Creepshow (1982)

Dismember the Alamo 2024: Four Mystery Horror Movies at the Alamo Drafthouse.

My wife leaned over during the Jordy Verrill segment and inquired: Real talk. How high was he when they shot this?

This year’s annual mystery movie marathon started off with some delightfully off-the-wall trailers like Blood Hook and Vampire People, then the first course arrived in the form of a severely faded, scratchy 35mm print that co-host and A/V Geeks creator Skip Elsheimer described as “KodakEastman Blood-O-Vision.” Either way, it looked and sounded rough, but when it’s Romero and King, can you really complain? The initial clue was an anthology from two horror masters and I somehow immediately keyed into Argento/Romero collabo Two Evil Eyes, but one out of two ain’t bad. Revisiting after so many years, Creepshow is an undeniably loony, joyously horrific ride. By today’s standards, it’s oddly quaint and in typical King fashion when rendering even the most archetypal of characters with intelligence and insight, he does tend to overwrite, which results in some segments feeling quite logy and bloated when we’re all simply waiting for the punchline and the big, bloody finish.

My storytelling skills tend to be a little scattered, so I’m surprised my wife hasn’t shot up and complained about my being “so goddamned elliptical!” Having seen Creepshow a number of times, what I wasn’t expecting was the justifiably famous sections hitting a little lighter than I expected. None of them are duds, which is rare when it comes to anthologies, but this was King and Romero in their heyday, so it’s to be expected they’d deliver the goods. “Father’s Day” is a fine opener, not counting Atkins’ mean papa and future Black Phone author Joe King’s voodoo-riffic revenge plot, but despite us all demanding CAKE(!!!) and seeing more of those sexy Ed Harris dance moves, it’s not much more than a showcase for a terrific Savini zombie corpse creation and a killer visual punchline. “Sweets to a whore!”

King’s Verrill segment is almost there and it’s a loving ode to Lovecraft’s “Colour” tale, yet despite my genuine amusement at King’s much-maligned, cartoonish performance, he also strives for pathos in the end. His grassy, weed-covered suicide vies for a tragic bend, which feels incongruent to the looniness found within the Department of Meteors.

“Fluffy” aka the beast in “The Crate” is still a marvelous creation and watching Adrienne Barbeau’s crude, piggish shrew belittle and humiliate Hal Holbrook is a highlight, yet again, King believes in detailed ingredients and full-blooded lead as well as secondary characters, so the path to Barbeau and her “special milk” taking a lil’ trip Amberson Hall is too protracted, as is the epilogue-like ending.

This leaves E.G. Marshall’s one-man show in “They’re Creeping up on You” and my biggest surprise, the stellar “Something to Tide You Over.” Marshall is a stitch as a Hughes-level germophobe and his miserly, Scrooge-like abuse of his offscreen employees is hilariously cruel “Everybody’s got the goddamned herpes these days!” I’d never given “Tide” much thought as it follows a standard revenge plot you’d find in any number of EC Horror comics or King’s later work like “The Ledge” in Cat’s Eye, yet thanks to Leslie Nielsen’s terrifically controlled, quietly menacing performance and tight editing, it’s a near-perfect little aquatic creeper to chill the bones. 

Romero’s direction is unobtrusive until it needs to be via DP and future Creepshow 2 helmer Michael Gornick’s tilted, Dutch angles and saturated color scheme are perfect for the hysterically exploitative comic book vibe. Relaxed pacing and embellishments extend the runtime far too long, but there’s plenty of nasty goodies to be found. As Leslie so aptly puts it: Look at the quality!