Word: creepshow
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...with a burst of dialogue breaking the stolid silence of some suburban Elm St. "I told you not to read this crap! Where did you get this shit?" an irate dad yells at his son cowering among toy monsters in the bedroom. The father snatches the latest issue of "Creepshow" from the boy's hands. The camera then focuses on the comic book as it lies in the front lawn garbage can, letting the wind-ruffled pages tell each story by segueing from animated stills to live film and back again. Other devices borrowed from comics are the occasional intrusion...
...when the film presents the five vignettes that Creepshow falls completely flat. The first story, "Father's Day," is a forced version of the skeleton-in-the-old-eccentric-family's-closet theme, replete with the obligatory sinister spinster aunt and a stroll through the family crypt. "Jordy" is yet another variation on the man-eating plant routine, something that's never seemed to work well even in better horror films. "Tide," a rather innocuous revenge fantasy, doesn't even belong among this assortment, and "Crate" is a heavy handed attempt at horror comedy, something else that's never seemed...
...also completely manufactured. A decent horror movie or comic has to believe in the silly premise it is executing; it has to set up it's own peculiar sequence of cause and effect, even with the most rudimentary means ("So professor, tell us about this ancient curse, etc., etc.,") Creepshow doesn't even bother to do this...
...subject like "Create" emerges as a limp, indecisive parody. Only "Creeping Upon You" contains a truly visceral moment of horror among all this tame nonsense, and even that has more to do with the by that time welcome presence of 40,000 live cockroaches than any storytelling skill. Creepshow is disappointingly bland, commercial, and far removed from its pulp roots...
Aside from the fact of their collaboration, Creepshow represents another first for both Romero and King. This is Romero's first film released by a major studio, and the constraints of commercial moviemaking seem to have dulled his atmospheric B movie sensibility. And it's the first time King has ever directly written a screenplay; up to now, his books have always been adapted by others, sometimes quite successfully, as in the case of Carrie. Perhaps if both men each return to their previous status they will once again be at the vanguard of horror entertainment, but here they have...