Cryptkeeper - Media Adaptations

Media Adaptations

The 1972 film from Amicus Productions features five stories from various EC comics. "Reflection of Death" (#23) and "Blind Alleys" (#46) were adapted for the film, the others were adapted from Haunt of Fear and Vault of Horror. A second Amicus film, The Vault of Horror, also used stories from Tales from the Crypt and Shock SuspenStories (despite its title, it didn't use any stories published in the *Vault of Horror* comic).

In 1989, the book was adapted into the HBO TV series Tales from the Crypt, which features John Kassir as the Cryptkeeper and included comic book covers designed to look like the original 1950s covers by Mike Vosburg with at least one drawn by Shawn McManus.

The following tales were used in HBO's Tales From The Crypt television series: "The Man Who Was Death" (issue #17), "Mute Witness to Murder" (#18), "Fatal Caper" (#20), "The Thing From The Grave" (#22), "Last Respects" (#23), "Judy, You're Not Yourself Today" (#25), "Loved to Death" (#25), "Well Cooked Hams" (#27), "The Ventriloquist's Dummy" (#28), "Korman's Kalamity" (re-titling of "Kamen's Calamity", issue #31), "Cutting Cards" (#32), "Lower Berth" (#33), "None But The Lonely Heart" (#33), "Oil's Well That Ends Well" (#34), "Curiosity Killed" (#36), "Only Skin Deep" (#38), "Mournin' Mess" (#38), "Undertaking Palor" (#39), "Food For Thought" (#40), "Operation Friendship" (#41), "Cold War" (#43), "Forever Ambergris" (#44), "The Switch" (#45) and "Blind Alleys" (#46). Other episodes were based on the two sister comics as well as Crime SuspenStories and Shock SuspenStories. At least one episode was even based on Two-Fisted Tales (another EC Comic).

In 1993, Tales from the Crypt was adapted into a Saturday morning cartoon series entitled Tales from the Cryptkeeper, based on the series (albeit with none of the violence or other questionable content that was in the original series), with Kassir as the Cryptkeeper again; it ran from September 18, 1993 to December 6, 1997. None of the episodes were based on the comics, or the HBO show; they were all original stories.

In late 1993 a pinball machine titled Tales from the Crypt was produced under license by Data East.

In 1996, another adaptation (a Saturday morning game show) called Secrets of the Cryptkeeper's Haunted House ran from September 14 to August 1997, with Kassir once again in the role of the Cryptkeeper as announcer.

Two films, Demon Knight (1995) and Bordello of Blood (1996), were based on the series, neither of which was particularly successful. A third film, Ritual, was slated for theatrical release in 2001, but was only distributed internationally (without the Tales from the Crypt connection) until 2006 when it was released on DVD in the United States, with the Cryptkeeper bits restored. Unlike the 1970s-era Amicus films, these three films were not based on stories from any of the EC comics.