13 Days of Tales From The Crypt: Steven Weber in "Mournin' Mess"

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.

Tonight's tasty tidbit is "Mournin' Mess", which aired on July 31, 1991 as the 10th episode of the third season. Directed and written by Manny Coto, this twisted tale stars Steven Weber (Francois Rousseau in Extreme Ghostbusters: "Dry Spell") as Dale Sweeney.


Dale Sweeney is a journalist who's tracking a story about a mysterious serial killer who's been killing homeless people across the city. His first stop is a press conference being held in a "potter's field"-type of cemetery owned by a group calling themselves the Grateful Homeless Outcasts and Unwanteds Layaway Society. Why do I get the feeling that that group's acronym will reveal their true nature.


Back in the office of his boss, Elaine Tillman (Ally Walker), he pleads with her to keep his job. Those pleas fall on deaf ears. Dejected, he arrives back at his apartment to find Roebuck (Vincent Schiavelli), a homeless man mistakenly believed to be the "Homeless Killer". Roebuck wants Dale to write a piece that sets the record straight, and that means digging into the Grateful Homeless Society, the shorthand that the group prefers to be referred by. Roebuck tells Dale to go to the Grateful Homeless Cemetery at sunset to learn what is really going on.


At the cemetery he meets up with society spokesperson Jess Gilchrist (Rita Wilson), whom he, of course, flirts with. This distracts him from his mission, as he takes her back to his place. He offers her a bit of his hamburger, but she doesn't eat meat. However, Jess will gladly take him now, like a Gatekeeper does a Keymaster.


Back on mission, Dale meets up with Roebuck in a dark and dingy alley. Roebuck scolds him for not staying at the cemetery long enough to learn the truth, then dies before he can give Dale any further information. Dales arrives home to find an eviction notice on his door. So now Dale is jobless and homeless. With nothing left to lose, he heads back to the cemetery to watch Roebuck's late-night burial.


As he sits there, back against a headstone smoking a cigarette, he sees that the recent burial mound is sinking into the ground. That's not a normal occurrence. Digging deeper - literally - he finds that at the bottom of each grave is a door. It leads to a system of mines beneath the cemetery. He looks around, and when he notices that he's not alone, hides in one of the coffins strewn about.


When the coffin is opened up, he finds it sitting as the centerpiece of an elaborate dinner table. The G.H.O.U.L.S reveal their true nature to Dale, then they make him the main course.




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.