Main cast: Kim Delaney (Gloria Fielding), Kevin Kilner (James), Don Hood (Sebastian Fielding), Michael Ironside (Jerry), and John Kassir (The Crypt Keeper)
Director: Richard Greenberg

I am sure there is a good story as to how someone like Richard Greenberg ends up directing an episode of The Tales from the Crypt. At least, the story has to be more interesting than the one in The Sacrifice, which is yet another episode about how women are the death of men everywhere, served up in a bland manner and topped with a “twist” that anyone can see coming from a mile away.

With some tweaking, this one would be right at home in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents reboot. James is a handsome, charismatic insurance salesman who loves to say that he can sell anything to anyone. He has one weakness: Gloria, the wife of his obnoxious, over the top wealthy client Sebastian Fielding. Sebastian is the kind of man who knows that his nine million dollars is attractive enough to any insurance salesman that he demands 30% of James’s cut if he appoints James as his insurance agent. Still, money is money, and the client’s hot wife in his bed is a nice bonus. Soon. he’s plotting to remove Sebastian from the equation – permanently – so that he can have Gloria as well as the money Gloria will inherit.

As you can imagine, things never go as planned – a man named Jerry witnesses the murder and soon blackmails James into forcing Gloria to perform sexual favors for him. What will poor James do now?

The twist is pretty obvious to me, so this episode isn’t what I’d consider a suspenseful or shocking one. Furthermore, the plot depends on my ability to believe that the mastermind is able to correctly guess what James will do in advance – and this includes James behaving out of character and goes from a narcissistic fellow into one who will sacrifice anything for some woman he has only known for a short while. That’s really hard for me to believe.

So yes, The Sacrifice is boring and predictable, with a generous side serving of “Hey, that doesn’t make sense!” as icing on the cake.