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Creepshow is a 1982 American horror comedy anthology film directed by George A. Romero and written by Stephen King, making this film his screenwriting debut. The film's ensemble cast includes Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Fritz Weaver, Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson and E.G. Marshall, as well as King himself (King's acting debut actually came a year prior in the Romero film Knightriders). The film was primarily shot on location in Pittsburgh and its suburbs, including Monroeville, where Romero leased an old boys academy (Penn Hall) to build extensive sets for the film.
The film consists of five short stories: "Father's Day", "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" (based on the King short story "Weeds"), "Something to Tide You Over", "The Crate" and "They're Creeping Up on You!" Two of these stories were adapted from King's short stories, with the film bookended by prologue and epilogue scenes featuring a young boy named Billy (played by King's son, Joe), who is punished by his father for reading horror comics.
The film is an homage to the EC horror comics of the 1950s, such as Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear. In order for the film to give viewers a comic book feel, Romero hired long-time effects specialist Tom Savini to replicate comic-like effects.
The film earned $21 million in the United States.[3] It was followed by a 1987 sequel, Creepshow 2, directed by the first film's cinematographer, Michael Gornick, written by Romero and based on stories by King. A second sequel, Creepshow 3, was released in 2006, without involvement from either Romero or King.
Plot[]
Prologue[]
A young boy named Billy gets disciplined by his father, Stan, for reading a horror comic titled Creepshow. Stan reminds his wife that he had to be hard on Billy because he does not want their son to be reading it, calling it "crap". As Billy sits upstairs with hopes of his father rotting in Hell, he hears a sound at the window, which turns out to be a ghostly apparition in the form of The Creep from the comic book, beckoning him to come closer.
"Father's Day"[]
The first story, "Father's Day," is an original story by King written for the film. Nathan Grantham, the miserly old patriarch of a family whose fortune was made through bootlegging, fraud, extortion and murder-for-hire, is killed on Father's Day by his long-suffering spinster daughter Bedelia. Bedelia was already unstable as the result of a lifetime spent putting up with her father's incessant demands and emotional abuse, which culminated in his orchestrating the murder of her sweetheart, Peter.
The sequence begins when the remainder of Nathan's descendants—including Nathan's granddaughter Sylvia, his great-grandchildren Richard, Cass, and Cass's husband Hank—get together for their annual dinner on the third Sunday in June.
Bedelia, who typically arrives later than the others, stops in the cemetery outside the family house to lay a flower at the grave site and drunkenly reminisce about how she murdered her insufferable, overbearing father. When she accidentally spills her whiskey bottle in front of the headstone, it seems to have a reanimating effect on the mortal remains interred below. Suddenly, Nathan's putrefied, maggot-infested corpse emerges from the burial plot in the form of a revenant who has come back to claim the Father's Day cake he never got. Grantham slowly avenges himself on Bedelia and the rest of his idle, scheming, money-grubbing heirs, killing them off one by one (which includes some apparent supernatural abilities such as making a heavy tombstone move by will) before finally attaining his Father's Day cake, topped with Sylvia's severed head.
While the ending is left ambiguous in the film, with Nathan gloating over a terrified Cass and Richard in freeze-frame, the comic book based on the film gives a vague hint that Nathan's next act was to "blow out their candles."
"The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill"[]
This section of the film is based on King's short story "Weeds". Jordy Verrill (played by King himself), a dimwitted backwoods yokel, thinks that a newly discovered meteorite will provide enough money from the local college to pay off his $200 bank loan.
As the meteorite is too hot to touch, he douses it with water, causing it to crack open and spew a glowing blue substance that comes into contact with his skin. He then finds himself being overcome by a rapidly spreading plant-like organism that begins growing on his body.
As the weeds start to grow on the house and everything Jordy has touched, Jordy pours himself a bottle of vodka. He falls asleep and wakes up moments later, only to find out that it was not a dream and that he has now grown a beard of weeds.
As Jordy starts to take a bath, he is cautioned by the ghost of his father that the parasite wants water and to not get in the tub. But when the itching from the growth on his skin becomes unbearable, Jordy succumbs to temptation and collapses into the bathwater.
By the next morning, Jordy and his farm have been completely covered with dense layers of the hideous alien vegetation. In despair, he reaches for a shotgun and blows the top of his head off, thus killing himself. A radio weather forecast announces that heavy rains are predicted and the audience is left with the dire expectation that this will accelerate the spread of the extraterrestrial plant growth to surrounding areas.
"Something to Tide You Over"[]
Richard Vickers, a vicious, wealthy and ruthless man whose spry jocularity belies his cold-blooded murderousness, stages a terrible fate for his unfaithful wife, Becky, and her lover, Harry Wentworth, by separately luring them out to his secluded beach property and then, at gunpoint, burying them up to their necks below the high-tide line. He explains that they have a chance of survival—if they can hold their breath long enough for the sand to loosen once the seawater covers them, they could break free and escape.
Vickers sets up closed-circuit TV cameras so he can watch them die from the comfort of his well-appointed beach house. Looking directly into the camera, Harry vows vengeance, to which Richard retorts "Got to hold your breath, Harry!" The next day, Richard returns to the spot he buried Harry and finds the ruined camera tripod, but no sign of Harry's corpse. Richard chalks up the lack of corpses due to Harry and Becky being carried off to sea by the current. However, Richard is in for a surprise of his own when the two lovers he murdered return as a pair of waterlogged, seaweed-covered revenants intent on revenge. Richard attempts to barricade himself in his bedroom, but they suddenly appear inside. He tries to shoot them, but they remind him: "You can't shoot us dead, Richard, because we're already dead!" The couple tells Richard that they intend to do the same to him what he did to them. The camera pans in on Richard as he continues firing gunshots, laughing that this is all a crazy experience. The final scene reveals that Richard is now the one buried in the beach, facing the approaching tide—and the sight of two sets of footprints disappearing into the surf. While the tide is rising, he laughs hysterically, his sanity shattered by the experience, and screams: "I can hold my breath for a long time!" The frame freezes into animation and the flipping comic pages stop on the title of the next story.
"The Crate"[]
Based on the short story "The Crate." A college janitor, Mike, drops a quarter and finds a wooden storage crate marked "Arctic Expedition - June 19, 1834" hidden under a staircase. He notifies Dexter Stanley, a college professor, of the find. The two decide to open the crate and it is found to contain a multi-fanged ape-like creature (Darryl Ferrucci), which despite its diminutive size promptly kills and entirely devours Mike, leaving behind only his boot. Escaping, Stanley runs into a graduate student, Charlie Gereson, who is skeptical and investigates. The crate has been moved back under the stairs and Gereson is killed by the creature as he examines the crate. Stanley flees to inform his friend and colleague at the university, the mild-mannered Professor Henry Northrup.
Stanley, now traumatized and hysterical, babbles to Northrup that the deadly monster must be disposed of somehow. Northrup sees the creature as a way to rid himself of his perpetually drunk, obnoxious and emotionally abusive wife, Wilma, whom he often daydreams of killing. He contrives a scheme to lure her near the crate, where the beast does indeed maul and eat her. Northrup secures the beast back inside its crate, then drops it into a nearby lake, where it sinks to the bottom. He returns to assure Stanley that the creature is no more. However, it is subsequently revealed to the audience that the beast has escaped from its crate.
"They're Creeping Up on You"[]
Upson Pratt is a cruel, ruthless businessman whose mysophobia has him living in a hermetically sealed apartment controlled completely with both electric locks and surveillance cameras. His apparent contacts with the outside world are through the telephone, where people call to denounce Pratt for ruining their families, and Mr. White, a put-upon employee who is made to run errands. During a particularly severe lightning storm, he finds himself looking out over the concrete canyons of New York City as a rolling blackout travels his way. When it hits his apartment tower, the terror begins for Mr. Pratt, who now finds himself helpless when his flat becomes overrun by hordes of cockroaches. As the situation rapidly becomes worse, he locks himself inside a panic room, only to find the cockroaches have already infested the room as well. With no way to escape, he is swarmed by the roaches, which induces a fatal heart attack. Later, as electricity returns to the building, Pratt's corpse is shown in the panic room, now devoid of roaches. However, Pratt's body soon begins to contort as roaches grotesquely burst out of his mouth and body, re-enveloping the panic room. Mr. White calls in to report, but gets no answer. He then says to himself, "What's the matter, Mr. Pratt? Bugs got your tongue?"
Epilogue[]
The following morning, two garbage collectors find the Creepshow comic book in the trash. They look at the ads in the book for X-ray specs and a Charles Atlas bodybuilding course. They also see an advertisement for a voodoo doll but lament that the order form has already been redeemed. Inside the house, Stan complains of neck pain, which escalates and becomes deadly as Billy repeatedly and gleefully jabs the voodoo doll as he finally gets revenge on his father for his past abuse.
Cast[]
- Joe King as Billy
- Iva Jean Saraceni as Billy's mother
- Tom Atkins (uncredited) as Stan
- Marty Schiff as Garbageman #1
- Tom Savini as Garbageman #2
- Jon Lormer as Nathan Grantham
- Viveca Lindfors as Bedelia Grantham
- Elizabeth Regan as Cass Blaine
- Warner Shook as Richard Grantham
- Ed Harris as Hank Blaine
- Carrie Nye as Sylvia Grantham
- Peter Messer as Yarbro
- John Amplas as Nathan's Corpse
- Nann Mogg as Mrs. Danvers
- Stephen King as Jordy Verrill
- Bingo O'Malley as Jordy's father and Doctor
- Leslie Nielsen as Richard Vickers
- Gaylen Ross as Becky Vickers
- Ted Danson as Harry Wentworth
- Richard Gere (uncredited) as Man On TV
- Hal Holbrook as Henry Northup
- Adrienne Barbeau as Wilma "Billie" Northup
- Fritz Weaver as Dexter Stanley
- Don Keefer as Mike the Janitor
- Robert Harper as Charlie Gereson
- Chuck Aber as Richard Raymond
- Christine Forrest as Tabitha Raymond
- David Garrison (uncredited) as College Party Host
- Darryl Ferrucci as Fluffy the Crate Beast
- E.G. Marshall as Upson Pratt
- David Early as White
- Ann Muffly (uncredited) as the voice of Lenora Castonmeyer
- Mark Tierno as the voice of Carl Reynolds
- Ned Beatty (uncredited) as the voice of Bob Bean
Production[]
"Father's Day", "Something to Tide You Over" and "They're Creeping Up on You!" are original stories by King written for the film. "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" is based on King's short story "Weeds" and "The Crate" is based on the short story of the same name.
In keeping with Romero's tradition of filming in and around the Pittsburgh area, most of the film was shot in an empty all-girls school located outside Greensburg, Pennsylvania. The school was converted into a film studio, and the episodes "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" and "They're Creeping Up on You", as well as the prologue and epilogue, were filmed in their entirety at the former school. Filming took place at the Greensburg location throughout 1981.
Several additional locations were also used for filming:
- "The Crate" — most of the interior and exterior shots for the university sequences were filmed at Carnegie-Mellon University[4] (Romero is a Carnegie-Mellon University alumnus), with Margaret Morrison Hall serving as Amberson Hall. The backyard party was filmed in Romero's own backyard at his former residence on Amberson Avenue in Shadyside, Pennsylvania.
- "Father's Day" was filmed on location at a mansion in the Pittsburgh suburb of Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania.[4]
- "Something to Tide You Over" was filmed on location at Island Beach State Park, Berkeley Township, New Jersey.
In a 2015 interview with The A.V. Club, Ted Danson explained the brief shot of his character drowning underwater: "So they make a little aquarium tank. I got in a wetsuit and climbed in, and somebody would reach down with an oxygen tank ventilator thingy, and I'd breathe, and then they'd take that out. And there was a yoke made out of... I don't know, wood and fake sand, so it looked like my head was buried in the sand, underwater."[5]
Ray Mendez, an entomologist with the American Museum of Natural History, and David Brody provided 20,000 cockroaches for the segment "They're Creeping Up on You".[6] In the final scene of the segment—in which the room is almost filled with cockroaches—many of the apparent insects were actually nuts and raisins, as specified by Tom Savini.[7]
Release[]
Creepshow was given a wide release by Warner Bros. on Wednesday, November 10, 1982.[1] In its opening weekend, Creepshow grossed $5,870,889 from 1,127 theatres, ranking number 1 at the U.S. box office, replacing First Blood in the top spot,[8] and had a five-day total of $8,003,017. In total it grossed $21,028,755 in the United States and Canada,[9] making it the highest grossing horror film for the Warner Bros. studio that year.[10]
Reception[]
Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 65% approval rating based on 74 reviews; the average rating is 6.2/10. The site's consensus reads: "It's uneven, as anthologies often are, but Creepshow is colorful, frequently funny, and treats its inspirations with infectious reverence."[11] Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "Romero and King have approached this movie with humor and affection, as well as with an appreciation of the macabre".[12][13] In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "The best things about Creepshow are its carefully simulated comic-book tackiness and the gusto with which some good actors assume silly positions. Horror film purists may object to the levity even though failed, as a lot of it is".[14] Gary Arnold, in his review for The Washington Post, wrote, "What one confronts in Creepshow is five consistently stale, derivative horror vignettes of various lengths and defects".[15] In his review for The Globe and Mail, Jay Scott wrote, "The Romero-King collaboration has softened both the horror and the cynicism, but not by enough to betray the sources — Creepshow is almost as funny and as horrible as the filmmakers would clearly love it to be". David Ansen, in his review for Newsweek, wrote, "For anyone over 12 there's not much pleasure to be had watching two masters of horror deliberately working beneath themselves. Creepshow is a faux-naif horror film: too arch to be truly scary, too elemental to succeed as satire". In his review for Time, Richard Corliss wrote, "But the treatment manages to be both perfunctory and languid; the jolts can be predicted by any ten-year-old with a stopwatch. Only the story in which Evil Plutocrat E.G. Marshall is eaten alive by cockroaches mixes giggles and grue in the right measure".[16]
Bravo awarded it the 99th spot on their "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments", mostly for the scene with the cockroaches bursting out of Upson Pratt's body.[17]
Home media[]
The film was first released in 1983 on VHS and CED Videodisc.
In the United States, Warner Bros. released a one-disc set on October 26, 1999, with the only extra feature being the film's trailer. No other special features have ever been released with the Region 1 version. The Region 1 DVD was a two-sided disc. One side was the 1.85:1 transfer (widescreen) version of the film and the other side was the full-screen version,
A two-disc Special Edition DVD of Creepshow was released on October 22, 2007, in the UK. The discs feature a brand new widescreen transfer of the film sourced from the original master, a making-of documentary running 90 minutes (titled Just Desserts: The Making of Creepshow), behind-the-scenes footage, rare deleted scenes, galleries, a commentary track with director George A. Romero and make-up effects artist, Tom Savini, and more. The owner of Red Shirt Pictures, Michael Felsher is responsible for the special edition, the documentary and audio commentary in particular.
On September 8, 2009, the film was released on Blu-ray. Again the only special feature is the film's trailer. Scream Factory re-released the film on Blu-ray with new special features (along with most of the ones from the UK release) on October 23, 2018. This release is sourced from a brand new 4K scan of the original camera negative, despite the fact there was some criticism with the 5.1 audio track having been pitched too high and having sync issues (the included stereo track however has no issues).[18]
Second Sight acquired the license to release a new Blu-ray in the United Kingdom. It contains all of the special features included in the special two-disc edition which was released in 2007. It also contains a new audio commentary with Director of Photography Michael Gornick, Actor John Amplas, Property Master Bruce Alan Green and make-up effects assistant Darryl Ferrucci.
Soundtrack[]
- Main article: Creepshow (soundtrack)
Legacy, Sequels, and Adaptations[]
The film was adapted into an actual comic book of the same name soon after the film's release. Bernie Wrightson, known for his work on Heavy Metal and Warren magazines, and fittingly influenced by the 1950s E.C. Comics, did the artwork and is also the uncredited writer of the comic.[19]
Tales from the Darkside was the television spin-off. Due to Warner Bros. holding certain rights including the name Creepshow, the title was changed.
A sequel, Creepshow 2, was released in 1987, and was once again based on Stephen King short stories, with a screenplay from Creepshow director George A. Romero. The film contained only three tales of horror (due to budget constraints) as opposed to the original's five stories.
Another sequel, Creepshow 3, featuring no involvement from Stephen King, George A. Romero, or anyone else involved in the production of the first two films, was released direct-to-video in 2007 (though it was finished in 2006) to mostly negative reviews. This film, in a fashion similar to the original Creepshow, features five short, darkly comedic horror stories.
Taurus Entertainment (rights holders of the original Creepshow) licensed the rights to Jace Hall, of HDFILMS, a Burbank, California company, to produce Creepshow: RAW, a web series based upon the original film. The pilot episode for Creepshow: RAW was wrapped on July 30, 2008. The pilot was directed by Wilmer Valderrama and features Michael Madsen. No other episodes have been produced.
Another Creepshow television series was announced in July 2018, which was produced by Greg Nicotero and streamed on Shudder.[20] Each episode of the series consisted of two stories. On January 16, 2019, it was announced that one of the segments of the pilot episode will be based on Stephen King's short story, "Survivor Type" from his 1985 collection, Skeleton Crew.[21] Adrienne Barbeau will return in a new role, and Tobin Bell will contribute a role.[22] On July 19, 2019, it was announced that the series will premiere on September 26, 2019.[23] The series spawned a tie-in novel from Scholastic Books entitled Creepshow: The Taker, featuring two novellas inspired from the show.[24] A follow-up novel is scheduled for release in April 2021, entitled Creepshow: The Cursed, also featuring two novellas inspired by the show.[25] On October 30, 2019, the series was renewed for a second season, which premiered on April 1, 2021. On February 18, 2021, the series was renewed for a third season.
On August 3, 2019, Universal Parks & Resorts announced that Creepshow would be coming to Halloween Horror Nights exclusively at its Universal Studios Hollywood theme park. The maze featured three segments from the 1982 movie as well as two others from the newly made web television version for Shudder.[26]
Transcript[]
Gallery[]
Notes[]
- The tagline for this film is "The most fun you'll ever have... being scared!"
- Opened the same day as Jack Sholder's Alone in the Dark.
Trivia[]
- The wooden crate from "The Crate" makes a cameo appearance in the basement of the Voorhees residence in the 1993 film Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.
- Billy has a Rodan action figure suspended from string on the ceiling of his bedroom. Rodan is a Japanese daikaiju and part of the Godzilla series of films. He had his own film in 1956. The toy was made by Mattel and released in the 1970s.
- The segment "Father's Day" is featured in the Femme Fatales episode "Family Business (Part 2)".
- The segment "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" is featured in the Femme Fatales episode "The Clinic".
- The segment "Something to Tide You Over" is featured in the Femme Fatales episode "Help Me, Rhonda".
- The segment "The Crate" is featured in the Femme Fatales episode "Libra (Part 2)".
- The segment "They're Creeping Up on You!" is featured in the Femme Fatales episode "Bad Medicine".
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Creepshow at the American Film Institute Catalog
- ↑ "Creepshow (1982)". The Numbers. Retrieved on April 27, 2016.
- ↑ "Creepshow (1982)". Box Office Mojo (December 28, 1982). Retrieved on January 22, 2016.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Tiech, John (2013). Pittsburgh Film History: On Set in the Steel City. The History Press, page 39–40. ISBN 978-1609497095.
- ↑ Harris, Will (December 7, 2015). "Ted Danson on Fargo, Damages, Cheers, and Leslie Nielsen's fart machine". The A.V. Club. Retrieved on January 7, 2016.
- ↑ Resh, Vincent (2009). Encyclopedia of Insects. Academic Press, page 674. ISBN 9780080920900.
- ↑ Savini, Tom (1989). Grande Illusions. Imagine Inc., page 127. ISBN 978-0911137002.
- ↑ "Weekend Box Office Results for November 12–14, 1982 - Box Office Mojo". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on August 9, 2010.
- ↑ "Creepshow". Box Office Moji. Retrieved on April 2, 2011.
- ↑ "1982 Domestic Grosses". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on April 2, 2011.
- ↑ "Creepshow (1982)". Retrieved on August 9, 2022.
- ↑ Ebert, Roger (January 1, 1982). Creepshow. Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on September 5, 2006. Retrieved on January 23, 2009.
- ↑ Ebert, Roger (January 1, 1982). "Creepshow". RogerEbert.com.
- ↑ Canby, Vincent (November 10, 1982). "Creepshow, in Five Parts". The New York Times. Retrieved on January 23, 2009.
- ↑ Arnold, Gary (November 12, 1982). "Oh, Horror! Oh, Yawn! Creepshow; Five Stale Vignettes Plus One Redeeming Monster". The Washington Post.
- ↑ Corliss, Richard (November 22, 1982). Jolly Contempt. Time. Archived from the original on October 15, 2010. Retrieved on January 23, 2009.
- ↑ The 100 Scariest Movie Moments. BravoTV.com. Archived from the original on October 30, 2007. Retrieved on July 18, 2012.
- ↑ "Creepshow Blu-ray (Collector's Edition)". Blu-Ray.com. Retrieved on October 30, 2021.
- ↑ "The Berni Wrightson Interview". TCJ.com (March 22, 2017).
- ↑ "Creepshow TV series stories confirmed". Den of Geek.
- ↑ "First 'Creepshow' Series Details Emerge About 'The Walking Dead' Director's Entry". ComicBook (January 16, 2019). Retrieved on March 12, 2019.
- ↑ "Giancarlo Esposito, Adrienne Barbeau booked for 'Creepshow' episode". UPI.
- ↑ "Video: Shudder Releases First "Creepshow" Trailer at San Diego Comic-Con, Announces September 26 Series Debut". The Futon Critic (July 19, 2019).
- ↑ "Creepshow: The Taker". Scholastic.com.
- ↑ "Creepshow: The Cursed". BarnesandNoble.com.
- ↑ Tuttle, Brittani (August 3, 2019). "'Creepshow' announced for Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood". Attractions Magazine.
External links[]
- Creepshow at AllMovie
- Creepshow at Box Office Mojo
- Creepshow at Rotten Tomatoes
- Creepshow at the TCM Movie Database
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