George Romero’s 1982 omnibus horror Creepshow brings the Hammer-style horror anthology format to America. When it was made, there were a plethora of popular British horror anthologies like Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Asylum, and the all-time classic Dead of Night, but this subgenre was strangely rare for American movies at the time. and Creepshow opened the door to the format and gave American audiences a taste of the horror anthology. It earned a respectable $19,000,000 in box office receipts alone, more than double its hefty $8,000,000 budget, and has remained a cult favorite ever since and remains one of horror master Romero’s best and most colorful films. The five condensed stories in Creepshow represent tales from a fictional 1950s EC-style comic book of the same name, hosted by a creepy character called “The Creep”, and in fact, the film as a whole is a tribute to the comics. scary at that time. which would have been when Stephen King and George Romero were at their most impressionable.
The first tale is “Father’s Day” and revolves around a family gathering at the vast country estate of a long-deceased patriarch on the dreaded day. It turns out that the wacky Aunt Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors) murdered her poisonous father on the same day seven years earlier, just before the old man dug into her huge cake. And when the troubled alcoholic Bedelia drinks and curses her father’s headstone in the present, guess who lumbers out of the grave and strangles her to death with a vengeful fury: dear dead daddy, now a rotting corpse moaning “I want my cake” . !” with a deep, rough throat filled with dirt. Then the stuffed zombie walks back to his house where the other family members are waiting, and at the end Dad gets his prized cake… coincidentally it’s garnished with the severed head of the old man’s niece!
Our next story, “The Lonely Death of Jordy Verrill,” is more humorous and stars horror author Stephen King himself (who also wrote the screenplay and gives an incredible performance) as Jordy Verrill, a hermit in the middle of nowhere. , complete with overalls and unshaven face, who has a meteor hitting earth on his land and envisions selling it around town for some much-needed extra cash. He is thrilled with his discovery at first, but after pouring cold water on the smoldering meteorite, it shatters, ending Jordy’s money-filled dreams. He picks up the cooled remains of the fallen star, throws it away, and continues on his way watching TV and drinking a concoction when he discovers something even more startling: a patch of green moss has formed on his hands where the meteor hit, and it’s spreading. quickly all over your body and everything it touches! Before long, Jordy’s home is a virtual jungle of moss, grass, and foliage, and the hermit, now completely consumed by moss inside and out and can barely breathe, knows he has to make a difficult decision to stop his suffering. .
Our third story is “Something to Tide You Over,” a hilarious revenge story in which filthy sociopath Richard (the late Leslie Nielsen in a very atypical role) murders his wife Becky (Dawn of the Dead’s Gaylen Ross) and her lover Harry (Ted Danson) burying them up to their necks in the sand on the beach and leaving them to slowly drown in the rising tide. After completing his terrifying feats, Richard returns to Harry’s seaside condo and lounges remorselessly around the luxurious rooms…until he is visited by the water-soaked corpses of Becky and Harry, wanting to give Harry a taste of their own medicine. This is probably tied with “Father’s Day” as my favorite thanks to the inventive concept and engaging performances from Nielsen and Danson.
The fourth and longest segment, “The Crate,” introduces us to the depressing world of Henry Northrup (Hal Holbrook), a college professor whose only pleasure in life comes from imagining the drunken death of his wife Wilma (Adrienne Barbeau). , controller and loudmouth. hers with her own hands shot to the head, strangled, etcetera. One day, Henry’s friend, fellow professor Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver), discovers a 200-year-old unopened box in the basement under some stairs at the university. It turns out that inside the box lives an ancient ape-like beast that hasn’t eaten in 200 years and is hungry for human flesh, and after Stanley and school janitor Mike (Don Keefer) disturb the creature’s home , jump. to life, he pulls the keeper into the box and eats it right in front of Stanley’s horrified eyes. Stanley rushes to Henry’s side and half babbles the awful story to his best friend, who believes him and at one point when his lightbulb goes off hatches a plan to lure his bitchy wife into the school and into the mouth of the house. beast, riding him on his heavy load. Holbrook is perfect as the pussy-whipped Stanley; the wonderful Barbeau gloriously chews up the landscape and spits it out like the alcoholic bitch Wilma; and Demon Seed’s Weaver is equally impressive as the delighted Dexter Stanley who knows he’s the one responsible for the beast getting out in the first place.
If you’re squeamish about bugs, you might want to stay away from the fifth “They’re stalking you” segment. Interestingly, this story is often omitted entirely when the film airs on commercial television due to time constraints and stars veteran EG Marshall in a vivid role as the cruel and ruthless Upson Pratt, an obsessive-compulsive bigwig from the company (with an intense phobia of germs and insects). ) who lives in a hospital-like penthouse and treats everyone he meets with the utmost disgust… until one night he starts detecting roaches in his sanitary shelter, finding them in his food, blender, vents, coming out of faucets and power outlets. . He tries to call for help, but soon there’s a city-wide blackout and Pratt is left alone in the dark with hundreds of hungry roaches who end up making a home out of his corpse.
There’s also a cool wraparound story that loosely connects the five comic book tales and casts horror professional Tom Atkins as an abusive father who discovers that his son Billy (Stephen King’s son Joe) has been reading Creepshow and cruelly takes away his check out boy one. Halloween night, crumpling it up and throwing it in the trash outside the house. But Billy won’t let his father get away with destroying his beloved Creepshow, and the next morning he begins sticking pins into the neck of a voodoo doll (which the boy secretly ordered from an advertisement in the comic) that symbolizes his father. bastard son. potato. Suffice to say, the doll works, and daddy won’t be a pain in the ass for Billy anymore!
A jocular celebration of the macabre, Creepshow is fast-paced (even at two hours long), bloody, funny, and elegantly directed by Romero. It also has an unforgettable piano score by John Harrison that remains one of the best in a horror movie, in my opinion. It has spawned two sequels to date and has set the standard for movies like Cat’s Eye and Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, and for me it’s the best American horror anthology ever made, so I’d give it a 9 out of 10.
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