This is the overall thirteenth episode of the series, and the unlucky number certainly lived up to its name.. This seems to be one of the most disliked tales of season two, and not without good cause! As worthless a watch as I found "The Sacrifice" to be, I still didn't find it quite as bad as the awful "Judy, you're not yourself Today." I by enjoyed other episodes like this that don't have any monsters or supernatural elements or just a lot of gore, in fact to me some of the best examples of Tales from the Crypt's particular brand of greatness were the murder thrillers ones. "The Sacrifice" actually feels like an okay story that may be going somewhere at first, but it doesn't. The big revelation is a terribly lame one, and it's just a weak and thoroughly unengaging attempt at a story. For a start the cast is mostly pretty poor, I just found Kim Delaney's performance to be one of the weakest ever portrayals of the scheming predatory female to ever grace the show and I didn't really get anything out of her character at all. Kevin Kilner I thought was better than her, but not by much in his role of a most unfortunate dupe. Why was his character supposed to love her that much exactly? All they did was sleep together a few times, was I supposed to buy this all-consuming,self-sacrificing love they had based on ten minutes of that?! Something else that really irritated me were the cheesy eighties blues riffs that played during their lovemaking scenes. The twist really is unexpected, but so daft and unbelievable it means nothing. That everything in the secret plot between Gloria and Jerry would depend solely on James's suicide. Why would he kill himself over her when he only knew her for what? Couple of months? Sorry, not buying it, just dumb and bad story writing! Not even the presence of Michael Ironside could make it worthwhile. He's good in his part of course, particularly back here in his younger days. He does his classic fine routine of subtle menace, all cool and in control. I'm a big fan but they really should have used him in a better episode. The other one they used him in wasn't much cop either, so the show unfortunately wasted this great character actor's talents twice! For me the only real highlight was Don Hood's enjoyable little spin as an arrogant and obnoxious old millionaire. He made me laugh, particularly during when he waxing on his "money, pussy, and bulls**t" philosophy on life and business. And his dialogue just before he is shoved off his own penthouse balcony is good and tension inducing, they really butter him up for that drop! His parrots, which feature quite prominently, while being very beautiful birds, were also quite annoying, and it was laughable how obvious it was that it wasn't them doing the talking! The last scene of this lame tale of lust, greed and backstabbing with them just caps off its lousiness for me. I think what they're saying is meant to imply that Gloria and Jerry may eventually be caught-but you know, who cares! I don't like this one, it's bland, it goes nowhere, and the twist is an insult, it's really one of the show's worst, and during it's best season to. No thanks, burn it!
2 out of 5 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink