In case you have forgotten about Tales from the Cryptkeeper, a three-season animated series based on the Tales from the Crypt property, we thought we would use this opportunity to remind you about it. The series is frequently dismissed as just another radical animation from the 1990s, yet this is a heinous misinterpretation because it was almost flawlessly crafted and catered to the tastes of both young and older youngsters. It certainly gave any children who were awake early enough on Saturday mornings shivers. Even though it was a horror show, it featured moral lessons that the characters had to learn the hard way. The only drawback might be the mediocre voice acting. Nonetheless, it is a show worth remembering, which is why we have compiled a list of seven of the cartoon’s darkest and creepiest episodes. Are you all set?
Nature – Season 1 Episode 02
This episode revolved around two young boys who went for a family picnic and indulged in some antics without anticipating the result of their actions. Rick and Teddy go for a picnic with their family, but instead of spending time together, the two brothers engage in a game that they called Ant Wars! They set a bait for the ants, and when they would arrive, the two boys would use their various booby traps to kill the poor ants. The booby traps include shooting the ants with cola, dropping marble balls on them, and even using a makeshift minefield to kill the little creatures.
While Rick and Teddy were using a magnifying glass to focus the sun’s rays on the ants, a mysterious cloud appears, which struck a lightning bolt on the magnifying glass. The two kids then shrunk to sizes smaller than ants. The hunter had turned into the hunted as the ants capture the two boys in their mandibles and head towards the hive. Meanwhile, Rick starts to read about the ants from the insect book that his father gave him in the hopes that learning about the ants would provide them with an idea of what the ants would be doing to them.
The ants take the miniature boys to the food storage, but they manage to escape from there with the help of another bug, only to find themselves in the queen’s lair. However, the real intent of these ants is to take the boys back to the bait or the carrot cake and make them experience what it feels like to be on the other side of the fence. Their first experience as ant-sized boys was getting almost showered with dog drool. Next, a giant spider attacks them, but the boys manage to take it down with the help of the ants.
When they finally approach the cake slice, their younger sister joins the party and begins to play Ant Wars. However, she is relatively humongous and almost sits on them. Furthermore, she uses the same tricks that the boys previously used on the poor ants. They manage to make her run away by pricking her finger with a splinter when she attempted to crush them. In the end, Rick and Teddy realize the hardships they were subjecting the innocent ants to. The mysterious cloud appeared once again and enlarge them back to their original sizes.
Pleasant Screams – Season 1 Episode 03
This episode begins with a man spiraling down due to a possible vertigo effect. He wakes up in a graveyard and meets a girl named Jenny Lawson. She seems to know this man, who’s only referred to as Mr. Purdy. The two of them get attacked by undead corpses, and all their attempts to escape the graveyard turn out to be futile. Out of nowhere, a young boy appears before them. Although the boy had the key to the graveyard’s door, he flings it away. Soon, Mr. Purdy and Jenny found themselves locked up in a cell, but they end up in Tokyo.
In Tokyo, the two of them get attacked by a two-headed and flame-spitting dragon. But a superhero named Dino Man appears out of nowhere, seemingly for their rescue. However, he then attacks Mr. Purdy and Jenny, revealing himself to be a giant version of the same faceless boy from the graveyard. With the help of Dino Man, the two-headed dragon then gulps the two of them down its throat. However, instead of dying, they find themselves in the midst of ghostly flying vampires, one of whom takes Jenny into an ancient castle. Mr. Purdy initially thinks of fleeing the place without Jenny, but when he gets attacked by more creatures, he resorts to running into the castle.
At the castle, the faceless boy reveals himself in the form of a knight in shining armor and attacked Mr. Purdy, who finds Jenny locked in a room with more of the flying creatures. He manages to open the door of the room, but the knight wasn’t far behind. In a desperate attempt to save himself and Jenny, Mr. Purdy jumps with her from the window but went into another spiral and ended up in a swamp on a boat. Here, they get chased by a giant blob and get thrown into a cabin in the woods, where a Frankenstein-styled monster attacks them.
After a tough battle and with a bit of luck, Mr. Purdy manages to not only save Jenny but also subdues the beast. It turns out the beast was, in fact, the faceless boy, who in turn was a boy named Darryl, whose teacher was Mr. Purdy, and whose classmate was Jenny, and this was all a part of his dream. It turns out that Darryl didn’t like Mr. Purdy’s subject and wanted a transfer, but Mr. Purdy wouldn’t allow that.
Naturally, the boy would get bored through the course of the class and fell asleep. Jenny and Mr. Purdy forced him to wake up, ending the continuation of this horrific sequence of events. The next day Mr. Purdy allowed Darryl to take a transfer from his Latin class to whichever subject Darryl preferred. This story was based on Pleasant Screams! from Tales from the Crypt Issue number 37.
Ghost Ship – Season 1 Episode 13
Two friends Ben and Mike, take Ben’s father’s yacht for a spin into the sea, despite the fact that Ben has no prior experience of driving a vessel, or well, any vehicle for that matter. As was expected, they hit a huge rock that damages the underside of the yacht. Soon, the yacht starts brimming with water, and by nightfall, it almost drowns, except their surfing boats. However, to their utter relief, they see another ship approaching them. Upon getting aboard this ship, they realize it belongs to ancient pirates.
As Ben starts to display his skills with a pirate sword, pirate skeletons come to life and begin to hunt the boys across the length and breadth of the ship. However, they get saved by the Captain of the ship named Captain Redbeard. Four hundred years ago, the Captain was locked in his cabin by the ship’s mutinous crew, who wanted the details about a large chunk of treasure, but they didn’t know that the treasure was cursed.
Captain Redbeard buried it on Skull Island, yeah, the same one. However, the curse from the treasure transformed the Captain and his crew into undead beings, destined to live until the curse was lifted. And the only way to do so was through sinking it to the bottom of the sea. Captain Redbeard seeks the help of Ben and Mike to sink the cursed treasure. Although they agree to help Captain Redbeard, their prime intent is to steal from the treasure, and they totally disregard the curse factor. Ben, Mike, and Captain Redbeard manage to get off the pirate ship in a small boat and head towards Skull Island.
In Skull Island, Ben and Mike get attacked by swarms of bugs and giant lizards. They ultimately find the treasure, but instead of sinking it, they opened it, only to find Captain Redbeard inside. It turns out the whole story was just a heinous plan to get the two boys to join his crew because they deviated from the plan of sinking the treasure and instead opened the treasure crate. However, they manage to escape with their surf boats and were later found by a commercial ship. Mike and Ben owned up to their mistakes and took up jobs as junior lifeguards so that they could repay Ben’s father for the destroyed yacht.
Game Over – Season 2 Episode 01
Two friends skip school to play video games, but they get so engrossed that they continue playing even though it was night and way past their bedtime. Their habit was clearly engulfing and consuming them, and they were about to learn a lesson the hard way. Later that night, a monster from the games comes to life at Vince’s place, but the friends didn’t initially notice him. However, the monstrous being soon made its presence known to the friends. They escape a room full of zombies only to run into vampiric bats.
They hunt down the creatures with a good game of baseball! Weird! But the night was far from over. After escaping a giant leech, they find themselves facing a fierce werewolf from the game. They get into a sewer to save themselves and destroy the werewolf with the cover of the maintenance hole. However, zombies were running amock the city streets. While walking down the sewers, they get trapped only to get visited by the grim reaper. In a not-so-happy ending, the Grim Reaper sends the boys into the video game.
Uncle Harry’s Horrible House of Horrors – Season 2 Episode 10
Uncle Harry and Aunt Dorothy take Jeremy out to a theme park for his birthday, but Uncle Harry is clearly an extremely skeptical man who would go to any lengths to have his way. It’s not that he’s a bad person, but he just sorts of likes things his way and has strong opinions about almost all the rides and attractions of the park. After much ado, Uncle Harry finally agrees to take Jeremy to an attraction named the House of Horrors.
As the ride begins, Uncle Harry begins with his usual logical and rational explanations behind all the ghosts and monsters that come their way. In a strange turn of events, Uncle Harry and Jeremy’s ride takes a wrong turn, and they enter a place that would change Uncle Harry’s opinion about the supernatural. While Jeremy is thrilled because he thinks that it’s all a part of the ride, Uncle Harry gradually begins to learn that something is up with the place. Bats come out flying of a foggy sky and almost attack Uncle Harry.
As the second stage of the ride, they enter a swampy place with tree branches groping Uncle Harry’s face and snake-like creatures mysteriously appearing under his hat. But the older man soon gets pulled up and out of the ride by a bunch of sentient tree branches. Unaware that his uncle was gone for a while, Jeremy continues being fascinated by the strange things he sees from the ride.
Their next level is a graveyard, where corpses start to come out of their graves. One of them tries to pull him out of the car, but Jeremy insists that Uncle Harry stays in the car. Finally, they manage to go beyond a swinging pendulum with razor-sharp edges, and out they were. Uncle Harry acquires the ability to enjoy life through the depths of his imagination. When he comes out with Jeremy, the six-year-old convinces his uncle that none of what he saw was real, and Harry realized that he did, in fact, have fun.
Waste Not, Haunt Not – Season 3 Episode 03
Two young boys carry out various science experiments for their science fair the following day, but things go horribly wrong. Their mosquito repellant ends up attracting bugs, and the bicycle tire patch ended up melting the wheels. Their latest attempt was making a solution that erased ink, but that just dissolved the clothes of one of the boys. The boys, Steven and Richard, disregard the local safety requirements for the disposal of toxic waste and dump in the ooze in a bog. The science kids should have known better than polluting the environment, and now they’ll have to face the consequences of their actions in the form of a vicious bog monster that gets created due to a biochemical reaction. The bog monster follows Richard and Steven to their house and breaks into it.
The two boys messed with mother nature, and naturally, the unnatural abomination was now onto them to exact its greasy vengeance. Instead of thinking about a way to destroy it, the boys decide to present it at their science fair. Well, because they created it. In order to contain it, they decided to use a vacuum cleaner, but all that they managed to contain was their pet cat. The monster chased them all through the house, passing through crevices, taps, sinks, etc.
And ultimately, it caught up to the kids and pulled them inside its interiors to show that their toxic waste was still in the barrel, and hence, they didn’t create it. The bog monster lived in the bog, and it hated the fact that the kids polluted its home. Steven and Richard pulled the barrel out of the monster and decided to dispose of it the proper way. Well, a few lessons have certainly been learned.
Town Gathering – Season 3 Episode 10
Aaron likes to joke a lot and prank others, especially her mother. After her last prank, Aaron and her mayor’s mom have a bit of an argument, and Aaron leaves. She waits in the middle of nowhere to pull a prank on her grandfather but instead, she ends up tricking a lost man named Arnold, who was desperately looking for any hamlet, town, village, or just any settlement whatsoever.
Initially, he was furious and agitated with Aaron’s prank but soon cooled off once he heard that Aaron lives in a nearby town of just about 30 or 40 people. All the others had left after the town’s mine had shut down. The following day her mother informs her that some businessman’s associate had contacted her for a new mining project. Soon the man arrives, and it was none other than Arnold. While taking a stroll, Aaron was wondering if she really does go too far when she cracks her wolf-cry jokes on people. However, to her utter shock and horror, she sees a ship arrive in her town, and from it came strange aliens.
She rushes to her mother to tell her about the development, but of course, she doesn’t believe Aaron and assumes it is just another prank. However, Arnold was present there too, and he seemed to take an interest in Aaron’s story and agreed to check out the place for himself with her. The two of them go to the spot where Aaron spotted the ship, and Arnold revealed that the aliens were, in fact, his clients who had come to the unprotected and remote town of Deep Woods to use the humans to replenish their food source.
Aaron manages to escape the aliens and attempts to warn her mother again, but she still wouldn’t believe her. But fortunately for Aaron, her grandfather not only came for her help but also believed in her story. However, Arnold messed up the deal with the aliens, who called the deal off and aborted their plan. Aaron had finally learned her lesson the hard way, though.