Creepshow (1982)

 

120 min.; 92 min.

Director: George A. Romero/ Michael Gornick

Writers: Stephen King, George A. Romero

Stars: Stephen King, Hal Holbrook, Leslie Nielson, George Kennedy, Lois Chiles, etc.

Maybe it’s just a product of all the Tales from the Crypt I watched as a child, but I love the format of an anthology when it comes to horror films. I’ve seen some odd ones, some truly scary ones, but somehow this slightly cheesy series of tales stood out to me. I’m a big fan of how great Stephen King can be, but also how terrible and ridiculous. This one is actually pretty good though.

The first Creepshow is definitely comprised of better stories than what Creepshow 2 has to offer, and I’ve yet to see Creepshow 3. Creepshow 2 involves Stephen King being covered in grass and a mutant blob eating some dumb teenagers out on a raft in the middle of a lake. Creepshow contains some pretty interesting stories though, and all seem to follow a general theme of revenge from beyond the grave. It’s hard to talk about all five of these tales individually in one post, but I’ll do what I can.

The most terrifying story of all, in my opinion, is the tale that includes a man’s infestation of cockroaches. Of all things to be terrified, I’m pretty sure roaches are at the top of my list of fears. Something about the little bastards makes me skin crawl and gives me the urge to burn everything in site. For this reason alone, I’m ridiculous and find this part of the movie to be utterly terrifying.

What nightmares are made of

What’s scarier? They’re real cockroaches, or course. All of them. This is another movie that was made before the age of CGI, which is one of the things I find to be so impressive about it. The movie is low budget, but still managed to be pretty popular in its time and even contained effects I think are pretty cool for it to have been so low budget and made in 1982.

As I was saying earlier, though, the anthology seems to be framed by two things: it’s reference back to the comic it was derived from (through the use of cuts to cartoon frames/ the classic bubble text seen in comics) and revenge from the grave. One of the coolest was one titled “The Crate,” which seemed to contain subtle gay subtext of what happens when the monstrously repressed come out of the closet. The movie’s first story of the five, “Father’s Day,” is pretty great as well and seemed like it was playing into the heavy use of holiday horrors that had become so popular in the late 70’s/ early 80’s (such as Friday the 13th, Halloween, Black Christmas, and so on).

Father’s Day

 

Story: 5/10
Gore Factor: 3/10
Scare Factor: 4/10
Overall: 6/10