Directed by George A. Romero. Written by Stephen King. Gore effects and garbageman cameo by Tom Savini. 1980s. Slam dunk, right? Weeeeeellll… not sure what happened here. I suspect alcohol and/or drugs and/or crazy stripper alcohol coke parties may have been involved. Even nostalgia called to leave a message on the answering machine tape, then sent a fax, and finally sent the message “5318008” on the pager which normally is awesome but in this case means…. kinda sucky.
An anthology horror film that takes that mediocre bar and lowers it. Fer. Fucks. Sake. You telling me, out of all the cool stories out there, you pick bottom of the barrel claptrap to waste celluloid, time, talent, and well-done animated comic book art on? Basically a modernized take on the EC comics of old like Tales From the Crypt and The Vault of Horror. Tales From the Crypt would eventually become its own television series on HBO in 1989 for quite a few seasons, and like this, involved a lot of different talent per episode, and also to mixed results. But Creepshow? Even as the 2nd movie reviewed on a DMR night, still not drunk enough to have much fun with it. Tragic.
Okay, a little harsh, but not really. I’m not the 10 year old kid this was ultimately marketed to, so I recognize that. But even as, like, a 10 year old kid when I probably first saw this, even then I was...not impressed. I dunno, of the five stories,The Crate segment is pretty done well. At the beginning of that one, I still swear the janitor says “Fuck-A-Diddle” when he drops the quarter but that might be some weird mandela effect going on. Too bad, woulda been the best writing of the film. The fact Stephen King actually stars in one of the segments is particularly telling. His first 10 years of books, yeah, some interesting stuff. After that, like, around the time this movie came out? Even worse odds than the 1-to-5 good ratio of this film. Sad.
