Based on the legendary and gruesome 1950's EC Comics from publisher, William M. Gaines, this horror anthology featured stories of murder, greed, lust, gore and the supernatural, with touches of humor sprinkled throughout, usually with a twist ending of sorts. Some of Hollywood's biggest names including Demi Moore, Tom Hanks, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Whoopi Goldberg and Michael J. Fox were featured, either in front or behind the camera. Hosting duties fell to everyone's favorite decaying corpse, the Crypt Keeper. The episodes were based on several comic books by Gaines, which were The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear, Crime SuspenStories, Shock SuspenStories, and, of course, Tales from the Crypt, to name a few. The success of this series spawned a Saturday morning cartoon series, Tales from the Cryptkeeper, a short-lived Saturday morning gameshow on CBS, Secrets of the Cryptkeeper's Haunted House, and lots of merchandise. A short-lived TV series based on the EC Comics' Weird Science series, entitled Perversions of Science, was also produced in 1997, following the same anthology format as Tales from the Crypt, with wraparound segments featuring a female android named Chrome. In addition, two feature films, Demon Knight (1995) and Bordello of Blood (1996), were also produced. In 2006, Ritual, a third film originally released overseas (without the Crypt Keeper wraparounds) in 2001, was finally released on DVD. Two other movies based on the EC Comics Tales From the Crypt and The Vault of Horror were released back in 1972 and 1973 respectively. They are not connected to this series in any way, other than the original source. Since its cancellation, Tales from the Crypt had aired in syndication on HBO, Fox, the Sci-Fi Channel, AMC, DirectTV's Chiller Network, Zone Horror in the UK and in Canada on CBC and the Space Channel.