Even a Crypt Keeper can’t live forever. Thirty years ago on July 19, 1996, HBO brought the burial shroud down over Tales From the Crypt, the horror anthology series based on the classic EC Comics series and emceed by the famed skeletal horror host whose intros and outros became iconic outside of the series.
During its seven-season run, the show had become one of the network’s crown “ghouls,” surviving ratings highs and lows, and becoming a darling of the since-discontinued Cable ACE Awards. But the pun-loving Crypt Keeper’s last tale — an animated offering called “The Third Pig,” based on the classic fable “The Three Little Pigs” — provided a somewhat ignominious end to the spooky fun.
By the time Tales From the Crypt entered its final season the series had already spawned two feature films, 1995’s fun Demon Knight and the more tawdry Bordello of Blood, which arrived in theaters the following year, one month after the series went off the air. That represented a massive shift from when the series was introduced in 1989 as a fresh, sexy horror series with A-list directors (think names like Robert Zemeckis and Richard Donner) and actors (the roll call included Demi Moore, Kyle MacLachlan, and Whoopi Goldberg) meant to bring prestige to the then-fledgling premium cable channel.
But for a show that developed that level of prestige — and cultivated a legion of fans in the process — the final season is often considered a rusty nail that took too long to nail into the coffin.
“I felt like that last season had more of a Hammer Films feel to it,” says Mike Spatola, one of the show’s makeup effects supervisors. Production moved to England during that final year as a cost-cutting measure that was hoped to reinvigorate an exhausted crew. The relocation led to some unique guest stars — like a pre-fame Ewan McGregor and Daniel Craig — but failed to do much to give the show a new lease on life.
Then again, going back to Season 2, every season was shaping up to be the last. So when the English crew finished filming the last live action episode, “Ear Today… Gone Tomorrow,” starring Robert Lindsay and Richard Johnson, they didn’t harbor many illusions about coming back.
“To tell you the truth, I thought that when we were done here [in the U.S.] that was that,” said series costume designer Warden Nei. “I didn’t even know they were gonna go [to London].”
Those that didn’t already make the leap to the English production — like long-time cinematographers Levie Isaaks and Rick Bota — had already been let go. Fortunately, most of the crew was already planning to move to the new spin-off series, a sci-fi anthology dubbed Perversions of Science.
In the meantime, no one planned on how to say a proper goodbye to the Crypt Keeper. That’s why the series wrapped up with an animated episode that had been commissioned over a year before the cancellation axe came down.
“The Third Pig” was the work of Bill Kopp and Patrick Ventura and re-framed “The Three Little Pigs” around the surviving pig who is put on trial for the bloody deaths of his companions. In a series known for its scares, there’s little of that in this animated episode. Instead, it’s more of a kooky story that’s told entirely in rhyme. The first two little pigs are also vulgar and crass in comparison to the eponymous third pig, who ultimately has better survival instincts.
Kopp was working in the animation department at Warner Bros., and had become friendly with the secretary of super-producer Joel Silver, who had co-created the series. “It became a joke because I would do this everyday,” Kopp recalls. “[She’d say] ‘Oh, Bill, I’m sorry, he’s out, but I’ll let him know.’ It just kind of went on like that.”
At the time, Kopp had recently sold the short-lived animated series, Eek the Cat, to Nelvana Studios, an animation outfit run by Toper Taylor. Taylor was already in the Tales family with Nelvana having produced the animated series, Tales From the Cryptkeeper, which ran on ABC for two seasons that aired from 1993 to 1994. “The Crypt partners were thinking of an animated series, and we were coming to an end,” says series producer Alan Katz. “That was in its planning stages and it was going to be handled by people completely different from us.”
Because there were no rules, the episode could be as gory as can be — which it certainly is. For example, the two little pigs eaten by the Big Bad Wolf (voiced by Bobcat Goldthwait) have their body parts scattered around their house post-feeding. And the episode ends with the lupine aggressor — complete with exposed brain — eating the remaining pig alive between two slices of bread, declaring: “Pork is the other light meat.”
“I had very little contact with anyone,” says Kopp about working on “The Third Pig.” “They just turned us loose and there were zero script notes. It was a great feeling to have that freedom to just go absolutely crazy.”
Speaking of crazy, the vocal cast was pretty bizarre; besides Goldthwait, the featured voices included Brad Garrett — who would have his breakout role in Everybody Loves Raymond that fall — as well as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles performer Cam Clarke, and Winnie the Pooh himself, Jim Cummings, who based his voice work as the judge on actor, Strother Martin. (Sadly, there are no Winnie the Pooh references found in the episode.)
For those who worked on the show, “The Third Pig” holds mixed feelings. In many ways, it’s a reminder of how over the series they all were. “I know it’s there,” said Katz. “The expectation was that we were going to bring Tales From the Crypt to an end and slide into the thing that became Perversions of Science. … But I was so done, I wasn’t even thinking about the end of Crypt. I was thinking about the beginning of the next thing that, to me, was much more exciting.”
Unfortunately, the “next thing” was not exciting for anyone associated. Perversions of Science is a story unto itself but, in short, lasted a whopping 13 episodes and is a wild story all its own.
“The Third Pig” is far from the worst Tales From the Crypt episode, but it’s also far from a satisfying series finale. There’s no documentation available online announcing the show’s end, or how the finale was reported in the press. In a way, the episode’s existence represents the series’s journey over the last thirty years since airing: ignored, misrepresented, and waiting for reevaluation.
The good news is that Tales from the Crypt now has a new life on Shudder, which is the new streaming home for the series. That lifts the Crypt Keeper and his many tales out of the YouTube-pirated graveyard that they’ve been trapped in for the past 30 years. Now fans — and newbies — won’t have to huff and puff to pay a visit to this Crypt.
Look for Kristen Lopez’s book, Welcome, Boils and Ghouls!: The Complete Oral History of Tales From the Crypt, coming in 2027 from Running Press
