BEFORE: Sure, it's a no-brainer to follow up "Creepshow" with "Creepshow 2", but I still have to make sure that something in this film connects to the next horror film, which connects to the next one, and so on. It's also great that this franchise is about horror comics, and "Swamp Thing" was also based on a comic book, and yesterday I packed up 3 boxes for New York Comic Con (1 box books, 1 box DVDs, 1 box supplies) and the convention starts in just two days, I'm doing the load in TOMORROW because that's how I roll.
My boss doesn't QUITE understand how hard I work for this event. When I said we need to do the load-in on Wednesday, he said, "Why can't we do the load-in on Thursday?" Well, because we do it on Wednesday so we don't HAVE to do it on Thursday. "Yeah, but why can't we pick up the badges on Thursday?" Well, because on Thursday we want to already HAVE our badges so we can just walk right in and not have to stand in TWO lines, which would cut into our selling time on Thursday. "Yeah, but last year, I just walked right in on Thursday..." Yes, you were able to walk right in on Thursday because we picked up the badges on Wednesday, and also because I loaded all the merch and supplies in on Wednesday, too. That's how this works, I work hard on WEDNESDAY so you can just walk right in on THURSDAY. But if I don't work hard on Wednesday, well, you're bound to have a much tougher time on Thursday, So, please, just let me do what I do. He's become spoiled because I've spent years making things easier for him, to the point where he just thinks that things are naturally easy, but they're not. I work very hard to make them SEEM easy, at least from his perspective. A little more appreciation might be, well, appreciated.
Stephen King carries over from "Creepshow" and I'm going to try to keep up with my movies, even during the convention. Sure, maybe I could have lined things up a little better so that these comic-book movies would get reviewed DURING the NYCC, instead of a few days before, but I can only do what I can do, and what the linking dictates. The linking, she is a cruel mistress.
THE PLOT: Three macabre tales from the latest issue of a boy's favorite comic book, dealing with a vengeful wooden Native American, a monstrous blob in a lake and an undying hitchhiker.
AFTER: Well, there's really no better lesson about economics, particularly inflation in the 1980's. In 1982, paying for a movie ticket got you FIVE shorts (and a wrap-around) written by Stephen King presented in anthology form, and then just five years later, after movie ticket prices had gone up a little bit, that same ticket only got you THREE shorts (and a wrap-around) written by Stephen King in "Creepshow 2" and this time the wrap-around was in animated form, and it looks like it was done on the cheap to boot. Wow, what a gyp, but that's Reaganomics for you. They kept saying the good horror stories would "trickle down" to the working class, but horror fans, well, they're still waiting. Instead, they got "Creepshow 3". Nuff said.
And now I come to find out that the same production company that made the "Creepshow" movies also made the "Tales from the Dark Side" TV show, they just couldn't use the "Creepshow" title because of some copyright restriction or something. George Romero directed the "Creepshow" movies and then wanted to make a TV show, but Warner Bros. had some rights to the elements seen in the movies, so Romero just went ahead and made the TV show without that title and the framing elements, to compete with "Tales from the Crypt" on HBO, I thiink. But I feel like there's another economics lesson in there somewhere, about monopolizing the market or being your own competition, or something. I don't know, I never studied economics, just movies.
What's weird to me about "Creepshow 2" is that the stories ingtroduced via the comic book are told in live-action, and the framing story supposedly taking place in the "real" world, with the boy who reads the comic, is told in animation. That almost seems like it's completely backwards, in terms of presentation format. Just me? Billy is that small boy in a small town in Maine who rides his bike to the newsstand to get a copy of the latest issue of "Creepshow". Then in-between the stories we see him at the post office, picking up the Venus flytrap bulb that he ordered from the comic, and then in the next interlude, Billy gets ambushed by the town bulles, who crush his plant bulb - but Billy kicks the biggest bully in the groin and escapes. And in the last animated segment, the bullies chase Billy through an abandoned lot, but it's a place where Billy had already planted some Venus flytrap plants, and the giant plants devour the bullies. Hilarious, right? Ah, you can do just about anything with animation - so, umm, why did somebody choose THIS?
The first of the three main stories is "Old Chief Wood'nhead", in which an elderly couple runs the general store in a small town that's fallen on hard times. Ray and Martha have extended credit to many of the local Native Americans, who have chosen to allow them to hold on to their tribe's sacred treasures, turquoise jewelry, while they raise money to pay their bill at the store. OK, already I've got a NITPICK POINT, if the jewelry is valuable, then why not just sell it and pay for their groceries with good old cash? Whatever, but this country hasn't worked on the barter system in a few hundred years. This becomes a moot point, however, when the elder's nephew, Sam Whitemoon, robs the store, takes the jewelry, which he says is worth about ten grand, and then kills the grocery store owners for good measure.
So, it's up to the grocery store's decorative Indian statue to come to life and track down Sam and his two delinquent cohorts, killing them with arrows and a tomahawk. (Umm, wait, Happy Indigenous People's Day?). The statue, aka Old Chief Wood'nhead, also returns the jewelry to the tribe, but unfortunately it's too late for the store owners - but I guess the good news is that since they're dead, the tribe doesn't have to pay their grocery bill!
The villain, Sam Whitemoon, was played by an actor who looked a lot like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, only it just couldn't have been him, this was back in 1987, when he would have been only 15 years old! It turned out to be Holt McCallany, who I've seen in a bunch of films like "Run All Night", "Three Kings", "Gangster Squad" and "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back", but man, back in the 1980's he was RIPPED! Not as chiseled as The Rock, but then again, who is?
The second story is "The Raft", about four college students (two couples) who drive out to a desolate lake to swim and smoke weed and have some fun - there's a platform floating out on the lake that the locals keep in place almost until wintertime. There's also a mysterious oil slick on the lake though, and it's more like a blob that moves with purpose and oh, yeah, it's hungry. Well, I guess they missed the sign that says "Swim at your own risk" and so it's another ironic ending for the people who are just out to have a good time. Well, blobs gotta eat, too, you know, as do all of God's creatures. Circle of life, top of the food chain, the beauty of nature, whatever helps you reconcile this - also who's going to miss a couple students from "Horlicks University", which is the same institute of higher learning seen in "The Crate" in the first film. Oh, yeah, I noticed.
And the final story is "The Hitch-hiker", in which a woman has an affair (sinner!) and is driving back home to try and get there before her husband (adulterer! liar!) when she loses control because of ashes from her cigarette (and she's a smoker! She deserves to DIE!) and she accidentally hits a hitch-hiker with her car. Since nobody else saw the incident, she drives off before anyone else arrives on the scene - but she's plagued with guilt and then either haunted by the reality of what she's done, or possibly haunted by the ghost of the hitch-hiker, who keeps clinging to her car and ironically screaming, "Thanks for the ride, lady!" She drives erratically through the woods, trying to shake the hitchhiker off of her car, but he's very persistent. Finally he falls off and lands by a tree and she's forced to repeatedly drive her car into the tree to crush him - but was he ever really THERE? Believing the whole thing to be some kind of horrible nightmare, she drives home - only to have the hitchhiker crawl out from under her car in her garage and attack her. Later her husband finds her in the garage, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning - or WAS IT? And it's for sure not based on Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" in the same way that "Jeepers Creepers 2" had nothing to do with "Moby Dick".
I don't know, just because the stories here were longer, that doesn't really mean they were BETTER. Certainly the ones in the first film were more clever, so I suspect this illustrates the other economics law of diminishing returns - I feel much less need to watch "Creepshow 3" now, but since there's no actor connection, that doesn't even matter. These stories just feel kind of half-written, like they could have all been developed better or needed some input from a focus group or something.
NITPICK POINT #2 - how did Deke get his joints out to the raft? Did he have them in his swimsuit or something? Also, this movie had simply the fakest swimming scenes I've ever seen. The actors were clearly bending over in shallow water and just pretending to swim. Lame.
Also starring George Kennedy (last seen in "The Gambler"), Domenick John, Tom Savini (also carrying over from "Creepshow"), Philip Dore, Dorothy Lamour, Frank Salsedo (last seen in "Almost Heroes"), Holt McCallany (last seen in "Nightmare Alley"), David Holbrook, Don Harvey (last heard in "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker"), Dan Kamin, Dean Smith (last seen in "The Sugarland Express"), Shirley Sonderegger, Paul Satterfield, Jeremy Green, Daniel Beer (last seen in "Point Break"), Page Hannah, Lois Chiles (last seen in "Sweet Liberty"), David Beecroft (last seen in "The Border"), Tom Wright (last seen in "Message from the King"), Richard Parks, Chere Rae Bryson (last seen in "The Legend of the Lone Ranger") and the voice of Joe Silver (last seen in "Deathtrap").
RATING: 3 out of 10 Stephen King novels seen on a shelf in the background (blatant cross-promotion!)
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