After a first viewing, this seemed pretty good, but not quite great.  Watching it again, I am baffled by my reservation.  It is simply one of the best episodes of the series.  Before I watched the episode, my expectations were high:

IMDb description:  A happy housewife is pitted against three CIA agents, who have come to kill her husband, a supposed rogue agent.

Wow, Die Hard in the home!  Great premise.  Maybe not technically “from the Crypt”, but enough over the top gore could have qualified it.  I envisioned a Home Alone series of Rube Goldberg devices, brutal accidental kills, and domestic mayhem by a kill-at-home mom like Ma Peltzer in Gremlins.

Shelley Hack

Briefly a beautiful Charlie’s Angel, sexy in classic Charlie Perfume ads, and stunning in countless other productions with the word Charlie ^[1] in them.  I have remembered her for 25 years as an evil submarine commander in the pilot of SeaQuest DSV.  The show quickly became unwatchable for many reasons; killing her off in the pilot was one of them.  She was also in The King of Comedy where she was beautiful and classy, although that might have been because every other character was repulsive. ^[3]  So I was prepared to love this.

Jonathan Banks

Mike Ehrmantraut has become such an iconic grizzled character on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul that it’s hard to believe he was ever young (or, at 46 here, younger).  I looked forward to seeing him in something from 25 years ago.

William Sadler

Always solid.  He has been in a ton of great movies and TV shows — a fine Outer Limits, Shawshank Redemption, etc.  He was no Hans Gruber, but was a memorable villain as what’s-his-name in the underrated Die Hard 2.  He was even in the very first TFTC episode, The Man Who Was Death; and he was the actor who was Death in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.

Corey Feldman

Er, maybe not so much now, but this was 25 years ago.  I was expecting the Stand by Me era, but this was 8 years later.

Chelsea Field

I think I confused her with someone else, so this one’s on me.

Janet McKay is the ideal, adoring 1950s housewife.  Even better, this is 1994.    She cooks a nice breakfast for her husband and gets him off; to work, I mean.  She returns home from the grocery store wearing an adorable little dress and finds a less adorable woman in her kitchen.  She says she is a CIA agent and tells Janet her husband was a contract killer.  Qu’est-ce que c’est.

After Agent Simone knocks Shelley out, they are joined by clean-up crew Todd (the formerly adorable Corey Feldman) and William (the futurely adorable Jonathan Banks).  They tell Shelley her husband was a notorious hitman and that they are here to kill him so he doesn’t embarrass the president (back when that was possible). ^[4]

When they give his name and show her a picture, though, Shelley assures them they have the wrong man.  Simone roughly shakes her in a nice POV shot and shouts, “He’s changed his appearance you stupid cow!  He’s changed his face, he’s changed his hair!  He’s a Hollywood actor! a new man!”  Unfortunately, the hitman went for the Hollywood trifecta ^[5] and also got his teeth fixed so was tracked through his dental records.

Todd takes Shelley downstairs to kill her.  After a seduction scene with equal amounts of creepiness and humor (your wokeness may vary), Todd ends up dead thanks to Shelley’s quick thinking and a treadmill.  That exercise equipment is dangerous, I tells ya.

When Todd doesn’t return, Simone goes to the basement stairs.  It is a little muddled what happens next.  Shelley has Todd’s gun, and the ladies fire at each other.  They both miss because one of them breaks a heel.  It is poorly edited, but I believe Simone was wearing the grey this evening; plus, she tumbles down the stairs.  However, Shelley falls also, but maybe she was dodging a bullet.  After a brief, leggy tussle, Simone grabs Todd’s gun which Shelley had dropped 1) into an open can of paint, 2) in this otherwise immaculate basement, and 3) which had been left open just long enough to congeal just enough to prop up the gun.  When Shelley runs away, Simone fires with the paint can still on the muzzle.  The director cuts away quickly, but we are led to believe she was killed in an explosive backfire; deadly, albeit in lovely Sherwin-Williams Rhapsody Lilac.

Shelley runs upstairs and dispatches William quickly and viciously.  Just when you think she is safe, Simone reappears less dead and less lilacky than I expected.

The twist that follows is Ludacris, and maybe that’s what bothered me on the first viewing.  However, in the TFTC style (the ideal, not what it sometimes lapses into), it makes complete sense.  The still goofier, winking epilog even comes across as reasonable and charming (thanks to Ms. Hack).

Of course, Shelley Hack was great.  I never understood why she wasn’t a bigger star.  The others were also very good in their roles.  That includes, to my surprise, Corey Feldman.  I’m convinced he could still come back big given the chance.  Unfortunately, William Sadler appeared only in the Cryptkeeper segment.

So I guess it took a second viewing to get into the spirit of the episode.  Final rating: Excellent.  Maybe I should Give Ray Bradbury Theater another chance.

Footnotes:

• [1] Charlie?  Why does a perfume have a man’s name? ^[2]  OK, could be short for Charlene, but how many sexy Charlene’s have you ever known?  Plus, in 1973, the Viet Nam War was still fresh in everyone’s mind — why name your product after the enemy.  Just lucky it wasn’t released after VJ Day, I guess.
• [2] I see on Wiki that it was named after the founder of Revlon.  What kind of controlling, egomaniacal dude names a woman’s product after himself?  What a douche — oh, sorry Dr. Masengill.
• [3] I forgot the nice woman Rupert dragged to Jerry’s house.
• [4] The president when this episode aired was Bill Clinton, so this comment is really a perennial.
• [5] Boob jobs lead to a Superfecta for women.  Could be even more, but who wants to deal with the bleach?