Tales from the Crypt: Easel Kill Ya (1991)
Season 3, Episode 8
5/10
The composer of Creepshow directed this
10 May 2024
Warning: Spoilers
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.
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