Television

By Richard Zoglin

TV has often looked for inspiration to the world of comic books, usually superhero juvenilia like The Flash or The Incredible Hulk. But TALES FROM THE CRYPT is a different kettle of rotting fish. Based on the seedy old E.C. horror comics, each half-hour episode is a ghoulish black comedy that aims less for thrills or scares than for gleefully evoked squirms. The show, garnering high ratings in its third season on HBO, demonstrates another quality rare in TV: it is improving with age. Introduced by a cackling, skeletal "crypt keeper," the stories barrel along with logic-bending abandon; even when the ending fizzles (a frequent problem), getting there is a wild ride. Among the summer's highlights so far: Beau Bridges and Tony Goldwyn as brothers who trade sadistic practical jokes in a morgue, Malcolm McDowell as a soft-hearted vampire who opts for safe sustenance by raiding the local blood bank, and Jon Lovitz as a sad-sack actor who auditions for a far-off- Broadway production of Hamlet. Turns out that the only role available is Yorick. Alas, poor Lovitz! R.Z.