Tales from the Cryptkeeper

I remember watching this show fondly growing up. It brings back a lot of memories and it is a good show to watch if you love horror anthologies. While some episodes were really good like Gorilla's Paw or While The Cat's Away, some were less memorable like Dead Men Don't Jump or Too Cool For School. The animation isn't fantastic by any means but it does give nostalgia to viewers who grew up with the show. Like with other horror anthologies each episode does deal with morality tales and because of that we see character growth and development from the characters and we also relate to them in certain ways.

That said, this series was an animated version of Tales From The Crypt. If anyone enjoys this series I also recommend watching the live action version of this show as it is just as good and they have more episodes based on the same comic books that came out in the 50s.

TALES FROM THE CRYPTKEEPER was an animated kid's show spin-off from the much better known TALES FROM THE CRYPT horror TV series. It ran over three seasons between 1993 and 1999, consisting of 39 episodes hosted by a green goblin-looking Cryptkeeper, voiced by the original John Kassir from CRYPT. Given that this is a family-friendly, gore-free show compared to the adult version, I found it surprisingly enjoyable when I sat through it this past week after it was uploaded to Amazon Prime.

The stories are fast and furious, typically involving child protagonists getting mixed up with various supernatural creatures or events. As is the norm in these shows, humans turn out to be the greatest monsters of all, and a lot of the beasts aren't so bad after all. Plenty of wince-inducing puns from the Cryptkeeper and his buddies, alongside workable animation and enthusiastic voice actors. I imagine teenagers today would be less than impressed as animation has got a lot more sophisticated these days, but as a child of the 1990s this brought back the era for me in an entertaining way.

Tales from the Cryptkeeper(1993-1999) is a 3 season animated series currently available on Amazon Prime. Much like Tales from the Crypt, the series is narrated by the Cryptkeeper and is made up of short stories with important lessons where if you're not on your best behavior, or you make the wrong decision, you may end up meeting the Cryptkeeper face to face.

The series is directed by Laura Shepherd (The Care Bears), Rick Marshall (Beetlejuice Animated Series), Mike Csunyoscka (The Ren & Stimpy Show) and Jessie Thomson (Caillou). The voices are primarily provided by John Kassir (Tales from the Crypt), Elizabeth Hanna (Mega Man Legends) and David Hemblen (Tommy Boy).

Each season is 13 episodes and the first season focuses more on ghosts and ghouls and takes place primarily in present day. Season 2 merges Tales from the Crypt with the 1950s comic book series The Vault Keeper and a witch from that series that was a lot of fun. Season 2 also added in different eras and a stronger focus on acting right or bad things will happen to you. Season 3 returns to the Cryptkeeper being the primary character and a continued focus on lessons learned and what can happen to you if you misbehave. The animation has a Ninja Turtles feel to it, ie early 90s, and who doesn't love a good animated horror cartoon?

Overall, this is a tremendous animated horror series that is an absolute must see. I would score this an 8/10 and strongly recommend it.

I got to say it was quite interesting to have a cartoon based on a TV show come to life (pun intended) with the same amount of macabre and frights that the live action Tales from the Crypt gave us. However, I really wish they never added the Old Witch or the Vault Keeper in Season 2 as I found them to be very annoying. And season three should have had the same animation from the first two seasons because the animation for season 3 looked like it was meant to be comedic and didn't really have the same frightening atmosphere.

This was an awesome cartoon! Great stories, quality animation and voice work, nice stories and monsters etc that did not talk down to us kids, it was great. Wooot wooooooooot!!