Kassir, John (The Crypt Keeper)

Dread Central Staff   |  

Apr 14, 2005

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He’s done voices for video games including Halo 2, Tak, and Syphon Filter and cartoons including Tiny Toons, Rocket Power, and The Simpsons; he’s been a stand-up comic and character actor. Still, the role he’s best known for is the voice of the King of Halloween, the Crypt Keeper. John Kassir’s career has been long and varied with projects for children and adults alike. I had the opportunity to talk to John about his upcoming projects, where he got his start, and what’s going on with that rotting corpse that we all love so much.

Scott A. Johnson: Looks like you’ve got a busy year happening.

John Kassir: (laughs) Yeah, things are good. Always like to be in demand.

SJ: Well it certainly seems like you’re doing that. So far I’ve counted three projects that I can think of. You have Reefer Madness coming out on the sixteenth of this month (April). How did all that come about?

JK: Well I had originated the role onstage, here in Los Angeles. I like to call it “The little Splif that could.”

SJ: (Laughs)

JK: It just started out in a theater here in LA and became an instantaneous little small hit and it ran for almost two years. And I was on the show on and off depending on what my work schedule was. Then it went to off-Broadway, which was kind of a hardship because we opened three days after September 11.

SJ: Oh wow.

JK: Yeah, and we were there rehearsing when all that happened, so we got whatever run we could out of it with the lack of tourists in town, but we got a really good turnout from the New York audience. And then they sold the show to Showtime, and I was asked to reprise my part, which was a sheer joy. We have more fun than I could even start to describe to you.

SJ: It looks like a pretty fun production.

JK: Yeah, we had a good time. I don’t think I’ve ever had that good of a time doing anything in my life. We just had a great time shooting up in Vancouver, and once we were done we just kept our fingers crossed that everything we wanted it to come out like was there. When I saw it cut together I was just like, “This is so much better than we ever even thought.” So everyone’s really happy with it. Everyone’s really excited about it. There’s this billboard on Sunset Blvd, like a third of the sign is my face smoking a joint.

SJ: (Laughs)

JK: I just thought it was hysterical.

SJ: Is it strange to see your face, instead of one of the characters like the Crypt Keeper, on the billboard?

JK: Yeah, well I’ve been involved in press and other things before with my face, but never in a billboard sign. (Laughs)

SJ: Your face thirty feet tall!

JK: Yeah, I mean you don’t really go…I mean you do say, “Hey, that’s me,” but you don’t really feel like that’s you, it’s that character that you play and that’s cool. It’s a really colorful sign — “Reefer Madness” with yellow and blood-orange letters.

SJ: That all came out of the original Reefer Madness that was a drug awareness film.

JK: Right. It was from the late 30’s as a “cautionary tale.”

SJ: That was one of the most unintentially funny things I’ve ever seen.

JK: Oh yeah, totally. You’ve gotta be stoned to watch it; otherwise you’d sit there and watch it and go, “It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.” (Laughs)

SJ: (Laughs)

JK: There’s a really great sixteen-minute behind the scenes show that’s playing on Showtime right now called Reefer Madness: Grass Roots, and if you have Showtime and TiVo you should grab it because it’ll give you a really good background on not only the chronology of our production, but the chronology of the original movie and how that came to be and a lot of the satire behind what we’ve just done in our movie, you know, taking it from the 1930’s where they were using fear to scare people through the media. There are newspapers where they were “waging war on marijuana.” They were calling it that and using the Mexican name to make it sound foreign.

SJ: What’s foreign is scary.

JK: Exactly. William Randolph Hearst owned all the newspapers and he bought up all the paper mills and he was afraid it was going to cut into his paper products, and the DuPonts were involved in that because they had just created nylon and they were afraid it was going to cut into their nylon. And they’re still using fear in the media in terms of oil and other things to get us to go to war and other stuff, so it’s poignant on that level. I don’t know if the film really strived to have that as its main crux, but it certainly comes through. For those that it doesn’t come through to it’s just a totally entertaining film. It plays on those levels. It’s a very smart film but also a very wacky, funny film.

SJ: I can’t wait to see it.

JK: You’ll love it. But if you get to see the Grass Roots thing, it tells some pretty amazing tales of the whole chronology of what happened.

SJ: You’ve also got American Scary in post production right now. What are you doing for that? I know you’re doing yourself and the Crypt Keeper.

JK: That’s the documentary right? Basically, they ask me lots of questions about the history of the Crypt Keeper and that kind of thing. It’s one of those interviews where you talk a lot and you don’t exactly remember what you said until they cut what you said and show it, and then it’s like, “Oh yeah…I remember doing that.” (Laughs)

I’m sure that with all the years that I’ve been doing the Crypt Keeper, that it has the passion of what I’ve been through with that, which has been great, but in terms of exactly what they’re going to use out of it, I don’t know. I haven’t seen any of it. But they seem really on the ball, so I’m excited to see what they’re going to do.

SJ: That’s cool. So tell me about Moe Moebius.

JK: Moe Moebius is a weird strange character with coke-bottle glasses for the movie Dr. Rage, which was made for around half a million dollars. I was approached by a friend, another actor, who’d worked on the script and produced it, and I have a buddy directing it, Jeff Broadstreet. And it was such a fun character I couldn’t turn it down. It has Karen Black in it and Andrew Divoff, who plays the bad guy. I’m his sidekick. I’m like the Igor to his Dr. Frankenstein, but it’s got a different feel to it than most horror films I’ve seen — a very unique feel. I’ll be really interested to see how it comes out. My character seems kind of meek and quirky, but there’s an underlying rage below his character as well.

SJ: I’ve seen a few stills from the movie, and there’s this interesting look of mayhem that you get in parts of it.

JK: (Laughs) Yeah, the photos make it look over the top, and it’s not quite that way at all.

SJ: It looks like it’s made by genuine horror fans.

JK: Yeah, I would say that. I’d say the director was interested in making something unique but at the same time having these little homages to different horror filmmakers. And there’re some interesting effects, and we’ll see how the effects come out too, because they’re working on a small budget. But we have some guys that are new and creative working on those, so they do some interesting things. I know my face melts at one point. (laughs)

In terms of the Crypt Keeper, we’re doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff for the DVD box sets, which I’ve been getting a lot of questions about. People always ask me, especially at all the conventions and stuff, “When are the DVD Box sets coming out?” They’re just about to release the first six episodes. Warner Bros. just picked it up to release, and we’ve done some fun behind the scenes stuff on it, and we also had some neat behind the scenes stuff when we first shot it, so that’ll be in there as well.

SJ: That was in 1989.

JK: Yeah.

SJ: Wow.

JK: So yeah, the first six episodes. And you can see the difference in the Crypt Keeper too. Because in the fist season, when we worked on it, HBO gave us a smaller budget than what we wound up having later on, and so Kevin only had so much to put into the mechanics of the Crypt Keeper, so the mouth moved much slower. So (in Crypt Keeper voice) the voice is much more ominous. (Laughs)

SJ: (Laughs)

JK: Because the puppet couldn’t keep up. How I originally auditioned is what you hear on the later episodes.

SJ: Everything after that is just rapid fire.

JK: Right, and that’s the way we always wanted to do it. But sometimes those are the things we’re working with. I mean, I’m still quite proud of what we did in those first sequences, and I thought they had a real cool feel of their own, but we always wanted him to have a more tongue-in-cheek feel to him, and once the show got picked up and they put more money into more servos and things on the Crypt Keeper, he worked so much faster that he could follow pretty much whatever I wanted to do. So that was kind of cool. We had a lot of fun.

SJ: Did you ever think the Crypt Keeper was going to be as big as he is?

JK: For me, I collected the comic books as a kid.

SJ: So did I!

JK: So everyone thought I was a freak. I though it was going to have a cult following, and I thought it was really cool that we were making it in the first place, and with such big producers making it as well, so I kept my fingers crossed. And then, all of the sudden, it was like, “How cool is this?” And the guy was more famous than me. At the time I was on my way to becoming a well-known stand up comedian and an actor, and this guy rose to the top much faster than I did! (Laughs)

SJ: Wasn’t that around the time you were playing Zagreb on 1st and Ten?

JK: Exactly. In fact, when I was doing Zagreb, 1st and Ten shot during the summer, also for HBO. HBO’s first series. So I was able to also go out for shows during pilot season, shoot 1st and Ten during the summer, and then if whatever show I did got picked up for any episodes, I could do those too. So, at the time when Tales from the Crypt was happening, I was doing a show called FM with Allen Burns who created Mary Tyler Moore’s show and a guy named Dan Wilcox. So I was doing 1st and Ten, FM, and Tales From the Crypt. I was doing three series, which is a huge luxury!

SJ: You were a busy guy!

JK: I was a busy guy! It was really a fun time in my life. You know, you want some time off, but at the same time, I love what I do, so gimme all the work I can get.

SJ: Did you ever get confused on the set and do the Crypt Keeper with Zagreb’s accent?

JK: (Laughs) You know, funny thing, in the later episodes I’d goof around as the Crypt Keeper as Marlon Brando, or something like that, and they started writing all these bits for the Crypt Keeper as Howard Stern, Marlon Brando. We’d do Streetcar Named Desire with this bony little guy in a torn tank top yelling, “Stella!” We did him as John Wayne, anyone. So it was kind of fun. It was so corny, I had enough of his persona in me that I could do impersonations of other people from his point of view, which was kind of funny. I know right now they’re starting into the second six episodes, putting them into a box set, so they’ll release them as they go along, which is kind of neat, because just when you’ve finished digesting the first six episodes, the second six episodes will come out.

SJ: I remember seeing those when they first aired, and I can’t wait until they come out. The Crypt Keeper went from being a sort of underground comic to suddenly there are Crypt Keeper lunchboxes and dolls.

JK: The merchandising helps pay for the idea of making the shows of such high quality. They don’t normally get the budget that they need to do that. The money comes from somewhere else. A lot of the times, that’s how they do it. If Elvira is the Queen of Halloween, then the Crypt Keeper is the King or the Mayor. He’s a great pitchman! (Laughs) He’s pitching the shows to you, he’s a storyteller, and he loves being a storyteller. I think early on, they realized that not only could he be a great storyteller, but he could also be a great pitchman for his own show, which is a lot of the work I do and not just the episodes, but the whole idea of helping to promote the show, which was a lot of fun as well. I mean, I’d go to do interviews as the Crypt Keeper being off camera and the puppeteers would be following me and people would be interviewing the Crypt Keeper, which would be kind of scary and fun and bizarre at the same time.

SJ: I’m actually sitting here with a talking Crypt Keeper doll in a tuxedo.

JK: (Laughs) One of the first photographs they took of the Crypt Keeper was in a tuxedo. In fact, I still have some copies of that photo that I take to conventions. It’s his glam shot. I always love that. He always had some fancy clothes when they took him out of the shroud. He had fancy clothes for the movies. For Demon Knight he had this kind of tweedy director’s outfit with the red ascot.

SJ: Oh sure, with the riding pants and the high boots and the whole nine yards.

JK: Yeah. It was kind of fun to see him evolve as well. They did a really good job of not only evolving the show but that character. At the same time, you got to see some really great directors. Those first episodes were directed by Bob Zemeckis, Walter Hill, they had Frankenheimer directing an episode, and we had some stars coming out. Schwarzenegger directed an episode, Michael J. Fox, Michael Keeton, some really up and coming people.

SJ: One of my favorite episodes was the one with Morty the Puppet and Don Rickles.

JK: Richard Donner directed that one. He also directed one of the first episodes, Nine Lives, with Joey Pantaleone. I haven’t been in his office in a long time, but the last time I was in his office he had that little puppet in a plastic case in his office. (Laughs) That little puppet is so creepy looking. And Don Rickles was great, wasn’t he?

SJ: He was hilarious!

JK: They’ve given some uncharacteristic parts to some uncharacteristic people to play on the show. Depending on who directed and what the story was like, they could have such a different feel to them. Horror anthology series, even more than Twilight Zone which always had some great stuff, they always had a certain tone to them. Being that these were comics, we could have an entirely different tone to them. Some of them were just purely comical and weren’t scary at all, while others were incredibly gross, and others were incredibly thriller-esque. The one that Bob Zemeckis did with a the old movie stars edited in with John Vernon and Isabella Rossellini, and they played opposite Bogart and all these different people in that episode. That was sort of Zemeckis’ training for Forrest Gump because those were the same techniques he used in that. And then we did the Crypt Keeper as Forrest Gump.

SJ: When you look at the whole Tales from the Crypt series, the episodes are so very different from each other, like you said thrillers, comedies. And I don’t think the series could have been pulled off nearly as well if it weren’t for the one character that held it all together, and that was you.

JK: Yeah, I get people that come up to me all the time and say, “That one episode I wasn’t that thrilled about, but the Crypt Keeper stuff . . . .” (Laughs)

I remember doing an interview with Howard Stern, and you know how Howard Stern is, if he doesn’t know you and doesn’t have anything positive to say about you, his tactic is to try to rip you up. So he says, “I gotta tell you right off the bat, I hate that puppet!” And I started talking as the Crypt Keeper to him and cracking him up and laughing at him in that kind of Eddie Murphy kind of way. (Crypt Keeper voice) The Crypt Keeper loves to be hated, just like you Howard! Hehehehe. Stuff like that, and I had him chuckling and he said, “I like the Crypt Keeper; it was just the puppet that creeps me out.” I’ve had people think the Crypt Keeper is an old woman, and he conjures up different images for people. But it’s always refreshing to see a little kid who’s into the Crypt Keeper.

SJ: When you first auditioned for Tales from the Crypt, had they already built the puppet, did you get to see it and match the voice with it, or was that just a voice that came to mind?

JK: I went down to Kevin Yeager’s studio. They had the auditions at his studio, and they were already making versions of it, and they’d pared it down to pretty much what you see now. He was trying to find the right mold material that would move well and that kind of stuff. So I actually got to see what he looked like. So they brought me into Kevin’s office and he had this makeshift sound box set up and a casting director, and there weren’t that many people who got to audition for it. They really wanted someone who was an actor and had the delivery of a stand-up comedian that could come up with the voice. I had no idea what I was getting into because the Crypt Keeper didn’t really look like that in the comics, and the only live version we’d seen was that version with Ralph Richardson as the Crypt Keeper, so I wasn’t exactly sure what they wanted until I walked into the studio and saw that guy. Then they gave me the copy, and it had all that really great alliteration.

I’m sure a lot of people said, “This is stupid! ‘Be careful what you axe for or you’ll get it?’ What is that?” And I looked at it and said, “This is great! This guy must love saying this stuff! That’s the only way it’ll work is if this guy loves saying this stuff.” And that’s what I did. And I said, okay, he has a little Margaret Hamilton, so we’ll give him a little of that in the cackle and the laugh and the scream and the whole thing. Okay, he’s got a little Henny Youngman in there, and he’s got a little, at first I thought it was Rod Serling, but later it was more refined to Alfred Hitchcock, because Hitchcock was more tongue-in-cheek when he did his Alfred Hitchcock Presents because he would always look at the camera and say something.

SJ: He was the king of the sardonic with that look.

JK: Yeah, that’s the perfect word for it. So I did it for them and he said, “That’s great! Can you make up some stuff too?” I said sure, and I did some improvisation for it. The next day they had a trailer for me on the set, and they’d already created the set where the Crypt Keeper pops out of the coffin.

SJ: The one for the opening sequence?

JK: Yeah, and it was so intricate, they had the producer’s face carved on the ceiling, along with a bunch of other people who worked on the show. You’ll never see that stuff, I mean, you may notice that there’s people’s faces carved in the stone, like in Alien or something. But it was such a great set-up. And in the back was this panel trailer where Joel Silver and Richard Donner were sitting there discussing what to do, and they bring me in and I do it for them, and they said, “That’s it! That’s it! That’s great! See you on the set!”

SJ: So do you ever get weirded out when someone comes in and they have one of these talking Crypt Keeper dolls and they play it at you?

JK: (Laughs) No, no, no, that’s cool! I’ve had people bring everything from talking dolls to the backsplash on their pinball machines for me to sign. I have one of those pinball machines myself. It was my payment for doing the pinball machine. I’m sure the arcades make money on them, but the people that make them, like for movies and stuff, really do them for advertising. They don’t make money off the fact that the machine was made off their property. So they told me, “We can give you X amount of dollars, or we can give you a pinball machine that’s worth about eight grand,” and I was like, “Okay, I’ll take one of those!” (Laughs) So I have one in my house. Just recently, this guy brought in the top piece for me to sign for him. It’s always kind of fun and unique to see what people bring. Another guy brought in a life-sized Crypt Keeper that they made to sit in the windows of Spencer’s Gifts. So I also have one of those too, but he’s falling apart. People like for me to bring him to Halloween parties all the time. “Please bring the Crypt Keeper,” you know. And now the legs are broken, and the arms are broken.

SJ: Somehow that seems strangely appropriate.

JK: Yeah… (Sings as Crypt Keeper) I go to pieces! (Laughs)

SJ: (Laughs)

JK: When you do the Crypt Keeper, you start thinking like him, and when someone says something like that it just pops into your head.

SJ: I know that the box set is coming out, but is there anything else on the slate for the Crypt Keeper that you can talk about?

JK: Not that I should talk about right now. They always have stuff in the wings. They have a guy over there named Jack Wahl, he’s an advertising guy. He’s been in the advertising business for years and years, and he’s always putting stuff together for the Crypt Keeper. He did the Christmas album. I call him the Crypt Keeper’s Pimp, but he’s always like, “Don’t call me that! I’m his manager!”

You know . . . It’s funny, and he’s always finding something fun for the Crypt Keeper. He’s always calling me saying we’re going to do this or that. Some of it goes through and some doesn’t. And people always have the intention of using the Crypt Keeper for different things. And there’s always something coming up for Halloween, but right offhand, that’s what we’re working on.

SJ: In addition to the Crypt Keeper, a lot of people don’t know most of your credits. I mean you’ve done everything from EEK! The Cat to the voice of Buster Bunny on Tiny Toon Adventures.

JK: Right, but I didn’t originate the voice of Buster Bunny. Charlie Adler, who is a great voiceover artist and a great director that I work with all the time as a voiceover artist, originated that role. Charlie had moved on to other things, and he wasn’t available, and he called me and said, “They’re looking for someone to play it and you have my blessing.” They called me up and said I had the perfect voice to do that, that I had that same timbre to my voice, so I did it. It’s one of the few well-known voices I’ve done that I didn’t create on my own. But I was very proud to do it and brought him to life as well. And it was very fun to do Buster Bunny.

SJ: And there’s some crossover there, with the Tiny Toon Night Ghoulery.

JK: (Laughs) Yeah, we always do some fun stuff. That was during that time when the characters had all been bought by Steven Spielberg and he’d bought all these rights to Warner Bros. characters and stuff. Every single one of those scripts was hand stamped by Steven Spielberg.

SJ: You also did The Three Stooges. You played Shemp Howard in 2000. What was that like?

JK: Oh that was great! I mean, first of all, when we were first auditioning for it, I was like, “Get me in!” The stooge I most look like is Larry. Of course, the one, especially when we were kids, that was most beloved was Curly because he was the most child-like. But one of my all-time favorites has always been Shemp, not only from the Three Stooges, but comedian-wise. He had so many levels to what he did, and he also was in a bunch of other movies in addition to the Stooges. So I went in to audition for Larry. And I liked Larry, he’s funny and all, and when I went in they said, “We like your Larry, and we’re looking at some other people for Larry, but we really think you could be our Shemp.” And I said, okay. I didn’t see it, but sure. That sounds great, so they got me a greasy wig to put on and I came back in for the producers and the director as Shemp, and they were like, “Yeah, that’s great!” and I wound up getting it. And I started researching Shemp more, finding out what an interesting character he was. He was such a strange, neurotic kind of guy, but a brilliant physical comedian, which is something I’ve always wanted to play.

You know, as you get older you get fewer parts, but as I’ve gotten older I get better parts. As a young comedian I may have had more of a star cache that I wasn’t so focused on. I was more focused on more being able to do the best parts. Of course, if I had known that, now, that most of the business is more taken over by marketing people, that the cache is more important than anything else, I might have exploited it more. But you get a good project like Reefer Madness, and they do a lot of press on it and it helps your career as well.

SJ: You started off as a stand-up comic — or really in theater.

JK: I fell into stand-up purely by accident.

SJ: That was the Star Search thing, right?

JK: Right. I was doing a show called Three Guys Naked from the Waist Down, and I got nominated for a couple of awards for it. It was me and Scott Bakula and a guy named Jerry Coker, who wrote the piece, and my character was so successful as a comedian that Star Search asked me to come on the show and do it. And I told them I really wasn’t a stand-up comic, but when they told me I could win $100,000 . . .

SJ: Hey! I’m a stand up comic!

JK: Right! (Laughs) So I was on and I won, and I worked on sketch comedy and street performance as well, so it wasn’t like I had no experience doing comedy on stage and doing my own bits and my own material, but as far as doing stand-up comedy it wasn’t something I had much experience with. So after I won, I read on the show that Tom Jones was a guest on the show, and he asked me to open for him in Vegas, and I didn’t even have an act! So I started putting an act together out of the bits I did on Star Search; I put it together into this theme of this guy addicted to television. And over the years I added onto that routine, but I pretty much went right into headlining as a stand-up comedian without a lot of experience. But I’ve performed on the stage in front of thousands of people, and street performance is a lot harder than stand-up comedy. You don’t know what you’re walking into or what you’re doing that day. You don’t know if your audience is going to get into it or not. So stand-up wasn’t that scary to me. Certainly, my introduction to the L.A. market was stand-up comedy. At the time, I wasn’t really sure that was what I wanted, and not giving me the kind of credibility as an actor that I was getting in New York on the stage, but it was giving me opportunities that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, so at some level I had to exploit it, and I wound up getting a lot of TV shows and movies and eventually slipping into the voiceover stuff and Tales from the Crypt.

On some level it was a double-edged sword. But I’m finally getting to do the kind of work I wanted to do when I started out over the last number of years. Three Stooges, Reefer Madness, you know, characters with depth where they weren’t just asking me to do a funny character with funny bits, which is a lot of what people wanted me to do when I was known as a stand-up comedian. So I’m finally becoming the character actor I always wanted to be. The next Christopher Lloyd or whatever. It’s a good time in my life, but it’s hard. Harder than it ever was. Any actor that is out there today will tell you that they see a lot of star movie actors playing character roles that aren’t the big box office draw movies. They aren’t getting the salaries anymore because they’re paying the huge salaries to the big stars. They’re taking over the roles in the TV series, so it’s harder to get a regular role in a series. So they look at independent features and they’re like, “Hey, I’m not working now, I’ll take that part! It’s not paying much, but . . . you know.” So it’s harder than it ever was, but when I’m working it’s with the best stuff. I just worked on Charmed this week, and it was really good and I had a great time playing the character.

SJ: Have you always been a really big fan of horror?

JK: Oh yeah, I’ve always loved horror. One of my favorite movies is the combination of two of my favorite genres, comedy and horror, Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I used to collect the Testors models like Frankenstein and the Guillotine.

SJ: I had both of those (Laughs).

JK: Yeah, I had Dracula and Wolf Man and all of those things. It was always one of my favorite things. They used to have this thing in Baltimore called Twilight Movie, and it was on in the afternoon. They played all kinds of movies, but at least once a week they’d play horror movies including all the Universal classic movies and Mothra, The Day the Earth Stood Still. I’d be really disappointed if it wasn’t one of those when it would come on. Because it would be on while my mother was making dinner and I would come into the kitchen and sit down, and if it was like a Doris Day movie or something, I’d be like, “CRAP! I want one of my favorites!”

SJ: I want monsters! (Laughs)

JK: And that was my introduction to all those. We used to have Creature Feature and they’d show good horror movies in the afternoon and evening.

SJ: Ahhhh memories!

And so ended my conversation with John Kassir. Many thanks to him for taking time out of his increasingly busy schedule to talk with us and both reminisce about his Crypt Keeper days and also give us an update on all the exciting things he has coming up.

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