Other than each missing an eye in the stills above, The Terminator and Tales From the Crypt  might appear to have absolutely nothing in common at first glance. Tales From the Crypt was a campy horror film from the 1970’s, while The Terminator was a science fiction landmark for practical effects. Even the storytelling format is completely different, with Tales From the Crypt using a five-story anthology series rather than the more straight-forward narrative of The Terminator. The two could not seem to be any more different. However, they each share two aspects that make them both such impressive films – making the most out of a low budget, and a central theme of ironic consequences.

Show Me the Money

An unfortunate reality of filmmaking is that the budget can quite often dictate the quality of the end result. Filmmakers with a low budget can run into extreme problems with how convincing their effects look, how much time they have to make the film, affording permits to film on location, and losing the ability to re-shoot problematic scenes, among many others. However, when creative filmmakers are able to create exceptional work despite their limited budget, it makes their accomplishments all the more impressive. Tales From the Crypt did an outstanding job with its sets and make-up when considering its microscopic £170,000 budget, earning over seventeen times its money back at the box office.

With the exception of The Omen, the 1970’s British horror film era did not typically produce particularly impressive box office returns for their budgets. As noted by Empire’s online magazine, other Robert Blach adaptations such as Asylum or The House That Dripped Blood earned notable cult status, but never saw anywhere near the same financial success as Tales From the Crypt. There was finally a 1970’s British horror film that bucked the trend of poor commercial yields, and this success may in fact have inspired the creation of The Omen to show how truly profitable this style of film could be.

But as remarkable as Tales From the Crypt‘s use of budget was, it is The Terminator that was especially impressive in this regard, creating incredible practical effects through ingenuity despite having a rather small (for a blockbuster) budget of $6.4 million. The brilliance of Stan Winston’s designs was particularly important in this regard, as the T-800 has become an iconic figure within pop culture.

The film’s massive success was part of a large trend from the blockbuster film era of the 1980’s – impressive practical effects despite smaller budgets. Following the successes of similar films such as The Road Warrior and Escape From New York, The Terminator followed suit by yielding over twelve times its budget back worldwide.  As noted by Empire magazine’s online review, this propelled James Cameron into stardom, granting him the credibility to create other practical effect marvels such as Aliens and The Abyss. However, following all of these hit films, Cameron became notorious for his gargantuan-sized budget CGI films. And, in an ironic twist of fate perfectly mirroring The Terminator‘s theme of advancing technology completely destroying its creator, the blockbuster practical effect era was destroyed by the same man who came from it. And speaking of ironic consequences…

Punishment Fits the Crime

Both The Terminator and Tales From the Crypt seem to revel in doling out ironic consequences towards their characters as warnings to the audience. The Terminator’s message isn’t entirely original, even to the point that Matt Zoller Seitz notes that James Cameron was sued (and agreed on a settlement) for stealing the premise from an Outer Limits episode, but it is effective nonetheless. The idea of technology becoming advanced so far that it becomes more powerful than its creator is a classic, and serves as the entire purpose of The Terminator‘s cautionary tale. A particularly interesting aspect of the story was Cameron’s decision to make the T-800 appear as a normal human being at first.

Cameron’s point that “”the Terminator was this anonymous character who could walk out of a crowd. Just one face in a crowd could walk up and kill you for no apparent reason except for what your life would mean in some future time” adds an additional layer of irony to the film. In their future, machines have advanced so far beyond humanity that they can literally replace them both in function and appearance. While the sole human who travels back from that future, Kyle Reese, is so completely single-minded towards his goal that he may as well be a machine. This role reversal works well at warning society as a whole for our arrogant need to play God, but what about punishing the evil individual?

Enter Tales From the Crypt, a film that is oozing with Twilight Zone-esque ironic punishments for each of its despicable characters. Expertly described by Roger Ebert, “The five stories all work on the principle that an evildoer should be punished ironically by his own misdeed”. And ironically punished they are indeed. Joanne is not only unable to call the police for help from a killer as she had just murdered her husband, but she is attacked by a killer dressed as Santa on Christmas Eve. Carl and Susan have their adulterous lust punished by horrific disfigurement (never being attractive to anyone again) for Carl and permanent blindness (never being able to view beauty again) for Susan. James has his heartless attitude towards a kindly old man rewarded by literally having his heart removed. And so forth for each character, until the final twist is revealed that they were all brought to the crypts as their entryway into Hell. Granted, the messages are not particularly complex as they are all centered around the concept of karma, but they are still quite effective at issuing a warning while being simultaneously entertaining.

Conclusion

The Terminator and Tales From the Crypt are prime examples of foreboding storytelling expertly done despite significant budget constraints. The financial success of the two films launched them into full-blooded franchises, with sequels and television shows abound among a truly tremendous amount of merchandise. Neither film may have a particularly unique message attached to their stories, but they at least both gave an effort to provide the audience with something more substantial than a basic action or horror film. Its unlikely that we’ll ever see a crossover between these two (though Hollywood may eventually get desperate enough to try it), but The Terminator and Tales From the Crypt will forever be ingrained in my mind as triumphs of low-budget filmmaking.