'Creepshow' is a 1982 horror anthology complied of five stories written by Stephen King, including 'Father's Day', 'The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill', 'Something to Tide You Over', 'The Crate' and 'They're Creeping Up on You!'. Each segment is directed by the legendary George A. Romero and is done in homage to the era of horror comic books that were all the rage in the 1950's such as 'Tales from the Crypt', 'Vault of Horror' and 'The Haunt of Fear'.
'Creepshow' not only takes and adapts its stories as though they are told from the perspective of a comic book reader, but films and edits them together in such a way that this would feel very at home had it come from any original source material. It does this by having the intros and outros of each segment, along with dream and flashback sequences intertwined throughout, broken down into comic style storyboards and more often than not using sequential art graphics to highlight the importance of each scene. It is not only the visuals that make 'Creepshow' feel relatable to fans of comics, but the very vivid use of overly accentuated primary colours used to highlight the set design creates an otherworldly sense that you would closely associated with stories told in this format.
As with most anthologies, more often than not there is at least one story that you could consider skipping. I personally find it very rare to find one where every story lands with the audience. For me, 'Creepshow' is the one that comes as close as I've found to breaking that mould. Granted, some segments are stronger than others, with 'Something to Tide You Over' being my personal favourite of the collection. But still, as a whole I found every entry to be as equally as enjoyable as the previous for contrasting of reasons.
As previously mentioned, 'Something to Tide You Over' was my favourite of the overall anthology and I think my love for this particular story was more enhanced by the performance by Leslie Nielsen. His straight lace portrayal the character Richard Vickers, was something I had never seen before from this actor. If found Nielsen so memorising that I couldn't take my eyes off him every time he was on screen. The rest of the cast is comprised of many recognisable faces from film and TV such as Ed Harris, Adrienne Barbeau, Ted Danson and even Stephen King himself to name but a few. I think I would struggle to find a weak link, between all of them.
The makeup and special effects come from the master of all things gruesome, Mr Tom Savini, and boy does he deliver here. It isn't as frequently as I would have liked considering he was involved in the project. But, that being said, the moments he does get to showcase his talents he take full advantage of. This is more apparent in both 'The Crate' and 'They're Creeping up on You'. And even though I found these two in particular to be the overall weakest storywise of the anthology, his practical and makeup work outshines anything else that these two stories have to bring to the table and makes them noteworthy for that alone.
'Creepshow' has a rather lighthearted tone at its core and never once really pushes the boundaries of dark horror, or at least for the most part, 'The Crate' does get quite graphic with its gore but even then it still has that lighthearted nature at its core. And whilst every segment is horror in tone and plot direction, it is done in such a way that makes this anthology very easy watching compared to most. Even though I have found there to be many other horror anthologies out there that execute this overall format better than 'Creepshow' and certainly more terrifying, for what this film is and the time of its release, I had a lot of fun with it and will no doubt be making countless returns to it at some point in the future.
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