Why watch one quality film when you could watch several mediocre short films tenuously linked together? The anthology film turns this beautiful fantasy I've just described into a glorious reality, and from now until Halloween (i.e. "The Devil's Bar Mitzvah"), GEP will be taking a gander at a few of the scarier horror anthologies out there (i.e. whatever was available for instant viewing at Netflix). We'll examine these anthology films story by story to determine whether or not the whole is better than the sum of its parts, though I'm pretty sure we all know that the answer is no. No, anthology movies, I'm afraid, are simply terrible. So, let's have fun tearing them apart, shall we?
Our first film comes from the supergroup team-up of zombie-aficionado, George A. Romero, and popular fictionist, Stephen King, and was inspired by the horror comics of yore (Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, Tales to Scare Your Balls Off). The film is Creepshow. The results are, well, kinda meh.
Prologue
The film opens with a young boy being lambasted by his stern father (a tragically un-mustachioed Tom Atkins) for filling his impressionable young mind with gory horror comic dreck. The young man responds in the most rational way possible: he invites his father to burn in Hell. Kids really do say the darndest things, don't they?
Father's Day
King's first tale of the macabre introduces a concept that, I must admit, is quite foreign to me and, as a result, I was completely taken out of the movie, and that is the idea of a Father's Day cake. Perhaps this doesn't bother you, but I couldn't (and can't) get over it. Cakes are associated with birthdays, anniversaries, and retirement parties. We never baked our mom a special Mother's Day cake, we made her blueberry muffins and served them to her in bed like any other red-blooded American. Do you bring cakes to a funeral? Maybe you should, I mean, it might be appreciated, but you don't. Christmas cakes, Halloween cakes, Thanksgiving cakes, Easter cakes: these cakes don't exist! But, OK, so the father in "Father's Day" likes cake on Father's Day. Fine. Unfortunately, the aforementioned father in this particular story is long dead, murdered by his long-suffering daughter, denied cake for all eternity.
Anyway, as you've probably guessed already (Or maybe you haven't. Now that I think about it, how would anyone every guess what happens in this ridiculous story.), the allure of cake is too much to keep Pappy in the grave, so he pulls himself out of his grave, kills the remaining members of his extended family, and turns one of their heads into a Father's Day cake. Oh, yeah, the rotting zombie guy PUTS CANDLES ON HIS CAKE! Ugh...
Grade: D
The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill
There is nothing even remotely charming about Story #2. It is ugly, joyless, depressing, and pointless. Stephen King himself plays a slack-jawed yokel who discovers a meteor full of goop in his front yard. As the night progresses, green space mold begins to sprout all over Jordy's body, eventually leading him to cram the business end of a shot gun down his throat and pull the trigger, ending his poor, lonely existence for our enjoyment, I guess? Thumbs down, Stephen.
Grade: F
Something to Tide You Over
Filmlet #3 is a bit of an improvement, but only because the psycho killer of the piece is portrayed by none other than Mr. Leslie Nielsen. When Nielsen discovers that his lady is rocking the sheets with Ted Danson, he buries the lovers neck deep in sand along his private beach, the idea being that when the tide comes in, the lovers will drown. It's a fiendish plot worthy of the most classic of classic horror comics. Unfortunately, there is a second act in which, well, remember "Father's Day?" Not the holiday, but the first story? Yeah, pretty much the same thing happens again, this time without cake. Waterlogged zombie versions of Danson and his chippy break into Nielsen's palatial estate and drag him to the beach for a little revenge.
Grade: C+
The Crate
By this point in the film, I wish I could tell you things get better, but they don't, not yet. "The Crate" is more ho-hum mediocrity. A janitor finds a mysterious crate under some stairs in the basement of a university's science building. The custodial engineer and the head of some department or other lug the wooden box into one of the classrooms and crack it open to find a slobbering, knife-fanged beastie with an insatiable blood lust inside. The janitor is promptly eviscerated and the professor runs to friend's house, losing his mind somewhere along the way.
The friend is our "hero," Henry, an unassuming college professor with an obnoxious harpy for a wife. After listening to his friend's rambling story, Henry decides that a man-eating monster-in-a-box is the perfect solution to his Annoying Wife Problem. So, Henry heads over to campus, cleans up all the janitor blood, finds the crate back under the stairs (?), and makes up a story to get his wife to meet him in the basement. She shows up, he shoves her under the stairs, and the creature eats her. That's it. That's literally the whole thing. Oh, brudder.
Grade: C
They're Creeping Up on You
My favorite tale, ironically, is filled to the brim with thousands of somethings I hate almost more than anything that has ever been or ever will be: cockroaches. I can't stand 'em, dudes. Sorry to any of my readers who are big cockroach fans, but I can't stomach them. Maybe that's why I found "They're Creeping Up on You" to be the scariest story in the bunch, though, let's be honest, that's not a very impressive feat considering what's come before.
Upson Pratt lives in a futuristic penthouse apartment. Everything is painted white, everything is spotlessly clean. In fact, Pratt is obsessed with cleanliness, and when a single cockroach pokes it's ugly, demonic head into Pratt's sterile little world, the old man pretty much loses his mind. But one cockroach is not enough, oh no. Romero invites thousands of roaches to the party. The grand finale of this story is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach.
Like the rest of its Creepshow brethren, "They're Creeping Up on You" is mostly pointless, but the six-legged co-stars make it a cringe-worthy delight to watch.
Grade: B+
Epilogue
In the Epilogue, the little snot-nosed jerk from Prologue tortures a voodoo doll resembling his father, totally ruining Tom Atkins's breakfast. Sheesh! What a brat!
