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- <text id=91TT1697>
- <title>
- July 29, 1991: View Points:Television
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- July 29, 1991 The World's Sleaziest Bank
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- VIEW POINTS, Page 63
- TELEVISION
- Gleefully Ghoulish
- </hdr><body>
- <p>By Richard Zoglin
- </p>
- <p> TV has often looked for inspiration to the world of comic
- books, usually superhero juvenilia like The Flash or The
- Incredible Hulk. But TALES FROM THE CRYPT is a different kettle
- of rotting fish. Based on the seedy old E.C. horror comics, each
- half-hour episode is a ghoulish black comedy that aims less for
- thrills or scares than for gleefully evoked squirms. The show,
- garnering high ratings in its third season on HBO, demonstrates
- another quality rare in TV: it is improving with age. Introduced
- by a cackling, skeletal "crypt keeper," the stories barrel
- along with logic-bending abandon; even when the ending fizzles
- (a frequent problem), getting there is a wild ride. Among the
- summer's highlights so far: Beau Bridges and Tony Goldwyn as
- brothers who trade sadistic practical jokes in a morgue, Malcolm
- McDowell as a soft-hearted vampire who opts for safe sustenance
- by raiding the local blood bank, and Jon Lovitz as a sad-sack
- actor who auditions for a far-off-Broadway production of Hamlet.
- Turns out that the only role available is Yorick. Alas, poor
- Lovitz!
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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