YMMV / Tales from the Cryptkeeper

• Anvilicious: The third season had some reasonable morals; it just delivered them in an annoyingly hamfisted way. The episode "Unpopular Mechanics" had the moral that technological skill is only good when used constructively and the very loose adaptation of the comic story "Drawn and Quartered" explained how revenge against your enemies is never worth it.
• Awesome Music: All of it. Even the background music.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: "Transylvania Express" has a brief part at the beginning where a werewolf and a Frankenstein monster show up right out of nowhere to attack Ben and Mike at the train station. This part has no impact on the actual plot (which focuses instead of the two being chased by vampires while inside the train) and is never brought up again.
• Complete Monster:
  • "Dead Men Don't Jump!": The faceless basketball player is a monstrous entity who tricks aspiring athletes into life-or-death rounds of basketball, using his demonic powers to give himself the advantage. When they inevitably lose, the being transforms his opponents into withered undead husks that he collects as macabre trophies. Challenging the protagonist Nathan, the monster sadistically toys with the boy and sprains his ankle, laughing at his impending doom and taunting Nathan's brother Aaron when he steps up to finish the game.
  • "Town Gathering": Sleazy businessman Ben Arnold is secretly working for a group of aliens who have developed a taste for human flesh. The aliens have hired Arnold to find a small town where they can capture the town's population and devour them, without attracting attention from the government. After stumbling across the small town of Deep Woods, Arnold goes to the mayor and suggests holding a town meeting to discuss a business proposal for the town, so that the aliens can capture the town's population all at once. When a local young girl named Erin discovers the aliens, Arnold tries to silence her by trying to feed her to the aliens. Arnold also reveals that after the aliens have devoured the town's population, he plans to sell them out to the government for a reward.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Camille and Mildred due to their pretty good chemistry together in their stories. Making them older in their sequel ep didn't hurt either.
  • Chuck and Melvin for just how silly and twisted their fairy tale adventures were. Plus it's always fun seeing Chuck get what's coming to him.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Both the Old Witch and the Vault Keeper were really, really fond of tying the Crypt Keeper up or otherwise restraining him. The Old Witch calls him "Cryptie", openly flirts with him once (much to his disgust), and generally treats him like a third grade crush she can't stop teasing, while "Dead Men Can't Jump" involves a loosely dressed Crypt Keeper and Vault Keeper staring into each other's eyes like they're five seconds away from getting a room.
• Growing the Beard: Admittedly some of the third season eps started finding their groove around the halfway mark, finding a compromise with the scares while trying to keep the lessons present. Sadly by the time they were getting better, the show ended up cancelled.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In "The Avenging Phantom", when the Phantom confronts Jimmy, his first lines are "I am Shadow." In addition, he mentions existing only for revenge, which fits another Shadow to a T.
  • In "The Spider and The Flies", the mysterious exterminator is revealed to be a humanoid spider. Years later, Marvel would introduce Patton Parnell in Spider-Verse, who is also a humanoid spider.
  • In "Hunted", the hunter who is the demon creature sounds remarkably like D.C. Douglas's voice as Albert Wesker, but with a deeper voice.
  • "Gorilla's Paw" featured someone nearly causing the moon to crash into the Earth, via a wish granted by an Artifact of Doom seven years before The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask did. Bonus points for airing a month after the NA release seven years later, and the same month as the PAL release.
  • The ending of "A Game Of Tag" in Zekkyou Gakkyuu has the villain be trapped in an eternal chase forever... something "The Works...In Wax" did first.
  • The Old Witch looks a bit like Gruntilda.
• Informed Wrongness: Particularly in season three. For example, Randall from "Unpopular Mechnanics" is arrogant and definitely a bit of a jerk, but his supposed crime is that he utilizes his talents reprogramming machines to fight, self-destruct, etc. Needless to say, Randall is a mechanical genius and this is a highly applicable skill to have. He has it beaten out of him in the end, and instead stays safely inside the box, focusing on repairing machines. Admittedly, part of the wrongness we find out about is that he's using whatever machines he can get his hands on for his antics, and isn't very good at asking permission (his mother was less than happy about having her vacuum cleaner turned into part of his personal shooting gallery). If he'd simply learned this lesson, there would be no problem, but instead, the moral of the day is "be nice to inanimate machines."
  • Long before her newfound looks go to her head, Julia from "So Very Attractive"'s only crime is being insecure.
  • Ralph from "Drawn and Quartered" is punished because he wants to get back on the bullies who chase him into alleyways and destroy his artwork.
• Karmic Overkill: In "Game Over", two boys pay for skipping school to play video games by being entirely erased from existence at the end of the episode.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • Melvin defeating the vampire queen single-handed.
  • "All the Gory Details" has Sally finally telling off Mr. Klump for his obnoxious, misogynistic and selfish behavior after all she's put up with.
  Sally: I have had it up to here with you! "First rule" this, "second rule" that!
  Mr. Klump: Now wait just a minute, sister!
  Sally: (cuts in while Mr. Klump stutters) No! No more "sister", no "sweetheart", no "darling sweet cakes", nothing! My name is Sally! And you Mr. Klump are on your own. As far as this story goes, it's my word against your own, and I didn't see anything. And if that means never having to work with you again, THAT SUITS ME JUST FINE!!
  • In "Hyde and go Shriek", Wendell exacting his revenge by pulling a Batman Gambit on Rex. He could've mauled him the second time he used the tea to change into a werewolf. But instead, he spared him, counting on Rex to try and retaliate, overdose on the werewolf tea and be captured by the authorities. And it works.
  • In "Fare Tonight", Mildred and Camille watch a vampire movie, which apparently spooks them. When a member of the audience snarks at them that Romance movies are more suited for them, the girls make him eat his words by scaring him with their vampire fangs.
  • In "Gone Fishing", we have Randy finally telling off his Uncle Ned for his abusive nature towards the lake and the fish in it.
• Narm:
  • In "Cold Blood, Warm Hearts", the female lead's Big "NO!" when the captain attempts to shoot the sea monster.
  • The captain himself, since nearly every line out of his mouth is a sardonic laugh. The first time, it's properly intimidating. The next hundred or so times... not so much.
  • The continued close-ups of the captain's face when the sea monster is revealed to be a shapeshifter distract from the mood. Not helped by the fact that the captain points what looks like a cardboard tune at the monster... and he surrenders without even considering a fight.
  • The part where the two sea monster shapeshifters finally meet and fall in love is ruined when the camera inexplicably cuts to the unconscious captain, making it look like he fell asleep due to it.
  • Any time anyone mentions Pharaoh Ikamokama in "This Wraps It Up."
  • The part in the flashback from the same episode where Ikamokama fends off five dudes with spears who never consider just throwing them at her with only a torch.
  • The traps in the pyramid lose some of their luster when one is literally a bunch of balls zooming from one wall to another at high speed.
  • In "Hunted", the egomaniac hunter is surrounded by all the animals he captured at the end. So far so good. Then they cut to the toucans, which are not known for being threatening (something not helped at all by the Death Glare all the animals sport, toucans included)
    • His bizarre and over the top "frightened" expressions also fit.
    • The over the top Anvilicious nature of the episode. By the end of it, you'll wonder if subtlety is dead.
    • And then there's the fact that the now human again former Oniya leaves the new one in the net without even bothering to cut him loose.
  • All of Season 3 due to its Lighter and Softer mandate.
• Narm Charm: Despite all of the above Narm, "Hunted" still manages to be a rather creepy episode.
• Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page.
• Seasonal Rot: The CBS episodes, for being too preachy and not scary enough, thanks, in no small part, to the FCC's call to make kids' TV more educational and CBS' Standards and Practices being stricter than ABC's.
• Squick: "Hyde and go Shriek" sees the Crypt Keeper making a post-workout smoothie out of wheat germ, garbanzo beans, carrot juice, and nothing else. While beans are a perfectly edible, acceptable way to add substance and creaminess to a smoothie, simply adding them to wheat germ and juice is probably going to taste awful — especially to a child.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: What the usual sentiment is of the third season, due the change of the art style, and the Lighter and Softer tone of most of the stories.
• Ugly Cute:
  • The sea monsters from "Cold Blood, Warm Hearts", which is an example of this being an Invoked Trope.
  • The Crypt Keeper this go around. He's less realistically rendered and much less dangerous, and can instead be found laughing when ants tickle him, falling asleep face down in one of his books, and getting knocked around by the Vault Keeper and the Old Witch.