10 Best Tales From The Crypt Episodes

Sideshows and circuses feature heavily in the '50's comics TFTC's is based on, so it's no surprise that they are the setting for a number of episodes such as season 2's Lower Berth, season 5's Food For Thought and this effort from director Richard Donner.

Following on from his fellow producers, Donner's first entry focuses on a down and out, played by Joe Pantoliano (Memento), who volunteers to be experimented on by Gustav Vintas' mad Dr Manfred.

Manfred believes that he can transport the fabled nine lives of a cat into a human body and one quick surgery later Pantoliano's vagrant is reborn as "Ulric the undying", the must-see sideshow act who will die and come back before your very eyes. Ulric and Manfred then begin to get rich fast with increasingly elaborate deaths drawing greater and greater crowds, until greed and bad maths lead to murder and macabre mishaps.

The underrated Pantoliano is great as ever in another unscrupulous, yet oddly likeable, role and the dizzying camera work and quick edits help to evoke the overwhelming sensory assault of a demented sideshow. The death sequences and the show around them provide much of the humour, making as much of a joke out of the bloodthirsty audience as it does Ulric's various deaths. Kathleen York is Harley Quinn-esque as the ditzy ring girl who strikes up an ill-fated romance with Ulric, while motormouth Robert Wuhl draws chuckles as a wise-ass compere.

Step right up and see for yourself...