Creepshow (1982) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 4

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Caution: Contains five ghoulish stories to creep you out!

Creepshow works as both the anthology entry this year as well as a Stephen King film. It’s comprised of five moderate to excellent stories that have a little something for everyone.

Before Viewing

The trailer for this film gives off a very comic book-like vibe. It begins by letting audiences know that both Stephen King and George Romero worked on the film before showing scenes of reanimated corpses, werewolves, monsters, and lots of creepy crawly bugs. It has quite a cast that includes Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Leslie Nielson and even Stephen King in a rare on-camera appearance. This looks like a creepy, yet fun experience, so let’s start the Creepshow!

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

“Prologue”

A young boy named Billy (Joe King) is berated by his father (Tom Atkins) for reading a Creepshow comic book. The father throws it into the garbage can. Billy contemplates revenge against his father as he sees “The Creep,” the skeletal host of the comic book appear outside his window.

“Father’s Day”

On Father’s Day, Sylvia (Carrie Nye), Richard (Warner Shook), and his sister Cass (Elizabeth Regan), relate to Hank (Ed Harris) how the matriarch of the family, Aunt Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors), murdered her father Nathan (Jon Lormer) by bashing his head in with a large ashtray. Bedelia arrives and heads to the cemetery to pay her “respects” to Nathan. After drunkenly spilling whisky on his grave, the rotting corpse of Nathan pulls itself out of the ground and kills her. Hank goes out to look for her and falls into the hole, getting crushed by the grave marker that topples in on him. Sylvia finds a dead maid in the kitchen and has her head twisted off by the zombie patriarch. Richard and Cass investigate the disappearance of everyone to find corpse Nathan standing in the kitchen with Sylvia’s head on a platter. He has decorated it as a birthday cake, fulfilling his dying wish.

“Where’s my cake, Bedelia? I want my cake!” – Nathan Grantham

“The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill”

Country bumpkin Jordy Verrill (Stephen King), a self-proclaimed lunkhead, witnesses a meteor crash near his remote farmhouse. He has dreams of getting big money, like $200, for taking it to the local college. Pouring water on it to cool it down, the meteor cracks in two and spills a strange liquid. Jordy burns his fingers picking up the meteor and realizes that he can never make money with a broken meteor, so he puts it on his porch with other junk. After a short nap, he finds a green fuzz on his hands where he touched the space rock. He begins to drink to calm his nerves. Later, the mossy growth covers a lot of his body. He draws a bath, hoping to ease the itchiness. The ghost of his father (Bingo O’Malley) warns him not to get in the water, as that’s exactly what the growth wants. The next morning, his entire property is covered with a green fungus. Jordy, now a humanoid shaped plant, grabs a shotgun and blows, what used to be his brain, all over the wall. The television relates the local weather report, calling for moderate temperatures and lots of rain in the coming weeks.

“Something to Tide You Over”

Harry (Ted Danson) is visited by an angry Richard (Leslie Nielsen), who pulls a gun on the younger man. Harry has been having an affair with Becky (Gaylen Ross). Taking Harry out to the beach dunes, Richard forces him into a hole near the high tide line, burying him to his neck. Richard then sets up a video feed showing Becky buried “further down the beach,” being hit by wave after wave. Harry vows revenge on Richard. The older man leaves, letting nature take its course on the two lovers. Returning later, Richard finds the bodies, and some of his video equipment missing. He believes the tide pulled them out to the ocean. At home, he cleans up but is shocked to hear a voice calling his name. The two waterlogged zombie bodies of Harry and Becky return for Richard. He tries to shoot them, but it does no good. The zombies take him down to the same beach and bury Richard up to his neck in the sand.

“Oh I can hold my breath for a long, long time!” – Richard

“The Crate”

Mike the Janitor (Don Keefer), who works at Horlicks University, finds an old crate dated 1834 under some stairs and calls Professor Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver) to let him know. They put the crate in the lab. As they open it, Mike leans in for a closer look and is pulled inside by some creature, still alive after all these years. Grad student Charlie (Robert Harper) doesn’t believe the story that Dex tells him, and goes to investigate. The creature has pulled its crate back under the stairs, and when Charlie gets too close, he gets dragged inside too. Dex resorts to visiting his friend Henry (Hal Holbrook). Henry’s wife, Wilma (Adrienne Barbeau), is a shrew who berates Henry in public whenever she can. He fantasizes about killing her often. Upon hearing Dex’s story, he drugs his friend, leaves a note for Wilma, and heads to the University. He cleans up the bloody remnants of Mike and Charlie. Wilma arrives at the campus, believing Henry’s note that Dex has injured a young coed. Henry directs her under the stairs where the “girl” is hiding. Wilma, berating Henry, is shocked when the simian-like creature devours her. Henry re-locks the crate and throws it into Ryder Quarry, where it cannot be found. He informs Dex that both their problems have been solved. Back at the water-logged quarry, the crate bursts open and the monster escapes.

“They’re Creeping Up on You!”

Upson Pratt (E.G. Marshall), a captain of industry and germaphobe, berates Mr White (David Early), the superintendent of his sterile and supposedly germ free apartment. Somehow, a cockroach has breached the hermetic seal and he won’t stand for the custodian lollygagging. He takes another call about a corporate merger, in which his rival committed suicide as the result of the sale. The widow of the man calls to angrily scream at Mr. Pratt, who has no remorse whatsoever. More cockroaches appear around his apartment leading to further hysteria on his part. A blackout occurs forcing Pratt into a smaller sealed room, as more roaches come out. Once locked inside, he discovers the bed is literally teaming with roaches. Later, when the power comes back on, White returns to the apartment door to give Pratt an update on the exterminator. Pratt’s body writhes as cockroaches spew forth, rending the flesh of the old man. White, getting no answer, calls Pratt a bastard and leaves.

“Epilogue”

The next morning, the father complains of a pain in his neck. The garbage men collect the trash, finding the comic book which has part of an advert removed for a voodoo doll. The father suddenly grabs his throat, screaming. Upstairs Billy is stabbing a small voodoo doll in the neck with a large pin!

“Just tell it to call you Billie, you bitch!” – Henry

Creepshow was not close to being the first horror anthology film. That honor goes to Dead of Night in 1945. But it wasn’t until a decade and a half later that the popularity of horror anthologies picked up in the 60s and 70s. Almost 20 titles were released between 1961-1981, which includes The House That Dripped Blood, as well as films based on popular EC Comics like Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror. Creepshow started its own trend of horror anthologies, kicking off a wave of films like Cat’s Eye, Deadtime Stories, and Body Bags. It produced five stories that all captivate the audience, and provide varying degrees of chills. But this was the exception. Most horror anthologies ended up being more miss than hit, but there are still solid anthologies out there, like Trick ‘r Treat.

Creepshow is a throwback to some of these classic anthologies of horror stories, but more importantly was an homage to the classic EC Comics published by Bill Gaines. These comic books include the two titles listed above, as well The Haunt of Fear. The stories in these comics all had a gruesome or ghoulish ending usually resulting in the evildoer being punished or getting their comeuppance. It was a darker version of the television anthology series The Twilight Zone. This film was conceived as a partnership between George Romero and Stephen King wanting to pay tribute to those childhood stories they remembered, and became a classic of the genre, spawning sequels, and many other imitators.

Romero, who was best known for his Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead films, took both the gore and the campiness seen in his previous films and really turned them up to eleven. The comic book inspired lighting, frame composition, and special effects leave no doubt in fans minds of where the homage points. Many scenes of terror involve the use of Dutch angles, which is tilting the camera left or right to make the horizon line uneven. This provides an off-kilter and unsettling feeling in the viewer when used properly and often represents the way imagery is drawn to fit inside the smaller comic book panels. Visual effects were also used to create comic books panels and borders on screen. Each containing a piece of the footage, as the camera pans between panels, rather than having an edit to change the focus of the shot.

Creepshow also uses dramatic and chiaroscuro lighting to emulate comic book styles. Shocked characters may be filmed against a blank frame which uses a flash of red in an angular shape behind them. Their isolated head with the appropriate effect creates an instantaneous  and visceral reaction from the audience. The final nod to the source medium is, of course, the animated sequences in between stories. The camera drifts over the rejected comic book which has the title for each sequence drawn as it would have appeared in an EC comic from the 1950s. The Creep, a spiritual host for the anthology, has a small word balloon of dry wit to explain what the story is about, before an illustrated representation of the film fades into the actual footage.

As with the comics, the characters all receive their just deserts–at least for the most part. Bedelia and Sylvia both get revenge from beyond the grave as their father provides a little more than corporal punishment. It could be argued that sometimes the creatures or entities go beyond their mandate to only punish the guilty, as the Maid and Hank both get caught up in Nathan’s revenge plot. Richard gets his just desserts with a similar fate that he enacted on the two lovers. Billie, while she might not have deserved what she got, deserved something. And there’s evidence in the final shot that the creature might be coming back for Henry and Dexter, just to serve justice on them as well. Finally, Mr. Pratt certainly got what was coming to him in one of the most squeamish stories in ages. Only poor Jordy Verrill may have been innocent, caught up in a story of horror that might have passed him by if he minded his own business. His “dumb luck” doomed himself, and possibly the world, in the most open-ended, and apocalyptic tale in the film.

Creepshow produced two numbered sequels, which diminished in quality between each outing. But its biggest accomplishment, besides spawning copycat films, was its impact on horror anthologies on television. Supposedly producer Richard P. Rubinstein and George Romero wanted to put Creepshow on television, but were unable to call it by that name due to legal rights. Instead they created Tales from The Darkside, a Twilight Zone/Creepshow hybrid that presented single stories each week usually with monsters, scares, twist endings, and the dry wit presented in the film. This was a super successful series, lasting four seasons. Other anthology horror shows began popping up on television and cable during the 80s including Monsters, The Hitcher (on HBO), a revitalized Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, as well as a full blown Tales from the Crypt series by the end of the decade. So the next time you watch a horror anthology in the cinema or on television, thank George Romero, Stephen King and Richard Rubenstein for creating Creepshow. It just may save you from frightful consequences.

Assorted Musings

• Tom Savini, the makeup effects master who worked with Romero on Dawn of the Dead, created the creature effects for Creepshow as well. He nicknamed the monster in the Crate, “Fluffy,” which somehow makes the creature even more terrifying.
• Ted Danson was actually buried in the sand (but with his head sticking through a sand-covered board, and not fully impacted) as the tide came in to get the shots of him buried alive. His lover, Becky, was played by Gaylen Ross who also worked with Romero on Dawn of the Dead, as Fran.
• The young boy in the prologue is played by Joe King, Stephen’s son. He now uses the pen name of Joe Hill and is a successful horror author in his own right, with books including Horns, NOS4A2, and the comic series Locke & Key (all of which have been adapted as films or television series).