THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
What a fun movie this is. When I was little we had one of the first VCRs, and this was one of the first movies my dad recorded on it. Funny, spooky, gruesome
and harmless, and the best filmed representation of the EC Comics genre, until HBO put out the genuine "Tales from the Crypt" a decade later. Creepshow is
also the first collaboration of a trio whose names are caviar to scare fans:
George Romero directs, Stephen King writes, and Tom Savini makes the
monsters.
A young lad (played by Joe King, son of Steve) gets told off by dad Tom Atkins for reading Creepshow, a "worthless piece of s**t" horror comic. The best kind, the kind that rots your brain and curves your spine, and all that. Anyway, Dad throws the rag into the garbage, but The Creep (a cloaked flying skeleton)
retrieves it and tells us five grisly stories. In brief: a murdered SOB patriarch claws his way out of the grave to do in the filthy-rich, swinish relatives who profited by his death ("Father's Day"); a slack-jawed yokel crap farmer handles an oozing meteor and develops a case of creeping crabgrass ("The Lonesome
Death of Jordy Verrill"); a maniacal husband drowns his wife and her lover, and is subsequently stalked through his beach house by two briny zombies
("Something to Tide You Over"); a drooling werewolf/baboon/hellhound gnaws
on the residents of a university campus, and provides a novel sort of marriage counseling ("The Crate"); and Manhattan's most bigoted billionaire goes eye- to-eyes with what seems like the entire cockroach population of the Five
Boroughs ("They're Creeping Up On You").
This movie is like a buffet, a buffet of the richest and most delectable junk food imaginable. The direction is sharp and witty, the comic-book sets and shot
design and saturated lighting are beautiful (whenever a character bites it, a comic splash panel surrounds his/her horrified face; all that's missing is a
Batman-style SPLAT!! or EURRRGGGH!!) and the performances are superbly
overblown. Sure, there are a few stale Twinkies in the batch, mostly in that second story. Stephen King spins a great yarn, but he's no actor, not by a long shot. Yet he acts here, and plays that slack-jawed yokel as a google-eyed
mating of Gomer Pyle, Jethro Bodine and Harpo Marx. It's a painful clash with the rest of the movie, like a Grand Ole Opry number in the middle of The Magic Flute. But the other actors more than cover for it. "Father's Day" headlines two of the scariest old broads in the movies (and I mean that respectfully), Carrie Nye and the late Viveca Lindfors; fine actresses, fine screamers, and they know how to die well on camera. Leslie Nielsen is light-years from The Naked Gun as the leering, loony murderer of "Tide". In "Crate", Hal Holbrook and Adrienne Barbeau shine as the most dysfunctional couple since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Adrienne's diatribe before she meets Savini's toothy hellbeast
puppet is so nasty, it's sublime. And E.G. Marshall closes the tale cycle in "Creeping" with a hilarious turn as a geriatric cauldron of resentment, who
realizes too late that even a penthouse as sterile and technologically
bugproofed as his is no match for a New York blackout. This movie also has the spookiest theme music I've ever heard, with the possible exception of Philip
Glass' Candyman score.
There's a so-so sequel too, and if you like this one it's worth a look. But this is the one to get your hands on. Perfect for Halloween, and a riot anytime.
Stars: 8.5/10