Guess they prefer white wine.
Crypt Keeper: (emerges from behind a curtain dressed as a flight attendant, standing in front of a seated group of skeletons seated in front of him; through an intercom, in a nasally, montone voice) Good evening, creeps. And welcome aboard Tales From the Crypt Scare-lines Flight 666, offering direct service from your living room straight to Hell. (cackles) As we will be experiencing some tur-boo-lence, we recommend that you keep your seat belts fastened and your vomit bags handy. So slip on your dead-set and get ready for tonight's in-fright entertainment. (no longer through the intercom and in his regular voice, to the viewers) It's a nasty tale about my favorite kind of ghouls: dread-heads. I call it: Came the Dawn.
A thief on the run who takes the name "Norma" (Brooke Shields), stuck on the road during a stormy night when her truck breaks down, is picked up by the handsome and mild-mannered Roger (Perry King), who says that he is on his way to a cabin in the woods, where he hopes to make up with a woman that he has apparently parted with on bad terms. Since "Norma" has nowhere to go and he can’t in good conscience let her sleep in her vehicle, Roger offers to let her stay in his cabin for the night. "Norma" soon discovers that Roger loves opera, dines on noble food like oysters, and imports vintage, antique goods from Europe for resale, explaining his wealth. To "Norma", there are also many nice things in the cabin for her to swipe. She particularly notes the necklace Roger is wearing, suspecting that he has picked her up solely for revenge sex to get back at his woman. Problems soon begin arising when Roger's woman returns to the cabin earlier than he had anticipated.
Not to be confused with the Season 6 episode, Comes the Dawn.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Roger hints that Joanna is the result of abuse he received from his mother.
- Amazon Chaser: Roger, by his own admission. Norma talking about how she "dealt with" her cheating husband certainly arouses his interest.
- Anti-Climax: In-Universe and Played for Laughs. Roger finishes summarizing Norma the opera for Norma the character, but she gives him a blank-faced reaction to the ending and asks if that's it. She tells Roger how she feels it would be more realistic for the Woman Scorned rob her lover blind and escape to a different country.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Joanna gets away with locking Roger back into their shared psyche and killing Norma, and she isn't set to stop killing women anytime soon.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: While sweet-talking Roger, Norma says she loves surprises. She certainly gets one whopper of a surprise during the Twist Ending.
- Big "OMG!": Norma, upon seeing Roger dressed as Joanna and wielding the axe.
- Bookends: Roger's date in the restaurant bathroom gets hacked to death by Roger's alternate personality, Joanna, with her hand sliding down the stall and out of view as she is being killed. The same thing happens to Norma at the end of the episode, where Joanna does the same to her, complete with her hand sliding down the door window and out of view.
- Cassandra Truth: As things begin going downhill, Roger warns Norma to leave while she can, saying that Joanna is dangerous. Norma doesn't listen, and she meets the business end of her axe.
- Chekhov's Gun: The axe on Roger's wall, which the guy gives a history lesson about to Norma.
- Classical Music Is Cool: Roger is an avid fan of opera, even telling Norma (the character) about Norma (the opera) at dinner.
- Contrived Coincidence: Norma stepping on the TV remote, which just so happened to be on the floor in front of the safe, allowing Joanna to hear her.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Norma spends the valuable time she could be using to escape with Roger's car emptying his glove compartment. She only finds the keys still in the ignition by the time he comes back to the car and takes her to the cabin, ultimately cementing her fate.
- Creepy Crossdresser: Roger is revealed to be this when he becomes his alternate personality, Joanna.
- Dead-Hand Shot: The woman at the restaurant has one at the beginning. Norma herself gets one at the end.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Ed tells Roger how he thinks the person who stole his friend's truck is the same person who killed that woman in the restaraunt. It's actually the friendly fellow he's telling this to who's the culprit.
- "Eureka!" Moment: While Roger is in the store, shopkeeper Ed tells him how his friend Dave's truck was stolen last night. It takes a few moments for Roger to realize the woman he just picked up, who he sees rummaging through his glove compartment, is the most likely culprit.
- Evil Versus Evil: "Norma", a kleptomaniac who killed her husband and his lover and was looking to rob Roger's cabin of all its loot, goes up against Roger himself, who's revealed to be the host of a murderous split personality who kills every woman he tries to date.
- Fake Orgasm: Roger's date in the opening scene is seen practicing faking orgasms in the bathroom, just before Joanna hacks her to death. It just goes to show that she didn't think very highly of him.
- The Farmer and the Viper: Roger picks Norma up off the side of the road during a rainstorm and offers her food and shelter. She reprocates his kindly gesture by trying to rob him blind.
- Fancy Dinner: Roger goes out of his way to make one of these for Norma, treating her to oysters and Cristal.
- Fatal Flaw: Norma's kleptomania. She sneaks back into the cabin to steal some jewelry from an open safe, but this ends up allowing her to step on a TV remote, turning the set on and allowing Joanna to discover and kill her.
- Foreshadowing: Multiple hints about the final reveal are dropped throughout the episode.
- We first hear Joanna's voice (which is oddly masculine) on an answering machine as Roger calls her number. We hear her talking live, not in a recording, immediately after Roger (alone in the store) realizes Norma has been lying to him.
- Roger tells Norma that she can change out of her wet clothes into one of the dresses in the closet upstairs. Norma asks Roger if he's married, but he insists that they belong to someone he's no longer involved with. Upstairs, Norma finds more than dresses and smells fresh perfume. Norma is particularly outraged by this development, and we later learn her husband had been cheating on her.
- After describing opera as generally being about love and death, Roger likens his own relationships to that of opera, and also reflects on the various things he likes about women.
- When Joanna ostensibly arrives and starts yelling at Roger, we never see the two onscreen together, and Joanna's voice is only heard when Norma is in a different room from Roger.
- For Want Of A Nail: While Roger was in the store, Norma could've stolen his car and made a clean getaway, avoiding the entire rest of the episode as well as her own death. She misses the opportunity to do so simply because she was too busy giving in to her kleptomania and emptying Roger's glove compartment.
- Freudian Excuse: While it's not mentioned directly, it's abundantly clear that Joanna taking control of Roger is the result of something Roger's mother did to him, the man himself even admitting that she was quite a piece of work when he and Norma view a painting of her.
- Gory Discretion Shot: We see a good bit of blood splattered around the walls, but not the axe directly cutting into the flesh.
- Hope Spot: Norma goes back into the cabin rather than climb down the balcony. She actually manages to get her loot and make it to the front door with enough time to open it, but just as we see someone pick up the axe, she spots the open safe and moves in to swipe the jewelry within, sealing her fate when she steps on the TV remote.
- Hypocrite: Norma is outraged when Roger has been seemingly using her to commit adultery, and intends to get even. Though it strikes a nerve for her because of her own personal history, it's still quite hypocritical of her to be offended by Roger's seeming betrayal of her trust when she was actively trying to rob him before even learning that the guy was supposedly married.
- In Name Only: The comic story is about a man who thinks his wife has been replaced by an escaped mental patient who looks just like her. He kills who he thinks is the imposter until he sees another woman who looks like his wife running off in the distance.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Norma gets hacked to death by the alternate personality of the man she was looking to rob, and after she already killed her husband and the bimbo he was screwing.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: Norma is a thief on the run because she's strongly hinted to have killed her husband for cheating on her. Roger, on the other hand, is the host of a cross-dressing, axe-wielding alter ego who acts like his wife and kills women regardless of whether they know Roger or not.
- Line-of-Sight Name: "Norma" isn't actually our female character's name, just something she lifted off a tape label in Roger's car shortly after being picked up. Roger is amused by the supposed irony of her sharing the name of his favorite opera, until he realizes she was doing this.
- Male Gaze: The camera (revealed to be seeing from Roger's POV) oogling his date's figure in the opening scene.
- Never Say "Die": Norma strictly tells Roger that she "dealt with" her cheating husband in a way that made it so she can't go back home.
- Nice Guy: When Joanna isn't in control, Roger is a well-meaning guy who takes a complete stranger into his cabin on a stormy night and treats them to expensive food and lets them change into warm clothing.
- No Name Given: Norma's real name is never revealed, and neither is the woman at the restaurant's.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Whatever Norma did to her husband as revenge for his adultery, it meant that she can't ever go back home. It's very strongly implied that she killed him and his lover in cold blood.
- We also put together the idea that Roger grew up with an abusive mother, this likely being how Joanna came into the picture. But we never get any implication as to just what Roger's mother did to him to make him spawn an axe-murdering alternate personality.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: At the store, Ed tells Roger about how his friend's truck was stolen. Roger realizes that Norma is the culprit and begins to question everything she told him, but he keeps his peace until well-into dinner.
- Off with His Head!: Roger states that the axe on his wall was originally used to chop off heads during the French Revolution.
- Panty Shot: Roger's restaraunt date briefly flashes her panties to get him excited.
- P.O.V. Cam: The episode opens with a pretty blonde on a date in a fancy restaraunt, sweet-talking the camera before she heads to the restroom. We later learn we were looking through Roger's perspective.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Joanna, once it's discovered that she is Roger's psychotic alternate personality, tells Norma "Roger is mine!" before killing her.
- Properly Paranoid: In bed, Roger muses that Norma could very well just be tying him up to rob him. Given that she's a kleptomaniac, he was absolutely right.
- Red Herring: Norma is teased as possibly being the killer, due to the restaraunt's bathroom being dark during the first murder, as well as the fact that she has red hair, she's a Woman Scorned, and- she intends to give Roger a big surprise for possibly being an adulterer. The actual killer is Roger himself, his mind taken over by his psychotic split personality, Joanna.
- Shout-Out: The name "Norma" is literally taken from the opera of the same name. Roger later explains the plot of the opera to Norma (the woman) over dinner, the audience tuning in just as Roger describes the ending.
- And, of course, there's also the Psycho homages listed above.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Norma is pretty swear happy, especscially in her intro scene, where she's seen and throwing a fit when she's stuck in the rain with a broken truck (that she stole).
- Skewed Priorities: Norma is so focused on swiping petty materials from Roger's glove compartment that she realized too late his key was still in the ignition, and she could've just made off with his car while he was in the store.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Ed the shopkeeper, who tells Roger about how his friend Dave had his truck stolen, cluing him in to Norma's true intentions.
- Split Personality: Roger's a decent guy, but he's also the host of Joanna, a possessive spouse and crazed killer.
- Stealth Pun: Norma finishes playing as Joanna finishes off Norma (the woman), bringing both Normas to an end.
- Sticky Fingers: Norma is an absolute kleptomaniac, looking to steal any cash or jewelery (and the occasional vehicle) she can get her hands on. Her uncontrollable desire to steal is even the very thing that gets her killed.
- Tempting Fate:
- Roger's date in the opening scene tells him that she knows what he's up to and isn't going to stop him. She had no idea how right she was.
- While stranded in the rain with no one stopping to take her home, Roger remarks this really isn't Norma's night. Neither of them are aware of what's in store later that night.
- Norma asks if Roger if she can touch the axe on his wall.
- Troubled Fetal Position: Roger admits that he likes to curl up in bed with some wine and an opera CD, and just cry.
- Wham Shot: Norma steps on a remote that switches on a TV, the set displaying a prerecorded video with Roger dressed in drag, reenacting the conversation that he supposedly had with Joanna earlier, revealing to Norma and the viewers that Roger and Joanna are the same person.
- Whole-Plot Reference: This episode is a pretty big homage to Psycho, thanks to its similar plotline of a hitchhiker who is murdered by a man with an evil alternate personality.
- Woman Scorned: When Roger prods her about why she was really in a broken down truck on the side of the road, Norma says that she stole the truck to drive into the woods looking for her husband. The guy had claimed to be on a weekend fishing trip with his friends, but she had learned he was really fooling around with some bimbo. When Roger asks what happened next, Norma simply tells him that she "dealt with it" and can't go back home. Knowing how most adulterous couples work in a horror anthology, it's glaringly obvious that Norma killed her husband and his lover.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Finding Joanna's things upstairs, Norma thinks Roger was simply lying about having parted ways with an ex and is just an adulterer.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Norma tells Roger that what she did to her cheating husband (killing him) means that she can never go back home.
Crypt Keeper: (strapped into an electric chair and seated next to a skeletal passenger) Hmmmm. I know they say blondes have more fun, but you gotta admit, redheads really know how to swing! (cackles) So, till next time, kiddies I hope you'll excuse me, but I've got a little private business to take care of. It's the only way to fry! (cackles) I've always wanted to join the Mile Die Club! (cackles as he's electrocuted, whooping and hollering in the process)
