In 1982, horror author Stephen King teamed up with zombiemeister George Romero and special effects wizard Tom Savini to make Creepshow, a horror anthology film with an all-star cast (including Leslie Nielsen, Ed Harris, Ted Danson, Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Adrienne Barbeau's cleavage, and Stephen King himself) which tells five stories:
Father's Day: Bedelia Grantham's domineering father Nathan had her boyfriend killed. That Father's Day, she proceeded to bash Dad's head in with an ashtray as he yammered loudly for his cake. But you can't keep a hungry man down. Nathan wants his cake, and a little thing like dying isn't going to keep him from getting it.
The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill: Backwoods hick Jordy Verrill (King) thinks his financial woes are solved when a meteor crashes into his front yard, and he intends to sell it to a local college professor. But Jordy's hopes for both fortune and survival are dashed when the meteor turns out to contain a parasitic alien plant. Partially inspired by HP Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space.
Something to Tide You Over: Control freak Richard Vickers (Nielsen), upon learning that his wife, Becky, is sleeping around with well-to-do beach bum Harry Wentworth (Danson), enacts a sadistic revenge upon them: by burying them in the sand below the high tide line at his stretch of private beach. Richard is certain they'll be gone once they drown. Unfortunately, he never saw Father's Day. Otherwise he'd know that death isn't always the end.
The Crate: An old crate is found underneath the stairs at a prestigious university. Upon being opened by Professor Dexter Stanley and janitor Mike Latimer, it turns out to contain an ancient and ferocious beast. After the thing kills and eats Mike and a grad student, Dexter goes to his colleague Henry Northrup (Holbrook) for help. Henry is married to a cruel shrew of a woman named Wilma (Barbeau and her cleavage), and a flesh-eating monster is a tempting alternative to divorce.
They're Creeping Up on You!: Upson Pratt, a loathsome, racist, eccentric, germophobic billionaire, hates pretty much everybody. He treats his hard-working employees like dirt while he rules his multinational business empire from a sterile, germ-proof apartment. After driving a business rival to suicide, Pratt finds out the hard way that sometimes, if grieving widows wish hard enough, they can make lots of killer roaches invade his domicile.
A less well-received (but still mostly good) sequel, Creepshow 2, which was followed by the unofficial and nowhere near as popular Creepshow 3.
Beach Bury: Done to both Harry and Becky by Richard with the intent of letting the tide drown them both. Richard gets the same treatment by the story's end.
Big Eater: Staying locked up in a crate for so long must have played hell on the Eldritch Horror's appetite, because he tucks away two full-grown men and still has enough room to fit Henry's wife for dessert.
Chekhov's Gun: During one of the quick framing sequences that shows additional pages in the comic, there's a brief shot of a mail-in ad for a voodoo doll with that order cut out, but it's quickly passed by as the film moves on to the next segment. This comes into play at the very end when it's revealed that Billy already sent away for it, and uses it to kill his father in revenge for throwing the comic out at the beginning of the film.
Cultural Stereotypes: Hick Jordy is totally incompetent and all of the rich folks (particularly Upson Pratt) are total dicks.
Death by Racism: It isn't really what kills Pratt, but his racist comments to his apartment's ironically-named superintendent, Mr. White, don't endear him to us any.
I CAN HOLD MY BREATH! I CAN HOLD MY BREATH A LOOOONG TIME!
Disproportionate Retribution: How does Richard deal with the news that his wife was cheating on him? He buries her and her lover neck-deep in sand and leaves them to slowly drown when the tide comes in, giving them both a monitor so they can watch one another die.
Even considering the fact that EC Comics morality has a much lower threshold for bloody revenge, it's still hard to see what Hank Blaine did to deserve his death.
Or Jordy Verrill, for that matter.
Well, that's another common theme of EC Comics stories: bad things can happen to undeserving people simply by their being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Wilma: Same old Henry; afraid of your own shadow! You know what, Henry, you’re a regular barnyard exhibit. Sheep’s eyes, chicken guts, piggy friends……, and shit for brains! No good at departmental politics, no good at makin’ money, no good at makin’ an impression on anybody,….and no good at all in BED! When was the last time ya got it up, Henry? Huh? When was the last time you were a man in our bed? Now get outta my way, Henry, or I swear to God you’ll be wearin’ your balls for earrings!
"Just tell it to call you Billie!"
"Please, God, let my luck be in! Just this once. Please, God, just this-"
Freeze Frame Bonus: Oh so much. It's fun to pause the video to read the letters page or some of The Creep's Deadpan Snarking. For example, at the end of The Crate, in the final comic book frame, the Creep snarks, "Oh, Henry. You didn't think you could drown your fears that easily?"
Nathan definitely. Normally, death would definitely be a be-all-to-end-all karmic ending to a guy likehim. But because this is a horror film with supernatural elements, not so in his case.
Killer Eldritch Monkey: The thing in the crate looks like a Lovecraftian baboon. In King's original short story, it was more like a badger or wolverine, as befits its icy origins.
Mood Whiplash: The film swings from horror to comedy and back in an eyeblink.
Pet the Dog: When Henry lures Billie back to the lab with a lie about Dex getting into trouble with some girl, she seems genuinely concerned that Dex might have beaten his non-existent lover.
Plant Person: With a very sad demise, indeed. Although it's not much of a spoiler, because you did read the title of the second story, right?
The two zombies in Something To Tide You Over seem to be made of seaweed, even bleeding greenish-black blood.
Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Subverted, somewhat. Nathan Grantham doesn't so much come back from the dead to get revenge as he does to just get his darn cake. We say "somewhat" because he settles for Aunt Sylvia's head.
Rule of Scary: It is never given a good explanation of how the zombies of stories 1 and 3 are re-animated, or how the crate monster was able to survive for many years without needing food, or the cockroach invasion against Pratt. They just happen because they have to. And let's not even talk about zombie Nathan's Psychic Powers...
Hank lays underneath the tombstone for almost a full minute before Zombie!Nathan gets around to squishing his head with it, far too long to just chalk up to being paralyzed with fear. Guess snobs don't have the "fight or flight" reflex.
Younger Than They Look: Charlie Gereson was apparently set to win the Nobel Prize before he reached 20, despite looking as though he passed that age milestone about 18 years prior.
You're Insane!: Harry to Richard. Then Harry realizes he is.
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