CREEPSHOW II
A film review by E. Stephen Mack
Copyright 1987 E. Stephen Mack
Even though... ...I was born in 1967, I am a big fan of EC Comics-style horror tales of the early 60's. CREEPSHOW and CREEPSHOW II [directed and screenplay by George Romero, based on stories by Stephen King] certainly pay homage to these comics, fondly perpetuating the style and its numerous conventions.
Even though... ...CREEPSHOW II boasts one of the premiere directors and producers of the modern horror movie, George Romero, the movie comes off with no tension, little shock value, and very little that is frightening or entertaining.
Even though... ...CREEPSHOW II has the most popular horror writer today to thank for its source material, the three Stephen King stories contained in CREEPSHOW II are too simple, too mundane and too uninteresting in this medium for the film to be a success.
Even though... ...CREEPSHOW II has high intentions of being as outrageous as its predecessor, it ends up an uninspired failure.
I enjoyed CREEPSHOW a good deal. It was a wild departure from the more mundane slasher film that was so popular at the time, with an animated framing sequence and a light-hearted macabre approach. And best of all, the five vignettes were graphic, tense, and above all, interesting. CREEPSHOW was an absorbing, engrossing package.
CREEPSHOW II retains the animation and light-hearted black humor, but it has neglected the most important part: the three vignettes are neither tense or intriguing.
The first vignette, "Old Chief Woodenhead" is the longest of the three (or maybe it just seems the longest), and also the worst. George Kennedy stars as an aging shopkeeper in a decaying Arizona desert town, entrusted with a great prize. The title character is a cigar-store Indian mounted outside George's hardware and grocery store.
From the opening moments of the story, you know the wooden Indian is going to come to life just as much as you knew Seth Brundle was going to turn into a human fly. This story is overly simple; it is merely a revenge fantasy. And most objectionable: when the revenge does come, it happens off-camera. This sort of restraint seems surprising, coming from two artists who seem to revel in vivid and graphic story-telling. But the biggest problem with this segment is the pacing: about 70% of the action is George Kennedy talking in a slow drawl. And it's drawn-out, too--stretched out to be about five times as long as it needs to be.
The second vignette is "The Raft," which I had already encountered in King's most recent short story collection, SKELETON CREW. The story involves four characters who are stranded in a lake on a raft, surrounded by a water-borne blob-like icky thing. There is some tension here, but unfortunately this segment is marred by two unfortunate (and very avoidable) errors. Firstly, the special effects for the blob-thing are poorly done: it looks like they just got a plastic tarp and pulled it around with some string. Secondly, they've given away the "surprise" ending in this movie's commercials! We were near the end of this story, and a certain scene from the commercial had yet to occur--which meant that everyone in the theatre who had seen the commercial knew what was going to happen next. This is an unforgivable sin; I hope the person who chose this particular scene to put in the commercial is relieved unceremoniously of all duties.
The third story, "The Hitchhiker," comes closest to succeeding. Here the graphic special effects are more unrestrained, but Romero spends too much camera time on the special effects, allowing us to see how plastic and mechanical they are. There is some tension here, but these moments are few and far between because it is too prolonged. If this segment had been five minutes shorter, instead of being drawn out into a series of dull driving scenes with whiney voiceovers, I would have liked it much more. As it is, the audience is quickly bored, and the ending becomes much more predictable simply because we are given so much time to think about it.
And finally, the animated framing sequence is supposed to be an amusing example of the type of retribution that was the staple of EC Comics. If the animation were more competent, or if the story was paced better, or even if the story wasn't so lame, the audience would have something to do other than shout out comments. As it is, the only interesting thing about the framing sequence is the blatant (and seemingly intentional) Freudian imagery.
So, the two big problems with CREEPSHOW II are that the stories are predictable and uninteresting. This is mainly because they are drawn out far longer than they should be; about half of the movie is extraneous and distracting footage--a void which should have been filled by a couple more stories, just like they did in CREEPSHOW I.
And why is King suddenly so formulaic? Here are the two formualae found in CREEPSHOW II:
FORMULA #1: 1. Meet sympathetic characters. 2. Sympathetic characters get screwed by unsympathetic villains. 3. Unsympathetic characters destroyed by supernatural agents.
FORMULA #2: 1. Meet sympathetic characters. 3. Sympathetic characters destroyed by supernatural agents for no real reason other than to show gory special effects.
If there's to be a CREEPSHOW III, I can only make one suggestion: Stephen, George, you guys have to get more original stories, and you can't pad out three 10-minute stories into 90 minutes. Get five or so stories, and make each one fast-paced. A horror movie should never be boring. (Unless you're being boring on purpose for some reason I can't fathom? Some social statement that I completely missed?)
Oh, I can't say CREEPSHOW II is all bad. True to form, most of the narrator's puns are terrible.
[e. stephen]
UUCP: {u-choose}!ucbvax!miro!stephen ARPA: stephen@miro.Berkeley.EDU
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