"Tales from the Crypt" Television Terror (1990)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

Charlie Picerni

Writers:

Randall Jahnson (teleplay)
G.J. Pruss (teleplay)

TV Series:

"Tales from the Crypt" (1989)

Original Air Date:

17 July 1990 (Season 2, Episode 16)

Genre:

Horror | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Macabre | Cult TV | Murder | Black Comedy | Dark Comedy

Cast

Morton Downey Jr.	...	Horton Rivers
Dorothy Parke	...	Sam
Peter Van Norden	...	Booth
John Kassir	...	Crypt Keeper (voice)
Warren Burton	...	Roland
Michael Harris	...	Trip (as M.K. Harris)
Ami Rothschild	...	Lisa
Candace Savalas	...	A.D.
Jeannie Epper	...	Ada Ritter
Victor Paul	...	Rudy Deluca
Wally Rose	...	Man in Tub
Steve Picerni	...	Man on Staircase
Ted Grossman	...	Weird Old Man with Camera

Easily One Of The Show's Very Best Episodes.

One of my personal favorite episodes in the whole entire series was this one entitled: "Television Terror". Morton Downey Jr. played to perfection the ultra-nasty and particularly slimy lead character of Horton Rivers: a talk show/reality show host of his own self-titled series "Horton Rivers Live". The character was not only a rather clever self-parody of Morton Downey Jr. himself, but also an on the money skewering of numerous other well-known mid-to-late 80's and early 90's sleaze-ball talk show hosts such as the god-awful Geraldo Rivera for instance! Narcissistic, vindictive, mealy-mouthed, fame-seeking and most notably money-grubbing Horton goes against the better and wiser advise of the network that he works for, a female producer (I guess that's what she was) of his show who has it out for him based on the fact that he had left her high and dry in a past liaison they had together and most especially a grim and very spooky all-black clad British psychic who warns him of the "life-threatening danger" he was putting himself and his cameraman Skip into by "crossing over the threshold into a house of seething evil" when he decides to film an entire episode of his show (shades of Rivera's horrendously laughable Al Capone's vault fiasco present here if anybody noticed, it's even mentioned by Downey Jr.'s character at one point in the episode if I recall) inside a rumored haunted house where supposedly five years earlier a psychotic elderly woman had brutally murdered her equally as elderly boarders so as to collect their insurance money. Overall, this was easily one of their funniest (well, in a darkly comedic sense that is), goriest and creepiest episodes that they ever chose to air. Located towards the end of the show's highly acclaimed second season this was indeed one that die-hard fans of the show should not make the mistake of ever overlooking. In fact, it's so damn freaky-cool that I personally recommend only buying the second season by itself and skipping all the pricey others for just this one awesome episode alone!