Creepshow 2 (1987) – Film Review

Director: Michael Gornick
Cast: Lois Chiles, George Kennedy, Dorothy Lamour
Certificate: 15

By Sarah Morgan

It’s 80 years since Ealing Studios released Dead of Night. Many have tried to better the classic portmanteau horror movie in the decades since, but nobody has managed it, although the likes of Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors and Tales from the Crypt, made by Hammer Films’ rival Amicus in the 1960s and 1970s, came the closest.

In 1982, Night of the Living Dead director George A Romero teamed up with author Stephen King to have a go. The result was Creepshow, which featured five stories (two based on works already written by King, the rest being original offerings) linked by a sixth involving a lad reading the comic book Creepshow.

“Murdered during a robbery”

It was a big hit so, five years later, Romero adapted three more King short stories, with the resulting sequel directed by his friend and colleague Michael Gornick, who had been the cinematographer on the first film.

This time the tales are linked by a kid called Billy, who’s given a copy of the Creepshow comic by the Creep himself, a character who appears within its pages – it introduces them in a live action segment, before turning into an animation drawn in the style of the old EC comics that inspired the whole endeavour.

The first title is Old Chief Wood’nhead starring Hollywood veterans George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour as an elderly couple who are murdered during a robbery at their convenience store. However, the life-sized carved wooden Native American who stands outside comes to life to exact a gory revenge.

“Hit-and-run”

The Raft sees a quartet of teens trapped in the middle of a lake by a man-eating blob. What’s particularly incredible here is that the youngsters’ car battery manages to keep the radio playing in the vehicle all night without running out – we could all do with knowing what make it is.

Finally, in The Hitch-hiker, an adulterous woman (former Bond girl Lois Chiles) receives her just deserts after running down a man and leaving him for dead while on her way home to her oblivious husband. King himself has a cameo as a truck driver who stops at the scene of the hit-and-run; he survived such an incident himself in 1999.

Creepshow 2 is not a classic, but it’s a fun time-passer for horror fans, one that embraces the influence of comics on its creation. It’s certainly not in the same league as Dead of Night, but then again, what is?

Sarah Morgan( Writer )

Sarah Morgan studied film journalism at post-graduate level with the BFI and has been writing about TV and film for PA Media’s newspaper, magazine and new media customers since 1996. She’s also written for a wide range of other publications, both online and in print, including the book Offbeat and Intermission magazine, and is a regular contributor to the Talking Pictures TV podcast. When she isn’t watching movies, she’s collecting and reading vintage crime and horror paperback books or, for her sins, watching her beloved Sheffield Wednesday.

You do not have any posts.