spider-Man, and so many more) are driven by the ghosts of family members they lost when they were children? Well, nobody ever accused Marvel of being all that original!
Entertainment
The Best Horror Series Ever Made Is Now Streaming For Free
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
My absolute favorite kind of movie is the anthology. When you have a collection of short films all rolled into one, it provides the ultimate ROI for the audience. Don’t like one of the stories? You can just thug it out with the short runtime or skip ahead to the next tale. Either way is infinitely preferable to slogging through a two-hour film that started boring you to tears in the first scene. The anthology is much rarer in television, however, because networks and streamers have learned just how attached fans get to the same characters and stories, causing them to run these shows into the ground.
Heroes, Stranger Things, Star Trek: Discovery…what do all of these shows have in common? They were designed to be anthologies that would change things up each season, but their early success meant we were stuck with the same cast for years as the show got worse. Fortunately, true anthology lovers are just a click away from getting their fix. Right now, Tales From the Crypt is streaming for free on Tubi, just waiting to delight all you ghouls and boys. It’s not just the perfect anthology show; it is, in fact, the greatest horror series ever made!
Meet The Cryptkeeper
Tales From the Crypt fully embraces its anthology format, with every single episode focusing on different characters and different terrifying tales. What ties all of them together is our host, the Cryptkeeper. He’s a snarky, hilariously mean corpse of a character brought to life by a small army of puppeteers. The show originated on HBO, and its creators embraced the fact that it didn’t have to abide by any of the restrictive standards of network television. As such, episodes were filled to the brim with vulgar language, nudity, sex, and more buckets of blood than you can shake a bodybag at.
Younger horror fans should know that it’s almost impossible to overstate the popularity of Tales From the Crypt and its ghoulish host. Despite all the blood, breasts, and beasts, the show was wildly popular with kids, including my own underage self. Accordingly, it got two spinoffs aimed directly at children: Tales From the Cryptkeeper (a Saturday Morning children’s cartoon) and Secrets of the Cryptkeeper’s Haunted House (a weird gameshow). If that seems odd, this was during the same time that Kenner marketed toys based on Terminator 2 and Aliens directly to kids. What can I say? The ‘90s were weird, man!
Friends In Low Places
One compelling reason to check out Tales From the Crypt is that it had plenty of awesome guest stars, all of whom were happy to do an episode without being tied down to a long contract. Guests included Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brad Pitt, Michael J. Fox, Tom Hanks, and so many more. In most cases, these actors are performing against type, making what happens to them onscreen that much more shocking. Trust me: if you only know actors like Robert Picardo and Wil Wheaton from Star Trek, you’ll never look at them the same way after watching Tales From the Crypt.
For me, though, the single best thing about Tales From the Crypt is the show’s wicked sense of humor. With his relentless puns, wild expressions, and unhinged laughter, the Cryptkeeper sets the tone for a show that has black comedy running through its veins at all times. This adds serious entertainment value and also helps position the show as a light (but filling) bite for horror fans. Not in the mood for elevated horror and don’t have the time for a two-hour psychological thriller? You can always count on Tales From the Crypt to deliver a perfect slice of scary entertainment in under 30 minutes.
There’s not much more to say, especially without spoiling these awesome episodes. Ready to see if this early HBO success story lives up to the hype? Maybe you want to laugh and scream in equal measure, or just write down some weird new puns with which to torment your children? Whatever your reason, the best horror series ever made is just a click away. Tales From the Crypt is currently streaming for free on Tubi, which is arguably the best platform for any boils and ghouls who love a good scare!
TALES FROM THE CRYPT REVIEW SCORE
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Entertainment
Raunchy, R-Rated Sequel Runs Beloved Franchise Into The Ground
By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated
As an elder millennial, I have a lot of respect for Kevin Smith. When the filmmaker has something to say, he often creates weirdly profound movies. Clerks is funny, sure, but it also perfectly captured the malaise of getting older and still not knowing what you want to do when you grow up. Chasing Amy had some of the best sex jokes ever put on film, but it also shone a spotlight on the insecurities that can destroy even the strongest relationships. Heck, beneath its many sacrilegious punchlines, even Dogma had powerful things to say about faith, redemption, and embracing the divinity within our flawed, human shells.
When Smith doesn’t have much to say, you are left with self-indulgence and little else. Beyond its charming characters, for example, Mallrats had little to offer but verbose jokes aimed squarely at pot-smoking English majors. One of the worst offenders was Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, a movie whose only redeeming quality was its banger of a soundtrack. As a fan of the director, I was really hoping that earlier outing would be as bad as it could possibly get, but Smith later outdid himself in the worst possible way. The follow-up film, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019), is an absolutely awful sequel that barely deserves to be called a movie.
Coming Down From The High
The plot of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is that Bluntman and Chronic are getting a reboot film from director Kevin Smith. Because of this and a surprise court ruling, Jay and Silent Bob have lost the rights to their own name. The two erstwhile stoners hatch an insane plan to head to California and keep the film from being made, thus winning back their names. Once these not-so-young men head west, they discover something shocking: Jay has a daughter he never knew about from a previous girlfriend. With the help of this gal and her band of enthusiastic weirdoes, our heroes hope to blaze (in every sense of the word) their way through Hollywood.
There’s no gentle way to say this, but Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is a hot mess from top to bottom. To start with, our titular duo is played by Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith, neither of whom is a very good actor. They work as zany side characters in movies like Clerks, where their lack of skill as performers gives them a kind of rough-around-the-edges authenticity. But as leading performers, they are seriously lacking, something that is made even clearer by the sheer number of big-name cameos in this film.
Nepo Avengers, Assemble!
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot has appearances from just about everyone in Smith’s beloved Viewaskewniverse. The movie features cameos by Ben Affleck, Jason Lee, Justin Long, Rosario Dawson, and more. Several franchise newcomers are also big names, including Joe Manganiello, Fred Armisen, and Val Kilmer. While most of these established stars aren’t in the film for very long, they don’t need much screen time to act absolute circles around Mewes and Smith. Conversely, our dimwitted duo seems like Oscar winners compared to Harley Quinn Smith. She plays Jay’s daughter in the movie, but in real life, her father is Kevin Smith.
As a family guy myself (and not just because I’m working on a Peter Griffin waistline), I understand the director’s impulse to try to make his child a star. Unfortunately, the result is a perfect storm of sh*t: the collective talent of the bigger stars of this film leaves the younger Smith looking even more out of place than her famous father. But even if she were the best actor in the world, performing in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot would be an uphill battle because she is dealing with one of the worst comedy scripts ever written.
He Needs To Talk About Kevin
Sadly, this isn’t a so-bad-it’s-sometimes-good sequel like Mallrats. Nor does it descend into full schlock like Tusk, which might have made it perfect to watch when imbibing Jay and Silent Bob’s favorite drug. Instead, this reboot is just kind of there: most scenes just feel like excuses to bring old characters back, and the result is less like a feature film and more like a series of shorts held together by forced punchlines. Beyond allowing for reunions with many of his previous actors, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot exists for one reason: so Kevin Smith can offer half-baked (pun very much intended) homages to his own life and career.
Unfortunately, this is another area where this sequel falls flat. Smith’s later film Clerks III does a much better job of looking back on his life and wringing something heartfelt out of all the d*ck and fart jokes. But Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is the worst of both worlds because its broad, deeply unfunny comedy flattens every emotional moment into something flat and brittle. At the same time, the director’s attempts at poignant depth keep the movie from fully embracing stupid slapstick that might, at the very least, earn a smile from time to time.
Let’s Blow This Joint
You won’t smile much while watching Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. You won’t frown, either. Instead, you’ll spend most of your time looking at the screen, head tilted in horrified anticipation at each new scene. Who will be the next famous actor Smith trots out instead of telling a story? What ‘90s-ass punchline will he drop on you next with the full force of your best friend’s pog collection? How else will he screw up the pacing while giving us the cinematic equivalent of a 12-year-old’s “isn’t this so deep” fanfiction?
These are just a few of the questions you’ll ask while watching this film. This is a natural side effect of your mind wandering in its naked attempt to escape the once-funny world of Kevin Smith. Still, there’s a lot here for superfans to glom onto, and it provides unexpected closure to several of this universe’s most beloved characters. Maybe that sounds like something you’d enjoy, or maybe you just want to give your brain a chance to get away from it all. Either way, it’s time to grab the remote and practice your best “snootchy-bootchies!” war cry, because Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is currently streaming for free on Tubi.
JAY AND SILENT BOB REVIEW SCORE
Entertainment
Time for a new smartwatch? Snag the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic for 51% off ahead of Samsung Unpacked.
SAVE $280: As of July 21, get the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic for $269.99 at Woot, down from its usual price of $549.99. That’s a discount of 51%.
$269.99
at Amazon
$549.99
Save $280
If you’re looking to kit your wrist out with a new smartwatch, now’s a great time to do so. Samsung is on the verge of debuting several new models, and that means the old ones are going down in price. Case in point: the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, which you can get for an excellent discount right now if you don’t want to wait for the new crop of devices.
As of July 21, get the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic for $269.99 at Woot, down from its usual price of $549.99. That’s $280 off and a discount of 51%.
This classy smartwatch opts to keep things traditional while offering a variety of modern features that you’ll appreciate. That includes a bright, easy-to-read display, a rotating bezel you use to select apps and navigate menus, and several health-tracking abilities so you can stay on top of what’s happening with your body and fitness at all times.
From a heart rate and sleep score monitor to a daily Energy Score calculated from your heart rate, sleep, activity, and rest this watch can make sure you’re ready for the day in all the ways that count. It can also be used to help track blood pressure.
Mashable Deals
Beyond all its health-centric features, this is a great smartwatch for day-to-day functionality and staying on top of your schedule. It has a built-in AI assistant as well as the option to use voice commands to navigate, which means you never have to use your hand to get things done if you don’t want to.
If you’re ready to debut a new smartwatch without breaking the bank, now’s a good time to buy in.
Entertainment
The Latest Poster For Avengers: Doomsday Secretly Spoils The Plot
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
With less than five months left until the film’s release, Marvel has taken their marketing for Avengers: Doomsday to the next level. Right now, fans are mostly focused on the trailer that dropped today, which is no surprise; after all, it’s not every day that you see the reunion of Thor and Steve Rogers or, for that matter, a battle between Shang-Chi and Gambit. Amid all the breathless hype over the trailer, however, a more powerful advertisement is lurking in plain sight. At the same time Marvel launched the trailer, they also released a new Avengers: Doomsday poster.
Compared to that crowded character poster, the new poster is downright subdued. It features Doctor Doom staring at a huge tapestry with a broken world and two characters: a woman and a boy. Some comics fans think this image is Doom and his mother, a character who is eventually damned to Hell. However, other fans are convinced that this is actually an image of Doom’s wife and child; if true, this would effectively ruin the biggest plot twist. How does it do that? If you don’t mind some potential spoilers for this year’s biggest film, just keep reading!
You Can’t Spell “Painting” Without “Pain”
So, let’s start this story in reverse (just don’t let the TVA get me!): why do some fans think the woman in this poster is Doctor Doom’s mother? In the comics, she’s a big deal. To defeat an evil dictator who was ruling her country with an iron fist (an actual fist, not the kung-fu guy), she made a deal with the devil. As usual, the deal went wrong, and she lost control of the powers that she gained from Mephisto. She renounced those powers, got killed, and was then dragged into Hell. To see her again, Doom later mastered magic, visited Mephisto, and conducted an experiment that ruined his own face.
However, all of the lore behind this origin story is too dense to fit into Avengers: Doomsday, a movie which is already crowded with endless character cameos. It seems the movie is taking a different direction, as multiple reports have claimed that the two figures are actually Doom’s wife and child. An unconfirmed leak of the movie’s plot (don’t say I didn’t warn you about spoilers, kids!) claims that Doom actually lost his family to one of the incursions, which is when one reality collides with another. This motivates Doom to learn more about the incursions and to plot his revenge.
A Hero Will Be Broken
Revenge against whom, you ask? According to the leaked plot, Steve Rogers! Reportedly, Loki visits the former Captain America in the past and warns him that the TVA will prune his entire timeline because he’s not supposed to be there. In an act of seeming kindness, Loki brings Cap, Peggy, and their young son to the Fantastic Four’s universe. However, the leak claims that Steve’s presence in this universe somehow triggers an incursion and that Doom disfigured himself and killed his own wife and son trying to stop it. In a shocking twist, Doom reportedly kills Steve’s son in front of the hero in an act of vengeance.
Now, again, all of this comes from a leaked plot summary that hasn’t been confirmed, so all of this could be an Ego-sized bottle of hogwash. But it’s worth noting that the Avengers: Doomsday teasers last year prominently focused on both Captain America and Thor becoming fathers. This potentially adds credence to the idea that this is a film about family and how far someone will go to protect the ones they love. If the leaks are true, this innocuous poster featuring Doctor Doom is spoiling the motivation the villain will have to cross time and space and cross countless moral event horizons along the way.
A movie where costumed vigilantes (like Batman, Spider-Man, and so many more) are driven by the ghosts of family members they lost when they were children? Well, nobody ever accused Marvel of being all that original!
Entertainment
The Best Horror Series Ever Made Is Now Streaming For Free
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
My absolute favorite kind of movie is the anthology. When you have a collection of short films all rolled into one, it provides the ultimate ROI for the audience. Don’t like one of the stories? You can just thug it out with the short runtime or skip ahead to the next tale. Either way is infinitely preferable to slogging through a two-hour film that started boring you to tears in the first scene. The anthology is much rarer in television, however, because networks and streamers have learned just how attached fans get to the same characters and stories, causing them to run these shows into the ground.
Heroes, Stranger Things, Star Trek: Discovery…what do all of these shows have in common? They were designed to be anthologies that would change things up each season, but their early success meant we were stuck with the same cast for years as the show got worse. Fortunately, true anthology lovers are just a click away from getting their fix. Right now, Tales From the Crypt is streaming for free on Tubi, just waiting to delight all you ghouls and boys. It’s not just the perfect anthology show; it is, in fact, the greatest horror series ever made!
Meet The Cryptkeeper
Tales From the Crypt fully embraces its anthology format, with every single episode focusing on different characters and different terrifying tales. What ties all of them together is our host, the Cryptkeeper. He’s a snarky, hilariously mean corpse of a character brought to life by a small army of puppeteers. The show originated on HBO, and its creators embraced the fact that it didn’t have to abide by any of the restrictive standards of network television. As such, episodes were filled to the brim with vulgar language, nudity, sex, and more buckets of blood than you can shake a bodybag at.
Younger horror fans should know that it’s almost impossible to overstate the popularity of Tales From the Crypt and its ghoulish host. Despite all the blood, breasts, and beasts, the show was wildly popular with kids, including my own underage self. Accordingly, it got two spinoffs aimed directly at children: Tales From the Cryptkeeper (a Saturday Morning children’s cartoon) and Secrets of the Cryptkeeper’s Haunted House (a weird gameshow). If that seems odd, this was during the same time that Kenner marketed toys based on Terminator 2 and Aliens directly to kids. What can I say? The ‘90s were weird, man!
Friends In Low Places
One compelling reason to check out Tales From the Crypt is that it had plenty of awesome guest stars, all of whom were happy to do an episode without being tied down to a long contract. Guests included Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brad Pitt, Michael J. Fox, Tom Hanks, and so many more. In most cases, these actors are performing against type, making what happens to them onscreen that much more shocking. Trust me: if you only know actors like Robert Picardo and Wil Wheaton from Star Trek, you’ll never look at them the same way after watching Tales From the Crypt.
For me, though, the single best thing about Tales From the Crypt is the show’s wicked sense of humor. With his relentless puns, wild expressions, and unhinged laughter, the Cryptkeeper sets the tone for a show that has black comedy running through its veins at all times. This adds serious entertainment value and also helps position the show as a light (but filling) bite for horror fans. Not in the mood for elevated horror and don’t have the time for a two-hour psychological thriller? You can always count on Tales From the Crypt to deliver a perfect slice of scary entertainment in under 30 minutes.
There’s not much more to say, especially without spoiling these awesome episodes. Ready to see if this early HBO success story lives up to the hype? Maybe you want to laugh and scream in equal measure, or just write down some weird new puns with which to torment your children? Whatever your reason, the best horror series ever made is just a click away. Tales From the Crypt is currently streaming for free on Tubi, which is arguably the best platform for any boils and ghouls who love a good scare!
TALES FROM THE CRYPT REVIEW SCORE
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