MovieChat Forums > Tales from the Crypt (1972) Discussion > Laughable now

Laughable now

posted 10 years ago by raceface
11 replies | jump to latest

I remember being freaked out my this movie as a kid. I saw it a couple of time at the theater back in the day as part of a double feature, then later on a late night show called Creature Features.

I just watched it on YouTube and it's just plain silly. Oh well, still campy and fun, but not at all scary.

[–] Duragizer 9 years ago

Cool story, bro.

If this is a consular ship, where is the ambassador?

[–] Reva_C 9 years ago

I dunno....the effects aren't good now, however the actual stories as horror (maybe more psychological horror some of them) I still think are scary as stories.

~ I hardly looked at his face. His knees were what I wished to see. ~

[–] ElectricWarlock 9 years ago

Well, I adore the movie. I'd put it in my top 10 favorite horror films of all time without a doubt. I watch it once or twice every year and still never get sick of it.

[–] euro4569 9 years ago

Laughable now...

No it isn't😑

In terms of special effects, it didn't need any! That is why the film was extremely well made and still holds up today.

[–] Minus_The_Beer 9 years ago

OP has no respect for older horror and watches movies on YouTube. Tells me all I need to know.

Anyone here mentions Hotel California dies before the first line clears his lips.

[–] robinson-w-walsh 9 years ago

Mr. Grimsdyke's zombie emerging out of the darkness is far scarier than any by-the-number cgi jump scare in horror movies today.

[–] Navaros 8 years ago

Grimsdyke emerging wasn't scary at all. Especially since a> that plot line dragged on forever (as do all the others in this film) b> Grimsdyke doesn't even do anything. He just reaches for the bad guy and then there is a fade to black. That is an extremely lame cop-out and a huge letdown.

I absolutely hate CGI and I almost always prefer real effects over CGI crap. But undead Grimsdyke was impotent. If they had shown undead Grimsdyke actually mangle the bad guy, then you'd have a good point.

I am gonna disagree with the "now" part of the thread title. This film was always laughable because it doesn't show anything interesting or horrific. Contrary to what the OP asserts, it didn't used to be not laughable.

[–] ElectricWarlock 8 years ago

Well, it doesn't really need to show you Peter Cushing putting his hands through the man's chest and ripping his heart out. We still know it happened, just not on camera. Letting you imagine it is enough. Many of the Friday the 13th films do the exact same thing and we get the picture. That's not to say a film is trash if it does show gore. You can have both a good, well told story and blood/violence in the same movie. But it doesn't need it.

And the film is only 92 minutes. With only 5 stories they didn't really have time to "drag on forever."

[–] Navaros 8 years ago

Letting you imagine it is enough

No it's not. If it were, then why even have actors, and sets, and lights, and cameras etc? Instead, why not simply show a bunch of black & white title cards which state everything that happened. If "letting you imagine it is enough," then there is no reason for them not to do that. But they don't do that because that would be crap. Just like the fade-to-black cop-out on the undead Grimsdyke is crap.

This film desperately needed to show undead Grimsdyke doing something because that was the whole point of and climax to the story. By not showing it, the story barely has a climax, and the one that is present is, as I said, impotent.

On the other hand, if they had shown undead Grimsdyke doing something, then the ending would have been great! And the Grimsdyke film as a whole would potentially have been elevated from marginally mediocre to good.

the film is only 92 minutes. With only 5 stories they didn't really have time to "drag on forever."

Relatively short running-time does not necessarily mean that stories can't drag on forever. Stories drag when: one, they spend their a lot of their screen-time repeating the same point over and over and over again instead or progressing the plot; or two, when they spend their most or all of their screen-time simply not having a plot in the first place.

The Grimsdyke film is guilty of the former. It spends an awful lot of time showing Grimsdyke being mistreated. The subsequent mistreatments after the first one or two do not progress the plot or add any anything more to the story. They simply pad out the screen-time. That's why it drags. It's the equivalent to "jumping puzzles" in a videogame, which 99% of the time (except for games like Mario, where jumping is the core gameplay mechanic) serve no purpose other than artificially to delay plot progression and therefore prolong the time the player spends in the game, via the insertion of stupid filler in lieu of real content.

[–] ElectricWarlock 8 years ago

I don't agree with you. We know what Grimsdyke did. We don't need to see it because we already know. The details of the story still would've been the same whether we saw Grimsdyke actually committing the murder or not. It wouldn't have changed anything at all. To me, the point of that ending scene was to show Grimsdyke beat them at their own game. He sent them a Valentine's Day card just as they did him. Only with a twist; it was written in blood and had a human heart. That is the kind of twisted, gory humor the EC Comics were known for. I think the letter by itself was enough.

And I think showing Grimsdyke constantly being mistreated made the ending better. If they really didn't do all that much then their fates would seem cruel and unjustified. You'd have to do something pretty serious to justify having your heart ripped/cut out. Them just doing one or two petty little things wouldn't have been near enough. It had to be so serious it would drive a man to take his own life. So I don't see how you can criticize it for that.

[–] doomydoomdoom (34) 6 years ago

True, it is really campy and cheesy. Especially with the music in the beginning (a famous classical piece that is cliche), the awful setup (random people just randomly decide to pull over and tour a creepy cave/tomb), etc.

Regarding the argument about Grimsdyke not being scary, I think it's important to note that this movie very much predates the slasher movie explosion of the 80s and they wanted to keep it tasteful. If they had setup a bunch of gory shots then the BBFC would have banned the film, important to consider as this is a British film.