I have selflessly waded through some real crap in the last few weeks, searching through my massive stockpile of Steven King movies for those few gems that stand a cut above the rest. We all know that Carrie, The Shining and The Green Mile are legitimate, well-made pieces of cimema. I’m talking about sorting through the really, truly crappy stuff; trying to determine which of his bad movies are bad enough to be funny, which one’s don’t take themselves too seriously, which ones are scary not just for their content, but because they have a production quailty similar to that of the VHS in The Ring, and may actually be haunted.
Creepshow is one of these gems. Released the same year I was born, It has become a cult classic, so I am far from the first person to point out it’s brilliance, but I may well be the first person to point it out to the four people who read my blog. Creepshow is great because it hits all the highs and all the lows at once. It is hilarious, both intentionally and unintentionally. It has parts that try to be scary and fail, and parts that try to be scary and really succeed. It has laughably bad special effects and images that have haunted me for weeks. Best of all, it has great performances by unknown actors and atrocious performances by future stars.
Creepshow consists of five short stories woven together by a flimsy framework featuring Steven King’s own son (giving possibly the worst performance by a child actor in the history of film) as a boy who can’t get enough of his horror comic books. The first story is a classic zombie revenge fable featuring a young (but not that young) Ed Harris. The second is a short rip-off of The Blob featuring a one-man cast of Steven King himself. It’s interesting to note that while his son is a bad actor on the level of Ali Larter, King himself is pretty fun to watch. He’s the only one who seems to be consciously playing this comic book movie in a comic book style. In fact, King’s cameos in all his movies have a sort of winking awareness to them, unlike Stan Lee’s cameos in all the Marvel movies, in which he seems overly enthusiastic and occasionally disoriented.
The next short features my favorite star turns of all: Leslie Neilsen versus Ted Danson. The film catches both men at turning points in their careers; Nielsen has just done Airplane, but has yet to embrace his transformation from dramatic actor in campy films to campy actor in brilliant comedies. He plays it his deadpan best, but you can sense his sneaking suspicion that this film, and his entire career for that matter, might soon be enjoyed only ironically. Meanwhile, Danson has recently booked Cheers and quite visibly doesn’t give a fuck about this movie. He seems barely interested in his scenes (which feature his death, reanimation, and death again) and becomes the film’s second victim of “Larterism” (speaking English as if you’re reading it phonetically, with no knowledge of meaning or context).
The final short is another one-man nightmare featuring the scariest image I have seen in months, and I watch a horror movie almost every night. I can’t think of any clever way to allude to it, so I’ll just tell you: dude gets HIS WHOLE BODY FILLED WITH COCKROACHES. Now I will be the first to admit that cockroaches freak me out. A few crawling around my apartment, let alone my body, are enough to reduce me to the physical and mental state of an 11-year-old girl meeting the Jonas Brothers. For me, this short scene was one of my few tastes of genuine terror since I saw a live birth in 9th Grade Health.
Even if you’re not in it for the scares, or the gross effects, or the camp value, this movie is worth checking out for the IMDB credits. It’s a wonderful example of low budget horror movies as the great star-finders that they are. Doing a horror movie is one of the only ways that an unknown actor can get screen time, since horror movies are one of the few genres that don’t require stars to sell them; the scares themselves are the stars. Consequently you see more horror movies at the bottom of A-List resumes than soaps & commercials combined. So if that body filled with cockroaches turns you off, just think how that effect helped get this movie made, and how this movie and many like it launched the thriving careers of some of our most popular and respected stars.
Here are a few of my favorites, and the secret shames that gave them names:
Paul Rudd – Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers
Johnny Depp – A Nightmare on Elm Street
Jennifer Aniston – Leprechaun
Kevin Bacon – Friday the 13th
John Travolta – Carrie
Julianne Moore – Tales from the Darkside
Doug E. Doug – Dr. Giggles
Meryl Streep – Sophie’s Choice
Writer/Producer