13 Days of Tales From The Crypt: Ben Stein in "Doctor of Horror" (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 delightful little die-job is "Doctor of Horror", which aired on January 4, 1995 as the 12th episode of the sixth season. Directed and written by Larry Wilson, this twisted tale stars Ben Stein (Public Works Official in Ghostbusters II) as Andrews.


Andrews, the manager at Callaghan's Mortuary, hires Richard (Hank Azaria) and Charlie (Travis Tritt) as night security. In their first few minutes on the job, they catch Dr. Orloff (Austin Pendleton) trying to steal a corpse. He offers them $500 each if they will help. He's searching for the souls in recently-deceased bodies, which is in a microscopic gland located along the spine. It is the last part of the body to die; releasing the life force days after conventional death.


After Dr. Orloff fails to find the soul, he tasks Richard and Charlie with disposing of the now-mutilated body in an old well. They plan to cover for the missing cadaver by pretending to have passed out drunk when Andrews arrives the next morning. That doesn't matter to Andrews, as a dead body lost is a dead body lost. He will not risk losing his 40-year-old business for that, and fires them on the spot.


Andrews then notices the mud on Richard's boots and the tear in Charlie's jeans, which indicates that they have not been knocked out in a drunken stupor, as they told him. He believe that the duo stole the corpse of Mrs. Myers, and will inform the police. Richard runs after him, and when Andrews pays him no mind, he gets beaned in the head. They bring Andrews' still-living body to Dr. Orloff for dissection.


Dr. Orloff finds the "soul gland" in Andrews body, but it dies out before he can extract it. Then simple-minded Charlie comes in and drops some knowledge. The only reason Dr. Orloff was able to find it was because Andrews was still alive when he opened him up. By the time the body dies, so does the soul. Charlie warns Dr. Orloff that he should not steal souls. Richard talks to the not-so-good doctor privately about their "Charlie problem". Richard takes out Charlie by swapping his alcohol for ether, and the doc removes his beautifully-glowing soul. With that gone, Richard is free to do whatever he wants with the remains of Charlie's body. Several successful soul removals later, Richard wants a pay raise from the doc. Before he can force one out of him, Charlie's decapitated soulless corpse arrives to exact revenge on the pair.


The second course in our cannibalistic buffet is a tasty little plasma play called "Strung Along", which aired on September 2, 1992 as the 12th episode of the fourth season. Directed by Kevin Yagher, who co-wrote it with Yale Udoff, this twisted tale stars Tom Dugan (Restaurant Cop #1 in Ghostbusters II) as Paramedic.


Aging puppeteer Joseph Renfield (Donald O'Connor) suspects that his much younger wife Ellen (Patricia Charbonneau) has a lover, David (Zach Galligan). To say that Tom Dugan "stars" in this episode is a bit of a misnomer. His role as a paramedic affords him two short lines at the very end of the story after all of the carnage has taken place.




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.