Tales From the Crypt, Season Three, Episode One: "Loved To Death"

It’s a little hard to see what exactly made Tales From the Crypt feel confident enough about “Loved to Death” to make it the premiere of the HBO cult sensation’s third season. It’s what the members of Metallica might dismiss as “stock” in Some Kind of Monster. It’s a boilerplate mediocrity whose title gives its premise away and whose artless message the Crypt-Keeper succinctly sums up in his introduction as “Be careful what you wish for. You might get it!” 

Then again, it is entirely possible that the episode’s prominent placement as the season three opener is attributable to a level of nudity, sex and sexual situations unusual even for a show that seemed to exist, on some level, to test the boundaries of what pay cable could and would show in terms of boobs, blood and filthy language. 

At the very bottom of the hierarchy of pay cable nudity resides the sensual sacrifices of anonymous extras and body doubles who nobly display their unclothed bodies for the erotic delight of a public that would never know their name, only what they look like naked. At the very top is celebrity skin, and at the very tippy top of the tippy top is celebrity skin from members of distinguished literary families. 

So the season premiere status of “Loved to Death” could very well be attributable to Mariel Hemingway’s willingness to do nudity and any number of comically “scorching” sex scenes in a Marilyn Monroe blonde wig and revealing lingerie. 

As a season opener, this is a distinct disappointment that hits all the expected notes perfunctorily but it you want to see the grand-daughter of the man who wrote A Farewell to Arms in her skivvies then “Loved to Death” is a much more satisfying experience. 

The doomed dreamer who learns to be careful about what he wishes for is a stale sentient loaf of white bread from Indiana named Edward (Andrew McCarthy) who leaves his job blocking hats in Indiana with five thousand dollars to his name and moves to Hollywood to make it as a screenwriter. 

This would represent an unconscionably vast leap of faith for someone with connections in the industry and a bunch of screenplays to his name. We learn that Edward has moved to Hollywood while writing his VERY FIRST SCREENPLAY. Forget Edward’s misogyny, narcissism, murder and selfishness: this piece of shit deserves to suffer just for having the unbridled arrogance to assume that he would become a successful screenwriter in his very first attempt. 

Edward’s delusional belief in himself is particularly galling considering that his writing seems to consist exclusively of feverish masturbatory fantasies involving next door neighbor Miranda (Hemingway), a B movie actress with credits like Bimbo Beach Patrol to her name who spends most of her time yelling at her agent for not adequately conveying her intense pro-nudity stance and attempting unsuccessfully to sleep her way to the middle and then to the top. 

In Edward’s horny daydreams Miranda is his sad, juvenile conception of the perfect woman, a picture-perfect housewife who keeps a perfect home but turns into a fuck machine the moment hubby wants it. This fantasy Miranda looks adoringly at Edward’s penis and moans, “Oh God, it’s practically talking to me”, which is something people who have never had sex think women routinely think when looking at a particularly inviting penis, that certain cocks are so irresistible that they all but volunteer saucily, “Hey toots, how about a little attention here?” 

Edward peeps on Miranda when she takes off her bra and shirt in the laundry room in what can only be deemed a VERY narratively essential sequence but the reality proves to be decidedly different from the fantasy, and also way shittier. After snapping at Edward for going through her mail after her mistook her for a delivery person, the scheming actress offers Edward a pity drink later that night but after she stands him up for hours only to come home on the arm of some jerk Edward is ready to resort to supernatural hoodoo in order to trick this awful, terribly sexy woman into falling into love with him, or at least wanting to fuck him silly. 

Edward enlists the shadowy services of a sinister, woman-hating landlord played by David Hemmings as a figure of pure hate and bitterness poisoned by a deep, all-consuming hatred of women. 

In a bravura turn, Hemmings delivers a key piece of dialogue from Tales From the Crypt as a series and pop culture institution when he observes of Edward’s woman troubles, "Women, huh? You can’t live with them but you can’t cut them into little pieces and tell the neighbors she’s in Palm Springs, either?” 

This is the world of Tales From the Crypt, however, so what you CAN, but most assuredly should NOT do is use a magic love potion given to you by a creature of Satanic evil to trick the object of your desire into falling hopelessly in love with you, to the point that they forget about everyone and everything else. 

That’s just what Edward does. Miranda goes from being a sexist caricature of a grasping, shameless opportunists willing to use her body to get what she wants to a sexpot who only wants to make Edward happy.

At first Edward is pleased. That sensation seems to last a couple of hours, until he is thoroughly fucked out yet she’s still raring to go. A sexual fantasy quickly, inevitably and predictably turns into a sexual nightmare once it becomes apparent to Edward that he no longer has any control over his sex life, that he’s no longer the aggressor and can only respond whimperingly to his partner’s insatiable, sadistic libido. 

So the landlord gives him another potion that will undo the love potion by killing whoever takes it. Only do to a mix-up, Edward ends up taking the fatal poison himself. Despite being an evil fuck Edward seems headed to the Good Place post-accidental suicide until he sees that not even violent, disfiguring death by suicide can dim Miranda’s insatiable lust for a cock that seems to be speaking to her. 

The inevitable ending of “Loved to Death” is apparent from the very beginning. Tales From the Crypt has explored this fertile territory way too many times before for it to not feel like a limp rehash and the script by After Hours/Vampire’s Kiss cult scribe Joseph Minion and John Mankiewicz doesn’t seem to know whether it’s lampooning misogyny or lustily embracing it. 

“Loved to Death” kicked off a new season with something that felt unmistakably like a rerun. Being a season opener overflowing with classy nudity gives it a certain unearned cachet but otherwise “Loved to Death” is thoroughly undistinguished. 

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