Came the Dawn

"Came the Dawn" is one of my favorite crypt episodes of all-time and clearly the best of season 5 due to it's plot and twisted end, and most of all it features the beautiful Brooke Shields. It all begins with a beautiful woman murdered in a bathroom, then preceding on to a rainy night which is such a spooky and suspense setting you have a motorist(played perfect by veteran Perry King) who picks up a stranded chick(Brooke Shields) along the roadside. As this tale unfolds word is around town that an ax killer is killing off female after female, so this plot appears to have you thinking you know the direction, though you will be shocked how it turns out! The build up to the ending here is great, as the sexual tension between Brooke and Perry is super the kind of thing you expect from two veterans. Over a night dinner filled with opera music which is a good work of art, the two try to get to know each other, but always take the lesson no one is whom they seem and never trust anyone! The Shields character has plans to be the jewel thief of the day, because diamonds are a girls best friend, but only she finds out a nasty bad secret that this man has come out of the closet ready to swing! The words ring true ax questions later! This episode has some of Alfred Hitchcock applied to it just like in Psycho you never should trust strangers you may be trying to hide your past, but you meet up with a person who has a darker secret than yours and also they turn out to be crazy! Overall a good episode of tales with a great script and good twisting of plot with justice served!

A woman known as Norma (Brooke Shields) is driving with her pickup truck during a thunderstorm, but after a while the truck breaks down. She then stands by at the side of the road under the soaking rain when she is noticed by a rich businessman named Roger that takes her in his cabin. As they arrive they have a dinner and suddenly Norma is convinced that Roger is a rich womanizer and plans to steal his valuable stuff, but she will find out that he has a woman in his life...

While the story looked a bit similar to that of some TV movies of those years, it was still a decent episode with an unexpected ending and a funny cameo by Michael J. Pollard as the liquor store owner that talks to Roger about women who murdered men for robbing them of their riches. Decent overall.

I've just been getting into reading the original EC Comics stories that these "Tales From the Crypt" episodes were based on. This is a terrific episode... But I just thought it was funny how different it was from the original comic. The only things similar are a cabin in the woods and a mysterious, wet, stranded woman. The title actually makes sense for the comic...

But no worries... I just thought it was interesting. Curious to see if I find any more adaptations in the series that are this different from the original comic.

Anyway... on to the actual episode. Brooke Shields is totally effective, as is Peter King. I really don't want to give too much away, as the plot is pretty twisty...

This really isn't one of the funnier episodes of "Tales from the Crypt"... just a nice, scary little crime tale. The prologue is pretty damned funny though. Some great Cryptkeeper puns!

Watch it and enjoy. Hopefully all of these episodes will be streaming somewhere soon. HBO Go? C'mon! As of now, they are readily available on DVD.