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Great Performances in Horror: Tim Curry in Tales From the Crypt: Death of Some Salesmen

Published

4 years ago

March 16, 2022

These days, all the great writers, directors, and actors are gravitating towards TV and streaming due to better, more challenging material. But not so long ago, television wasn’t taken as seriously as theatrical films. It was really HBO that started allowing TV to be seen with more respect by both the general public and critics.

A show like Tales From the Crypt doesn’t seem like something that would have attracted top-tier talent in the late 80s and early 90s, but it did. Each week, some of Hollywood’s biggest and brightest stars, both in front of and behind the camera, would be allowed some much-needed creative freedom to play in the gory sandbox.

One of the most well-regarded episodes is Death of Some Salesmen from the show’s 5th season. It stars Ed Begley, Jr. as Judd Campbell, a ruthless traveling cemetery plot salesman, who goes around scamming the elderly and vulnerable (including Yvonne De Carlo) until he knocks on the door of the decrepit Brackett home and, in true Tales From the Crypt fashion, he’s served a big plate of just desserts.

You see, the Brackett family has a long history with traveling salesman and they don’t believe Judd’s pitch one bit. After Judd discovers that they’ve killed other salesmen, he’s knocked out by Pa on his way out the door and wakes up to Ma and Pa plotting about what to do with him.

They want to wait until their daughter, Winona, gets a look at him and, if Judd has any hope of ever leaving this house of horrors alive, he’d better convince Winona that he loves her.

Tim Curry plays this entire carnival sideshow of grotesques with skill and attention to tiny details. His Pa is especially different from what we’re used to seeing him play from both a speaking voice to the way he moves.

He turns Pa into a no-nonsense, toxically masculine redneck with horrific stained yellow teeth and a tendency to tell his wife to shut up a bit too much. Even with all this, he does show that he truly loves his family and will do anything to protect them. He’s a murderer, but he’s also an ordained minister. Of course.

His Ma is a sweet and chronically exasperated housewife who’s fed up with her husband’s behavior. She’s quick to talk back when Pa belittles her and she’s a hopeless romantic, praying that, maybe this time, her daughter can find love with someone. She wants her daughter to be happy just like any non-homicidal mother does and that’s sweet in its own twisted way.

Winona is the true showstopper with her Halloween mask face, stringy hair, hunchback, and an intriguing odor due to the fact that she “ain’t washed in a couple of weeks.” Even with all these things that should repel us, Curry supplies her with a lot of heart and dignity.

She’s self-aware enough to know she’s no beauty, but she doesn’t dwell in misery about it and still believes she deserves love and happiness. She’s a sex-loving good-time gal, too, and is quick to take Judd for a test ride once she gets her paws on him. This is so he can prove that he really loves her in a disturbing and outrageous sequence that, once seen, isn’t easily forgotten.

Curry seems to be having the time of his life playing all these characters and he creates a family unit that is terrifying, darkly humorous, and full of love for one another. That’s hard enough to do in a feature film with a lot more time for exposition and character development, but in a 30 minute TV episode, it might as well be impossible.

Curry pulls it off and makes it look effortless just like the best actors do. For all his hard work, he was rewarded with a well-deserved Emmy nomination in 1994 – a rarity for a horror performance.

Unfortunately, the entire Tales From the Crypt series is absent from streaming services and has yet to receive a Blu-Ray release, but every season has been released on DVD and it’s well worth your time to purchase them all to marvel at the amount of talent and skill on display in this series.

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[Exclusive Clip] ‘From the Beyond: High Strangeness in the Bennington Triangle’

Published

11 hours ago

April 26, 2026

Ryan T. Cusick

Audiences are invited to explore one of Vermont’s most mysterious regions in From the Beyond: High Strangeness in the Bennington Triangle, arriving later this month on streaming platforms and DVD.

The documentary will debut on April 28, 2026, on platforms including Apple TV, Prime Video, and Google Play. DVD editions will be available exclusively through the Small Town Monsters online shop.

Directed by Seth Breedlove, the film continues the company’s exploration of folklore, cryptids, and unexplained phenomena. Breedlove’s previous work includes The Mothman of Point Pleasant, On the Trail of Bigfoot, American Werewolves, and more than two dozen feature-length productions. In total, Small Town Monsters has released more than thirty films, along with investigative programs, web series, books, podcasts, and exclusive membership content.

From the Beyond: High Strangeness in the Bennington Triangle was made possible through the support of backers from the company’s 2025 Kickstarter campaign.

Set in rural Vermont, the documentary examines the legend of the Bennington Triangle, an area associated with reports of UFOs, ghosts, phantom lights, mysterious creatures, and a series of unexplained disappearances. At the center of the mystery is Glastenbury Mountain, where decades of unanswered questions continue to inspire speculation.

Going beyond folklore and campfire tales, the film asks a chilling question: Why is Glastenbury Mountain so inexplicable, and what happened to those who went missing?

Check out our exclusive clip below.

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This Week in Horror: DC Goes Full Body Horror, A24 Has Its Chainsaw Man, and The Bone Temple Is Finally Yours

Published

2 days ago

April 24, 2026

Luna Gray

Good week. The Clayface trailer dropped and made DC relevant to this website for the first time in a while, A24 put a director on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre reimagining, and we got some interviews worth reading. Here is all of it.

Clayface Has a Trailer, and It Is Exactly What You Want

The Clayface trailer landed Wednesday, and it is DC’s first real horror film. Not horror adjacent. Not dark. Horror. Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, an actor whose face gets disfigured by a gangster. He turns to a scientist, played by Naomi Ackie, who transforms his body into clay. Then the body horror starts.

James Watkins directed, which is the right choice. He made Speak No Evil and before that The Woman in Black, and he understands how to make dread feel physical. The screenplay is by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini. That combination should tell you everything about the tone they are going for.

A24 Has a Director for Texas Chainsaw Massacre and His Last Film Cost Under a Million Dollars

Deadline confirmed that Curry Barker is writing and directing A24’s reimagining of the 1974 original. Barker made Obsession for under a million dollars. Focus Features paid north of fifteen million to distribute it. It sits at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. A24 hired him before it even opens, which opens May 15.

Kim Henkel, who co-created the original with Tobe Hooper, is executive producing his own creation’s reimagining. That is either a blessing or a haunting. Probably both.

Astrolatry Is Going to Cannes and We Talked to the Actor Who Faced the Creature

Astrolatry is heading to the Frontières Buyers Showcase on May 16-17. The film has a sentient severed penis that grows into a ten-foot practical creature with spiky teeth. We interviewed star Ethan Daniel Corbett about what it was actually like to act against it. Short answer: genuinely terrifying. Long answer is on the site.

The Bone Temple Is Home

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple hit 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD on Tuesday. If you held out from the digital release in February, now is the time. The 4K presentation is supposed to be great. Extras include audio commentary and a deleted scene. If your gonna watch The Bone Temple, why not watch it where the snacks are better.

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Astrolatry Built a Ten-Foot Practical Penis Scorpion

Published

2 days ago

April 24, 2026

Luna Gray

A sentient severed penis grows into a ten-foot creature with spiky teeth. Genre cinema is doing fine.

Astrolatry follows Elliot, played by Ethan Daniel Corbett, who is every ingredient for quiet catastrophe assembled in one man. Socially isolated. Physically isolated. Craving dopamine and finding it in the wrong places. The romance guru pipeline, followed to its logical conclusion. Elliot does not just spiral. He loses a piece of himself, literally, and that piece does not cooperate.

Corbett described it as “a horror satire, a trippy mind-fuck roller coaster” and “a modern retelling of Maniac,” both of which are accurate and neither of which adequately prepares you. Director David Gordon is making his feature debut after shooting 14 films as a cinematographer and he is swinging for the fences.

The Creature

The effects company behind the creature has festival circuit work Corbett had already seen before signing on. He knew what they could do but he was not ready. “When I saw it in person it was kind of mind-blowing,” he said. “Everything that you see in this movie is practical. Very, very little else. It was genuinely terrifying to have a ten-foot creature coming at you with a big mouth and spiky teeth.”

A CG creature asks an actor to imagine something. A ten-foot physical creature on a set asks nothing. It just arrives. The fear on Corbett’s face in those scenes is not a performance. It is the normal reaction to a scorpion dick with sharp teeth.

Elliot

Corbett went into the character through the body. “I mainly focus on the physicality of it. Who this character is and who he is wholly. I strive in those kinds of moments as an actor.”

Gordon was explicit about the concept, the “nice guy” archetype and the overtly toxic one are the same problem, both aimed at the same object. That reading lands because Corbett does not play it as a reading. Elliot is not a symbol. He is a person.

Where It Is Going

Astrolatry is heading to the Frontières Buyers Showcase at Cannes on May 16-17. “To be able to get into that kind of room on David’s first feature is incredible,” Corbett said. “To be in front of buyers and to showcase the film and potentially get distribution through that.” Frontières is the correct room. It is full of people who understand that the most extreme premise, executed with precision, is not a punchline. It is an argument.