FEATURE: A Stephen King Halloween!...Creepshow

10. Creepshow

(George Romero, 1982)

Now, you can explain why a smart man will do something, because a smart man goes by the facts.  If a smart man gets car trouble, he goes to a service station.  If he gets wasps in his house, he calls the exterminator.  And if a smart man gets sick somehow, he calls the doctor. 

Jordy Verrill wasn't a smart man.

The Long and Short of It

A reuniting family gains an unexpected visitor...their long-dead father!  An alien grass discovers the best soil of all...man!  A spiteful sleaze murders his philandering wife and her lover...or so he thinks!  A college professor finds a beast under a staircase...and puts it to good use!  A rich recluse must fight off an uprising...of cockroaches!

Adaptation Decay

Significant but Necessary.  Out of the five stories in Creepshow (six if you include the wraparound), two are based on Stephen King stories: "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" comes from "Weeds," and "The Crate" comes from, go figure, "The Crate."  Neither story made it into an official Stephen King collection, but they've been published in magazines and anthologies.  "Jordy Verrill" amps up the silliness that King hints at in "Weeds," which reads more tragically, especially when Jordy "hears" what the alien grass has in mind.  "The Crate" similarly amps up the corn factor with an over-the-top performance from Adrienne Barbeau, who's more spoken around than seen in King's tale.  It's a drag for those who prefer darker thrills, but the right choice for the film.  The other three stories play in the classic mold of EC, more black-hearted morality tales than simple creepfests.  Granted, the morality isn't much more nuanced than "Don't be an asshole."

Forget All That - How's the Movie?

A treat.  Creepshow benefits from a cast of veterans and up-and-comers, but the best surprise is George Romero's direction.  The man is more renowned for his concepts than his style, but Creepshow expertly evokes the EC comics it's honoring.  Not just with the wraparound, in which King's son Joe (now a writer himself) "reads" the movie, but with the use of animated interludes that show the book's "Creep" guiding us from tale to tale. Meanwhile, moments of terror feature illustrated backgrounds and borders, and the film mixes its yucks and yuks in equal measure.  The gore is cartoonish, the victims caricatured evil that, frankly, deserve everything that's coming to 'em.  "Jordy Verrill" is the odd man out, as it offers none of the righteous comeuppance of the other tales, but even that one should grow on you (see what just happened?).

Alright, but Is It a Good Halloween Flick?

Creepshow may be the best Halloween flick to bear King's name.  Fast-paced, gruesome, with solid belly-laughs.  Most terrifying of all, the first story features a non-bald Ed Harris disco-dancing.  Scared the hell outta me.

Kingwatch 2012

"Jordy Verrill" reveals a signpost at the end that says Castle Rock is only five miles away.  Uh-oh.  And in the most substantial role of his tragically short acting career, Stephen King is the star of the second segment.  It's a specific role that demands a specific kind of approach...

Nailed it.

But You Know What Sucks?

10. "The Road Virus Heads North"

from Nightmares and Dreamscapes
(Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, 2006)

Nightmares and Dreamscapes was a mostly unembarrassing TNT mini-series that took eight Stephen King stories and reworked them for the small screen.  Six of them were decent, if unexceptional.  One of them was great (more on that later).  One of them, "The Road Virus Heads North," was atrocious, a stylistic disaster, full of aggressive, assaultive cuts and filters and angles, enough to make Tony Scott say, "Hey, let's just...dial this down a few notches."  Tom Berenger plays a successful horror writer who finds an eerie painting on sale, but when the painting starts shifting and changing, he realizes that its subject might be very real...and very hungry.  This is the type of story that demands slow-burn filmmaking, keeping things low-key, letting the situation dictate the style.  Instead, director Sergio thinks razzle-dazzle is the way to go.  Bummer.  The original story is wonderfully eerie.  This, however, is embarrassing.

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A Stephen King Halloween

01. ?
02. ?
03. ?
04. ?
05. Stand By Me / Dreamcatcher
06. The Dead Zone / The Mangler
07. Misery / Sometimes They Come Back
08. The Mist / Firestarter
09. "Battleground" / Creepshow 2
10. Creepshow / "The Road Virus Heads North"
11. Dolores Claiborne / The Tommyknockers (TV)
12. The Stand (TV) / Maximum Overdrive
13. 1408 / The Lawnmower Man
14. Christine / Silver Bullet
15. Cat's Eye / Thinner
HM. Hearts in Atlantis / The Shining (TV)