13 Days of Tales From The Crypt: Lewis Arquette in "Lower Berth" (Double Feature)

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.

Since there was an uneven number of episodes with Ghostbusters cast members in them, this article will be a FRIGHTFUL DOUBLE FEATURE featuring two episodes. Our first nauseating novella is "Lower Berth", which aired on July 3, 1990 as the 14th episode of the second season. Directed by Kevin Yagher, and written by Fred Dekker, this twisted tale stars Lewis Arquette (various voices in The Real Ghostbusters episodes "Hanging by a Thread", "Loathe Thy Neighbor", and "Big Trouble with Little Slimer") as Ernest Feeley.


Ernest Feeley is the owner of Feeley's Fantastic Fairway of Freaks, a traveling sideshow best known for it's main attraction, Enoch, the two-faced man (Jeff Yagher). Unfortunately, Enoch's life is nearing its end, which is as much of a problem for Feeley as it is for Enoch's handler, Mr. Sickles (Stefan Gierasch).


All hope is not lost. The mysterious Dr. Zachary Cling (Mark Rolston) comes a'calling with Myranah, colloquially Myrna, the mummy of an Egyptian slave girl who was buried alive at age 16 for repelling the Pharoah's advances. The sideshow has its new star attraction, and she's a big hit! The public is smitten with Myrna, and so is Enoch.


Mo' mummy, mo' problems. As Sickles soon learns, Cling didn't win Myrna in a card game, but rather he stole her for the beautiful baubles she wears around her neck. That's where it shall stay for it is cursed! Whomever shall remove it shall be rendered "unable to procreate". Sickles finds this to be true when, after framing Enoch for Cling's death, and removing said necklace, Enoch castrates the "naughty boy" with a pair of garden shears.


The next day, Feeley finds Enoch and Myrna missing, and the body of Sickles lying in her sarcophagus. A year later, when the sideshow comes back to town, Feeley gets a visit from the police, who inform him as to the whereabouts of his missing exhibits. The happy couple have taken residence inside a remote cave and sired a bastard child, The Crypt Keeper.


Our second sickening stab at suspense is "Dead Right", which aired on April 21, 1990 as the 1st episode of the second season. Directed by Howard Deutch, and written by Andy Wolk, this twisted tale stars Earl Boen (guest voice in Extreme Ghostbusters: "Casting the Runes") as Mr. V. Clayton.


While on her lunch break, gold digger Cathy Finch (Demi Moore) visits medium Madame Vorna (Natalia Nogulich), who tells her that she will be fired today. Cathy immediately calls Vorna's bluff, as her boss isn't even in the office today. Upon her return to work, Cathy finds that her "asshole" boss, Mr. Clayton, came back unexpectedly.


He doesn't take umbrage at being called a nasty name, but he does frown upon his workers taking longer than the allotted hour for lunch. For that reason, he fires Cathy.


At this point, less than four minutes into the episode, we see the last of Mr. Clayton. After being fired from her office job, Cathy lucks out on getting hired as a waitress at a strip club. There, she meets the grossly overweight Charlie Marno (Jeffrey Tambor), who informs her of his rich relatives. She promptly marries him, hoping he will soon die, leaving her to inherit a fortune, as was foretold to her by Madame Vorna. As it turns out, Madame Vorna is always right, but not in the way that Cathy had hoped.


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.