At Twenty Five: Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight
“This property is hereby…condemned…”
Oh, Tales From the Crypt, how I love thee, let me count the slays. From the Danny Elfman music and perfect intro to the Crypt Keeper’s cackled puns, an episode of Tales From the Crypt was always a cause for celebration - especially for a kid who didn’t have HBO growing up. I did, however, have reprints of the old EC Comics that the show was inspired by, so I had heard of several of these famous tales before; these punchy morality-plays that felt like The Twilight Zone with rabies. Even in my youth, I appreciated just how perfectly this show NAILED it, completely translating that nostalgic ‘50’s drive-in vibe into the burgeoning world of HBO.
God, I loved that show.
When I saw the trailer for a Tales From the Crypt movie, I knew I needed to see it immediately. My friend and I bought tickets to an innocuous PG-13 something-or-other, and snuck into Demon Knight on opening night.
To quickly summarize, a group of strangers are trapped at a bed and breakfast where a demon is trying to acquire an ancient amulet from one of the people inside but the people inside may not be exactly what they seem. That’s part of the beauty of Tales From the Crypt - keep it punchy. It leaves more room for glowing-eyed demons getting blasted with high-powered weaponry. As well as the show captured the comic, the movie captured the show. It was hilarious, gross, and had a to-die-for cast: William Sadler, CCH Pounder, Thomas Hayden Church (being 1995, it was disorienting to see him as anyone other than Lowell from Wings), Jada Pinkett doing some Ellen Ripley-level ass-kicking.
Dick Miller. Dick Miller. And let’s not forget Dick Miller.
To boot, Billy Zane as our villain, The Collector. His single best role - handsome, charming, and evil to the core as he commands his ghoulish hordes. A perfect horror-movie role, and he plays it with gusto.
But there’s another part of the film I want to address, a part I feel doesn’t get enough credit: Gravediggaz. Megadeth. Machine Head. Filter. Pantera. Rollins Band. Sepultura. Melvins. Biohazard. Ministry. The early to mid-1990’s was the heyday of the Soundtrack. Sure, 80’s movies gave us some anthems, most of them written by Kenny Loggins, but 90’s soundtracks were complete works of art. Movies from The Crow to Singles to Grosse Pointe Blank gave us albums as worthy of revisiting as the films they were attached to. The soundtrack to Judgement Night, in my opinion, was nearly as important to 90’s music as anything that came out of Seattle. The Demon Knight soundtrack ranks up there with the best of them - the high point being the Gravediggaz classic 1-800-SUICIDE, still one of the best hip-hop songs. Period. The Filter mega-hit “Hey Man, Nice Shot” was seemingly on every soundtrack from 1995 to 2002, and rightfully so. It’s a song so perfectly suited to genre films - ANY genre film, really - that EVERY genre film used it. Nobody has ever accused Hollywood of originality. It was the 90’s version of “Danger Zone.” But Demon Knight used it first.
Track for track this album is amazing.
Just like scene for scene the movie is amazing. The whole experience is pure, old-fashioned rock-and-roll and film and soundtrack alike achieve that 90’s hat-trick of being dark and gritty while still being funny.
Cast and crew were perfection.
Director Ernest Dickerson (Juice, Bulletproof, The Walking Dead, and The Wire - to name just a few) right out of the gate sets the funhouse atmosphere, dresses the sets in blue-black shadows and covers it all with green-glowing demon blood. The set design feels like a Halloween-time Haunted Attraction in all the best ways.
Of course, being a Tales From the Crypt movie, it starts and ends with our old friend, The Crypt Keeper, selling his graveyard charm.
This is, pure and simple, kick-ass filmmaking.
It kicked ass in 1995. It kicks ass in 2020. 9/10. 10/10 in October.
