It was the only series Boam wrote that made it on to television. Boam wrote and directed a 1993 episode of HBO's Tales From the Crypt, entitled "Creep Course", based on the EC comic Haunt of Fear number 23–1. The episode's story involves an archeology professor who enlists the aid of a jock in his class to trick an unsuspecting female student into becoming a human sacrifice to a mummy. In the end, she turns the tables on them, and they become victims of the mummy instead. Boam told EON Magazine in 1996 that he did not enjoy the directing experience, finding the work days too long and labor-intensive. The Phantom and late scripts Paramount hired Boam in 1992 to write a script for The Phantom, based on Lee Falk's comic strip character, with Joe Dante to direct. The box office failure of The Shadow, a similarly-themed period adventure, put the film on hold for several years. Boam's original script was intended to be a funny spoof of The Phantom. The studio restarted the film with Simon Wincer as director, who had Boam make changes to the original script, including a decision to keep the screenplay close in style and tone to the source material. Dante said that "nobody seemed to notice it was written to be funny, so it was—disastrously—played straight." Boam worked on screenplay drafts for a feature-length movie based on the DC Comics World War II hero Sgt. Rock, which was not produced. Writing style Boam's action film scripts are character-driven and mixed with humor. He told The New York Times that he had no problem writing a contrived plot in service of character interactions. "Plot tries to engage intellectually, but that's not how an audience responds," he said, adding, "I want emotional reaction, not intellectual engagement. An audience wants to be wound up because it enjoys the pop at the end when it's liberated." Writing in Scr(i)pt magazine, Ray Morton said that Boam's scripts "showed a strong feel for genre and story construction as well as a solid aptitude for creating robust, well-developed characters, and clever, witty dialogue." He rarely outlined a script, preferring to finish a story in his head, and then write the draft. Boam said, "I don't have any kind of routine, where I do notes or outlines or character sketches. I just try and live with it in my head, until it's