October Horror 2012: Creepshow

Creepshow is a classic 1982 horror film in the anthology style. The stories were written by Stephen King and everything was directed by George Romero. They use the Creepshow comic as a framing device and even use comic panels as transitions, it's pretty cute. None of this is particularly suspenseful, but you should expect spoilers.


The framing story is really simple, it's a kid gets caught reading the Creepshow comicbook which his father disapproves of. He throws it out "with the rest of the trash". As the page blows open, the panels animate and we see the title card for the first story.

Father's Day
The story starts in the parlor of mansion where an older woman, a young woman and her husband, and her faaaaabulous brother are waiting for Bedelia, the family matriarch, to arrive so they can celebrate father's day. They tell the story of her father, a miserable old bastard who emotionally abused her all her life. The rumor was that she had enough of it and bashed the old man's head in several years ago while he was demanding his father's day cake. She arrives in full-on Boss style: barreling down in a luxury car, smoking a huge cigar and swigging straight out of a bottle of Jim Beam. She checks in then goes to visit the gravestone. After spilling her whiskey, the zombiefied corpse of her father breaks through the surface and goes on a murder spree demanding cake. The short ends pretty quickly after this when the grandfather presents his "cake" to the young woman and her faaaabulous brother.

The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill
Starring Stephen King himself as Jordy, this story takes obvious inspiration from Lovecraft's "The Colour of Outer Space". A meteorite crashes in a dimwitted farmer's yard, and he decides he could sell it to the local college to pay off a bank loan he recently took out. He tries to cool it with water, which cracks it and makes it ooze a strange goo. He picks up the pieces and puts them in a bucket then goes inside to watch TV. Over the course of the night mysterious bright green alien vegetation grows at an alarming rate over anything that has touched the meteorite, or anything that has touched anything that's touched the vegetation or the meteorite. Jordy eventually becomes completely covered by the growth and pleads with God before shooting himself as the radio makes a highly ironic announcement. Stephen King is absolutely HILARIOUS as Jordy, and the whole short has these really comical dream sequences as Jordy imagines encounters with college professors and doctors (both played by the same person). It's one of the more fantastic bits, but it's short and really funny.

Something to Tide You Over
A horror short with Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen? No way this can be scary! Ted Danson is in his swank bathrobe when Leslie appears and demands entrance to his apartment to talk. You see, Leslie plays Richard, the husband of the woman Ted's Harry is having an affair with. Richard plays as completely insane. He jokes, threatens, makes odd references, and generally has a great time while kidnapping Harry and driving him to the beach that he owns. I don't want to give away too much because I really enjoyed it.  Nielsen is amazing as the wealthy psychopath.  He's funny, charming, and absolutely nuts.

The Crate
This story is a bit odd.  One of the main characters is an utter bitch of a wife played by Adrienne Barbeau and her meek husband who constantly fantasizes about killing her.  The story starts at a party where she's really drunk and making an ass of herself while her husband tries to hide from her and speak with a friend of his from the local college.  The friend gets a call from the college from a janitor who found a box under a stairwell from an expedition over 180 years ago and leaves to check it out.  He and the janitor take the box to a lab and open it, at which point some weird beast attacks and eats the janitor.  The professor runs into the hallway to tell someone else and get help.  The person he finds doesn't believe him and then the thing eats him too.  He phones up the husband, and babbles the whole story to him.  The poor man decides this will be a great way to dispose of his wife and concocts a plan, that despite some minor glitches goes off quite well. At least until the *DUN DUN DUUNNNN*

They're Creeping Up On You!
This story is probably the most dull, but is also kindof disgusting. It's about a ruthless and wealthy businessman who lives in a hermetically sealed suite in a NYC high rise. During the story he deals with an increasingly numerous and impractical cockroach infestation. He fields business calls, and spends many of them threatening people and generally being a deplorable human being until the infestation is too much. At which point he retreats to a super-sealed panic room in a mad craze. He's overcome by an absurd amount of roaches before the end of the night and when the exterminator he's been yelling at people to get finally shows up, he can't answer.

The framing story wraps up with the comic book being picked up in the morning by the garbage man who flips through it and decides to read some of it, but is disappointed the voodoo doll has already been sent out for. Then it moves to the family where the father is at the table for breakfast, still mad at the son. Then he clutches at himself and screams in pain as we see the son, with the voodoo doll.

I'm concerned with my ability to keep write-ups of this length, but I'll try at least a few more times.
Tomorrow's movie is: Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror