Some voice actors are precious about doing their characters for you. John Kassir was happy to play The Crypt Keeper in an interview to promote the seventh season DVD of Tales from the Crypt. Kassir provided the voice for the horror anthology's undead host, cracking macabre jokes about each week's story. We split our time evenly between Cryptie and the real Kassir. Imagine the Crypt Keeper's cackly voice reading his gag answers in this interview.
CraveOnline: Crypt Keeper, what have you been doing for money since the show wrapped?
Crypt Keeper: Oh, I have a lot stashed away. Don't believe them. You can take it with you. [Cackles] But I've been doing everything from beer commercials to working at theme parks. Now that my season seven of the DVD box set is coming by, I have my royalties to come in through my death wish.
CraveOnline: Nice plug for the DVD. What do you think of the new horror films like Saw?
Crypt Keeper: Oh, I love all the new horror films. They're bloodier and gorier and one has to up on the other one. You can't just have a zombie movie. It has to top the last zombie movie. George Romero has to top Night of the Living Dead with his new version and it has to be bloodier and gorier and grosser than all the others. Tales from the Crypt was like that. Every season had to top the last. That's what I loved about it. Saw is a great series of horror films and all the send-ups of the horror films are fun. I Know What You Did Last Summer was a great one. Even making fun of the genre was fun. So I love it.
CraveOnline: What did you go as for Halloween?
Crypt Keeper: Actually, I was going to go as a yule log. People kept trying to light me on fire, but I'm so well embalmed that I won't light. [Cackles]
CraveOnline: What are your biggest fears?
Crypt Keeper: I'm generally afraid of the living. Dead people are much easier to get along with. [Cackles] They just lie there.
CraveOnline: You had two Tales from the Crypt movies but the third went straight to video. How did you feel about that?
Crypt Keeper: Well, as a matter of fact, they did make two nice ones for me so I can't slam them too bad, but when you have a three picture deal, comedy comes in threes and so does horror. So I thought it was a bonehead move of them not to have a third film. [Cackles] Ritual is available on DVD. I own it myself. I love Jennifer Grey. I'd love to jump her bones.
CraveOnline: Are you still bitter about being skipped by the Emmys and Cable Ace awards?
Crypt Keeper: Well, first of all, the Cable Ace Awards are dead as well so who cares. Now, in terms of getting an Emmy, my show did get an Emmy and John was on the cusp of being nominated as a voiceover actor for it. As you know, that category is voted on by people in their own field. So they don't announce the nominations but he's been considered by the nominating committee for a number of years. Of course now, the show is gone. It got bypassed. As far as myself getting an Emmy, it would have set a precedent I'm sure, the first dead person to ever receive one while still being on the air. [Cackles]
CraveOnline: John, did you work with the directors of each individual episode on the intros to the show?
John Kassir: Yeah, occasionally we got to. There were certain episodes where Kevin Yagher directed most of the wraparounds which was a lot of fun. Of course most of them were written after they had started working on the episodes so they got a real feel for the episodes. Sometimes the directors would come in and talk to us about what they wanted it to feel like in terms of the episode and of course they would have conversations and I would improvise along with everything that was written. They would give it a sense of what kind of information they would want to get across besides the fun that we were having. There were a few times we would go down to the set when there were other people on the set. Like when Arnold Schwarzenegger directed one of them, he was also in the wraparounds. Rather than have him play to playback, I would record the voice first and then the puppeteers could choreograph to the voice, similar to doing a rock video or something like that. But in order to have a conversation with the other person on screen, they might have me off camera talking to them directly so that we could get more timing and that kind of fun.
CraveOnline: Are you worried about being recast in a potential remake of Tales?
Crypt Keeper: You talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? [Cackles]
John Kassir: You know what? The partners which were Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis and Richard Donner, Walter Hill, David Giler, AL Katz, all these different people that were involved in this piece, they really were passionate about it and they wanted it to be done right. Obviously, it was also a playground for them to bring in great directors and great actors and even for actors to come in and direct some of the episodes. But they were very careful about who they even selected for that so I can't imagine them in any way, shape or form taking the franchise that they, first of all, paid a lot of money for and secondly, were really passionate about doing it in a way and taking it and destroying it somehow. The film within the structure of it might be something that they might do differently, but this is definitely a situation where if it ain't broke, don't fix it. They still use Crypt Keeper for different types of little things, projects that they're doing that have to do with horror. I would be less surprised to see the franchise come back as a series again the way that Twilight Zone or Outer Limits came back later with new directors and fresh eyes and fresh stars of today. I would more see that happening above and beyond anything else.
CraveOnline: Where did you find the voice in the first place?
John Kassir: The auditions were kind of exclusive. I'd come off of being, at that time, a popular stand-up comedian after winning Star Search and that kind of thing. It was known that I did a lot of different characters in my act. They were looking for somebody who was this combination of actor/stand-up comedian/voiceover artist. So I kind of headily describe him as being a cross between Alfred Hitchcock, Henny Youngman and Margaret Hamilton from The Wizard of Oz. They had the auditions and I think there was maybe only 10 of us at the most, 15 that auditioned for it and we were invited down to Kevin Yagher's studio to try to match a voice to the look. The Crypt Keeper had gone through all these different generations of looks that he wanted to do with it. Some of them had noses, some of them had teeth, some of them were younger, some of them were older. What you see today is what he settled upon when I went in to read for it. I took a look at him and there he was with his nose rotting off and gleeful mad eyes and rotten teeth and holes in his throat. I created this voice and they had some copy and I improvised off of it. I said, "Be careful what you axe for. You may get it." And it was like oh my God, that's it, that's great. The next day he brought me in to do it for Richard Donner and Joel Silver and they loved it. Of course once we started shooting the episodes, if you listen to the very first season, the puppet was their first generation of the puppet. Mechanically as you know, the first season of a show they might not have the budget given to them as the show went on to become successful. So it didn't have quite as many servos and motors and that kind of thing in the puppet to make the mouth move as quick and as easily. So I had to slow him down which if you look at the first season, the three or four episodes, you'll notice the Crypt Keeper is a little more gravely and ominous but the voice that you hear today is the voice that I had auditioned originally for them. When the show got picked up, they gave them a bigger budget to make the puppet move better and that's why we were able to get that comic timing in there.
CraveOnline: Why did you stop doing the new Crypt Keeper intros for the DVDs?
John Kassir: I'm sure probably it just had to do with time or that they were trying to do something that had more variety to it. This one we have instead I do a narrated virtual comic book. I think they were just trying to do something different because maybe they felt that they'd been there, done that kind of thing so they were just trying to give some variety to it. A lot of times they decide to do these things at the last minute too. It's like all of a sudden they go, "Hey, we really want to get this. We've got to get it out by such and such time." And they don't have the time to put it together as quickly as they would like to. The Tales from the Crypt episodes are obviously the most important thing on the DVD. A lot of people didn't get to see these episodes in full form. Two generations of people only got to see it once it came to network television on Fox or Sci-Fi Network so they've never seen the unedited versions of it. I think mainly they were just looking for some variety. They didn't want to overload the DVD because people will watch the intro, they may watch it once or something like that. But if they can watch the episodes over and over again, then they'll also have certain episodes where we did commentary behind the episodes which are kind of funny.
CraveOnline: What was your experience making the original Legend of Zelda commercial?
John Kassir: Very rarely do I get asked questions about that. A few people at signings have brought the actual game with them and I did have a fan pass on, it's on YouTube now. They're playing it on YouTube which I thought was kind of funny. That commercial was a trip because that was when Zelda was first- - I mean, it is the first game of its kind that came to the United States. It had already been popular in Japan and was on an eight track sized cassette. That's how long ago it was. That was an amazing game with all the tiers and everything like that, the different tiers that you could go into and the different aspects of it was the first of its kind. The commercial, I had no idea that being cast in that commercial was going to be such a big deal. They were like, "Okay, this is this game, it's called The Legend of Zelda and you're going to be the guy that's stuck in the game. It's going to be really cool, we're going to do like a takeoff on Eraserhead and your hair's going to be sticking straight up and you're going to be stuck." So I was like, "Oh, that sounds really cool. I'm very excited about it." I was still playing at comedy clubs and I'd been at a comedy club working late the night before. I'm never late to anything. People will tell you I'm a habitual, on time person. That morning, my alarm clock didn't go off. I came in maybe a half hour late or something like that. I shows up to the set and the director was furious. He thought I was one of those actors that just showed up whenever they wanted and all that stuff. He was like, "Get in there!" I was unshaved because I just wanted to get there on time. They threw me into clothes, I was partially unshaved which wound up adding to the whole look of the thing. As soon as we started shooting, everybody relaxed and the director just kind of cut me loose. I improvised. They told me what they wanted me to say but the camera's sticking straight up towards the ceiling and I was going around in circles and doing all this different stuff. They showed me bits of the game and I would imitate bits of the game and that kind of thing. They cut it all together and it's what you saw. We started at nine, we were done at 12 to shoot the whole thing, which in the commercial world is no time at all. I just thought it came out great. I thought it was one of the funnest commercials ever, and certainly one of the funnest things that I've ever done in terms of commercials. There's been a resurgence for it. It showed up on YouTube and people have been showing up with the game and asking me to sign it. I was like, "You're kidding, after all these years." That must have been 1987, '88 maybe. Not even '88, maybe '86-'87, a long time ago. Ah, youth. I look the same by the way, guys. Maybe a little less hair sticking up.
