Tales from the Crypt Gameshow

[scary_dream]

I don't remember much about it, but I do know there was a short-lived gameshow based on Tales from the Crypt. It was a kid-oriented thing with horror-themed questions and obstacle courses... I guess kind of like a haunted Legends of the Hidden Temple-ish game. It had a human host, but co-hosting was the Crypt Keeper himself!!

Does anyone else remember this show?

[Mr. Marshmallow]

Not only do I remember it, I OWN IT! A good chunk of it anyway. I taped alot of episodes from the show and i remember it very well. The show was basically a very dark, Halloween orientated version of Double dare, doing all sorts of monster, zombie, and vampire related challenges and stuff like that.

The show was a big deal not only because of it's involvement with the Crypt keeper, but of the level of technology used for the games. One of them games involved the kid player to actually battle a 3-d skeleton gladiator for points. All games ended with a "skull hunting" game called "Skull duggery".

You'd go to 3 or 4 different levels in search of skulls and whomever comes back with the most wins. The show was definitely cool for a while, and it was a neat idea but it did suffer from a few problems. 1- The use of the Crypt keeper was limited to him saying random "corpse related" jokes in clips that often got repeated over and over.

He never is seen near the competitors or the host and just makes comments depending on whatever game, joke, or situation that comes up on the show. The other problem is that this show had extremely difficult games and like "Legends of the hidden temple", alot of kids lost more times then they won.

I still have those VHS tapes with this show and I still love these kinds of old shows. I got a bunch of em.

[Partymember]

Temple of whatever was that show where tree-people jumped out at you and took your tiki things, right? I vaguely remember that.

[Owennoreen]

No never seen or heard of it. I never even watch tales of the crypt!

[Ccook50]

The show was called Secrets Of The Cryptkeeper's Haunted House. It aired on CBS Saturday mornings during the 1996-97 season.

[scary_dream]

Originally Posted by Mr. Marshmallow

The show was a big deal not only because of it's involvement with the Crypt keeper, but of the level of technology used for the games. One of them games involved the kid player to actually battle a 3-d skeleton gladiator for points. All games ended with a "skull hunting" game called "Skull duggery".

You'd go to 3 or 4 different levels in search of skulls and whomever comes back with the most wins. The show was definitely cool for a while, and it was a neat idea but it did suffer from a few problems. 1- The use of the Crypt keeper was limited to him saying random "corpse related" jokes in clips that often got repeated over and over.

Okayyyy now I'm remembering more of it. Was the Skull Duggery part the big obstacle course at the end of the show? I remember at the last stretch, kids sometimes had to crawl through a low passage with something chasing them... oh my memories of this are vague!

Also, unfortunately, the "corpse related" jokes are usually what most horror symbols are reduced to in children's shows. Yeah, it's a good idea for the kiddos because it doesn't make them as frightened, but they at least need some new material! I mean, by all means, keep it rated for the kiddies, but if I hear "boys a ghouls" again, I think I'll plaster myself into a wall and stay there.

[Mr. Marshmallow]

The last game was the skull duggery one, and it was basically a big race to find as many skulls in various, dark creepy locations and then both teams would place them on a pike at the end and the host would count how many you had. They had a lot of interesting games.

One was a shrinking room, where you had to pick up letter blocks and put them on the wall and spell out the word/phrase before the room shrank too much you couldn't move. Another was walking over a CGI lava pit and you had to make it across without falling in (obviously).

One of the weirder ones was this game where the partners are split up, and one is on a tread mill and as he/she ran, they would see pictures of animals or objects and they would tell their partner what they saw through head sets. The other partner would then be presented with a sentence or a phrase from the host and have to try and fit that picture/object with the sentence.

They also had "Vampire's coffin", where you go in this pitch black room and one partner stays outside and has a map of the whole room and that person has to verbally direct you towards the vampire's coffin, where they then impale the vampire in the coffin with a stake nearby. This was a VERY hard one to accomplish.

The corpse related jokes actually never bothered me on the HBO show or the animated series, it was one of the things I loved about the Crypt keeper. However, because it was a expensive game show and operating a prop figure like the Crypt keeper costs money, they end up reusing certain phrases or words he says for different episodes of the show and it got annoying.

Shows like Power rangers and VR Troopers did this too, they'd reuse old fighting footage or explosion scenes that they already used before to work in a newer scene. It's always noticeable but not always bad, only in Crypty's case because it was reusing "talking clips", it made it look alot worse.

[Nathander]

Originally Posted by Partymember

Temple of whatever was that show where tree-people jumped out at you and took your tiki things, right? I vaguely remember that.

I think you're thinking of Legend of the Hidden Temple on Nick. I used to love that show.

I remember the Tales from the Crypt gameshow, and adored it when I was a kid. I thought it was fairly entertaining and, if I'm remembering correctly, actually fairly well done.

*sigh* I miss actual Saturday morning television.

[Mr. Marshmallow]

Originally Posted by Nathander

*sigh* I miss actual Saturday morning television.

Yeah I do too. I remember when I was younger I would wake up earlier times then even my parents would, getting up at 7 or 8 in the morning and recording everything I could get my hands on. I taped SO many saturday morning cartoons.

I have a LOT of old shows including the Crypt keeper's game show. I got Mysic Knights of Tir na Nog, Godzilla the series, Mad Jack the pirates, Oggy and the cockroaches, Bailey Kipper's POV, Eerie Indiana, Goosebumps, Toonsylvania, Sticking Around, TMNT: The next mutation, Space Goofs, MIB the series etc.