There is more than one way to be two-faced.
About Face is the 9th episode in the 7th season of Tales from the Crypt.
A womanizing priest is visited by twin girls who claim to be his daughters. He agrees to take them in as his wards, but one of the girls isn't what she seems...
Original air date, June 28, 1996.
Tropes:
- Affair? Blame the Bastard: The twins Angelica and Leah are all the proof Sarah needs to tell at Johnathan. She holds both him and his illegitimate children at contempt. Johnathan is reluctant to bond with the children and puts all his faults on them.
- Ax-Crazy: Leah is this, with the use of several knives and a crucifix!
- Band of Brothels: The brothel at the beginning of the episode.
- Big "NO!": Jonathan, twice at the end when he stabs the evil twin Leah to death and unintentionally stabs Angelica to death too, as both girls are revealed to be conjoined twins.
- Blatant Lies: Johnathan insisting to Sarah that nothing has happened between him and his last secretary. Cue Sarah telling him that a young woman claiming to be his daughter wants to see him.
- Conjoined Twins: Angelica and Leah. And rather a creepy example. Jonathan finds this out the hard way.
- Consummate Liar: Jonathan. Not exactly a good thing for a minister to use to his full extant.
- Death by Childbirth: Emma the housemaid dies (off-screen) after giving birth to her twins, sixteen years before the events of the episode.
- Deadpan Snarker: The minister Jonathan, his neglected wife Sarah and his daughter Leah all fit this trope.
- Disappeared Dad: Jonathan to twins Angelica and Leah. He didn't even know they were born nor did he ever stop to think that he might have actually impregnated his maid, Emma from their last tryst together. What's worst is once he learns of this, he refuses to take responsibility for his being the father of said twins nor accept the fact that the girls are actually his daughters. Only when he realizes that being a "loving father" could boost his public image and he could profit from it does he decide to change his mind and "act" like a loving father to Angelica and Leah.
- Downer Ending: With his secretary dead, his wife murdered and having just murdered his only daughter (thus accidentally killing both conjoined twin daughters) in a fit of rage, Johnathan loses everything and is last seen close to dying from a stab wound...
- Downer Beginning: A young housemaid dies from childbirth, her children are left to grow up in a brothel and the father is a glorified corrupt minister.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Sarah does this to cope with her sexless, loveless marriage and the fact that her husband was having many affairs.
- Exorcist Head: How Leah and Angelica are revealed to be conjoined twins after they're fatally stabbed by their father, Johnathan.
- Facial Horror: Leah, due to her face being horribly disfigured from being "born wrong" along with her twin sister and the fact that she and her sister were conceived from an forbidden affair between a young maid and an old minister inside a church building proves just happens when you sin in God's house...
- Foreshadowing:
- Why exactly did the Madame scream when she finally saw the twins being born?
- Also, notice how Angelica's hair in the back is extra long and thick?
- Or how neither sister is ever seen with her twin together side-by-side in the same room?
- Forbidden Fruit
- Glorified Sperm Donor: Johnathan is this to the two young girls seeking him out as he had conceived the twins from an affair with the young housemaid and refuses to take paternal responsibility for his illegitimate children until he thinks of the money and good publicity it could bring him.
- Happily Adopted: What Johnathan is hoping to believe the twins are to him and his wife in the public. While Johnathan takes them in for profit, Angelica believes she is happily and willingly adopted by Johnathan and his wife Sarah while Leah prefers to think otherwise as she despises their father.
- Luke, You Are My Father: Twins Angelica and Leah seek out minister Johnathan claiming to be his daughters.
- Mama Bear: The Madam took the young housemaid Emma in as her own as she was underage and pregnant. While helping her through a traumatic birth, she demanded to know who did such a thing to Emma.
- Missing Mom: The maid Emma dies giving birth to her twin daughters at the beginning of the episode. Also, the Madam who raised the twins after Emma's demise for sixteen years eventually succumbs to dementia.
- Miss Kitty: The Madam in the episode's opening. While running the brothel, she's helping housemaid Emma give birth to her twins as she tries to keep calm in the delivery.
- Nothing Is Scarier: We don't see what the babies look like when they're finally born but based on the Madam's screaming, it's not pretty.
- I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: Jonathan's excuse for having numerous affairs. He claims it was because that his wife simply stopped sleeping with him. This is Lampshaded by Sarah having a uncomfortable conversation with Leah later in the episode.
- Jerkass: Jonathan, who is a very corrupt minister.
- Love Triangle: Two examples, one being Jonathan caught between his long-suffering wife Sarah and his mistresses. Also, the other being Jonathan torn between his trust towards his wife Sarah and his fatherly devotion to his twin daughters.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Flashbacks show Jonathan and the young housemaid Emma having sex on a table inside of a church confessional building.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Jonathan's solution, as he mistakenly believes his wife Sarah killed his secretary when it was actually Leah to blame. Also, Leah's solution to prevent her father from spreading anymore of his "demon seed" and damnation.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Leah, who frequently openly curses her father's name, quotes the Bible and seeks revenge for both herself and her sister Angelica being abandoned by their sinful father, all while using sharp knives and crucifixes for weapons to make a point. She also murders her father's new mistress, curses at her stepmother's ignorance at her husband's sinful ways, then Leah attempts to kill Jonathan for good.
- Screaming Birth: Housemaid Emma in the opening as she bleeds heavily and screams out in pain giving birth to her twins in the brothel she was raised in. She dies soon after.
- Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: Jonathan. While he is a priest devoted to spreading the word of Jesus Christ, at some point at the start of his ministry did he use his "devoted holy image" to the good extent of getting women to bed with him.
- Sex Signals Death: Not long after having sex with minister Jonathan, Miss Prichard gets her throat slashed by Leah.
- Slashed Throat: Jonathan's new secretary (and mistress) meets this fate by the hands of Leah who murders her just minutes after she's just had sex with Johnathan.
- Son of a Whore: Twins Angelica and Leah are this after their mother dies giving birth to them and were raised by their adoptive guardian The Madam of the brothel until they are old enough to seek out their real father. Their biological father, Minister Johnathan, unfortunately, reprimands them of this and criticizes the both of them of being raised from 'such whores'.
- Two Beings, One Body: Angelica and Leah. Two faces on opposite sides of the same head.
- Wham Line: Angelica to Johnathan as she dies, "Father, what have you done?".
- Wham Shot: As Johnathan stabs Leah to death, her head does a 180-degree twist revealing Angelica is the other half.
