Now this was quite the fun and disturbing tale. Like Adam Ant in "Maniac at Large", I'm not sure Roger Daltry even was an actor as such, but I thought he was very good and convincing as a deviously underhanded and formerly-great photographer of bloody war atrocities who is no longer troubled by a conscience and who gets the eye for the beautiful girlfriend of a younger more popular photographing ace who still idolises him, and who devises a very cruel way to eliminate the unwitting competition by luring the naively trusting poor sap to a germ-infested war zone with the promise of once in a lifetime snapshots that he fully intends to steal and pass off as his own afterwards. While scouting there the man Isaac catches something hellish that soon has him dying an unbelievably gruesome death as he first writhes in diseased agony until his goddamn eyeball pops out of his head, and is after gunned down by Dalton before he can groan out the truth! Dalton seems to have clear gotten away with his evil deed until, after making his move on Isaac's former girlfriend Bobbi, he discovers that the both of them now also have the nightmarish mystery disease as she quite literally falls apart on top of him, and he races to the bathroom where he frantically attempts to wash off the tainted gore and instead loses something else... Before dying Isaac had sent a package of balsa he obtained from the pestilential jungle death village of "Valmalera" to Bobbi, and knowing this and Dalton's entire plan because of a letter she received from one of the mercenaries who escorted the photographers through the rotten jungle, she deliberately put it in the killer joint that they shared for revenge! This is surely the most nauseating Crypt episode, as the Steve Buscemi character melts down there's some seriously vile and disgusting makeup effects work done, and it made for one hell of a spectacular insane visual! Also quite striking on a smaller scale is when Dalton's nose plops into the bathroom sink in the blackly comical closing scene. The nose does seem a bit random and doesn't really play into anything except that Mr Daltry had a very prominent nose, and it also echoes back to the weird story told by the mercenary about a pal in 'Nam who had his nose eaten away by bugs. I like this episode more than I used to, the story and the buildup to the nastier scenes and ending is interesting, and it's alp nicely grim, it's probably not got too much else standing out about it besides the gore but it's still fun and it's definitely one of the series' best if you have a penchant for the good old blood and guts! It was cool to see Marshall Bell in an episode again so long after appearing in the classic and brilliant "And All Through the House". Back then the show was strangely more innocent.. Good story, I would really advise against eating while watching it though!
Review of Forever Ambergris
