13 Days of Tales From The Crypt: Peter MacNicol in "Let The Punishment Fit The Crime"

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 nasty little sound bite is "Let the Punishment Fit the Crime", which aired on October 31, 1994 as the 1st episode of the sixth season. Directed by Russell Mulcahy, and written by Ron Finley, this twisted tale stars Peter MacNicol (Janosz Poha in Ghostbusters II) as Austin Haggard.


Geraldine "Geri" Ferrett (Catherine O'Hara), an unscrupulous ambulance-chasing lawyer, gets stuck in the strange town of Stueksville for a moving violation. As she soon learns, the punishment for even petty crimes in the town comes with a harsh punishment. Thankfully, she has Austin Haggard as her court-appointed lawyer. Think "Louis Tully with a bad toupee".


Austin caught the judge (Joseph Maher) on a good day. He's willing to reduce the punishment for driving an illegally-licensed vehicle to "10"... 10 lashes, that is. Since she believes that a flogging is a rather extreme punishment for the crime, Geri decides to enter a plea of "not guilty" and depend on the court's swift delivery of justice.


The case proceeds with the district attorney submitting Geri's "SUE ME" New York state license plate as evidence. The issue at matter is that "five digit" plates are only reserved for government vehicles, not civilian vehicles. However, as Geri points out, the space counts as a "sixth digit", making the plate perfectly legal.


After seeing a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about the legal victories of the "Class Action Queen", the judge declares that Geri is a "cynical and amoral woman who is a discredit to her profession", and thus GUILTY AS CHARGED! The punishment is 100 lashes, to be administered immediately.


On her way to be taken to her punishment, Austin stops the officers with some good news. The judge looked up the fact and, yes, Geri's license plate is six-digits. The case has been thrown out. YAY! Geri doesn't see it that way, chastising Austin for nearly getting her severely punished. On her way out of the courthouse, she gets stopped by another attorney brandishing her business card. She's under arrest for giving her business card to someone who had already obtained counsel.


She stands before another judge, who looks identical to the first (they are related, and both played by the same actor), with Austin by her side defending her again. His defense? Not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. He (badly) reads off cue cards about her childhood abuses, but the judge ain't buying it. GUILTY AS CHARGED! Her punishment for this crime is to be pilloried for a period of one year.


While shackled to the pillory, the ghosts of her past legal "victories" come back to haunt her. Before it gets gruesome, Austin comes in with some more good news. Her appeal has been granted. This time the case will be held in Courtroom C with a new judge who looks identical to the other two (again played by the same actor), who is the strictest one of them all. He agrees that she is guilty of the crime, but that the punishment given by the previous judge was wholly inappropriate. Instead of pillory, Geri will be sentenced to death by way of electrocution. Oh shit!


Thankfully, Austin is a competent attorney. He talks to the judge and manages to get the sentence reduced down to public service for a period of time yet to be determined. Geri frantically runs from the courtroom before he could change his mind, but instead of ending up back in the hallway, she's in the death chamber. Don't you just hate those magical portal doors. With an electric chair sitting dead center in the room, and the ghosts of her past literally there with her, she's scared and confused. "I'm not supposed to get the chair! The judge said I get to go home and do public service!"


Geri is correct. The electric chair is not for her. TWIST ENDING ALERT!!! It's for Austin! The chair is his way out of Stueksville. It's the end to his punishment of being the court-mandated attorney for (presumably) decades! Just like Geri, he was an unscrupulous attorney getting the "bad guys" out of legal trouble, even though they deserved to be punished. "In my day, I got off more big-time dirtbags with a slap on the wrist than a lowlife ambulance-chaser like you could count." She then asks, "But I get to go home and do public service, right? He replies, "You are home, counselor? And I'd rather be dead than you." With that, he takes off his toupee, Old Sparky fires up and Austin is fried, thus releasing him from his long-term punishment. After he's dead, we cut back to Geri who is now wearing Austin's horrible plaid tweed blazer, bow-tie, glasses, and toupee. She has, literally, taken his place. A life worse than death.




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.