The cable TV freak show, now in midseason stride, is hosted with an animatronic grimace by the rotting Crypt-Keeper. Arnold Schwarzenegger already made his directorial debut in one of this season’s 18 episodes, and Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis, Burt Reynolds and Peter Weller have said they want to follow in his over-sized footsteps. Screenwriters and superstar actors also are getting in on the act. Steven Spielberg, Penny Marshall, Tim Burton, Blake Edwards, Kathryn Bigelow, John McTiernan, Joe Dante- film directors who make powerful executives stand in line for their services-have all expressed interest in a “Crypt” excursion if the series gets picked up for 40 new episodes next season. All they have to do, in return, is direct a half-hour episode of “Tales From the Crypt,” HBO’s horror anthology series airing Tuesdays at 10 p.m. They’re given about $900,000 by HBO and allowed a week to roam the grounds and scare up some fun. In between feature films, they head for the Crypt with a squeal on their lips and a tong in their heart. But it’s really an amusement park, an E-ticket chill ride that’s attracting a funeral procession of big Hollywood names. All lurking inside the brick bowels of a faded spaghetti factory somewhere in Culver City. A dark menagerie of graveyard tombstones, a mist-shrouded bog, a padded white-walled insane asylum, a dank stony dungeon oozing moss, dripping razor-sharp stalactites. It’s the kind of playground you dreamed of as a kid.
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