Creepshow **** (1982, Hal Holbrook, Leslie Nielsen, Adrienne Barbeau) – Classic Movie Review 8382

Despite two of horror’s biggest names and some of Hollywood’s most reliable actors, the 1982 horror anthology movie Creepshow is all too gross and sometimes uncertain of tone to be totally entertaining. Yet, still, its sophisticated tongue-in-cheek style works well for it. Director George A Romero directs five of Stephen King’s gruesome horror tales of terror, based on the E.C. horror comic books of the Fifties, adapted for the screen in an original screenplay by the author himself.

King and Romero were good friends, and always wanted to work on a film together. It is Romero’s only film for which he did not write the screenplay.

There is a lot of swearing and gore. However, Creepshow is slickly made and Romero has achieved the intended evocation of the Fifties horror comic books, most obviously in the animation between tales but also in the filming style (shot by Michael Gornick) and production designs (by Cletus Anderson).

King performs in the second story (The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill) as the greedy hillbilly Jordy Verrill. The other stories are: Father’s Day (with Carrie Nye, Viveca Lindfors and Ed Harris), Something to Tide You Over (with Leslie Nielsen and Ted Danson), The Crate (with Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau and Fritz Weaver), They’re Creeping Up On You (with E G Marshall).

In the opener, Father’s Day, a demented old man returns from the grave to get the Father’s Day cake his murderous daughter failed to give him.

It runs 120 minutes, though the Original Workprint was 130 minutes.

It was a hit. Costing $8,000,000, it grossed $19,733,000 in the US. So Creepshow 2 followed in 1987, written by George A Romero but directed by Michael Gornick.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8382

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