13 Days of Tales From The Crypt: Ernie Hudson in "Food for Thought"

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 little dose of fright-rous oxide is "Food for Thought", which aired on October 6, 1993 as the 4th episode of the fifth season. Directed by Rodman Flender, and written by Larry Wilson, this twisted tale stars Ernie Hudson (Winston Zeddemore in Ghostbusters and its sequels) as Zambini.


We're back at a sideshow for our final episode; this time it's Captain Thropp's Travelling Oddities. Here we find The Great Zambini, a psychic clown and part-time cook, and his wife and assistant, Connie (Joan Chen). Their abusive relationship revolves around him trying to get her to send him her thoughts. He has no problem sending his thoughts to her, such as when he invades her mind in order to force her to give him his "special dessert". We're not talking about food, though Zambini does seductively lick a plate while doing his "telepathy mumbo-jumbo".


Later, Zambini and Connie, the latter known professionally as Soltarna, perform their mind-reading act for a bunch of rubes. Backstage, the rest of the oddities think the act is fake, but Connie tells them that Zambini's powers are real. She also gazes lovingly at the fire-eater, Johnny (John Laughlin), who stands up for her when Zambini orders her to come back to their trailer.


After Zambini and Connie eat dinner, she sneaks out while he's passed out on the bed clutching his dinner plate. (Given Zambini's proclivity for eating, I'm surprised that they hired Ernie and not someone a bit more rotund.) How does Zambini keeps the pounds off? Anyway, Connie meets up with Johnny, and they have a little chat. Johnny has plans to leave the sideshow, and he wants to take Connie with him. She can't leave Zambini because he's dangerous. She believes that he killed his last assistant and now wears the Zambini makeup full-time as a "disguise" so the cops can't find him.


Our would-be Romeo and Juliet make out in silhouette as she telepathically calls out his name. Zambini picks up the errant mind signal and awakens from his food coma. He looks around the room and doesn't see Connie, so he knows that something is amiss. When the duo start making out in the center ring under the big top, Zambini telepathically yells in her head. She rushes back to him.


They talk outside the trailer. Zambini is proud to announce that, moments ago, he was able to finally read her mind. That being when he heard her telepathically call out Johnny's name. He violently grabs her. "You're hurting me," she tells him. He replies, "I'm only just beginning." Fade to black, so we don't have to bear witness to the physical abuse.


The next day, Johnny sees that Connie is now sporting a black eye. She's not afraid of Zambini anymore because she's going to runaway with Johnny. Zambini is onto the plan since she is, consciously or not, sending her thoughts to him. Later, Johnny says good-bye to Nabonga, the man-eating gorilla, whom he was taking care of. Right after, Zambini douses Johnny in gasoline, then throws a lit torch at him. Nabonga is enraged at seeing her friend and handler engulfed in flames.


Connie runs outside to find Johnny's cremated remains. The other oddities think it was the result of a fire-eating accident, but Connie knows that Zambini killed him. She races back to the trailer and packs a bag. She's leaving Zambini for good. He tries to stop her with his mental abuse, but she blocks it. Good for you, Connie.


Dissolve to sometime later, Zambini is lying on the floor in a drunken stupor. After finishing off the bottle, he tries to use his telepathy to send messages to Connie in a vain attempt to get her back. (As he does this, he makes a bunch of really goofy faces that would make for some great animated gifs out of context.) Connie's voice answers the call. "I hear you. I'm coming. You're right. I can't stay away from you. I'm here." Oh, no. Did Connie really return to that abusive asshole? C'mon, girl, you're better than that.


Zambini sees something walking on the roof of the trailer. Could it be Santa Claus? He's still out there, after all. Whatever it is, it crashes through the skylight. It's Nabonga, wearing a pretty pink nightie. Maybe she's gonna be Zambini's new bitch...or more likely, the other way around. Nabonga, who is telepathically speaking in Connie's voice, wants to taste Zambini's mind.


A little bit later, all of the oddities find Zabonga sitting in her torn-open cage. In a case of simian revenge for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, she is sitting there eating the brains out of Zambini's severed head. Yum. "Now that's a man-eating gorilla," says one of the oddities to put a nice little bow on the tale. (PS: I wonder who got to keep Ernie's head.)




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.