CREEPSHOW 2
****
Directed by Michael Gornick.
Starring George Kennedy, Lois Chiles, Tom Savini, Holt McCallany.
Horror/Comedy, USA, 89 mins, cert 15.
Released in the UK on Limited Edition 4K UHD by Arrow Video on 29th September
1982s CREEPSHOW was a collaboration between writer Stephen King and director George A. Romero that celebrated their love of EC Comics and the horror stories of the 1950s in an anthology format, successfully bringing the comic book aesthetic to the screen with bizarre lighting, crazy comic panels and tales of revenge in over-the-top ways.
Fast forward five years and a sequel appeared, although it was fairly obvious that a few corners were cut. Firstly, George A. Romero wasn’t directing and was credited as screenwriter, turning King’s (unused) story ideas into shorts, and this time there were only three stories instead of five (five were originally planned but two were cut out due to budgetary reasons). The other notable difference was that the wraparound story - a yarn about a boy called Billy who buys some plant seeds from an advert in a horror comic - was animated, again to keep the budget down.
OLD CHIEF WOOD'NHEAD is the first proper story, and is probably the weakest. It sees elderly store owners Ray (George Kennedy) and Martha (Dorothy Lamour) Spruce lamenting about the lack of business in their run-down desert town when they get robbed by Sam Whitemoon (Holt McCallany) - a Native American with long hair and dreams about making it big in Hollywood - and his goons, who wish to take the jewels that Sam’s uncle Ben (Frank Salesdo) left Ray as payment for debts incurred.
When what should have been a simple robbery goes wrong the gang have to leave town quicker than expected, but the old wooden Indian chief that has stood outside the store for decades and seen everything has other plans for Sam.
After an interlude where we see Billy collecting his pack of seeds from the post office, THE RAFT sails into view. In this one, four teenagers (allegedly) have driven out to a remote lake for some summer fun - i.e. sex and drugs - on a raft that is floating on the water. However, once they swim out to the raft, a strange oily mass floats around them and when they try to swim back to shore it soon becomes clear that this weird blob is sentient and not going to let them leave, melting and swallowing the bodies of anyone who gets in the water.
After another scene of Billy being chased by a gang of bullies we get THE HITCH-HIKER, a simple story of Annie Lansing (Lois Chiles), a rich woman cheating on her husband with an escort because she is bored. Falling asleep after an evening of passion, she wakes up to discover she only has a matter of minutes to get home before her husband, so she races across town in her car. After a mishap with a cigarette, Annie loses concentration and drives into a hitchhiker, but with no one else around she drives off.
However, further down the road the hitchhiker appears again, bloodied and trying to get into the car, in a pattern that gets more and more horrific as the night goes on. Is Annie dreaming, and what will her husband say about the wrecked car?
And then we get to see what kind of seeds it was that Billy got in the post, and considering how that story goes you can see why they animated it instead of spending thousands on huge rubber plants.
Despite the obvious penny-pinching, CREEPSHOW 2 is still good fun and does try to keep the vibe of the first movie going, although not having Romero behind the camera is very noticeable. Director Michael Gornick was a frequent Romero collaborator but mostly stuck to directing TV, which shows as CREEPSHOW 2 is very workmanlike when compared to the first one.
THE HITCH-HIKER is the goriest of the three, and watching former Bond girl Lois Chiles lose her mind is compelling, whilst THE RAFT has more teen appeal and could easily be expanded into a full-length movie. As previously stated, OLD CHIEF WOOD’NHEAD is the weakest story here but still has a nasty edge to it, and George Kennedy is always a treat to watch (especially as his NAKED GUN co-star Leslie Nielsen was in the original movie).
If you already own the Blu-ray that Arrow put out a few years back, it is debatable whether this 4K UHD upgrade is worth double-dipping for as the special features are the same as on that disc (although you do get a comic adaptation of PINFALL, one of the exorcised stories from the movie), and apart from the car headlights in THE HITCH-HIKER popping out a bit more, there isn’t really enough noticeable differences in the visuals to warrant buying it again. If, however, you don’t own the previous disc and have a 4K setup then this release of CREEPSHOW 2 will be the best version to get. Simple as that.
Chris Ward