MORAL PANIC MONTH #2: Tales from the Crypt, by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein (1950)

Type of Media: Comic Book

If you’re only familiar with the 90s TV show, you might be really confused right now. How could anyone panic about Tales from the Crypt? None of the stories are particularly edgy or scarring and the Crypt Keeper is one of the least-threatening horror icons ever created. But the original Tales from the Crypt came out in the 1950s, and back then its depictions of gore, violence, and monsters were considered outrageous. Allegations leveled at Tales from the Crypt and similar comics would lead to self-censorship in the comic book industry that lasted more than 50 years.

Like the TV show, the Tales from the Crypt comic is an anthology horror series, with each issue containing four stories. The stories are framed as tales from the Crypt Keeper, an old man with a warty face and long white hair, who sometimes interjects with terrible macabre puns. Generally the stories involve people who do something immoral and, as a result, meet some kind of horrific, ironic fate. Sometimes, though, the protagonist is innocent and just has scary stuff happen to them for no real reason.
 
Like almost every anthology series, Tales from the Crypt is a mixed bag. It has some legitimately good little horror stories, but just as often they’re bland and predictable, unable to stand up to media-savvy modern audiences. One thing that helps Tales from the Crypt in this regard, however, is that some of these stories are saved by a sense of mean-spiritedness that is hilariously thorough.

Example: one of the early issues has a story about a group of bored, rich college kids who decide to buy an old spellbook and work some magic rituals for kicks (because who hasn’t been there before, amirite?). Three of the kids decide to prank the fourth by pretending to get attacked by a monster, and then shut the fourth kid in a coffin they emptied. That kid winds up getting buried alive accidentally, and the others all contract leprosy from the body they took out of the coffin.
 
It’s all pretty tame by today’s standards, but in the 1950s Tales from the Crypt actually shocked quite a few people. Among those alarmed: psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, who in 1954 published the book Seduction of the Innocent condemning comic books as harmful to children. In it he argued that the gruesome images in Tales from the Crypt contributed to juvenile delinquency. Seduction of the Innocent started a frenzy among parents, who now feared that comics like Weird Science and Blue Beetle were enticing their youngsters into lives of moral degeneracy.
 
The resulting stir culminated in a Senate hearing on juvenile delinquency that called Fredric Wertham and Tales from the Crypt creator Bill Gaines as expert witnesses. The comic book industry got scared at the idea of government censorship, and instituted the Comics Code Authority to police themselves. The Code banned violence, gore, and monsters in comics, and forbid usage of the words ‘horror’ and ‘terror’ in titles, which killed off not only Tales from the Crypt, but also its sister comics The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear. 
 
Seduction of the Innocent wasn’t a scientifically sound book, as Wertham distorted sample sizes and interviewed kids with a long history of delinquency problems so his evidence would support his conclusion, but he did have a point. Kids probably shouldn’t have been reading Tales from the Crypt. While not too heavy on the gore by today’s standards, some of the illustrations are legitimately disturbing. Most of the time Tales from the Crypt’s art suggests its violence rather than showing it, but every once in awhile it’ll cross the line and show a bloody stump or a woman with her face ripped off. 
 
Tales from the Crypt might not be for you if you’re particularly squeamish, but if you’re looking for some pulpy visual horror you may want to check out some old 50s back issues. It works particularly well if you’re just getting into horror and you want to work your way up to scary movies.