TV General : Tales From the Crypt comics vs. tv show.

Tales From the Crypt comics vs. tv show.

The comics on which the show is based were from the 40s and 50s. They were cancelled due to the strict comic book code set in the 50s.

One big difference is the comics had 3 narrator characters taking turns introducing the stories: The Old Witch, The Vault Keeper, and the Crypt Keeper. The Crypt Keeper's appearance in the comics was much different than the show; he was just an old man. The Crypt Keeper is a hybrid of the Vault Keeper and the Witch.

The comics were more teen-friendly. The show was much darker. Where the show had bloody dead bodies, the comic would show unrealistic almost inhumane of dead bodies.

Sometimes there'd be huge changes. In Death of Some Salesman, in the show, he's selling fake grave plot insurance to scam people. He stumbles to Ma and Pa's house due to getting the wrong address. He tries to scam them but they figure it out and target him.

In the comic, his car breaks down in front of the hicks' house. At the end it is revealed he's selling a meat grinder. It's implied they're going to use it on him but his death isn't shown. Unlike the show, the salesman is actually trying to get away but the couple insist on buying his product.

In the show, this was a decapitated head in the tv, but the comic version tones it down and makes it less realistic:






Re: Tales From the Crypt comics vs. tv show.

The show wasn't marketed to kids, was it? Plus it was on premium cable. Who was it marketed to? People who read the comics when they were younger? I wonder if it was a popular comic or if it was just a lot of cheap stories available for purchase. I haven't seen many episodes but they seemed a little juvenile so maybe they were always aiming at children or maybe they realized by that point who was watching it maybe they were banking on nostalgia.

Re: Tales From the Crypt comics vs. tv show.

I've never seen the show, but I have read a few of these comics. There were about three stories an issue and some are pretty bad. I can't imagine they used them for the show. EC, the publisher behind Tales From the Crypt also published a similar sci-fi comic called Weird Science. They have the same mix of bad and good, but all are fairly enjoyable. You'll see a lot of the ideas used in those comics pop up elsewhere.

Re: Tales From the Crypt comics vs. tv show.

All the TftC episodes are available on Youtube, so whatever story you're familiar with from the comic, watch the episode equivalent, and you can see how they did it. They only used the basic premise of the comic story and fleshed it out, adding changes, grounding it, and in most cases making it much better.

The Weird Science movie in 1985 is an adaptation of the Weird Science comics, but no one knows that. They used the premise of "Made for the Future" which was only a few pages long and made a full-length film out of it.
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