Ah, HBO. Here in the year 2014, those three little initials are shorthand for quality, original programming; small screen event television almost certain to be immeasurably superior to the megabucks offerings of your local multiplex. The network also boasts a rich tradition of brining monsters into our living rooms, with the unsavoury actions of Livia Soprano, Gyp Rosetti, Cy Tolliver and Joffrey Baratheon horrifying viewers of all walks of life. Way back in the late 1980s, however, HBO introduced us to an altogether different kind of miscreant; a wisecracking living corpse, a teller of tall tales that focussed on vampires, zombies and the evil that men do. Jackanory it most certainly wasn’t – we’re referring, of course, to the legendary Tales from the Crypt.

In the 80s, TV anthology horror was as much a fixture as leg warmers, John Hughes movies and the musical stylings of Duran Duran. Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone had enjoyed a redux, James Coburn invited us to his Darkroom, a certain pizza-faced dream demon hosted Freddy’s Nightmares, and genre enthusiasts were gripped by the Ray Bradbury Theater. Perhaps the most prosperous purveyor of small screen shivers was producer Richard Rubinstein, who enjoyed phenomenal success with Tales from the Darkside (the brainchild of none other than George Romero, director of the beloved portmanteau picture Creepshow) and Monsters. Bright and breezy 30-minute creature features with their tongue frequently placed firmly in their cheek, these shows were heavily influenced by the infamous EC horror comics of the 1950s, with a perverse sense of morality at the dark heart of the stories.

Those comic books, the source of so much controversy at their heyday, had fuelled the imagination of generations of filmmakers. Titles such as Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear and Shock SuspenStories were the ultimate contraband to the decade’s horror-hungry children, packed with grisly and hilarious capers with a twist in the tale – a quirk of fate that invariably saw the story’s resident scoundrel learn that, in the world of EC, no evil deed goes unpunished. These ten-cent terrors were a sales sensation – a fact that publisher William Gaines kept under wraps for as long as he could, fully aware that the industry operated on a copycat basis whenever someone managed to source a golden goose.

Gaines was, of course, entirely correct. By 1953 newsstands were groaning under the weight of EC imitators, with titles such as Chamber of Chills, Tomb of Terror, Adventures into Terror and Worlds of Fear exchanging hands in treehouses throughout America. EC’s titles, however, sat head-and-shoulders above the rest. Unlike most competitors Gaines paid his pencillers handsomely, which ensured eye-popping artwork was complemented by superior wordsmithery – while so many comic book scripts were churned out by hacks, dripping with sweaty desperation and clunky A-to-B storytelling, EC’s team ensured their books were heavy in prose, taking unabashed influence from the likes of Ray Bradbury (to excess, in some cases – an amicable end and agreement was reached when the publisher took to plagiarising Bradbury’s stories).

Perhaps the biggest innovation of all was EC’s trio of creepy comperes, dubbed The GhouLunatics - The Crypt Keeper, The Vault Keeper and The Old Witch. These unpleasant urchins introduced a new dynamic to comic book storytelling, bad-mouthing and bickering with one another throughout their groanworthy pun-laden introductions and conclusions, and setting the tone for the anarchic sense of humour that was EC’s stock in trade – as well as reassuring readers of a nervous disposition that the events unfolding on the page were Only A Story. Sadly, the EC horror boom burned as briefly as it did brightly. Comic books were far from a respected artform in Gaines’ era, with campaigns against the format starting as far back as 1940 – Chicago Daily News editor Sterling North described funnybooks as “guilty of a cultural slaughter of the innocents”, while J. Edgar Hoover opined that comics depicting violent crimes were “… extremely dangerous in the hands of the unstable child”. It was a publicity-courting child psychologist by the name of Dr. Frederic Wertham that picked up this baton and ran with it for all its worth, launching a campaign against comic book culture that brought the industry to its knees, nearly bankrupted EC, and changed the face of four-colour publishing forever.

Seduction of the Innocent, Wertham’s supposedly scientific study into the link between comic books and juvenile delinquency, has become something of a pop culture phenomenon itself over the years. Ever hear the one about Batman and Robin being a gay couple, and their adventures thinly-veiled homosexual propaganda? That was a Wertham special, as were many more crackpot theories

It should be noted that Wertham wasn’t necessarily a bad man, and he certainly had the interests of children at heart. Alas, when it came to comic books he had quite the bee in his bonnet, and seemingly an inability to think straight; Seduction was published in 1954, but Wertham was on record in 1948 as claiming that most of his maladjusted young patients were “comic book addicts”. The fact that most American teenagers in general were “comic book addicts”, and the vast majority had no psychological problems, seemingly held no water with the good doctor. In the words of Gaines himself, “It would be just as difficult to explain the harmless thrill of a horror story to Dr. Wertham as it would be to explain the sublimity of love to a frigid old maid.”

Sadly, the metaphorical frigid old maids of the US senate committee agreed with Wertham’s philosophies; concerns over the content of comic books grew, and the Comics Magazine Association of America was born. Headed up by John Goldwater, president of the resolutely family-friendly Archie Comics publishing line, the CMAA devised the self-censoring Comics Code, an agreement to ban the words Crime, Horror, Weird and Terror from the titles of comic books, and forbidding “all scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism and masochism”, as well as any depiction of “the walking dead, torture, vampires, ghouls, cannibalism and werewolfism [sic]”.

In other words, all the good stuff.

This left EC with barely any product to publish (though most retailers had blackballed them by this point anyway – the reputations of Gaines and his company took a real battering over the whole affair), with only the beloved and immortal MAD magazine keeping them afloat. The last EC horror comics shipped in 1954, with a glorious sideswipe from Gaines declaring that “Naturally, with comic magazine censorship now a fact, we at EC look forward to an immediate drop in the crime and juvenile delinquency rate in the United States. We trust that there will be fewer robberies, fewer murders, and fewer rapes!”. Kids moved onto their next craze, and horror comics vanished from contemporary consciousness.

Despite this, Tales from the Crypt always had its fans. Amicus Films released a classic anthology adaptation in 1972, bringing five classic scare-strips to the screen, with an equally well-received sequel (entitled Vault of Horror, naturally) following a year later. It was the original stories that lingered long in the memory of those who read them first time around though, with one such reader being Walter Hill – director of The Warriors and, as an uncredited writer on Alien, a man who knew a thing or two about scaring people senseless. Hill devoured reprints of the stories with his writing partner David Giler, and the pair started to dream of a new movie adaptation.

Things started to take off in 1983, when Hill and Giler convinced uber-producer Joel Silver to jump aboard the project. Silver was keen, and purchased the rights to the EC catalogue from William Gaines for a bargain price. The next Hollywood big-hitter to join the team was Richard Donner, a huge fan of the source material in his teenage years in the 1950s – and, as the director of the superlative Superman, a man who knew a thing or two about adapting classic American comic book stories for the screen. The project meandered in development hell for a few more years, until Joel Silver reconnected with Robert Zemeckis on the set of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Shooting the breeze with the director, Silver mentioned that he was now considering adapting Tales as a cable show, which piqued the interest of Zemeckis no end; cable meant breaking free of the censorship shackles of network television, and ensured that EC’s excesses could be presented on screen in all their goofy, gory glory. Zemeckis signed on as the shows fifth musketeer, sharing a joint Executive Producer credit with Hill, Giler, Silver and Donner, Gaines gave his blessing to the idea, and HBO snapped up the show. Suddenly, Tales from the Crypt had left the realm of dream project and was a reality – and five of the busiest men in Hollywood had an episode each to deliver.

The first season of Tales from the Crypt, comprising of just six episodes, aired on Saturday nights in the summer of 1989. The show was an immediate ratings success, and it’s not hard to see why; in addition to the talent on both sides of the camera (the founding quintet were joined by genre legend guest directors Mary Lambert and Tom Holland, and stars such as William Sadler, Lea Thompson, Amanda Plummer and Joe Pantoliano), these Tales were like nothing that had been seen before, comic books brought to vivid life before our very eyes. The show’s colour palette was bright and glossy without compromising the horror, and the camera angles jaunty and experimental. Everything about Tales from the Crypt’s first season was anarchic and off-the-cuff, with even the opening credit sequence a labour of love; as Danny Elfman’s playful, bombastic and infuriatingly hummable theme tune soundtracked a delightfully gothic tour through a haunted house (actually all completed via miniatures – the only full-size set was the crypt itself), a generation was hooked. While not all the episodes of the debut season were roaring successes (Holland’s Lover Come Hack to Me is one of the only genuine yawnfests in the show’s entire 93-episode run, and Thompson is hopelessly miscast as a tough-girl hooker in the otherwise excellent Only Sin Deep), there is such a deep sense of affection for the material evident from the off that it would take the hardest to hearts to resist its charms.

Naturally these Tales would stand or fall based on the strength of their storyteller, and The Crypt Keeper was another triumph. Although Giler and Hill envisioned a stately actor in the role (James Mason was one name mooted), we were instead introduced to one of the most instantly recognisable puppets in modern pop culture – and the face of a thousand mid-90s marketing campaigns. Devised by SFX legend Kevin Yagher, who went on to direct two later episodes (Lower Berth, an account of the cackling corpse’s origin, and Strung Along, a tale of warring puppeteers) and voiced to perfection by stand-up comedian John Kassir, the Crypt Keeper was a rotting, wise-cracking punmeister with a seemingly bottomless dress-up box, an infectious laugh, and a hint of edge. It was this injection of distinctive personality as well as a memorable look that really gave the show its hook. Zemeckis put it best when he opined that “[The Crypt Keeper] will make you laugh, but he may also kill you. He’s a little asshole.”

While the maiden season of Tales from the Crypt was excellent work, the show really hit its stride by its sophomore run. A case could be made for the second season offering an early peak (it was certainly the longest run of episodes, offering up eighteen instalments of a mostly high standard), but if truth be told much of seasons two through six are interchangeable, with a firmly established formula –ghost train-style mirthful horror romps, with a distinct moral message and warning that karma is, as you may have heard, a bitch. A- list stars were also queuing up around the block to appear in an episode (a huge deal, considering this was cable television – then considered a graveyard for acting careers), with many also opting to direct; Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael J. Fox, Tom Hanks, Kyle MacLachlan, Bob Hoskins and even Joel Silver himself all took a turn behind the camera, as well as legendary lensmen such as William Friedkin, Tobe Hooper and Mick Garris.

These mini-movies very much took their cues from the comics that spawned them, to the point that some directors must have used the source material as a makeshift storyboard. The original EC stories also followed a very strict set of guidelines; Gaines placed an advertisement for script submissions in 1954, specifying “We have no ghosts, devils, goblins or the like. We tolerate vampires and werewolves, if they follow tradition and behave the way respectable vampires and werewolves should. We love walking corpse stories. We’ll accept the occasional zombie or mummy”. This house style was reflected in the show – while there were occasional romps involving traditional supernatural beings (chief among them the Malcolm McDowell-starring comedy episode The Reluctant Vampire, the twisted take on Hansel and Gretel The Secret, and Werewolf Concerto, which features a terrifically ripe lead performance from Timothy Dalton) the show just as frequently focussed on human monsters. Out and out mysteries and crime capers (frequently adapted from Shock SuspenStories or Crime SuspenStories) such as Till Death Do We Part (one of the more poignant and bittersweet episodes in the Crypt canon), Dead Right, Maniac at Large, Two for the Show, As Ye Sow and the fiercely inventive You, Murderer (starring Humphrey Bogart, thanks to some judicious use of technology) were bags of fun, but the vast majority of truly unforgettable episodes mixed the mundane with the fantastical to devastating effect – pretty much the raison d’etre of EC Comics. Personal favourites at CTVT Towers included Til Death (arguably the simplest and creepiest cautionary tale of “be careful what you wish for”), Abra Cadaver (a twisty-turny fable of prankster sibling surgeons), Showdown (a haunting Western), Only Skin Deep (a very creepy two-hander), and Staired in Horror (arguably the most barmy and imaginative story in the EC canon).

Elsewhere, the show delivered intermittent out-and-out comedy, the occasional thought- provoking dramatic piece (the WW1-set Yellow, the only episode to break the show’s strict breezy sub-half hour running time, and the host of an all-star cast including Kirk Douglas, Dan Aykroyd and Lance Henriksen, provided the finest example of that particular craft), countless stories of siamese twins (a real favourite theme of Gaines), and every once in a while, a story that truly pushed the boundaries of good taste, violence and gore. While Tales from the Crypt is largely remembered as a fun and campy show, we defy anyone with anything but the strongest of stomachs to sit through fare such as Carrion Death and Forever Ambergris without feeling queasy. During this mid-90s peak, the show was a genuine sensation. A trio of musical compilation albums were among the more successful tie-ins, while a children’s cartoon, Tales from the Cryptkeeper, ran alongside the parent show. Overseen by the same quintet of executive producers, and with Kassir retaining the title role (albeit finding himself joined by his old sparring partners The Vault Keeper and The Old Witch), these were obviously highly watered-down versions of EC’s epics, but enjoyable all the same. A moderate ratings success, the show was followed by the Saturday morning game show Secrets of the Crypt Keeper’s Haunted House, ensuring that Ant and Dec were no longer the most rictus-grinned presenters on children’s television, and in 1999 another (short-lived, and very shoddy) animated series, New Tales from the Cryptkeeper. Perhaps more important to the future of the franchise, however, were old boneheads ventures in Hollywood; starting with 1995’s desperately underrated Demon Knight.

Directed by The Walking Dead and Masters of Horror veteran Ernest Dickerson, the script for Demon Knight had been bouncing around since before the show even saw the air, passing through the hands of countless directors. Joel Silver eventually optioned a draft and got the film into a troubled production beset with budgetary issues, with the movie eventually opening to a disappointing box office performance. Never one to let a disappointment linger, Silver oversaw Bordello of Blood for release a year later; a zany vampire tale directed by Dark Castle co-founder Gilbert Adler. Sadly Bordello also bombed, and Silver shelved plans for a third bite of the cherry – at one time, Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners was slated as a Crypt-flick. A third movie, Ritual, was eventually shot, but went almost entirely ignored. Finished in 2001 and released internationally without any connection to the show, Ritual eventually surfacing on Region 1 DVD (with the Crypt Keeper wraparound reinstated) in 2006 to no discernible fanfare.

These were mere sideshows from the main event, however; Tales from the Crypt enjoyed a glorious run of form for six seasons, and cementing its status as the top-rated show on US Cable television. Unfortunately such a show weighs in at quite a price, and the seventh, final season saw its production relocated to Blighty - complete with a predominantly British cast, and some seriously slashed budgets. Some of the efforts of this final 13-episode season were still memorable, especially the non-supernatural stories; Steve Coogan’s turn in The Kidnapper was particularly engaging, and Eddie Izzard was on top form in Confession, foreshadowing his recent role in Hannibal. Alas, other episodes involved Robert Lindsay turning into an owl would work as a dramatic device, and that Ewan McGregor attempting an accent would be a good move. Hopefully that theory has finally been laid to rest. Tales from the Crypt signed out with what could only be considered the show’s nadir, The Third Pig – a bizarre, and strictly adults-only, animated take on The Three Little Pigs, narrated by the Crypt Keeper and featuring the vocal talents of Bobcat Goldthwait. After seven glorious years of chills and chuckles, The Crypt Keeper closed the lid of the coffin for the last time in the summer of 1996.

Sort of.

Much like many of the shuffling, terrifying protagonists of EC’s eerie anecdotes, Tales from the Crypt refuses to really die – a dedicated cult fanbase have been keeping the brand alive since 1954. Lush hardback reprints of the classic comics are the pride of any horror aficionado’s comic book collection (unless you’re one of the lucky few you can afford the increasingly rare original issues), and rumours of a rebooted series have been circulating for the last two years. The show’s following in the UK has never facilitated a Region 2 DVD release, but all 93 episodes are available on seven Region 1 box sets – one per season. Variable picture and sound quality on these releases leaves us crossing our fingers, toes and everything else besides for an eventual HD makeover, but we won’t be holding our breath. For all that, we should remain over the moon that the show was made at all; William Gaines, who sadly passed away in 1992 just as the show was entering the peak of its popularity, always enjoyed ironic comeuppance for cretinous behaviour. Doubtless he would have loved the fact of Tales from the Crypt eventually invaded more homes than Dr. Frederic Wertham could ever have imagined.