Creepshow

“Creepshow” The Most Fun You’ll Ever Have Being Scared. This movie, a great collection of short stories, is a tribute to 1950s style comic books “Haunt of Fear” “Vault of Horror” & “Tales from the Crypt”. George A. Romero and Stephen King bring five tales of terror to the screen with some awesome special effects by the genius make-up artist Tom Savini. A haunting musical score by John Harrison (who also did the score for “Day of the Dead”) keeps the chill in the air throughout the five stories. Framed within the pages of a comic book, each story is told as the pages are turned and the terror comes to life.

To begin, elements of a wrap around story are presented about a young boy named Billy and his angry father played by Tom Atkins. The father slaps the boy as an overzealous discipline and throws the boy’s horror comic in the garbage. Something creepy takes place and we are invited by a ghastly spectre to the Creepshow.

The first story, featuring Ed Harris, deals with a demented old man returning from the grave to get the "Father's Day" cake his murdering daughter never gave him. Savini’s zombie effects make your skin crawl.

In "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" Stephen King stars in this segment (based on a short story he wrote titled “Weeds”) as a slack-jawed farmer who discovers a meteorite with strange radioactive powers that makes plant life grow exponentially and in unexpected places.

The third tale is about a vengeful husband burying his wife and her lover up to their necks on the beach. "Something to Tide You Over" presents a serious role for Leslie Nielsen and also features Ted Danson & Gaylen Ross (who starred in Romero’s 1978 classic Dawn of the Dead)

The fourth story is about a savage man-eating creature that has lain dormant in a crate under the set of stairs in a college for about 20 years, until awaken by a local professor played by Fritz Weaver. When he tells his friend Henry (Hal Holbrook), things take a twisted turn. “The Crate” also features a love to hate character played by Adrienne Barbeau.

The final story “They're Creeping Up On You “ is about an ultra-rich, obsessively clean businessman who gets his comeuppance from a swarm of cockroaches. E.G. Marshall plays an excellent eccentric and meets a most grotesque end.

The comic book closes and we are brought back to the second segment of the wrap around story where two garbage men are collecting trash and one finds the horror comic. We are treated to a cameo from Tom Savini who discovers that a coupon for a voodoo doll has already been cutout. Perhaps Billy already ordered that and his father may live just long enough to regret treating him so mean.

• Today's Cure song is "One Hundred Years" from the Pornography CD-(1982) A thundering drum and a whining guitar brings dreary imagery to this classic from their early days.

"The pain and the creeping feeling, a little black haired girl. Waiting for Saturday, the death of her father pushing her. Pushing her white face into the mirror."

CJ