Creepshow (1982)

Creepshow is a 1982 horror anthology film directed by George A. Romero and written by Stephen King. The film's ensemble cast included Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Fritz Weaver, Leslie Nielsen, and E.G. Marshall.

The film has one official sequel, one unofficial sequel, and an official TV series reboot. A previous web series was canceled.

An anthology which tells five terrifying tales based on the E.C. horror comic books of the 1950s.

Introduction
A young boy named Billy gets yelled at and slapped by his father, Stan, for reading a horror comic titled Creepshow instead of doing his chores. His father tosses the comic in the garbage to teach Billy a lesson, but not before threatening to spank him should Billy ever get caught reading Creepshow comic books again. Stan also refers it as "such horror crap". Later after he tosses the comic book away, Stan reminds his wife that he had to be hard on Billy because he can't believe all the "crap" that's in the book. He closes out the discussion with the reason why God made fathers: to protect their ways of life and their children. As Billy sits upstairs hating his father, he hears a sound at the window, which turns out to be a ghostly apparition, beckoning him to come closer.

Father's Day

 * (First story, written by King expressly for the film)

Third Sunday of June, seven years ago, an elderly despicable patriarch named Nathan Grantham was killed on Father's Day when his daughter Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors) bashed him in the head with a marble ashtray as he screamed for his cake. Third Sunday of June, seven years later, his ungrateful, money grubbing relatives get together for their annual dinner on Father's Day. Nathan Grantham comes back as a zombie-like creature to get the cake he never got, and kills off his relatives one by one.

The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill

 * (Second story, originally titled "Weeds", adapted from a previously published short story written by King)

A dimwitted backwoods hillbilly farmer named Jordy Verrill thinks a newly discovered meteorite will provide enough money from the local college to pay off his $200 bank loan. Instead, he finds himself being overcome by a rapidly spreading plant-like organism that comes off the meteorite. Stephen King himself plays the doomed protagonist in this darkly humorous story.

Something to Tide You Over

 * (Third story, written by King expressly for the film)

Richard Vickers, a coldblooded, wealthy husband, stages a terrible fate for his unfaithful wife, Becky (Gaylen Ross) and her lover, Harry Wentworth (Ted Danson) by burying them up to their necks on the beach, below the high tide line. They drown, but the tide somehow revives them as waterlogged zombies intent on getting revenge of their own.

The Crate

 * (Fourth story, adapted from a previously published short story)

A mysterious, extremely lethal creature is unwittingly released from its crate in this suspenseful and gory monster story. Hal Holbrook stars as pacifistic college professor Henry Northrup, who sees the creature as a way to rid himself of his drunk, emotionally abusive wife, Wilma. (The monster in the crate was nicknamed "Fluffy" by the film's director, George A. Romero.)

They're Creeping Up On You!

 * (Fifth and final story, written by King expressly for the film)

Upson Pratt is a cruel, ruthless businessman whose Mysophobia has him living in a hermetically sealed apartment, but finds himself helpless when Mr. White, his put-upon employee, allows his apartment to be overrun by endless hordes of cockroaches.

Ending
The following morning, two garbage collectors (one played by special effects makeup artist Tom Savini) find the Creepshow comic in the trash. They look at the ads in the book for X-ray specs, a Charles Atlas bodybuilding course, and a voodoo doll, whose coupon is missing. Inside the house, Billy's angry father complains of neck pain, which escalates to deadly levels as we see Billy jabbing the voodoo doll over and over, causing his hated father to suffer great pain.

Prologue and Epilogue

 * 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

Father's Day

 * 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 Undead Nathan
 * Nann Mogg as Mrs. Danvers

The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill

 * Stephen King as Jordy Verrill
 * Bingo O'Malley as Jordy's father
 * John Colicos (uncredited) as Doctor

Something to Tide You Over

 * Leslie Nielsen as Richard Vickers
 * Gaylen Ross as Becky Vickers
 * Ted Danson as Harry Wentworth

The Crate

 * 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
 * Cletus Anderson as Host
 * Katie Karlovitz as Maid
 * Charles Van Eman as Bartender
 * David Garrison (uncredited) as College Party Host
 * Daryl Ferrucci (uncredited) as Fluffy

They're Creeping Up On You!

 * E.G. Marshall as Upson Pratt
 * David Early as White
 * Ann Muffly (uncredited) as Voice of Lenora Castonmeyer
 * Mark Tierno as Voice of Carl Reynolds

Notes & Trivia

 * 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.
 * 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 "Father's Day" segment is featured in the Femme Fatales episode "Family Business, Part 2".
 * The "Something to Tide You Over" segment is featured in the Femme Fatales episode "Help Me, Rhonda".
 * The "They're Creeping Up on You!" segment is featured in the Femme Fatales episode "Bad Medicine".

Box office
Creepshow was given a wide release by Warner Bros. on November 12, 1982. It started strongly with an $8 million box-office gross for its first five days. In its opening weekend, Creepshow grossed $5,870,889, ranking #1 in the box office, capsizing First Blood from the top spot. In total it grossed $21,028,755 domestically, making it the highest grossing horror film for the Warner Bros. studio that year.

Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 73% approval rating based on 37 reviews; the average rating is 6.4/10. 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." 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". 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". 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". 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 10-year-old with a stop watch. Only the story in which Evil Plutocrat E.G. Marshall is eaten alive by cockroaches mixes giggles and grue in the right measure". The film has become a cult horror classic. Bravo awarded it the 99th spot on their "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments", mostly for the scene with the cockroaches bursting out on Upson Pratt's body.

Home media
The film was first released in 1983 on VHS and CED Videodisc.

A 2-disc Special Edition DVD of Creepshow was released 22 October 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. Owner of Red Shirt Pictures, Michael Felsher is responsible for the special edition, the documentary and audio commentary in particular.

In the United States Warner Bros. sticks to a one-disc set with only the film's trailer. No other special features have ever been released with the Region 1 version. The Region 1 DVD was a 2-sided disc. One side was the 1:85 transfer (widescreen) version of the film, and the other side was the full screen version.

On September 8, 2009, the film was released on Blu-ray. Again the only special feature is the film's trailer.

Second Sight acquired the license to release a new Blu-ray in the U.K., It contains all of the special features included from the special 2 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 Ferruci. To be released October 28.