Towson native John Kassir has always been a performer.
At one time or another during his childhood, he fancied himself a football star, a circus clown and a Western cowboy.
Now a resident of Los Angeles, Mr. Kassir, 37, has been a street mime, a stand-up comic and a television actor. He also moonlights as the voice of cartoon characters like Mittens on "Eek the Cat" and Buster Bunny on "Tiny Toon Adventures." But the job that has been drawing attention to him lately is that of the Crypt Keeper, a character he has been playing for six years.
Mr. Kassir is the voice behind the Crypt Keeper, sinister skeletal host of "Tales from the Crypt," a half-hour of Twilight Zone-ish storytelling. Fox 45 airs back-to-back episodes Saturdays at 11 p.m. The character, animated by Mr. Kassir's voice and six puppeteers, opens and closes each "Tales from the Crypt" episode dressed as such devilish fiends as Shock Cousteau and Fearrest Gump ("Life's like a box of shock-a-lots").
"He's a bigger star than I am," Mr. Kassir says from Los Angeles in a phone interview. "He's not only for comic relief, because he's also a sinister character. He's your Alfred Hitchcock, your Rod Serling, your Alistair Cooke," he says, mimicking the former host of "Masterpiece Theatre."
Since he was a child, Mr. Kassir has been imitating the noises and voices on television.
Growing up near the Loch Raven reservoir, Mr. Kassir, his two sisters and two brothers watched Red Skelton's "Silent Spots," "The Wizard of Oz" and "The Flintstones."
School was a chore for Mr. Kassir. He simply found his imagination more interesting than his lessons at Cromwell Valley Elementary School.
"He did his work, but he never finished it," says his mother, Lillian Kassir. "He was always so interested in what was going around him, that was the problem."
He was perhaps the typical class clown. "I allowed my imagination to run rampant," he says. "It was less for attention than for needing an audience to show off my creativity."
Mr. Kassir's parents never discouraged this creativity.
Mrs. Kassir saved everything she thought her son could use as props and stored them in the trunk of her car. She bought him cowboy boots and made him a wooden shield and sword so he could play knight in shining armor. While his mother shopped at Eudowood Plaza (now Towson Marketplace), little John entertained the customers next door at Toys R Us, setting up stage among the Jerry Mahoney dummies.
Mr. Kassir went on to Towson Town Junior High and then to Loch Raven Senior High. He acted in school productions and played lacrosse, soccer and indoor track and field. But his 135 pound frame kept him from going on to varsity football.
Years later, Mr. Kassir did play a Bulgarian field goal kicker in an HBO series called "First and Ten," which ran for six seasons.
Mr. Kassir first seriously pursued an acting career when he entered Towson State University in 1976.
"We just knew from the beginning that John was going to be something special," says Dr. Maravene Loeschke, head of TSU's theater department, who was both teacher and director to Mr. Kassir.
He was the theater department's jack of all trades: a skilled comedian, mime, actor, singer and dancer.
"He was also crazy," Dr. Loeschke recalls with a laugh -- crazy enough to dress up in jodhpurs and a flight jacket and show up in the stands at Memorial Stadium as Baron von Esskay, mascot for the Esskay meat company.
He and some fellow students also formed Animal Crackers, a comedy group that gained enough popularity from its appearances at the old Bolton Hill Dinner Theatre at Park Avenue and Howard Street to eventually tour Europe.
After his 1980 graduation, Mr. Kassir acted in some off-Broadway plays, made a lucrative business of street performing outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and polished his two-minute act on "Star Search."
Mr. Kassir's "Tales from the Crypt" break came in 1989, after he moved to Los Angeles.
He was the right person for the job: he had the voice and the acting ability to bring the Crypt Keeper to life, plus the character's hallmark sense of sick humor. And over the show's six seasons, Mr. Kassir has added some of his own personality to the character.
"I've made him very Shakespearean," Mr. Kassir says. "The copy had a certain poetry, a playful alliteration. And there's also an Old World feel to the character."
The ghoulish tale-teller had his beginnings in the classic E.C. Publications comic book by William Gaines, creator of Mad magazine. Resurrected as a television show more than three decades later, "Tales from the Crypt" went on to become the highest rated series on HBO, where it has recently ended its season. The show began appearing on Fox in January 1994.
There's a Crypt Keeper doll, a Christmas album titled "Have Yourself a Scary Little Christmas" and a "less gnarly looking" cartoon character, Mr. Kassir says. "Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight," the first of three movies commissioned by Universal Studios, is in theaters now.
When he's not doing voice-overs for the Crypt Keeper, Mr. Kassir enjoys collecting American Indian and Western antiques and riding his two horses on the property he owns just north of Malibu. He's also working on the pilot for a children's television show called "Johnny Time."
"It's sort of a stream-of-consciousness show," he says. "It takes you for a ride every episode and once you're on, you don't get off for half an hour."
Sounds like pretty wild stuff, but with John Kassir at the helm, you never expect anything less.