Tales from the Crypt (TV Series) Easel Kill Ya (1991) User Reviews

I love Tim Roth

[ga-bsi · 7/10 · 16 January 2010]

Although Tales from The Crypt was always a rather cheesy show, and spawned some B grade movies; I always enjoyed it. But I especially enjoyed this episode because Tim Roth is in the leading role.

The episodes script is slightly thin and a bit dull, but somehow he still manages to be an interesting character; and show the good and bad within himself in half an hour. He's also able to be convincing as an artist, and not look completely unrealistic when he is actually shown painting, unlike many actors who just end up looking uncomfortable.

As always Tim Roth shines and saves something that would have been rather lame if a less skilled actor had been cast as Jack. It is true that the twist is rather predictable, and that you don't really feel shocked or even sorry for Jack at the end; but you do feel that you haven't completely wasted your time watching this episode.

Worthy episode

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 26 April 2011]

Struggling artist Jack Craig (an excellent performance by Tim Roth) discovers a winning formula for creating successful works of gruesome art by painting people he's recently murdered. Director John Harrison and writer Larry Wilson handle the familiar theme of the tormented artist in an intelligent, absorbing, and wickedly sarcastic way as they explore the darker side of human nature: Although the basic tone is grimly serious, there's a deliciously vicious streak of nastily amusing pitch-black humor evident throughout, with a real doozy of a bitterly ironic conclusion. Roth's always intense and arresting presence really holds everything together; he receives able support from the fetching Roya Megnot as the sweet Sharon, William Atherton as wealthy and obsessive morbid art collector Malcolm Mayflower, and Debra Mooney as snarky art gallery owner Ellen. Nancy Fish has a funny bit as Jack's snippy old bat landlady. Moreover, this episode makes a creepy and disturbing point about the ruthless extremes one is willing to resort to in order to achieve success. Rick Bota's slick cinematography and J. Peter Robinson's spare moody score both further enhance the overall sound quality of this up to par show.

Seen it before but still great

[shellytwade · 8/10 · 7 April 2022]

We've seen these style of movies/shows before dating all the way back to the 60's but even with that this is still a pretty great episode. A large part of the reason is Tim Roth's performance is on point and perfectly cast as the painter. This is a dark one but definitely check it out.

Those bloody artists!

[Coventry · 7 March 2006]

This "Tales from the Crypt" episode has a rather random and unoriginal plot but it's entirely saved by Tim Roth's intriguing performance. Roth is a classy British actor so it's somewhat surprising that he agreed to star in this cheesy American TV-show. Nevertheless, he's great as always and he even looks genuinely uncanny from time to time as the down and out painter who lost his inspiration since he stopped drinking. His sexy female AA-colleague wants to help him, but the only way for Jack to re-discover his talent is by making ultra-morbid paintings for a rich and eccentric collector. Of course, in order to make these paintings, Jack has to stage the tableau first, which leads him to bloody murder… The concept of crazy artists using real people for their work is very popular and old. Roger Corman used it in 1960 already for his "Bucket of Blood" and the idea has been imitated ever since. It was to expect that "Tales from the Crypt" would borrow this familiar storyline as well, but the result is nonetheless entertaining. There's a fair amount of gore and even a bit female nudity to admire. The ironic ending is a bit too predictable, though. Next to Tim Roth, there's also the splendid (and hugely underrated) William Atherton as the obsessive art collector. Another great way to kill 25 minutes of your life!

An OK tale from the crypt.

[poolandrews · 6/10 · 18 March 2007]

Tales from the Crypt: Easel Kill Ya starts with struggling artist Jack Craig (Tim Roth) who hasn't sold a painting in over a year having his latest collection of work rejected for exhibition, frustrated Jack has to change his style. One night he witnesses an accident in which one of his neighbours is killed, intrigued & fascinated he takes photo's & paints an abstract piece of art based on them & sells it to Malcolm Mayflower (William Atherton) a collector of morbid art who pays him a lot of money & Malcolm says there's plenty more if he can deliver more paintings. The temptation is too much for Jack to resist but he needs inspiration & ideas...

This Tales from the Crypt story was episode 8 from season 3, the first of two Tales from the Crypt episodes directed by John Harrison I thought Easel Kill Ya was an OK story but nothing special. The script by Larry Wilson was based on a story from 'The Vault of Horror' comic book & is a serious in tone horror tale that isn't the best Tales from the Crypt episode ever but it's alright & it's watchable enough. The expected twist at the end isn't particularly memorable & it's rather predictable plus the build up is a bit laboured & dull. There's not much fun here & the comic tone found in the best Tales from the Crypt episodes is sorely lacking. An average episode just as season 3 was getting really good.

The production design is good & it's well made, there's some gore here including a hammer stuck in someones head, someone is impaled on garden shears & someone has their head bashed in. It's not scary & feels more like a character study than anything else. The acting by Tim Roth saves this story as he puts in a good performance.

Easel Kill Ya isn't the best tale from the crypt but it's not the worst, it's OK but not one to bust a gut to see.

One of the best episodes of the show ever!

[TalesfromTheCryptfan · 9/10 · 25 November 2017]

A struggling artist named Jack Craig (Tim Roth) is trying to come up with art that can sell well, so after accidentally killing someone thus gives me an idea of drawing murdered people. So he sells art to a very wealthy rich man (William Atherthorn) who has a collection of morbid art will pay him a thousand dollars each for his artworks, Jack goes around killing people and painting their dead bodies on his portraits.

Co-starring Debra Mooney, this is one of the better episodes of the series! sure the plot has been done before in Bucket of Blood or Color Me Blood Red by HG Lewis. This episode is directed by John Harrison who did Tales from the Darkside the movie and did the music for Creepshow/Day of the Dead and did a nice job here, Roth did a fabulous performance as the struggling murderous artist and it's quite a well done episode with nice cinematography and nice score plus a tragic dark twist in the end makes this one of the better episodes of season 3.

Easel Kill Ya

[Ludovico237 · 6/10 · 24 October 2020]

Very well played by Tim Roth, this episode is very interesting with this huge ending with 2 completely insane falls (discovery of the brush covered in blood by the Police and murder of the doctor who was to operate on Sharon).

This episode is very good and captivating the whole way, great job!

Good tale from the crypt

[bellino-angelo2014 · 8/10 · 19 June 2021]

Jack Craig (Tim Roth) is an artist that has a bad temper, drinks and has problems in selling his work. One night however, when he makes a man in the floor below fall to the ground and die, has an idea: takes a photo of the body and then paints it. He then sells this painting to wealthy art collector Malcolm Mayflower (William Atherton) and it finally succedds. Jack then thinks that for continuing having success this way he has to kill people at every occasion he becomes angry, and he still receives lots of money. However, when he accidentally hurts his girlfriend to death and she is taken to hospital, he hasn't the money for paying the delicate operation that could save her and when he comes out, he sees a man with a briefcase and strangles him to death. After he paints his body, he sells it and has the money, but once in the hospital he finds out that the man who could have saved his girlfriend was the surgeon he just killed in the parking lot, and even police arrives...

This was a great episode and I think all the credit goes to Tim Roth as he is used to play these sort of characters, and handles the role well. This is reason enough for seeing the episode at least once.

"The artist's touch..."

[Foreverisacastironmess123 · 8/10 · 29 August 2015]

I like this one, I can enjoy the stories that are centred on themes of artwork and I like how this story gets into just how serious real artists can be when it comes to their work and creativity. I've always tried to put a little bit of my self into these silly things, including all of the uh, magnificence that you see, before you(!) Tim Roth is very good and I will say that it is his performance that holds this entire episode together and makes it noteworthy, but I also reckon that his naturally intense and deep style of acting kinda makes him stick out like a sore thumb in the kooky world of the show. He might have tried playing up to the fun of his rather crazy character a little! But if I didn't know better, I'd say that he looks bored out of his mind. But nevertheless he's still effective as a struggling artist desperate for inspiration who's a former alcoholic who still has major anger issues, and who slowly loses what little sanity he has left as he discovers the deadly muse that gives him what he's looking for: By murdering people and sketching out their last moments... He meets a disquieting and very rich man who's obsessed with imagery of death and who pays him handsomely for his macabre works of art and who urges him to fulfil his what he sees as his greatest potential and deliver his true masterpiece at any price. I think I see some slight similarities to that grimiest of 80s classics "Driller Killer" "Jack" isn't exactly a sympathetic type of guy, as you soon find out in the story he's a pretty ruthless murderer, but there's still something moderately sad about the ending, absurdly hackneyed though it is even by Crypt standards! So the overly-nice girl from his support group who could've possibly been the one to save him from himself, upon discovering just what he uses to paint with, finally gets a clue that she's in over her head and flees in terror, only to promptly get hit by a car and suffer brain damage that requires a very specific kind of doctor to hopefully fix, except then Jack, needing the money for her operation, kills a man in the hospital parking lot in order to 'paint' the results, and he delivers the splatter of gore on a canvas and gets the money, but then it turns out to have been the guy who could've saved her life! And, by leaving his little paint brush at the scene of the brutal crime he leads the police right to him as you see in the great closing shot that has Roth staring right into the camera as the hospital blinds close around his face. You've gotta love that wonderful classic E.C. cruel karmic sense of justice! My favourite thing about this tale is William Atherton of Ghostbusters fame as "Mr.Mayflower", an elegantly sinister fellow who's an avid collector of the depiction of human death and misery of all kinds, and who makes a Faustian bargain of sorts with Jack as he encourages him to give in to his violent impulses if he must in order to create what he considers true art. It's almost as though he wants him to paint his own dark soul so that he can claim it as his own... This is a very straightforward story that doesn't really have any surprises that most won't see coming, but to me it's a very well done, grim and edgy episode of the third season that's very worth seeing once in a while. Later, and please don't ever be tempted into making a killing by making *a* killing!!

Shocking and clever episode

[hnt_dnl · 10/10 · 20 July 2022]

I used to watch Tales from the Crypt when I was younger, but can't recall if I've ever seen all of the episodes. I only remember certain ones vividly and it's actually a good thing because it's almost like watching the series for the first time. In any long-running anthology series there will be episodes that range from good to bad, but thankfully, this is definitely one of the good ones! One of the hooks of the episodes was that it actually had a lot of A-list actors and stars in them, some before they hit it big and even some while they were big stars. This clever and engrossing episode stars the great Tim Roth before he hit it big. This episode came out in '91 and Roth didn't become a household name until he starred in Quentin Tarantino's early classic Reservoir Dogs in '92, then Roth went onto garner an Oscar nomination for Rob Roy in '95. This episode was the early indicator of Roth's onscreen charisma. In this episode, Roth plays a struggling, troubled artist Jack who attends a group meeting for people with OCD as a way of battling his inner homicidal demons. At one of the meetings, he meets a beautiful, sweet woman and fellow compulsive (played by Roya Megnot from the daytime soap opera Loving fame) who becomes attached to Jack and falls in love with him despite his dangerous nature. Jack draws inspiration for his paintings after accidentally killing one of his neighbors and he actually does a painting of the neighbor's corpse using in his own blood. An eccentric, rich local (well played by William Atherton of Ghostbusters and Die Hard fame) takes special interest in Jack's paintings and commissions him to paint more bloody artworks. The episode snowballs from there with several shocking twists and turns. Roth is superb and carries it and is supported by a solid cast. I'm glad to have no re-collection of this one as the ending caught me by surprise. I'm actually re-watching the series in order and this was the first one in a while that really stuck with me after seeing it. Definitely one of the best episodes of the series.

An very mixed episode of Tales

[SleepTight666 · 5/10 · 17 August 2009]

An very mixed episode of Tales, on one hand it did have a few memorable death scenes. The most memorable one being a dream in which the main character hammered some woman's skull in.

But the truth is, it was pretty predictable and the dialog left much to be desired. Tim Roth is a good actor and he played a memorable character, but the rest of the cast as mostly forgettable.

The end of the episode was extremely predictable, he kills a man to save the girl not knowing that the man was the only guy that could have saved her.

Another thing that bothered me was the woman's stupidity, he almost killed her after sex and she still waits for him at his house?

Easel Kill Ya

[a_baron · 8/10 · 23 August 2015]

Jack is a fine artist. Actually, there is nothing fine about his work, an angry, short-tempered individual with a liking for drink, he is on the wagon, but is as hot-headed as ever the night a downstairs neighbour annoys him playing loud music on the fire escape. With a little help from Jack, the man falls to his death; at worse this is involuntary manslaughter, but it is also an opportunity. Taking Polaroid shots of the victim on the ground, he paints a death scene and flogs the canvas for a tidy sum to a ghoulish collector he has recently heard about, a man who promises him ten times as much for his next work.

At this point you might suspect this guy is Old Nick himself, but there is only one Devil here, the one inside Jack's head. He accepts the commission though, and his next victim is his elderly landlady, whose death most definitely cannot be classed as involuntary manslaughter or involuntary anything. After dispatching her he takes the preparatory photographs and then paints her corpse using her blood.

By this time he has picked up a love interest, but there is no love here, and no salvation for Jack. There is no real twist in the ending, but it has to end badly; what sort of world would it be if men like Jack were allowed to get away with serial murder, even in the name of art?

The composer of Creepshow directed this

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 10 May 2024]

This episode is directed by John Harrison, who directed eight episodes of Tales from the Dark Side, the movie of that film, the Dune miniseries on SyFy and oh yeah, wrote the theme for Creepshow. You can learn more about him in this interview we did last year. It was written by Larry Wilson, who wrote five episodes of this show as well as Beetlejuice and The Little Vampire.

"Greetings, art lovers. Vincent van Ghoul here with another morbid masterpiece sure to paint you into a coroner. (cackles) Hmmmmm. Something's not quite right. Ah, yes. (stabs the beating heart next to his fruit bowl) Now that's a still life. (cackles) Tonight's tale concerns a painter who's tired of people giving his work the brush. I call this pestilent portrait of the artist as a young mangler: "Easel Kill Ya.""

Jack Craig (Tim Roth), whose name is a combination of EC Comics artists Jack Davis and Johnny Craig, is a starving artist who drinks and has rage issues that he hopes to solve with a support group, Obsessives Anonymous. That's where he meets Sharon (Roya Megnot) and hopes that she too can save him. Of course, he still gets angry all the time and ends up killing a neighbor, but uses the photo of the crime scene to finally sell his artwork. Malcolm Mayflower (William Atherton) loves gore and he wants more of Craig's art.

Sharon needs an operation, so he keeps killing and selling art. Sadly, the first person he kills is the man who was rushing through a parking lot to get to the hospital to operate on her. Oh EC, your endings.

This story is based on "Easel Kill Ya" from Vault of Horror #31. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Johnny Craig. In the original story, an artist makes money from painting violence but when he's married, he starts to paint beautiful things. When she becomes sick, he brings a painting to his patron and he won't buy it. He kills the man, who ends up being the doctor who could save his wife.