Best episodes:
10. Monsters Are Due On Maple Street- Despite it's low budget, this episode focuses on paranoia and the self-destruction of a neighborhood, during an apparent alien invasion. The characters are great, and the way a friendly neighborhood tears itself apart through paranoia and fear in a matter of hours shows how savage humans truly are. Bad budget, great episode.
9. Night of the Meek- A surprisingly sweet Christmas episode, about a drunken hobo who gets an annual job as a mall Santa, who thinks he's useless, but, Saint Nick passes on the torch of bringing joy to kids, giving him a life's purpose, and fulfilling his destiny.
8. The Dummy- Let's face it, dolls are creepy. This is far scarier than any "killer doll" movies. It follows a famous ventriloquist, who hides a strange secret about his dummy. More like Magic than Child's Play. Good episode.
7. A Game of Pool- A great episode. A pool player, played by Jack Klugman, wants to challenge the pool champ, "Fats" Brown. Only problem? Fats is dead. But, the pool shark gets his wish, and the ghost of Fats challenges him to a game of pool. That's the episode, a game of pool. But due to the dialogue, which goes into serious subject matter like the matters of death, the episode is lifted into the gallery of greats. Jonathan Winters, a comedic actor, plays the dramatic role of Fats Waller very well, as does Jack Klugman does as the pool shark.
6. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet- I put in this one for sheer cheesiness value, and due to being a very famous episode. William Shatner plays a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, on a plane ride, he begins to see a devious gremlin on the wing of the plane, tearing the plane apart.he may be going crazy, or it may be real, but he tries to hold the breakdown in, and the gremlin begins to taunt him, trying to urge a freakout out of him. The gremlin is infamous for it's goofy appearance, which was fixed in the remake of the episode in the 1983 movie. The ending is good, and the story over-the-top, but overall a good episode.
5. Printer's Devil- A down-on-his-luck independent newspaper editor hires on a new writer, a sleazy old guy named Smith, who helps the paper turn into a top local news source, due to Smith having a talent for catching the most juicy and nasty stories. unfortunately, the editor notices the stories are conceived sometimes right before they even happen. He begins to think Smith knows more than he's telling, and may even be the Devil himself. This is a great episode. Great actor Burgess Meredith plays Smith, with his crooked cigar and grimy voice, he's a really odd and somewhat creepy guy. He was in two other episodes, but this is his only villainous role in the show. The rest of the cast are good, too. Another episode with no real sci-fi or horror monster, and the low budget doesn't matter here. Burgess Meredith completely steals the show.
4. The Masks- This is a truly disturbing episode. Down in Louisiana, during Mardis Gras, an elderly, rich bachelor invites his remaining relatives over during his slow, last hours on his death bed. The relatives are his daughter, her two kids, and her husband. They embody different bad characteristics: self-pity, greed, sadism, and vanity. They all are selfish, and are forced to wear the masks until 12 midnight, or the bachelor will not let them have a share of his will. The twist ending is great, and most of the episode is just an onslaught of insults and harsh words. The disturbing factor comes from what happens to these people at the end, how the rich bachelor get his revenge on them for being assholes to him throughout their lives.
3. It's a Good Life- This tells the story of a small town in the Midwest. A young kid who has strange powers basically controls the townsfolk. He doesn't let them leave, and transports anything or anybody who even slightly displeases him to a mysterious alternate world known as the "cornfield". The townsfolk don't want to leave, not knowing if the world around them is normal, has been distorted by the kid, or just destroyed. No people have rolled into town for years, and no one will kill the kid out of fear of their world literally falling apart. Billy Mumy, of Lost in Space fame, (the second time a Space cast member appeared on the show) is great as the kid, who gives a truly threatening performance. There's real tension, as you never know what will set the kid off, from a disrupting noise during a music session, or people insulting him, there's no end to obscure things this kid hates. A truly unsettling episode, as killer kids are just weird.
2. Walking Distance- A great, sweet episode. It starts with a businessman's car breaking down, and he has to take a stroll down the road as his car is repaired at an auto shop. He visits his small town, which was within "walking distance", and finds it hasn't changed much. He then realizes he has walked back in time to his childhood. In an attempt to reconnect with the past, he just causes misery and grief, resulting in a bittersweet ending. A well-acted and written episode, with no real horror elements in it.
1. Living Doll- This follows the story of an asshole, his wife, and his stepdaughter. The dad gets upset when the wife and girl come home with an expensive doll.The dad throws a fit and get rid of it, but the doll continues to come back, and become more antagonistic to the father. Hands down, scariest killer doll story put to screen. You never know if it's insanity, vengeful pranks played by the mom and daughter, or the doll's really alive. It's never revealed until the end, which is a great shock ending. The acting is good, the suspense as tense as any episode, and the fact it doesn't reveal if it's the doll or not until the end if a good move, better than in any Chucky movie or a movie like Dead Silence where they say it right off the bat. Great horror episode, that proves you don't need a big budget to be scary.
Runner-ups: Eye of the Beholder, Little Girl Lost, The Little People, Five Characters in Search of an Exit, To Serve Man.
Continued in part II!(Don't forget to see my Tales/Crypt retrospective and review of Sinister on mattsmonstermovies.blogspot.com)
1. An example of the gremlin from "Nightmare": 2. Bad-ass pinball machine:
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