Review: “Creepshow”

Three horror masters join together for the first time! King, Romero & Savini! Can’t miss, right! Well…

Supergroups almost never live up to fans’ expectations. For every Cream, you get a dozen Audioslaves. They’ll do in a pinch, but they aren’t going to stand up to any of the individual artists’ best work. Creepshow follows the pattern of its musical cousins, featuring an enticing lineup of horror legends, but failing to live up to the considerable expectations that such a collaboration is bound to generate. Stephen King penned the screenplay of this horror anthology, which is an homage to the same type of horror comics of the 50’s that Tales from the Crypt drew its inspiration from. George Romero directed, and contributed to the theme by crafting the interstitial bits to feature the pages of a discarded comic book flipping over. Romero also brought in famed special effects artist, Tom Savini, who had worked with him on Dawn of the Dead a few years prior. Of the three, Savini is the one that comes off looking like a rock star. His creativity with creature design and practical effects is one-of-a-kind, and virtually every segment has an awesome creation of his that pops off the screen.

For those unfamiliar with the genre, those old horror comics are typically populated with immoral people doing bad things to each other, and then suffering some kind of karmic comeuppance via last-panel ironic twist. King and Romero seem to understand this, and the movie follows the same beats, but it struggles to actually mine any irony out of the situations that it develops. For example, the first segment has a gory final shot that is clearly meant to make the audience gasp or pump their fist, but it mostly just falls flat. It’s similar to watching a bad, but seasoned, stand-up comic. You can tell that it’s a comedic performance and even convince yourself to laugh, not because it is funny, but because they are speaking in the cadence of someone telling jokes.

The biggest misstep occurs in the second segment, which stars none-other than King himself, playing a dim-witted farmer who discovers a meteor in his yard. At first, I recognized the author and simply thought “oh yeah, his typical cameo”, but soon it became clear that he wrote himself into what is basically a one-man performance piece. Quentin Tarantino is a visionary and one of my favorite directors, but he has the unfortunate habit of wanting to act, despite the fact that he doesn’t have the slightest aptitude towards it. Whenever he is on screen, no matter how brief the appearance, he takes me completely out of the action. Tarantino is like Robert Duvall compared to Stephen King. Forcing myself to sit through his mugging, over-the-top “acting” for a full ten minutes was the only horrifying thing about this movie.

Before I turn you against Creepshow forever, I should point out that it dramatically improves after the first two segments. Partly, the quality of the movie got better, and partly my expectations realigned with reality after I realized that this was not going to be some work of unparalleled genius. The third segment features Leslie Nielson and a young Ted Danson involved in a love triangle gone wrong, and it’s a lot of fun. Another story about some ancient creature discovered in a dusty crate is also very enjoyable. In both instances, the “twist” ending is telegraphed from at least the mid-way point, but there is still some satisfaction in watching it all play out. The last segment is possibly the best, and certainly the creepiest. It features E.G. Marshall as an amoral business mogul with an obsessive aversion to germs. It is the closest that the film comes to poetic justice for one of its antagonists, a hallmark of the source material. Marshall’s slightly unhinged performance is excellent, and he carries the load in what amounts to another single-person performance piece.

When all is said and done, I actually enjoyed Creepshow. Despite the very valid criticisms levied at the start of the review, the movie had a goofy charm that eventually swayed me to its side. That’s the great thing about scary movies: They don’t have to be intelligent, or competent, or even scary to be enjoyable. It’s the one genre where moxy can count for everything. So it turns out that Creepshow isn’t Cream or Audioslave, it’s the Travelling Wilburys. A group of geniuses that got together not to deliver some epic masterpiece that somehow aggregates beyond the sum of its parts, but just as an excuse to have some spirited fun. In October, with the lights turned off, that’s enough.

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