Still Creepy after all these Years
Creepshow is a movie that you can watch over and over, and it just never gets old. Back in 1982, masters George Romero and Stephen King teamed up for one of the best collaborative efforts in the horror genre. The result was a compilation of five deliciously ghoulish shorts, each standing on their own merit as horror classics. I was lucky and saw this in the theatre back then, and I have always had a copy of it in my collection in some format or another since. My horror comic craze was when I was a kid, and I loved Ghost Manor, House of Secrets among others; those are all modern equivalents of the EC comics of Romero’s and King’s youth which were the primary influence for the film.
The first frame of the film opens on a house with a pumpkin in the window, and the prologue begins. Billy and his father Stan (Tom Atkins) do not get along too well at the moment. Billy just loves those idiotic horror comics too much, and his dad won’t tolerate it anymore; he threatens Billy with throwing them all away. What appears to be a poor little boy being deprived of his rightful rite of passage, is actually a boy wishing the worst upon those who would come between him and his comics ‘ this sets up the sinister mood for the five stories to follow’..
Father’s Day: A young Ed Harris and Viveca Lindfors star in this tale of a long dead over-bearing father wanting the Father’s Day cake he never received. And he’ll get it, even if his rotten corpse has to crawl out of its grave and kill everybody!
The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill: Stephen King ventures into acting in this comically dreadful combination of The Blob and The Day of the Triffids, as the loner Jordy Verrill. Jordy stumbles upon a ‘meteor’ on his land that he thinks will make him rich, but it will only turn him into a weed from outer space.
Something to Tide You Over: Leslie Nielsen is a jealous husband seeking revenge upon his cheating wife and her lover, played by Ted Danson. What was supposed to be a very creative drowning death for the two, winds up backfiring and the tables are turned on him.
The Crate: Hal Holbrook has the perfect opportunity to rid himself of his obnoxious domineering wife (Adrienne Barbeau), when a friend stumbles upon a crate containing a ravenous beast that hasn’t had much to eat over the past 150 years.
They’re Creeping up on You: Thousands of cockroaches, trapped in a sterile sealed-off-from-the-world environment created by the grumpy old roach hating jerk Upson Pratt (E.G. Marshall); something’s got to give ‘ Need I say more? Warning: Don’t watch while eating!
The film has the vibrant color palette of a classic comic book, and the stories are as if the jumped off of the pages of one and into the theatre. It is a blast, and full of blood, some grisly humor and a bit of gore ‘ fun for the whole family, and just perfect for that Halloween state of mind.
