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The PackageCREEPSHOW
(1982) was George Romero’s comeback after 1981’s disastrous KNIGHTRIDERS,
and was a moderate success at the box office.
Made by Romero’s production company Laurel and distributed by Warner
Brothers (Romero’s first experience with a big studio), it was a sincere
homage to the horror comics of the fifties that inspired Romero and King.
As such it works fairly well, with five lurid, pulpy narratives
involving zombies, ghouls and bugs, at least three of which were adapted by
Stephen King from his own short fiction (King likewise scripted the now
out-of-print comic adaptation of the film, impressively illustrated by the
great Berni Wrightson). Inevitably,
a sequel was made in 1987, scripted by Romero and directed by CREEPSHOW’S
cinematographer Michael Gornick, which I actually find more satisfying than the
original. CREEPSHOW 2 contains
three segments (including an adaptation of King’s nail-biting novelette THE
RAFT) as opposed to the five of part one, and so was able to devote more time
to each, and furthermore had an honest-to-goodness R rating, something
CREEPSHOW could have definitely used. |
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The StoryA
young boy is caught by his father reading a horror comic called CREEPSHOW. The enraged father throws it in the garbage, but a gust of
wind blows it into the street, where a Crypt Keeper-like ghoul hosts five
gruesome stories from the comic. “Father’s
Day” is first. The supremely
bitchy Sylvia Grantham is throwing a Father’s Day party in honor of the fact
that her vile husband Nate is dead. Flashbacks reveal that he was killed years earlier by
Sylvia’s daughter Bedelia, who was driven mad by her dad’s obnoxious cries
of “I want my cake!” at a
previous Father’s Day gathering. But
this party is to be different: during a visit by Bedelia to her father’s
grave, the old man’s rotting corpse bursts out of the ground and rips off her
head. From there the zombie heads
to the Father’s Day party with Bedelia’s head, decorated with frosting and
birthday candles, on a platter, and proclaims “I
have my cake!” In
“The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” a meteor crashes in the backyard of
Jordy Verrill, a penniless hillbilly. Jordy dreams of using the meteor to pay off his debts, but
makes the mistake of pouring water on it, thus cracking it open.
It disgorges “meteor shit” on the ground, facilitating the spread of
a malignant growth which quickly takes over the surrounding countryside...and
the body of Jordy himself. “Something
to Tide You Over” features loony TV producer Richard Vickers, who, upon
learning his wife Becky is having an affair with the dashing Harry, vows to do
her in. This he does by burying
Becky in the sand on a nearby beach, so as the tide comes in she’s drowned.
Richard then lures Harry to his beachside mansion and kills him in the
same way. But just how dead are Becky
and Harry? In
“The Crate”, Dexter, a janitor, is rocked by the discovery of a
150-year-old crate under the stairs of the university lab where he works.
The crate houses a toothy creature with a taste for human flesh that
devours several of Dexter’s fellow janitors.
When Dexter tells his buddy Henry about the critter, the latter sees a
perfect opportunity for getting rid of his ultra-bitchy wife. “They’re
Creeping up On You” is the last story. The
loathsome Upson Pratt is a wealthy tycoon who lives in a hermetically sealed
big city apartment. One night his
home is invaded by cockroaches that Upson can’t seem to get rid of; there’s
a blackout and Upson dies of a heart attack, but the roaches aren’t done with
his body. The
film closes with the conclusion of the wrap-around tale: the kid whose CREPSHOW
comic was thrown out by his father is pissed, and looking for revenge.
He gets it in the form a voodoo doll ordered from an ad in the
comic--the kid repeatedly stabs the doll in the neck, causing his old man to
feel corresponding pains in his neck. |
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The DirectionIf
nothing else, CREEPSHOW was fairly unprecedented for its time.
These days comic book inspired movies are all the rage, some of which
flaunt their source material with self-conscious visual flourishes (most
notably ‘03’s deadening Ang Lee-directed HULK). In this film George Romero did just that, with garishly
colored lighting that in true comic book fashion changes color at opportune
moments and animated transitions that explicitly mimic the act of turning a
page. The result is a film that,
if nothing else, is mighty fun to look at.
The
cast is game for the most part, performing in deliberately histrionic,
larger-than-life fashion, although Adrienne Barbeau as the victim of “The
Crate” overemotes, and Stephen King as the unfortunate Jordy Verrill proves
he’s no actor--although his son, the future horror scribe Joe Hill, is quite
memorable playing the evil kid of the opening and closing segments.
Other cast members of note include Leslie Nielson in one of his last
“serious” roles, proving he can ham it up with the best of them; Ed Harris
in a small part in “Father’s Day”, following his breakout role in
Romero’s KNIGHTRIDERS; and Ted Danson getting buried in the sand in
“Something to Tide You Over”, a role Danson these days pretends never
existed. Now
for the bad stuff: the film, despite its visual flamboyance, is just not very
compelling dramatically. None of
the five segments stand out, and all are totally predictable.
This was Romero’s first Hollywood production, which may explain all
the attention he devoted to surface details, with very little paid to things
like plot and character development. Plus
the PG rating ensures that the film is never as nasty as it should be; the
horror comics it emulated were considered shocking and taboo breaking in their
day, whereas CREEPSHOW, despite the best efforts of its creators, wouldn’t
shock a fly. |
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Vital StatisticsCREEPSHOW
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