Main cast: Brooke Shields (Norma), Perry King (Roger), Michael J Pollard (Ed), Valerie Wildman (The Woman at the Restaurant), and John Kassir (The Crypt Keeper)
Director: Uli Edel

Sometimes I wonder how they pick stories for Tales from the Crypt. Maybe they do this by spinning a wheel or picking papers out of a jar, I don’t know, but surely, these folks must be really running out of ideas if they thought ripping off, er, making a homage to Psycho is the way to go. And that’s what Came the Dawn is. Still, they try to do something different instead of ripping off the source material wholesale, so there’s that.

So, when the episode opens, we have a woman using an ax to a woman in a restaurant washroom.

Later on, we see Norma stuck on the road during the stormy night when her vehicle breaks down. She is picked up by a handsome and mild-mannered man, Roger, whom we see earlier is headed to a cabin hoping to make up with some woman that he has apparently parted on bad terms with. Since she has nowhere to go and he can’t in good conscience let her sleep in her vehicle, he offers her a room in the cabin for the night.

And Roger’s a dream. He loves the opera, is willing to feed a stranger oysters and Cristal, and imports antique and vintage stuff from Europe for resale. More importantly, there are many nice things in the cabin for Norma to stuff into her bag. And then there is that necklace… She suspects that he has a woman in his life and he’s trying to cheat on that woman by getting into Norma’s pants, which of course makes it easier for Norma to stick it to him. Unfortunately for the poor dear, Roger isn’t exactly whom he claims to be either. Remember that woman he was supposed to meet at the cabin?

You know, I’ve almost forgotten until I watch this episode, just how hot Perry King can be. That man is almost too perfect, I tell you, and I can just watch him water the plants for days.

At any rate, Came the Dawn has a twist up its sleeve, but as I’ve mentioned, the twist is Psycho. Once it’s clear that Roger is the one who killed the woman in the opening of the episode, and he has made it a habit of courting and bringing women to his cabin to have them be killed by his alter-ego Joanna, there is nothing left to savor in this episode. No point to watch it again, except maybe to look at Perry King, because the twist is all this episode has. Poor Norma is just someone at the wrong place and time, making her one of the rare protagonists of this show who doesn’t deserve her fate. Oh well. At least I will always have Perry King.