Day 2…

---

Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight is a 1995 American black horror comedy film^[1] directed by Ernest Dickerson from a screenplay by Mark Bishop, Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris. It stars Billy Zane, William Sadler, Jada Pinkett, Brenda Bakke, C. C. H. Pounder, Dick Miller, and Thomas Haden Church.

Demon Knight is a feature-length film presented by the HBO series Tales from the Crypt, and features scenes with the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir, as in the series) at the film’s beginning and ending.

The film was met with mostly negative reviews.^[5] It was followed by a second standalone Tales from the Crypt film, Bordello of Blood (1996).

---

Up front, I’ve never watched a single episode of Tales from the Crypt. I was told by someone whom I believed to be a rather informed source that it was knock-off Twilight Zone. Loyalty was key in 1995. In hindsight, this person was wrong.

I was in the middle of my first divorce at 21 years old searching for anything I wasn’t – that will make sense to some of you who divorced early in life. Demon Knight was playing in the background at someone’s house one night (I don’t remember where, but no one likes to drink alone) when I caught wind of Billy Zane’s redneck impression.

I still laugh at this every time I see it, and it’s been thirty years. Of course, this was two years before he struck it big in Titanic. Also appearing in this film are Death from the Bill and Ted franchise, my favorite ex-art client CCH Pounder, early Jada Pinckett, and the legendary Dick Miller (no relation).

I recalled it being a bit campy and over the top with gore, but that’s the kind of film which won me over at middle age. Rewatching for the purpose of this post, it’s achieved cult-classic status regardless of how badly it BOMBED upon its theatrical release. So did “It’s A Wonderful Life”, and you see where that got it! Every time a bell rings and blah, blah, blah.

The story is radically deep for a budget horror film, and the studio actually footed the bill for additional special effects work to be done before the release. That’s how much faith they had in Demon Knight due to the popularity of the HBO show. Unfortunately, those were 1995 special effects, not everyone back then had a Jurassic Park budget, and not all television shows translate well to the big screen. It’s aged like everything else from that era of theatrical tech, but it stands tall as a fun, mid-90’s genre film.

In conclusion, this is not one of my top horror films, but it is one of my top fun horror films; there’s a difference. Halloween is all about fun…until the victim turns their back.

Preach truths, toke jokes, and shoplift Amazon.

I wonder what Day 3 brings?

---