The sequel to the campy 1985 horror anthology, Creepshow, offers us fewer tales, fewer big names, and overall less charm.
The original Creepshow is considered by many people my age and older to be a horror classic. I have a feeling that has less to do with an objective take on the film’s quality and more to do with the holy triumvirate of horror icons involved in its production: Stephen King, George Romero & Tom Savini. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the movie, but I think it coasts by on reputation more than anything else. By the time the sequel rolled around five years later, it didn’t have quite the same pedigree. Romero was still on board, but as a writer not a director. Savini was relegated to acting duties as the titular Creep, and while the segments are based on Stephen King stories, he didn’t seem to have any further involvement outside of his obligatory cameo. Instead of the nostalgic thrill of watching established or future stars like Leslie Nielson, Adrienne Barbeau, Ted Danson and Ed Harris, Creepshow 2 is populated by relative unknowns. It is gory, I’ll give it that, but the three stories presented are so wafer-thin that they could have been relegated to one of those anthologies that boasts 8-10 installments, and nothing would be lost in the reduced run-time.
The best, and generally most revered, of the segments is the middle one: “The Raft”. The only images of the movie that I retained from my youth came from this story of four teenagers who set out to party at the lake, but soon find their raft being overtaken by a sentient black ooze. It’s generally pretty suspenseful, and the ooze is an iconic horror villain that will be familiar to children of the 80’s whether they watched the movie or not. A lot of it is still pretty questionable, though. First, I have no idea what kind of party this quartet is purporting to have. The plan seems to be drive up, swim out to the raft and…? They don’t have any beer (although they do get high on the way), and if the two pairs wanted to fool around with each other, I can think of better options than sharing a 12’x12′ wooden square surrounded by freezing water. I suppose they have their music blasting from the car, but even that seems like an ill-advised use of their car battery when they are the only people around for miles. More disturbing is what happens after two of the teens have been gruesomely killed, and the other two have spent a long, chilly night on the raft. The guy wakes up first, and, upon noticing the sleeping body of his now-dead buddy’s girlfriend, proceeds to undo her top and feel her up. One can only imagine what type of dissociative psychopath would be capable of committing sexual assault in such a situation, but it is pretty much presented as a natural, “boys-will-be-boys” type of scenario. Ah, the eighties.
The other two segments, involving a statue of a Native American warrior coming to life to avenge the death of his owners, and a woman stalked by a hit-and-run victim, offer suitably grisly comeuppance for their cartoonishly deserving characters, but I can’t imagine a less complex set of tales. The idea that they were adapted from King stories is hard to believe, as they are seemingly more analogous to a three-page Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark chapter. I’m not gonna lie, Creepshow 2 was a pretty rough watch for me, top to bottom. It does have a solid reputation online, particularly among my fellow Gen X horror junkies and nostalgia peddlers. Admittedly, it seems like it should be fun, especially if you are searching the web for still images and skimming recaps for the finer points of the stories that you forgot out of boredom and/or having too much scotch while you watched. That’s where the memory of the film is best served, though, through the vague recollections of people who think they like it because it is associated with their childhood, and certainly not through revisiting its corny, misguided and stubbornly undemanding presentation for yourself.
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