Inspired by horror comics and written by Stephen King, CREEPSHOW tells 5 stories of varying quality, mostly combining campy humor with horror. On one hand, the movie does a great job of framing things in a comic book style, using lots of inventive visuals to tell the story the same way a classic comic book would, changing the size of the frame to emphasize different shots, etc. On the other, I think a lot of the casual, sloppy, "kidding" attitude comes from the comic book angle, as well, which is disappointing, because you'd think a couple guys paying homage to something would be able to take it at least a little seriously.
You can see just how seriously Stephen King takes the material right there on the screen in the second story, THE LONESOME DEATH OF JORDY VERRILL in which King himself plays the title character, a hayseed who discovers a meteor that turns him into a human vegetable. King has all the subtlety of Jim Varney here. If I wasn't watching this to review it, I probably would have turned it off at this point.
I'm glad I didn't, because I think the third story was my favorite, SOMETHING TO TIDE YOU OVER in which jealous husband Leslie Nielsen captures the man (Ted Danson) who has stolen his wife and tortures him by burying him neck deep in sand and allowing the tide to drown him. This segment is played the straightest of all of the segments, which is ironic, considering you've got Nielsen and Danson as stars, as opposed to the likes of Ed Harris, Hal Holbrook and E.G. Marshall in some of the lighter segments.
The final 2 stories concern a college professor who discovers a beast in a crate and sets it loose on his wife and a neat freak whose impeccably clean apartment is overrun with vengeful cockroaches. The first story, which I skipped over, has an abusive father returning from the grave. There's also a framing segment in which a kid (King's son) gets revenge on his father for throwing out his Creepshow comics. Most of the stories contain numerous references to booze, with characters constantly carrying around bottles of hard-A, so we know where King's mind was at when he was scribbling this down.
I guess it sounds a little dumb for me to be complaining about how the filmmakers didn't take this material seriously. I mean, what do I expect, right? Still, even if they approach it as a farce with a wink and a nod, they should do THAT as seriously as possible. It's the only way for it to work. Nothing is worse for comedy than when people act like they're being funny (hear that, Stephen King?). Romero's own LIVING DEAD flicks have their funny moments, but they're nuanced and subtle, the stuff of satire. Not mugging and slapstick and wacky sound effects.
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