Well, that was a let-down.

More below the cut.

I’m a huge fan of Creepshow. I made that fairly clear in the Sundays with Stephen on the movie. It scared the pants off me as a kid, it’s even better as an adult, and it even holds up well upon repeat viewings. Creepshow matches the style and morbid humor of the EC comics it tries so hard to emulate very well, mixing gallows humor and supernatural comeuppance with a variety of short but ghastly stories replete with bizarre angles and garish colors. It feels like a vintage EC horror comic come to life.

Creepshow 2… doesn’t. Which was a big disappointment for me, personally.

It’s easiest to explain why by comparing the two films. They’re about the same length, but Creepshow has 5 segments plus a framing device, whereas Creepshow 2 has only 3 stories. Both movies share a framing device involving a comic-loving child named Billy, and use short animated segments; however, there is a lot more of this animation, of a lot lower quality, in Creepshow 2.

(Pointlessly petty aside: The kid in the framing segment is supposed to be the same Billy, but he doesn’t look anything like King the Younger from the first Creepshow. I know it’s been five years between the movies, but would it have killed them to cast a child actor who at least vaguely resembles the first Billy, for continuity purposes?)

The animation is a good example of where Creepshow 2 goes wrong. In the first film, the animated segments are used to guide us into and out of the fictional world contained within the Creepshow comic book, as brought to life by a young abused child’s imagination. They’re not a substitute for reality, but a way to ease the audience into the slightly off-kilter world you’d find in an old Vault of Horror or Tales from the Crypt style universe.

In Creepshow 2, animation, and as I mentioned earlier, lower quality, less distinctive animation at that, is a *substitute* for reality. It’s not a framing device so much as it is filler between segments, and it no longer represents the imagination of a child, it represents his real life. This means that we as an audience lose a vital connection we had with the movie. In Creepshow, you’re tagging along for the ride of Billy’s imagination, his dreams and fantasies and nightmares on a dark and stormy night. In Creepshow 2.. I’m not sure. The events in the comic are happening somewhere? Billy reads it off-screen, or in-between segments of his little animated adventure?

Speaking of those segments, as they’re the meat of this anthology picture, let’s get to them. As mentioned above, there are three instead of five this time around, and they’re considerably longer as well. Unfortunately, this gives them room to drag. Each story feels too long, and none of them avail themselves of the tricks of the comic trade that Creepshow used to move the story along when it needed to save time. (For example, in the ‘Lonesone Death of Jody Verill’, I recall a scene transition done with a comic editorial box and soemthing to the effect of ‘Hours Later…’). They also lack the creative camera work and comic art around the edges of the frame that was so prevalent in the first movie. No colorful gutters or panel borders, no Dutch Angles to harken back to an era before they were cliche. Only a dribble here and there of the tasty sequential art frosting that was slathered all over Creepshow.

The movie itself opens with a bit of live action, as Billy waits for the delivery of his favorite comic. Which has its own truck and dedicated delivery service (take that, Diamond). The truck in question opens up to reveal… The Creep? Creepshow has a mascot now. Ok. Billy seems to take this in stride. I guess it’s not unusual for heavily costumed freaks to deliver periodicals in his world. Then the animation takes over and the opening credits roll over a series of pages that outline most of what will happen in the film you’re about to see. The first movie hinted at the stories to come, this one gives you an illustrated guide. It comes off as less gutsy than spoilery.

The first segment is a very predictable revenge tale called ‘Ol’ Chief Wooden Head’ that at least fits the theme (let’s face it, a lot of horror comic stories are just vehicles to show some asshole getting what’s coming to him). An old couple runs a General Store (yes, really) somewhere in the Southwest, and their store is all that’s keeping the local Native American population and the dying town going, though this charity eats into said old couple’s finances. The wife is very unhappy about this state of affairs, and she and her husband talk about the fortunes of this little town and their store and blah blah blah, you get the idea, Hallmark Movie stuff.

The store has as a mascot a very detailed and oversized dimestore Indian named.. Ol Chief Wooden Head.

Next, the flesh and blood local.. leader/Chief/tribal elder comes to the old family and proves the Stereotypical Nagging Wife wrong about the tribe taking advantage of her husband by handing over a bag of precious family heirloom jewelry as collateral until they can repay their debts.

In case you didn’t get that this proves her wrong, she has an Impassioned Speech to let you know.

For the record though, it’s not at all clear that this exchange changes anything. If their debts were worth less than this jewelry, why not sell it and pay cash for your groceries? The truth is, this collateral is intended to secure an interest free loan from an old retiree using emotional blackmail. The Chief admits as much, stating that he doesn’t foresee the tribe getting the money to ever pay his old mark back.

Of course once the old man utters the fateful words ‘I’ll guard it with my life’, you know what’s going to happen. *gag*

I’ll spare you the messy details of their drawn out robbery and demise, but once it happens, the titular character comes to splintery life and hunts down the three robbers in confusing and nonsensical fashion. He kills the first guy by shooting him with arrows from within his own tiny trailer; I don’t know about you but if an 8 foot tall wooden dimestore Indian came walking into my 200 square foot living/dining room/breakfast nook I think I’d notice. He gets another guy in a garage (Wooden Head makes Solid Snake look like a chump) and then gets the last guy in a predictable bit of dramatic irony (here’s a hint: Wooden Head is a giant Indian sculpture with a hatchet and his victim is obsessed with his luscious head of hair.)

Next up we see a bit more of Billy’s day-to-day life as he goes to the post office and retrieves a mail order set of Venus Fly Trap bulbs he got from the Creepshow mag’s classified section at the back. You know, where they sell X-Ray specs and voodoo dolls (hint hint, first movie).

The second segment is based on one of my favorite King short stories, The Raft. I regret that this review will have to be a bit spoilery itself to get into why the movie version sucks so hard.

The original story is a wonderful little bit of what makes King fiction great, where he brings the horrifying and the mundane together in that seamless and unnerving fashion that gets you to wondering about the shadows in your own closet or what your neighbors are really like behind closed doors. It concerns a group of four teens who go out for a late season swim to a now-closed for autumn area lake. They intend, in particular, to hang out on a raft that the owners of the lake keep tethered up for use during warmer parts of the year.

It’s a goofy outing with two couples who are probably mostly interested in beer and sex. Such things happen all the time.

Unfortunately, and inexplicably, once they arrive at their destination and get to the raft they find they can’t make it back to shore, because they’re being stalked by, well, a monster. Specifically, something that looks like an oil slick and functions like an amoeba, and eats anything near the surface of the water, which seems to be its home.

The greatness of The Raft on the page comes not from this setup but from the very matter of fact way it’s dealt with. A giant monster is stalking and gruesomely devouring a group of very tired people slowly dying of exposure in the middle of nowhere. It’s not important where this thing came from, or how it survives in the macro scale world. It *does*, in defiance of common experience and reason, and it’s here to kill you, and all that keeps it from doing so is a few inches of apparently inedible wood and the aching muscles in your legs, the drooping lids on your eyes…

The movie gets the basic events right, but fumbles the execution completely. The tone is all wrong, it never adequately establishes the cold or the misery or the pain these people go through, the characters are so douchy you don’t much care if they bite it, and to top everything off there’s an EXTREMELY FUCKING CREEPY date rape scene on the Raft that was absolutely NOT in the original, thanks much.

Seriously, that squicked myself and my roommate out. So much, in fact, that we were barely bothered by the lame gotcha ending that was also tacked on in place of the grim and beautiful original.

We go from this EXTREMELY FUCKING CREEPY segment to another piece of Billy’s Big Adventure, as he goes home with his venus fly trap bulbs (apparently they do in fact grow from bulbs, though I’ve only ever seen them sold in terrariums).

Unfortunately a group of fifties youth gangsters, led by Meatloaf’s biggest fan (or a young Rocky Horror cosplayer), decide to rob him of his package. This leads Billy to flee his pursuers while The Creep watches with amusement.

That’s also disturbing, really. He was at the Post Office too. This guy doesn’t just deliver Billy’s mags, he watches everything he does. One wonders if he has cameras in Billy’s shower. Uggh. I just squicked MYSELF out.

Ok, where was I? Ah yes. After Billy flees Meatloaf Jr. you go on to the third segment.

You know the saying Brevity is Wit? It’s kind of a double-edged sword. Keeping things short while maintaining quality is an art, but even if your work is bad, if it’s brief at least the pain is short-lived.

(Yes I know, I’m a hypocrite, look how long this SwS has gotten)

This last segment just drags and drags and drags. It only lasts about 20 minutes but it feels like an eternity. The story concerns one of those car-centric horror tales, which teaches you not to run people down and flee the scene of the crime, blah blah. Stephen King has a cameo here as a trucker. The whole thing is fucking stupid. The setup is stupid. the female lead character is a selfish moron who doesn’t understand that the consequences of fleeing the scene are a hundred times worse than those of hitting a hitchhiker by the side of the road on a dark rainy night. She wasn’t even drinking so she could blow a perfect blood alcohol reading. We’re talking probation. But noooooo, she has to flee the splattery scene, her car now a CSI wet dream, while working herself up into a hysterical frenzy, until the Ghost of the Hitchhiker teaches her a lesson.

Spare me. Seriously. The guy could at least have a hook for a handy or something. We all know where this is going and it gets there all right, but with glacier-speed. I seriously couldn’t keep my eyes on the screen. It was an effort not to fall asleep or daydream.

The last segment has Billy getting his mind-bogglingly stupid revenge on the kids who killed his venus fly trap bulbs. Spoiler: he has a virtual army of giant Venus Fly Traps to sic on his aggressors.

Err, what? If he had a huge crop of man eating fly traps, why did he send off for more bulbs? Why don’t they eat him? Was this whole thing premeditated murder? I’m confused. Confused and bored.

Then we’re back to a live-action Creep littering the Maine highway. Roll credits. Roll eyes.

What a let-down.

Update: Corrected my mistake regarding Hal Holbrook being in this movie. He’s not. Oopsie.

Next Week: The Running Man. Wait, who’s this Richard Bachman fellow?
Last Week: Stand By Me. Fifties music, 80s actors, still watchable today.