‘Riverdale’ told four pulpy tales of terror in the style of ‘Tales from the Crypt’ that become a meta commentary on genre, violence, and censorship.
“Veronica, it’s just a comic book…”
The CW’s Riverdale–against all odds–has become one of the most bizarre and unabashedly genre programs that’s currently on television. What started as a double-dog-dare of a premise that was ostensibly, “Archie Comics, but Twin Peaks,” will have produced more than 130 episodes across seven seasons that have included some particularly big swings and stylistic experiments (musicals have become a yearly tradition on Riverdale) over the years. Meanwhile, anthology horror has never been more popular on television and if any supernatural-adjacent series is designed to tell spooky tales around the metaphorical campfire, it’s Riverdale.
A Tales from the Crypt tribute already snugly fits within Riverdale’s uniquely weird wheelhouse. However, the events that surround the show’s seventh and final season–where the cast have magically been sent back to an alternate version of the 1950s, something that only Jughead is cognizant of–facilitate the perfect opportunity for Riverdale to embrace its comic roots, albeit through a wildly different genre and style. “Tales in a Jugular Vein” is one of the most fun episodes that Riverdale has done in years, and one that’s an absolute love letter to the pulp horror that helped the genre get to where it is today.
Riverdale’s seventh season conveniently benefits from Jughead’s recent employment at “Pep Comics” under the supervision of Al Fieldstone, a thinly-veiled counterpoint to the editor-in-chief of EC Comics’ Al Feldstein. This allows a comic book-based anthology episode to make sense on a practical level, but “Tales in a Jugular Vein” also finds a thematic reason to tell this story that informs the season’s narrative even if it’s still largely a standalone, non-canonical anthology genre exercise. Even the episode’s title itself, “Tales in a Jugular Vein,” is a reference to a collection of short horror stories by Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho. Bloch himself was an avid fan of pulp comics like Weird Tales, which brings a nice synchronicity to the Riverdale episode’s reference points.
“Tales in a Jugular Vein” is structured around four stories that cover a lot of ground as far as the horror genre is concerned. The introductory tale looks at the horrors of teen bullying and social hazing. These embarrassing customs push Dilton to mentally snap as he comes up with rather creative means for the heads that he acquires after he puts his basketball team through some group bonding in the form of decapitation. It’s a story that largely comes down to its final visual, but Riverdale nails it. The second story looks at a case of forbidden fruit where both of the involved parties end up rotten. It’s a combination of Tales from the Crypt’s surprise zombie lover installment, “‘Til Death,” and the comic series’ “A Fatal Caper,” which features a comparable leprosy-based twist.
Riverdale properly escalates the stories in “Tales in a Jugular Vein” and the concluding entries are particularly strong. Betty gets caught up in a “beauty is only skin deep” morality tale that turns to the unnerving urban legend that involves a spider making a nest inside of an oblivious girl’s beehive hairdo. It’s a story that’s shown up in the animated and younger-skewing Freaky Stories, not Tales from the Crypt, but its urban legend status makes it feel like a contemporary to the rest of these pulp parables. The final entry is the ultimate Archie/Betty/Veronica love triangle horror story that plays on Tales from the Crypt’s classic womanizing tale, “Split Personality.” Out of all of the Tales from the Crypt love triangle stories to recreate, this one holds the most substance and it even replicates the episode’s symmetrically scary big finish.
The entire cast rises to the occasion and showcases unseen sides of their personality here–especially in the case of KJ Apa–and it’s the most activated that everyone’s been in years. Everyone seems to truly relish the opportunity to play (even more) heightened versions of their characters where it’s encouraged to chew scenery and abandon restraint. It’s the perfect parting gift to these actors who can often feel like they’re going through the motions when it comes to their latest incredulous storyline.
In an abstract story sense, “Tales in a Jugular Vein” succeeds, but this anthology episode becomes even more entertaining once it’s filtered through its pun-making Crypt Keeper imposter, the Key-Keeper (Dan Vukovic). Riverdale has established such a cast of outlandish caricatures that it would have been easy for the show to put the Black Hood, the Gargoyle King, or even Sabrina Spellman in the master of ceremonies role. The fact that Riverdale actively avoids those easier alternatives in favor of creating its own creepy Crypt Keeper clone speaks to the reverence that it holds towards its “source material.” If Riverdale is going to do a Tales from the Crypt episode then it’s sure as hell going to feature its own take on the wisecracking Crypt Keeper.
This is also just a gorgeous looking episode of Riverdale and longtime series director, Jeff Woolnough, really directs the hell out of Greg Murray’s script to make this feel like an EC Comic come to life. Each story is made up of highly stylized shots, canted camera angles, and grandiose zooms that perfectly create impressionistic comic-style splash panels. Shudder’s Creepshow has adopted this aesthetic to great effect and it’s quite a surprise to see that Riverdale beats them at their own gruesome game. There’s dramatic lighting that casts a spider web pattern over Betty that foreshadows her fate that might be the best piece of cinematography from the entire series. To truly sell the idea that these stories are lost in a bygone era of tamer sensibilities, Archie even delivers an exaggerated “head shake” reaction as he tries to regain his composure after being tranquilized. Riverdale descends into full on Tex Avery before its main character gets vivisectioned in half and it’s absolutely glorious.
The closest analogue that Riverdale has to this anthology horror extravaganza is the season two episode, “Tales from the Darkside,” which also breaks itself up into separate character-driven chapters. That being said, “Tales from the Darkside” doesn’t exist out of canon or take the radical genre swings that are employed here. It’s still an episode that leans into a whole Texas Chain Saw Massacre aesthetic, right down to its opening text crawl and narration, but it ultimately doesn’t do enough with it. Alternatively, “Tales in a Jugular Vein” can’t help itself from lovingly wearing its references on its rolled back sleeve.
“Tales in a Jugular Vein” is clearly the evolution of “Tales from the Darkside,” it’s just a shame that it took five seasons to happen. This could have become its own seasonal tradition, like the show’s approach to musicals, if Riverdale went down this route several seasons earlier. Hell, it could have even become its own spin-off. The CW actively chased young adult-friendly anthology horror through series like Two-Sentence Horror Stories, as well as being known for its penchant for endless spin-offs, so it’s bittersweet that this idea didn’t come around earlier in the CW’s life. It’s hard to imagine that a “Tales in a Jugular Vein” anthology spin-off wouldn’t have at least lasted longer than Riverdale’s failed Katy Keene.
Nobody would have questioned if Riverdale just had some frivolous fun with these horror stories, so it’s quite impressive that “Tales in a Jugular Vein” uses this as an opportunity to hold a mirror up to society and preach good values while it chastises the contrary. This all appropriately occurs during a point in Riverdale’s season where the characters face a moral crossroads as everyone sits on the precipice of potential change. “Tales in a Jugular Vein” has fun while it creatively massacres its cast, but it becomes a larger deconstruction on how these types of stories demonize women, set up unhealthy gender stereotypes, and influence society, even if they’re “just comic books.”
This hits even harder considering that Riverdale itself is based on Archie Comics, but an attempt to sensationalize what was initially intended as wholesome content that was explicitly an antidote to what was being experimented with in EC Comics during the 1940s and ‘50s. This blossoms into a broader exploration of television’s effect on the youth and if the stories that are told in Riverdale, and by proxy the CW Network as a whole, are equally corrupt and polluting the minds of today’s youth even if they’re “just a TV show.” Riverdale engages in some surprisingly powerful commentary with “Tales in a Jugular Vein” that’s much deeper than the supernatural shenanigans that typically motivate the series. It’s a really evocative angle to frame the series, especially during its swan song season where it actually has the hindsight to reflect back on its legacy and the stories that it’s told for seven seasons.
If nothing else, it’s a genuine surprise that one of the best Tales from the Crypt tributes in years is found in the seventh season of Riverdale. As the Key-Keeper Crypt Keeper would say, “Don’t judge a hook by its shudder.”
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