13 Days of Tales From The Crypt: Ed Begley Jr. in "Death of Some Salesmen"

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 tasteless tidbit is "Death of Some Salesmen", which aired on October 2, 1993 as the 1st episode of the fifth season. Directed by Gilbert Adler, who wrote it along with A.L. Katz, this twisted tale stars Ed Begley Jr. (Ed Mulgrave in Ghostbusters: Answer the Call) as Judd Campbell.


Judd Campbell is a con-man posing as a traveling cemetery plot salesman. He scours the obituaries to find his next target. Today, that would be one Mrs. Jones (Yvonne De Carlo), who recently lost her husband, Ebb.


He arrives pretending that Ebb recently paid a down payment of $250 on a pair of cemetery plots, and that he's there to see Ebb to collect the other half of the money. The widow Jones gives him $187, which is all of the money she has left in the world.


After he leaves, a montage shows the score he gets from other widows as the travels across the area. It might be a hundred or two from each, but it adds up. His final stop would be at the home of the Brackett family - Pa, Ma, and Winona (all portrayed by Tim Curry) - at 2465 Maple Drive, though he intended to go to Maple Street. That error is the price one pays for being a "moralless individual" in a Tales from the Crypt story.


Initially, he walks away, ready to trek across town to Maple Street, but Ma calls him back. Inside, Judd has a chat with Ma and Pa Brackett. He explains what a $500 fee will get them at the Restful Hills Memorial Park. Pa is surprised by how little it costs. Hearing that, Judd looks around the room and sees the expensive stereo equipment these "simple folk" have. Dollar signs appear in his eyes, metaphorically, of course. I think he's hit the honeypot!


Judd goes on to explain the "extended death benefit" package, which goes for $750. They'll take it! They just have to see the place first. Judd is okay with that. He proposes they pay him today, and he will take them to the memorial park tomorrow. While Pa goes to get the cash, Ma takes Judd into the kitchen to make him some cold coffee. After she leaves, he goes to put it in the microwave, only to find a decapitated head already sitting inside. Now there's something you don't see everyday. Also alarming is a body with a vacuum cleaner hose shoved through its mouth sitting in the pantry.


At this point, Judd realizes that he's in trouble and makes a b-line for the door. Uh-oh, it's locked! "I'm afraid you ain't goin' anywhere," says Pa right before he beans Judd in the head with a baseball bat. As he lies there unconscious, Ma and Pa argue over whether to kill him or see if their daughter Winona wants to take him as a beau. Pa wakes him up and explains that the others Judd found were salesmen who sold them a faulty microwave, vacuum cleaner, and color TV. I guess Ma and Pa found something better than going to the Better Business Bureau. If each salesman died in a manner befitting the product he was hawking, what kind of fate will befall a cemetery plot salesman?


Fade in to the next scene with Judd still tied up in the living room chair. Winona walks into the room and ain't she a sight for blind eyes. Judd recoils in horror upon seeing her, but he pretends to be smitten with her as he desperately wants to live to see another day.


Winona takes Judd up to her bedroom and starts undressing him. She takes off her dirty unwashed panties and mounts him like a steed. Words may lie, but the body tells the truth. When she doesn't see him getting aroused, she doesn't believe that he really loves her. In that case, she'll hand him over to Pa. Judd tries to force himself to get an erection, and succeeds. Winona rides that man to victory.


Post coitus, some pillow talks ensues. Winona won't let her father hurt Judd because she wants to marry him. "If we got married, you'd get my dowry, and they'd let you go, and we could run away and be happy together." Judd's ears perk up at the mention of "dowry", and cash register ringing is heard. It's about $40,000 or $50,000, taken from all of the deceased salesmen, and it's buried in the basement.


The wedding happens immediately! Right there in the living room, Pa officiates the ceremony. At the point where Judd is to put the ring on Winona's finger, she asks her father to take the handcuffs off of Judd. Pa refuses, which infuriates her. She chokes him dead, then does the same to Ma. Meanwhile, Judd drops and tries to retrieve the handcuff key that has fallen on the floor. After offing her parents, Winona helps him remove the handcuffs and walks to the basement to get the dowry. Judd grabs the handgun that has also fallen to the floor during the fight.


In the basement, Winona hands Judd a shovel, and he gives her a slug in the chest. With all of the Bracketts seemingly dead, Judd starts digging a hole in the basement to get the buried dowry. If I knows these tales as well as I do, I would bet that he's really digging his own grave. At the bottom of the hole he finds a small box. Inside is the deed for a Restful Hills Memorial Park cemetery plot made out to Judd Campbell. Befuddled, Judd stands in the hole as the Bracketts stand around it. It was all a ruse. "'Tweren't no lie at all. It's called 'salesmanship'."




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.