13 Days of Tales From The Crypt: Clancy Brown & Cheech Marin in "Half-Way Horrible"

Welcome boils and ghouls to Spook Central's 13 Days of Tales from the Crypt: Ghostbusters Cast Spotlight. For the next two weeks, I will look at Tales from the Crypt episodes featuring cast members from the entire spectrum of the Ghostbusters franchise. Tales from the Crypt, for those who don't know, is a horror anthology series that ran for seven seasons on HBO from June 10, 1989 to July 19, 1996. Inspired by the 1950s EC Comics series of the same name, the show revels in nudity, gore, strong language, camp, and twist endings; taking full advantage of its premium cable home. Each episode is hosted by the Cryptkeeper, a wisecracking corpse performed by several puppeteers and voiced by John Kassir.

Given the nature of the series, I would be remiss if I did not give a HUGE CONTENT WARNING and a HUGE SPOILER WARNING if you continue reading this article. I will not shy away from any graphic gory imagery if warranted, and I am highly likely to go into plot details, including the twist ending.

This second article in Spook Central's 13 Days of Tales from the Crypt: Ghostbusters Cast Spotlight is a two-fer, as we have two Ghostbusters actors in the same episode. Tonight's nasty nugget is "Half-Way Horrible", which aired on December 1, 1993 as the 12th episode of the fifth season. Directed and written by Greg Widen, this twisted tale stars Clancy Brown (Tempus in Extreme Ghostbusters: "Ghost Apocalyptic Future") as Roger Lassen, and Cheech Marin (Dock Supervisor in Ghostbusters II) as Dr. Benneloy.


As the episode opens, Roger Lassen, the owner of Lassen Chemical Corporation, identifies the body of his friend and business associate, Dan King (Costas Mandylor). Flashback to six years earlier, where Roger and his buddies partake in a tribal ritual. Back in the present day, Roger arrives home to find his apartment vandalized with "I Have Not Forgotten or Forgiven" spray-painted across the wall. A voodoo doll has also been placed in his home.


In another flashback to the Brazilian rainforest years earlier, Roger sacrifices Alex (Jon Tenney) to the tribe in order to gain their secrets, so he can profit off of them. Alex is buried alive after drinking some kind of glowing potion. That potion, as an interviewer informs in the present day, is filled with herbs that Roger's company uses to create the preservative Exthion-B. This miracle preservative will keep food, wood, and clothes fresh forever. I bet that it works on corpses, too. Just saying.


Roger has been suffering from headaches and feeling rather ill and sweaty, but that's better than what has befallen his colleagues. Something has been killing them off one by one. First there was Dan, now Roger visits Kevin's (Brian Wimmer) apartment to find him with a syringe of glowing potion jammed into his neck. As with Dan, a written note reading, "I Have Not Forgotten or Forgiven", has been left with the body. It seems that Roger's sinister past is coming back to haunt him.


Infuriated, and perhaps going a little crazy, Roger attacks business associate Colin (Charles Martin Smith), smashing his face into the boardroom table. The zombified corpse of Alex watches on in approval. Roger is surprised to see him still "alive", but "nobody dies in Macumba voodoo". They have a little chat, a little exposition is dropped, then Roger decapitates Alex as if this were Highlander (which also starred Clancy Brown and was also written by Greg Widen).


Twenty-two minutes into this twenty-eight minute episode we finally get our "special appearance by Cheech Marin" when Dr. Benneloy walks into Roger's apartment. Benneloy is here to explain what voodoo curse is plaguing Roger. The doc informs Roger that the only way to kill the curse is to kill the evil side of the person it is attached to, which will probably kill him. Roger doesn't care.


Cut to the next scene, where Roger is lying on a table in his living room, with surgical tools next to him. In walks Dr. Benneloy, dressed in tribal regalia with full face paint and headdress. Serious shit is about to go down, but we don't get to witness it. Fade to black...


...fade back in to Roger taking a phone call, draped in shadow. What is he hiding on the right side of his face? He tells his assistant Withers (Judith Baldwin) to come to his house with the remaining supply of Exthion-B. When she arrives, she turns on the lights and we find out. The right side of his head is missing. Methinks Roger should run for district attorney in Gotham City.




Now this is where I would normally give you links to buy Tales from the Crypt: The Complete Series on DVD, but the series is no longer officially available to own. Warner Brothers, whom I always believed to have owned the HBO-produced series, originally released the seven seasons individually on DVD from 2005 to 2007 in Digipak packaging (fold-out paperboard with plastic disc trays inside side-loading slipcases). A decade later, in 2017, all 20 of the discs from those individual season sets were repackaged in a "Complete Series" box set, as well as in plastic case repackagings of the individual seasons. It's possible that an official "all discs in one thick case" repackaging was made a year or two later. Unfortunately, the original 2005-2007 season sets were produced at a time when Warner Brothers was using a manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania who was not manufacturing the discs correctly. As a result, all dual-layer DVDs produced at the plant are now unplayable, as I detailed in this article. The original 2005-2007 discs have photos of The Cryptkeeper on them, while the 2017 discs have plain colored labels on them. The 2017 discs have no issues, but the original discs do. Since Warner Brothers is now aware of the problem, they have been replacing discs where possible. Unfortunately, when I inquired about having my unplayable original discs replaced, I was told by WB customer service (whv@wbd.com) that they "no longer have the rights" to the show. The copyright on the show belongs to "Tales From the Crypt Holdings", but which individuals and companies fall under that umbrella is unknown to me. I assume Warner Brothers is one of them, but I could be wrong.

Making ownership of this series on physical media even more problematic is that there are A LOT of counterfeit "Complete Series" DVD box sets out there. Since the box set is officially out-of-print, you can no longer buy a legit set from Amazon, Target, Walmart, etc. You have to buy a copy from the second-hand market, which could be legit old stock, but is more than likely to be a well-produced counterfeit. As I noted in my Identifying Counterfeits article, in June 2025 I bought an "all discs in one thick case" counterfeit, which I wrongfully assumed would be a legit set due to the crappy Epik Pak case (which I thought only the major studios used). The problem with counterfeits, besides lesser print quality on the packaging and discs, is that they often take the original dual-layer discs and recompress them to single-layer discs. So the video and audio quality will be POORER than the originals. That's why they should be avoided.

Of course, with there being no official options, and with a flood of counterfeits out there, there is no good recommendation to give as to how to own this series on physical media. The ideal situation would be for Warner Brothers to get the rights back, do new transfers from the original film negatives, and release a "Complete Series" Blu-ray set; carrying over all of the original DVD extras and (maybe) adding more - such as all eight episodes of the "Seeing Ear Theatre" audio plays. I doubt that will ever happen, so there's always Youtube.