13 Days of Tales From The Crypt: William Atherton in "Easel Kill Ya"

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 pestilent portrait of the artist as a young mangler is "Easel Kill Ya", which aired on July 17, 1991 as the 8th episode of the third season. Directed by John Harrison, and written by Larry Wilson, this twisted tale stars William Atherton (Walter Peck in Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire) as Malcolm Mayflower. (Mistakenly spelled "Malcom" in the on-screen credits.)


Jack Craig (Tim Roth) is a down on his luck painter who hasn't sold one of his works in quite some time. After accidentally killing a noisy neighbor, he gets inspired by the crime scene. Jacks sells his morbid masterpiece to the wealthy Malcolm Mayflower.


He soon finds that in order to please his patron, he must continue to paint pictures of death, which leads him down a murderous path. He helps the landlady (Nancy Fish) down a flight of stairs, which gives him the subject of his next piece of art. Later, while making love to the beautiful Sharon (Roya Megnot), Jack gets the urge to give in to his darker side. Right now, this entails envisioning Mayflower in place of Sharon. Once upon a time, Atherton would have enjoyed being in bed with Jack. Jack snaps out of it before he bludgeons Sharon with an alarm clock. Thankfully, Jack doesn't kill the pretty girl.


Jack brings his new painting to Mayflower who sees it as the beginnings of a brilliant career. Jacks sees it as the end of one. Not even $100,000 can entice Jack to paint any more of these macabre works.


When Jack arrives home, he finds that Sharon has found his secret stash of crime scene Polaroids and blood "paint". She is disgusted and runs out while he's trying to explain. Sharon gets hit by a taxi while running away. It is not explicitly stated if the taxi driver stayed at the scene or drove off before the cops and paramedics (presumably) arrived. Cut to the next scene with Sharon in the hospital. Jack asks the doctor for a prognosis. Sharon's cerebral cortex is extensively damaged. She may not survive the night. Fear not! The best neurosurgeon in the city is on his way. If anyone can save her, he can. YAY!


Unfortunately, the operation is very expensive and Sharon has no insurance, nor does her family have any money. It looks like Jack will need to create a morose piece one last time. To do that, he'll have to kill again, and kill quickly; before the neurosurgeon arrives. The plot ignores the fact that in 1986, Congress enacted the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) to ensure public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay. By law, the hospital must perform the emergency life-or-death surgery, regardless of whether Sharon can pay for it or not. Anyway, you probably know where the plot is going. Jack runs out of the emergency room looking for a nearby victim. A nice-looking individual gets out of his car mere steps away from the emergency room front doors. Despite lots of people around, no one sees Jack kill this man and drag him to a secluded stairwell. Jack uses the dead man's blood to Jackson Pollock some crap onto a piece of cardboard he found on the ground. I guess it will do in a pinch.


Those high falutin' art snobs will buy anything shat onto a canvas... or piece of cardboard, as the case may be. Sure enough, Mayflower gives him $100,000 for this "work of art". Jack drives back to the hospital with Mayflower's check in hand. He's too late, Sharon is dead. TWIST ENDING ALERT!!! The neurosurgeon who could have saved her life was murdered a few hours ago. The police find Jack's paintbrush at the crime scene.


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.