Creepshow DVD: Review By brianroche

When I was a kid, the "Creepshow" video box taunted me from video store shelves, challenging me to immerse myself in its scariness. When I finally did see "Creepshow", I was about 15. It didn't scare me at all.

I probably should have toughed it out when the movie was originally released. You'd never see that today: a horror movie intended specifically FOR kids, the audience most likely to be traumatized by its zombie corpses, zombie sea creatures, moss-covered farmers, crate-dwelling monsters, and c*ckroaches.

But then, George Romero and Stephen King knew that. The director and screenwriter, respectively, of "Creepshow" grew up reading EC Comics like "Tales From the Crypt" and "Haunt of Fear". They set out to make a movie that was like an issue of one of those old comics come to life. But they weren't kids anymore. Where EC took a childishly direct view of human treachery and ultimate revenge, "Creepshow" has a wise, adult point of view - like King's fiction from that same early-80s period. So, while kids are scared, adults are entertained. "Creepshow" is like the adult experience of paging through an old "Tales from the Crypt" comic without the disappointment.

The film begins with a surreal opening sequence of a father (Tom Atkins, of "The Fog" "Night of the Creeps", and the first "Lethal Weapon") yelling at his young son (Stephen King's own son, Joe) for reading horror comic books, which are 'garbage' and 'crap'. Clearly, this man is unprepared for the Internet. In a display of parental sternness that today would mark him as a child abuser, He actually smacks the kid in the mouth for talking back, and throws the comic book in the trash. "I wish you'd burn in Hell," the boy says with an electronically-aided evil voice. This voice summons the Creep, the movie and comic's mascot, and one of cinema's top five least-convincing ambulatory skeletons. Thankfully, the Creep quickly converts to his animated form, better to guide us through the colorful, discarded comic book. The movie then takes us through five cartoonish horror stories, all of them about revenge of one kind or another, done as if they're from an issue of the fictional comic, "Creepshow".

The first is "Father's Day". The Granthams have a traditional Father's Day dinner, without the father. That's because Aunt Bedelia (Viveca A. Lindfors) bashed his head in with an ashtray, fed up with his tight-fisted control over her personal life. Every year since, Bedelia comes to the family estate, sits by her father's grave for an hour, and then comes into the house for 'a nice baked ham dinner'. After a tearful yet loving tirade she probably performs every year, Bedelia is killed by her father's zombified corpse. He's emerged worm-eaten from the grave to claim his Father's Day cake. He ends up claiming the lives of the remaining Granthams instead.

Romero here introduces the movie's comic book framing and weird red lighting devices to perfection. Despite the over-the-top nature of the story, King still takes it seriously to a degree, and all the characters, especially Aunt Bedelia seem real, and real sad. In a nice melancholy King touch, it's implied the Grantham family was once big and rich, and now consists of limited old money, and only four living members - matriarch Sylvia, her niece Cass and nephew Nathan, and Aunt Bedelia. Cass also has a new husband, Hank (Ed Harris in an early movie role).

The next segment, "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" has gained a reputation as a space-filler, with a terrible performance by King himself as Jordy. I beg to differ. "Jordy" is a loony palette-cleanser, taking us down from the first story and getting us ready for the third. And King's performance IS terrible - which is why it's good. It's the most cartoonish section of the movie, and King's bug-eyed, over-emphatic line readings suit it perfectly. Jordy Verrill is a struggling farmer, and one night a meteor crash-lands on his barren field. Jordy fantasizes selling it 'up the college' for not one cent less than $200. But Jordy pours water on the meteor to cool it off, which cracks it open, releasing a blue-green liquid. Jordy touches the liquid, and soon thick moss begins to cover everything. His body, his home and his farm are quickly tarped in green, and Jordy's fantasies turn to nightmares of disappointing his long-dead father. As the sun rises over his farm, the national anthem plays on the television, and the space vegetation begins to spread across the countryside, Jordy shoots himself rather than live as a moss-creature. The thing is, despite an itchy sensation, the space moss doesn't seem to cause Jordy any pain. Jordy's dumber than a bag of nails, yet his pain is psychological. This bizarre catastrophe of nature only highlights his personal inadequacy. I'd like to see the "Haunt of Fear" try that.

Our palettes cleansed, we settle into tale #3, "Something to Tide you Over". Here, Leslie Nielsen is a cuckolded husband and Ted Danson is the assistant cuckolder, a local tennis pro. Nielsen forces Danson, at gunpoint, to come out to a deserted beach with him. There, he shows Danson a videotape of Nielsen's wife, buried up to her neck in sand as the tide crashes repeatedly over her head. He can have her all to himself, Nielsen promises, if he submits to the same watery torture. Nielsen is more right than he knows. After Danson buries himself in the sand, Nielsen sets up a video camera and drives back to his beach house, to enjoy the slow death of his wife and her lover over a nice scotch. Nielsen is soon attacked by Danson and his wife, who are now seaweed-covered water zombies. Or are they? Nielsen ends up buried in the sand himself, but we never see the water zombies bury him. He's so jumpy and guilty over what he's done, he just as believably could have buried himself.

Danson is good here, a reminder that before sitcom stardom, he had a solid gig as a character actor, in movies like "The Onion Field" and "Body Heat". Nielsen, in all his velour-track-suited glory, is good too as the villain. It's a proper adjunct to his current reputation as the Paul Newman of spoof comedy. Tom Savini did the make-up effects for most of the movie, and his sea zombie make-up strikes the right cord between cartoon and horror. It's amusing too, in our digital times, to see Nielsen so enthused over the 'picture quality' of his crappy VHS tapes.

Now the movie gives us its main event, "The Crate". This is my favorite of all the episodes, and the one that could have withstood expansion to feature length. Hal Holbrook stars in a rare non-villain role as Henry Northrup, a sad sack college professor. Henry's wife Billie (Adrienne Barbeau) wears the pants in the family, and she beats him with them every chance she gets. It's tempting to lavish the same praise on Barbeau as I gave to King in his role. But no, she's just bad. She doesn't convince as a cruel loudmouth, and makes it worse by trying too hard. But she's the only bad thing in this segment. Henry's pal Dex (Fritz Weaver) is the star professor on campus, doing prestigious research and bedding all the cute coeds.

Dex is interrupted at a faculty function by a phone call from the janitor of Amberson Hall, who's found a huge crate under one of the stairwells marked "Arctic Expedition 1834". Dex rushes over to help the janitor pull it out, and open it up. The suspense in this sequence is expertly drawn out, with a combination of Dex's cool reserve, the janitor's nervous jabbering, and a simple synthesizer cue. When they finally get the crate open, out pops a long-toothed monster, which eats the janitor. Dex tries to run for help when a grad student pops up, expressed skepticism, and is also eaten by the crate monster. Horrified and blabbering like a mental patient, Dex arrives at Henry's door. He tells Henry everything. Henry drugs Dex and ventures off to Amberson Hall, where he uses the monster to rid himself of his marital woes.

The comic book style and serious characters reach their apex here. Edited by Brian De Palma's frequent collaborator Paul Hirsh, the screen is alive with multiple panels and nimble transitions. Red lighting is used most often and best here, bathing the screen for the monster's attacks as well as Henry's imaginary abuse of Billie. The monster is a perfect comic book creature - obviously fake yet creepily compelling. In most movies, the monster would have gotten loose, but "The Crate"'s secret weapon is that the monster's victim's go to it, rather than it chasing them. This segment also has the majority of the film's down-Maine slang, a King specialty: lines like "F*ck-a-diddle!"; "You're off on a hell of a toot!"; and "It looks like it's been through a hay-baler!" will please fans of King's early short stories.

"The Crate" also gets a lot of texture from the power dynamics between the characters. Billie has power over Henry, and so does Dex, who'd rather be a carefree bachelor than spend time with this loser. In helping Dex and essentially murdering Billie by tricking her into looking into the crate, he becomes a stronger person. Even though Henry's provided invaluable help to him, as the film closes Dex is seriously afraid of his once-pathetic friend.

Nothing could top "The Crate", so the film's last segment is another palate cleanser, "They're Creeping Up on You". Again, casting against type, the dignified E.G. Marshall plays a racist germophobe CEO. He lives in an all-white penthouse apartment, probably so he can always see what needs cleaning. He dispatches orders to his underlings via speakerphone as he deals with a c*ckroach problem. This problem only gets worse, overrunning his apartment until they crawl inside him and, in the single most disgusting image in the whole movie, out of him, through his mouth. No great shakes, but goofy and gross and short.

The film ends with a return to the framing device, with a cameo by Tom Savini as a garbage man. The kid, inspired by "Creepshow" has enacted some revenge of his own.

"Creepshow" works so well because it commits so completely to the comic book look. It's almost too bad there isn't more of it. I suspect that Romero, King, DP Michael Gornick, and the special effects crew had planned just that kind of total immersion into the EC comics world, but pulled back due to budget. One of the movie's other heroes is John Harrison, who composed the synthesizer score. His cues aid the different stories brilliantly with different degrees of suspense and cheese. Harrison would actually go on to become a director, of "Tales From the Darkside: the Movie" and the "Dune" miniseries. I haven't seen either of those, but hearing his "Creepshow" music again makes me feel as if we've lost a composer rather than gained a director.

The movie's only special feature is its trailer, also in 1.85. I noticed some footage that didn't make the movie, and a complete lack of the "Tide" story. It would be great to get Romero and King in the booth for a commentary track on this one. Until that day . . .

I've said it several times already, but the movie looks great, with bright, sharp colors during the horror scenes. The scenes with comic-style titles laid over them look a little fuzzy, but this is likely a fault of the original film. The 1.85:1 frame shows much more of the comic-panel look than the VHS. It looks as good as it ever has.

The sound has English and French 2.0 mono. Just fine for the movie, which is not intended as an aural assault. There's also some English subtitles.

This movie has never scared me, but then, there are lots of comedies that only make me smile. It's nice to smile. And it's nice to get some mild suspense and surprisingly complex characters. George A. Romero and Stephen King have many admirers. But when Romero's films or the films based on King's work are discussed, this one gets only a cursory mention. It's time to add "Creepshow" to the list of their great works.