Word: pulp
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They travel in gangs through the hills of the state of Madhya Pradesh, robbing wayfarers as did highwaymen of old. Villagers admire them, movies glorify their exploits. For eight centuries, India's dacoits (dakoo is the Hindi word for bandit) have been the buccaneering heroes of pulp-magazine adventures. But none is more compelling than the tale of Phoolan Devi, 27. Over the past four years she has become her country's most notorious dacoit. Once pursued by 2,000 police, she has been charged with 70 cases of banditry and is suspected of some 50 murders. Fanciful...
...past, Novelist Stephen King (Carrie, Cujo) and Director George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead) have scared people through the poetry of pulp-the primal or banal image that can raise millions of hackles. In Creepshow they have aimed lower, and hit the mark...
...shame that Creepshow fails so miserably, even as crude entertainment, because the initial premise is a good one. In the horror genre, King and Romero represent the opposite poles of safe commercialism and bizarre individuality, but here they both go back to their common root--the pulp comic book. The short vignette, already used to great effect in such classics as Tales from the Crypt and the marvelous Dead of Night, is the perfect medium to evoke the atmosphere of horror comics--those brief blurry flashes of primary-colored terror framed by win-great-prizes-selling-junk-door-to-door...
...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...
...minced a crafty pulp of this...