"Tales from the Crypt" Horror in the Night (1996)

Director:

Russell Mulcahy

Writer:

John Harrison (teleplay)

TV Series:

"Tales from the Crypt" (1989)

Original Air Date:

24 May 1996 (Season 7, Episode 5)

Genre:

Comedy | Horror | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Crypt | Crypt Keeper | Supernatural Power | Based On Comic Book | Cult Horror

Cast

Peter Guinness
John Kassir	...	Crypt Keeper (voice)
Elizabeth McGovern
Edward Tudor-Pole		(as Edward Tudor Pole)
Ronan Vibert
James Wilby

Quotes:

Do I Need One?: Something happened. A while ago, I made someone unhappy.
Nick Marvin: A guy?
Do I Need One?: How'd you guess?
Nick Marvin: There's always a guy in these stories.

OK Tales from the Crypt episode.

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Tales from the Crypt: Horror in the Night starts as armed jewel thief Nick Marvin (James Wilby) doubles crosses his boss Mr. Starr (Peter Guinness) & his partner T (Ronan Vibert) by keeping all the stolen jewel's from an armed robbery, however T manages to shoot Nick as he escapes wounding him in the shoulder. Badly bleeding Nick sees a cheap hotel & checks in till things cool off, there he meets a beautiful yet mysterious woman (Elizabeth McGovern) who keeps popping up everywhere including Nick's dreams & nightmares. Nick starts to have strange hallucinations & odd things begin to happen until he finally realises that he has been there before & met the mysterious woman before too...

This Tales from the Crypt story was episode 5 from season 7, directed by Russell Mulcahy one has to say that Horror in the Night is maybe just about the best episode from the seven season so far & is certainly the first horror &/or supernatural themed story from the season so far. The script was based on a story from 'The Vault of Horror' comic book & is an alright little tale about a wounded thief who finds himself inside a spooky old hotel where his dubious past comes back to quite literally haunt him & take a little bit of sweet revenge too. I don't know, Horror in the Night isn't that great to be honest but it's just when I compare it to the previous four episodes of season seven it seems like an absolute masterpiece by comparison! The old horror film cliché of having a character suffer something weird or strange & then 'wake up' like it was either a dream or hallucination is used to absolute death in Horror in the Night & you end up wondering if anything that happens to Nick is real or not as we constantly have the rug pulled from under our feet in a 'what just happened wasn't real' sort of way. The twist ending is alright & rounds things off satisfactory enough even though it's not the most memorable twist the show has ever offered up.

The opening & closing Cryptkeeper sequences are fun as usual as here he dresses up as an astronaut & has a 'skeleton crew' with him aboard a spaceship! Cue plenty of bad space puns & jokes. There's a bit of blood in this one, there's a few gunshot wounds & a scene in which Nick has sex & the woman turns into a winged creature before he starts bleeding all this bright green goo, yes you've guessed it it's another hallucination scene. The acting is pretty good from a decent British cast.

Horror in the Night isn't classic Tales from the Crypt by any stretch of the imagination but you have to take what you can from a generally very disappointing season seven & run with it, not that bad but not that great either.