Rating:

Horror giants Stephen King and George Romero teamed up to make a crazy-ass spook movie? With those two dudes running the show, it surely must be the greatest thing ever created! Well, it’s not. It’s enjoyable enough—although undeniably overlong and unforgivably plodding in some spots—but it’s not the ultimate achievement in fright you might expect it to be when you first hear about it. The pictures an anthology piece, like Trilogy of Terror and The Twilight Zone Movie, divided into five totally separate stories. The device they all hang together on is that they’re stories in the comic book Creepshow, a loving homage to the classic E.C. horror comics of old. If these stories don’t quite live up to the ones that provided the original inspiration, they’re still very much in the same vein and a pleasant enough diversion for anyone who’s a fan of that sort of thing. The individual stories are as follows.

Father’s Day
A family of rich, stuffy old people have gathered round, as is their yearly tradition, to celebrate Father’s Day, including newcomer-by-marriage Ed Harris. The father in question is, unfortunately, unable to attend the festivities due to a severe case of death. Years before, you see, his daughter Bedelia had brought herself home A Man. Pappy didn’t like that one bit; being a greedy old sonofabitch, he wanted to be the sole focus of Bedelia’s attention. The obvious solution was to have the new beau killed, and that’s just what he did. The plan went off without a hitch, unless you consider the fact that Bedelia exacted her revenge by way of bludgeoning him to death to be a hitch. The family members gathered here in the present recount the stories of their creepy and violent past, occasionally stopping to do insane dances. While Ed Harris can’t hold a candle to Crispin Glover’s bizarre moves in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, he still manages to cut a pretty fucked up rug. So if seeing the flight controller from Apollo 13 bust a move is how you’d like to spend time, this movie is right up your alley.

In any case, it’s Father’s Day and the father in question is dead. But in the works of George Romero and Stephen King, dead people don’t often stay dead for very long, and this is no exception. Before you know it, daddy’s corpse has risen and is marching about killing everyone with extreme prejudice, on the hunt for his Father’s Day cake. That’s really the sum and substance of this whole thing: Ed Harris dances funny, and a reanimated corpse twists people’s heads around. Fun for the whole family!

The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verril
Stephen King is known for having a semi-regular habit of making cameos in movies based on his work, but in this one he takes a starring role! In fact, he’s the only real character–the Jordy of the title–in the whole piece. That’s right, the success or failure of this entire segment hangs on the acting skills of a dude who isn’t an actor at all. Now, I like Stephen King a lot, so I’m inclined to say that his bizarre gestures and over-the-top craziness can be excused because this whole movie is supposed to be like a comic book. Even that’s being generous, though.

Jordy Verril, a poor an extremely dumb farmowner, is at home one evening when a meteor comes crashing down and lands on his property. He goes out to investigate and, with visions of selling the spacerock to the local university for a fabulous sum, attempts to collect it. In the process, he accidentally splits the meteor in twain, releasing its interior goop, which Jordy so aptly describes as “meteor shit.” The poor man gets some of this meteor shit on his hand, and that’s where the fun begins.

From then on, Jordy starts to grow. Not taller, but rather he begins to sprout some kind of moss all over his body. The bizarre plantlife spreads and spreads, gradually consuming Jordy as well as being transferred to everything he touches. Nothing Jordy does seems to have any effect. Is there no solution? No, not really. Sorry, Jordy.

Something to Tide You Over
Ha ha ha! Did you get it? To tide you over? See, it’s funny because it involves the tide on the beach…a pun..WHOO! Comedy! In any case, this segment stars Ted Danson as a philandering young man and Leslie Nielsen as the cuckolded husband of the woman Ted’s been seeing. Leslie’s become intent on revenge for this injustice, and in his cold calculating way he kidnaps Ted Danson and buries him up to his neck in the sandy beach. Just to prove he’s super crazy, he does the same to his wife. And then the tide begins to come in.

Although I seem to have the least to say about it, this is my favorite of the film’s five segments. Leslie Nielsen is an absolute delight to watch as the eerily calm nutcase; he’s obviously crazy but as he goes about his murderous plotting he never loses his cool, and it makes him fascinating. Further, this episode has something of a twist ending. It’s not a huge surprise, but at least it’s different. In the other sections of the film, the whole thing is basically outlined in one short sentence describing the plot. Man turns into plant. Corpse murders people. This at least has a little bit more to it than “man buries other dude.”

The Crate
While “Something To Tide You Over” is my favorite, this one is surely my least favorite. It seems to go on and on forever, and here’s the basic plot: There is a crate with a monster in it, monster attacks people. That’s a pretty thing premise to hang a piece of any length on, but a valiant effort is made here. Too much of an effort, if you ask me. Some guy has a shrewish wife, and he makes an effort to have her eaten by the crate monster…whatever. There’s just not really anything to say about this one.

They’re Creeping Up on You
Ah ha! This is more like it! This one I like. This segment’s about Mr. Pratt, a Howard Hughes type who’s not only madly obsessed with cleanliness and germs and whatnot, but is also a real friggin’ douchebag. He keeps his apartment hospital-style sterile, but this night it seems members of the insect community have their own ideas on the subject. Cockroaches start getting all up in Pratt’s space, first one, then another, then a whole bajillion of ‘em, crawling all over everything and giving me the jibblies.

Pratt says nastier and nastier things about people and finds more and more bugs everywhere, crawling on the walls, in his food, in his everything. The interesting thing about this whole scenario is that it’s not necessarily clear if any of the bugs are real. The effect they have, sending Pratt further and further into fits of agitation, are real enough. But Pratt has a tendency to think of the world’s “little people” as nothing but bugs, so it’s a very real possibility that his cockroach problem is all in his mind. Real or not, it ends in spectacularly gross fashion, so A+ for that.

And that’s Creepshow, ladies and gentlemen. Some high points and some low points, but overall a pleasant experience. I think the likelihood of a particular person really enjoying the movie is somewhat dependent on his familiarty and fondness with the old E.C. comics it pays tribute to, things like Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Terror. I don’t know if I can recommend it to everybody, but the right subset of people will definitely enjoy it.

Best Quote: “Go out and fuck somebody. But wear a damn rubber, everybody’s got the damn herpes these days.”

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