ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - November 12th
"CREEPSHOW" released in 1982
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A young boy named Billy (son of author Stephen King, Joe King) gets yelled at and slapped by his father, Stan (Tom Atkin), for reading a horror comic titled Creepshow. Stan reminds his wife that he had to be hard on Billy because he does not want their son to be reading such "crap". As Billy sits upstairs cursing his father with hopes of him rotting in Hell, he hears a sound at the window, which turns out to be a ghostly apparition in the form of The Creep from the comic book, beckoning him to come closer; and begins the first episode.
Nathan Grantham (Jon Lormer), the miserly old patriarch of a family whose fortune was made through bootlegging, fraud, extortion, and murder-for-hire, is killed on Father's Day by his long-suffering spinster daughter Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors). Bedelia was already unstable as the result of a lifetime spent putting up with her father's incessant demands and emotional abuse, which culminated in his orchestrating the murder of her sweetheart, Peter. Years later, the remainder of Nathan's descendants — including Nathan's granddaughter Sylvia (Carrie Nye), his great-grandchildren Richard (Warner Shook), Cass (Elizabeth Regan), and Cass' husband Hank (Ed Harris) — get together for their annual dinner on the third Sunday in June. Bedelia, who typically arrives later than the others, stops in the cemetery outside the family house to lay a flower at the grave site and drunkenly reminisce about how she murdered her insufferable, overbearing father. When she accidentally spills her whiskey bottle in front of the headstone, it seems to have a reanimating effect on the mortal remains interred below. Suddenly, Nathan's putrefied, maggot-infested corpse emerges from the burial plot in the form of a revenant who has come back to claim the Father's Day cake he never got!
The next episode features a dimwitted backwoods yokel, Jordy Verrill (played by Stephen King himself), who thinks that a newly discovered meteorite will provide enough money from the local college to pay off his $200 bank loan. As the meteorite is too hot to touch, he douses it with water, causing it to crack open and spew a glowing green substance that comes into contact with his skin. He then finds himself being overcome by a rapidly spreading plant-like organism that begins growing on his body. Jordy is eventually cautioned by the ghost of his father not to take a bath. But when the itching from the growth on his skin becomes unbearable, Jordy succumbs to temptation and collapses into the bathwater. By the next morning, Jordy and his farm have been completely covered with dense layers of the hideous alien vegetation - and is still growing!
Nathan Grantham (Jon Lormer), the miserly old patriarch of a family whose fortune was made through bootlegging, fraud, extortion, and murder-for-hire, is killed on Father's Day by his long-suffering spinster daughter Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors). Bedelia was already unstable as the result of a lifetime spent putting up with her father's incessant demands and emotional abuse, which culminated in his orchestrating the murder of her sweetheart, Peter. Years later, the remainder of Nathan's descendants — including Nathan's granddaughter Sylvia (Carrie Nye), his great-grandchildren Richard (Warner Shook), Cass (Elizabeth Regan), and Cass' husband Hank (Ed Harris) — get together for their annual dinner on the third Sunday in June. Bedelia, who typically arrives later than the others, stops in the cemetery outside the family house to lay a flower at the grave site and drunkenly reminisce about how she murdered her insufferable, overbearing father. When she accidentally spills her whiskey bottle in front of the headstone, it seems to have a reanimating effect on the mortal remains interred below. Suddenly, Nathan's putrefied, maggot-infested corpse emerges from the burial plot in the form of a revenant who has come back to claim the Father's Day cake he never got!
The next episode features a dimwitted backwoods yokel, Jordy Verrill (played by Stephen King himself), who thinks that a newly discovered meteorite will provide enough money from the local college to pay off his $200 bank loan. As the meteorite is too hot to touch, he douses it with water, causing it to crack open and spew a glowing green substance that comes into contact with his skin. He then finds himself being overcome by a rapidly spreading plant-like organism that begins growing on his body. Jordy is eventually cautioned by the ghost of his father not to take a bath. But when the itching from the growth on his skin becomes unbearable, Jordy succumbs to temptation and collapses into the bathwater. By the next morning, Jordy and his farm have been completely covered with dense layers of the hideous alien vegetation - and is still growing!
Nathan Grantham: [still clacking his cane, the clacking sound has been slowly intensifying] BEDELIA! WHERE'S MY FATHER'S DAY CAKE?
Bedelia Grantham: [Bedelia picks up the marble ashtray and lifts it above her head, her father looking up at her in terror] HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!
[Bedelia bashes her father's head in with the marble ashtray, killing him instantly]
Top: Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors) laments killing her father at his grave;
Above: Unfortunately, her father is also showing up for Father's Day
Richard Vickers (Leslie Nielsen), a vicious, wealthy psychopath whose jocularity belies his cold-blooded murderousness, stages a terrible fate for his unfaithful wife, Becky (Gaylen Ross), and her lover, Harry Wentworth (Ted Danson), by separately luring them out to his secluded beach property and then, at gunpoint, burying them up to their necks below the high tide line. He explains that they have a chance of survival—if they can hold their breath long enough for the sand to loosen once the seawater covers them, they could break free and escape. Vickers sets up closed-circuit TV cameras so he can watch them die from the comfort of his well-appointed beach house. However, Richard is in for a surprise of his own when the two lovers he murdered return as a pair of waterlogged, seaweed-covered revenants intent on revenge!
A college custodian, Mike (Don Keefer), drops a quarter and finds a wooden storage crate, hidden under some basement stairs for 147 years. He notifies a college professor, Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver), of the find. The two decide to open the crate and it is found to contain an extremely lethal creature resembling a Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, which despite its diminutive size promptly kills and entirely devours Mike, leaving behind only his boot. Escaping, Stanley runs into a graduate student, Charlie Gereson (Robert Harper), who is skeptical and investigates. The crate has been moved back under the stairs and Gereson is killed by the creature as he examines the crate. Stanley flees to inform his friend and colleague at the university, the mild-mannered Professor Henry Northrup (Hal Holbrook). Stanley, now traumatized and hysterical, babbles to Northrup that the deadly monster must be disposed of somehow. But Northrup sees the creature as a way to rid himself of his perpetually drunk, obnoxious and emotionally abusive wife, Wilma "Billie" Northrup (Adrienne Barbeau) - whom he often daydreams of killing - and contrives a scheme to lure her near the crate, and the beast inside!
The last episode tells the story of Upson Pratt (E.G. Marshall), a cruel, ruthless businessman whose mysophobia has him living in a hermetically sealed apartment controlled completely with both electric locks and surveillance cameras. During a particularly severe lightning storm, he finds himself looking out over the concrete canyons of New York City, as a rolling blackout travels his way. When it hits his apartment tower, the terror begins for Mr. Pratt, who now finds himself helpless, when his flat becomes overrun by hordes of cockroaches. As the cockroaches begin to overrun him, he locks himself inside a panic room, only to find the cockroaches have already infested the room as well!
Finally back at Billy's house the following morning, two garbage collectors (Marty Schiff and Tom Savini) find the Creepshow comic book in the trash. They look at the ads in the book for X-ray specs and a Charles Atlas bodybuilding course. They also see an advertisement for a voodoo doll, but lament that the order form has already been redeemed. Inside the house, Stan complains of neck pain, which escalates and becomes deadly as Billy repeatedly and gleefully jabs the voodoo doll as he finally gets revenge on his accursed father for his past abuse!
A college custodian, Mike (Don Keefer), drops a quarter and finds a wooden storage crate, hidden under some basement stairs for 147 years. He notifies a college professor, Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver), of the find. The two decide to open the crate and it is found to contain an extremely lethal creature resembling a Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, which despite its diminutive size promptly kills and entirely devours Mike, leaving behind only his boot. Escaping, Stanley runs into a graduate student, Charlie Gereson (Robert Harper), who is skeptical and investigates. The crate has been moved back under the stairs and Gereson is killed by the creature as he examines the crate. Stanley flees to inform his friend and colleague at the university, the mild-mannered Professor Henry Northrup (Hal Holbrook). Stanley, now traumatized and hysterical, babbles to Northrup that the deadly monster must be disposed of somehow. But Northrup sees the creature as a way to rid himself of his perpetually drunk, obnoxious and emotionally abusive wife, Wilma "Billie" Northrup (Adrienne Barbeau) - whom he often daydreams of killing - and contrives a scheme to lure her near the crate, and the beast inside!
The last episode tells the story of Upson Pratt (E.G. Marshall), a cruel, ruthless businessman whose mysophobia has him living in a hermetically sealed apartment controlled completely with both electric locks and surveillance cameras. During a particularly severe lightning storm, he finds himself looking out over the concrete canyons of New York City, as a rolling blackout travels his way. When it hits his apartment tower, the terror begins for Mr. Pratt, who now finds himself helpless, when his flat becomes overrun by hordes of cockroaches. As the cockroaches begin to overrun him, he locks himself inside a panic room, only to find the cockroaches have already infested the room as well!
Finally back at Billy's house the following morning, two garbage collectors (Marty Schiff and Tom Savini) find the Creepshow comic book in the trash. They look at the ads in the book for X-ray specs and a Charles Atlas bodybuilding course. They also see an advertisement for a voodoo doll, but lament that the order form has already been redeemed. Inside the house, Stan complains of neck pain, which escalates and becomes deadly as Billy repeatedly and gleefully jabs the voodoo doll as he finally gets revenge on his accursed father for his past abuse!
[repeated line]
Jordy: Oh, Jordy Verrill, you lunkhead!
Top and Above: Jordy Verrill (Stephen King) discovers a meteorite in his back yard, that has a very averse effect on him!
Inspired by the EC and DC horror comic books of the 1950s such as Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror, famed horror novelist Stephen King embarked on his first screenplay; adapting most of his own short stories into the script, including Weeds (included in the segment, The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill) and The Crate. Something to Tide You Over is almost identical to King's short story The Ledge in which a wealthy man forces his wife's lover to risk his life for amusement, and was also included in King's original 142-page screenplay. Only the segment Father's Day was originally written by King for Creepshow.
King and Night of the Living Dead filmmaker George A. Romero had at that point been friends for years, and always wanted to work with each other on a film. Romero took the opportunity to direct the anthology film, and, in keeping with Romero's tradition of filming in and around the Pittsburgh area, most of the film was shot in an empty all-girls school located outside Greensburg, Pennsylvania. The school was converted into a film studio, and the episodes The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, and They're Creeping Up on You, as well as the prologue and epilogue, were filmed in their entirety at the former school. Several additional locations were also used for filming: most of the interior and exterior shots for the university sequences for The Crate were filmed at Carnegie-Mellon University (Romero is a Carnegie-Mellon University alumnus), with Margaret Morrison Hall serving as Amberson Hall. The backyard party was filmed in Romero's own backyard at his former residence on Amberson Avenue in Shadyside, Pennsylvania. Father's Day was filmed on location at a mansion in the Pittsburgh suburb of Fox Chapel, with only Something to Tide You Over being filmed outside of Pennsylvania, at a beachfront residence in New Jersey.
King and Night of the Living Dead filmmaker George A. Romero had at that point been friends for years, and always wanted to work with each other on a film. Romero took the opportunity to direct the anthology film, and, in keeping with Romero's tradition of filming in and around the Pittsburgh area, most of the film was shot in an empty all-girls school located outside Greensburg, Pennsylvania. The school was converted into a film studio, and the episodes The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, and They're Creeping Up on You, as well as the prologue and epilogue, were filmed in their entirety at the former school. Several additional locations were also used for filming: most of the interior and exterior shots for the university sequences for The Crate were filmed at Carnegie-Mellon University (Romero is a Carnegie-Mellon University alumnus), with Margaret Morrison Hall serving as Amberson Hall. The backyard party was filmed in Romero's own backyard at his former residence on Amberson Avenue in Shadyside, Pennsylvania. Father's Day was filmed on location at a mansion in the Pittsburgh suburb of Fox Chapel, with only Something to Tide You Over being filmed outside of Pennsylvania, at a beachfront residence in New Jersey.
[waves wash over Harry, as he turns to face the video camera]
Harry: Richard! I'm gonna get you! You hear me, Richard? YOU HEAR ME, RICHARD? I'm going to get you f...
[a wave washes over his head, cutting him off abruptly]
Richard Vickers: You've gotta hold your breath there, Harry. You've gotta hold your breath!
Top and Above: Becky (Gaylen Ross), and her lover, Harry Wentworth (Ted Danson) confront their killer, Becky's insane husband, Richard Vickers (Leslie Nielsen)
In one of his first big screen appearances, Ted Danson was cast as the doomed Harry Wentworth. Danson later said in an interview that his daughter was on the set during the scene where his character returns from the dead encased in rotting flesh and seaweed. He purposely tried avoiding his young daughter out of fear of scaring her. Finally, despite his best efforts, she went up to him, looked at him and simply said, "Oh, hi Dad." Danson also explained the brief shot of his character drowning underwater: "so they make a little aquarium tank. I got in a wetsuit and climbed in, and somebody would reach down with an oxygen tank ventilator thingy, and I’d breathe, and then they’d take that out. And there was a yoke made out of… I don’t know, wood and fake sand, so it looked like my head was buried in the sand, underwater." Comic actor Leslie Nielsen - who plays the sadistic Richard - while he was all business while filming his scenes, also had a fart machine in his pocket during the shooting. He would let it go off during rehearsals and just before Romero would call Action, causing Danson and the crew to crack up with laughter.
It is rumored that Max von Sydow was originally slated to play Upson Pratt in Creepshow's final story, They're Creeping Up On You!, before E. G. Marshall was cast in the role. The story was originally supposed to take place in a lush, carpeted penthouse apartment. However, because with cockroaches this would have been unworkable, Romero opted for a more empty almost hospital room-like set for the story. Romero had said that the cockroaches were the most expensive part of the movie, stating that the cockroaches cost 50 cents a piece and they used more then 250 000 of them, grand total of $125 000 on roaches alone. The large cockroaches featured in the episode "They're Creeping Up on You" were hissing cockroaches imported from Guatemala.
Romero was unable to obtain an export permit for them, so they were imported on a temporary permit. This meant that each one had to be counted before and after each shot, and accurate records kept of the number of dead specimens. The cockroaches were stored in styrofoam egg cartons kept inside a large van that was filled with high levels of carbon dioxide to keep the cockroaches quiet. In the final scene of the segment—in which the room is almost filled with cockroaches—many of the apparent insects were actually nuts and raisins, as specified by Tom Savini (who also designed and created the creature for The Crate episode, which he cutely nicknamed "Fluffy").
It is rumored that Max von Sydow was originally slated to play Upson Pratt in Creepshow's final story, They're Creeping Up On You!, before E. G. Marshall was cast in the role. The story was originally supposed to take place in a lush, carpeted penthouse apartment. However, because with cockroaches this would have been unworkable, Romero opted for a more empty almost hospital room-like set for the story. Romero had said that the cockroaches were the most expensive part of the movie, stating that the cockroaches cost 50 cents a piece and they used more then 250 000 of them, grand total of $125 000 on roaches alone. The large cockroaches featured in the episode "They're Creeping Up on You" were hissing cockroaches imported from Guatemala.
Romero was unable to obtain an export permit for them, so they were imported on a temporary permit. This meant that each one had to be counted before and after each shot, and accurate records kept of the number of dead specimens. The cockroaches were stored in styrofoam egg cartons kept inside a large van that was filled with high levels of carbon dioxide to keep the cockroaches quiet. In the final scene of the segment—in which the room is almost filled with cockroaches—many of the apparent insects were actually nuts and raisins, as specified by Tom Savini (who also designed and created the creature for The Crate episode, which he cutely nicknamed "Fluffy").
[Henry watches as the creature in the crate attacks his wife]
Henry: Just tell it to call you Billie, you bitch!
Top: Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver - right) explains to his friend Henry Northrup (Hal Holbrook) just what he discovered under the stairs;
Above: Henry's obnoxious wife Wilma "Billie" Northrup (Adrienne Barbeau) meets the creature inside the crate
The prop 10-cent "CREEPSHOW" comic book featured in the film was drawn and inked by veteran artist Jack Kamen, one of the artists for the original E.C. crime and horror comics of the 1950's. Kamen also created the comic book-style poster for the film, which was also featured on the front of the Plume "Creepshow" comic book adaptation (which Bernie Wrightson, another prolific horror comic artist, drew and inked the interiors for). Originally, King wanted Graham Ingels, another EC artist (famous for his work on the title The Haunt of Fear) to do the artwork for the film's poster, but he refused. It was head of EC comics William M. Gaines who then suggested Jack Kamen do the assignment, who accepted.
In a Creepshow special feature from the pages of Cinefantastique magazine around the time of Creepshow's release, King and Romero, revealed that if the film's final story (They're Creeping Up On You!) had proven to be too difficult and ambitious to film, it would have been substituted with the King short story The Hitch-Hiker - which ended up being the final story of the film's sequel, Creepshow 2 (1987), directed by George A. Romero's cinematographer on the original Creepshow, Michael Gornick.
In a Creepshow special feature from the pages of Cinefantastique magazine around the time of Creepshow's release, King and Romero, revealed that if the film's final story (They're Creeping Up On You!) had proven to be too difficult and ambitious to film, it would have been substituted with the King short story The Hitch-Hiker - which ended up being the final story of the film's sequel, Creepshow 2 (1987), directed by George A. Romero's cinematographer on the original Creepshow, Michael Gornick.
Lenora Castonmeyer: How many men have you destroyed? How many men have you killed you monster?
Upson Pratt: Only the stupid ones. Only the ones who handed me a knife and then stretched out their throats. Only the ones who, if you'll pardon the expression, fucked up. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got this bug problem. So we'll have to defer your charming conversation for another time.
Lenora Castonmeyer: I hope you die!
Top and Above: Tyrannical businessman Upson Pratt (E.G. Marshall) meets his worst fear!
Warner Brothers tried a very unusual release strategy with the film. Instead of opening the film wide during the lucrative summer season, the studio gave it a four-week trial run at a number of Boston-area theaters in July 1982. After it did great business, Warner then ended the trial and prepared for a wider release in November 12th, 1982. Their thinking was that a bizarre, R-rated horror film was best position was close as possible to Halloween, and that a pre-October 31st release was a non-starter because it would have had to compete with Halloween III: Season of the Witch, but Warner forecast, correctly, that the Michael Myers'-less 3rd Halloween movie would burn out quickly and leave the horror field open for Creepshow to do impressive business, which it did with an a gross of nearly $6 million (making Creepshow Romero's only film to open up at number one at the weekend box office). Creepshow would eventually gross over $21 million at the US box office during its theatrical run.
Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "Romero and King have approached this movie with humor and affection, as well as with an appreciation of the macabre", while in his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "The best things about Creepshow are its carefully simulated comic-book tackiness and the gusto with which some good actors assume silly positions. Horror film purists may object to the levity even though failed, as a lot of it is". Richard Corliss wrote in Time, "But the treatment manages to be both perfunctory and languid; the jolts can be predicted by any ten-year-old with a stop watch. Only the story in which Evil Plutocrat E.G. Marshall is eaten alive by cockroaches mixes giggles and grue in the right measure". Creepshow has of course become a cult horror classic, with Bravo awarding it the 99th spot on their 2012 list of "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments", mostly for the scene with the cockroaches bursting out on Upson Pratt's body.
Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "Romero and King have approached this movie with humor and affection, as well as with an appreciation of the macabre", while in his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "The best things about Creepshow are its carefully simulated comic-book tackiness and the gusto with which some good actors assume silly positions. Horror film purists may object to the levity even though failed, as a lot of it is". Richard Corliss wrote in Time, "But the treatment manages to be both perfunctory and languid; the jolts can be predicted by any ten-year-old with a stop watch. Only the story in which Evil Plutocrat E.G. Marshall is eaten alive by cockroaches mixes giggles and grue in the right measure". Creepshow has of course become a cult horror classic, with Bravo awarding it the 99th spot on their 2012 list of "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments", mostly for the scene with the cockroaches bursting out on Upson Pratt's body.
TRIVIA: During a break in filming, Stephen King took his son to a McDonalds, and as a joke, Joe was made up with bruises, cuts and scabs. The girl at the Drive-Thru called the police when she saw him.
Top: Director George A. Romero with writer Stephen King;
Above: King on set with "Daddy" from Father's Day
A sequel, Creepshow 2, was released in 1987, and was once again based on Stephen King short stories (including The Raft and The Hitch Hiker), with a screenplay written by Romero. Unlike the first film, Creepshow 2 only contains three stories instead of five. Originally two more stories consisted of Pinfall and Cat from Hell were set to appear in the film, but were scrapped due to budgetary reasons; the latter, however, has been filmed for Tales from the Darkside: The Movie. A further sequel, Creepshow III, featuring no involvement from Stephen King, George A. Romero, or anyone else involved in the production of the first two films, was released direct-to-video in 2007 (though it was finished in 2006) to mostly negative reviews. This film, in a fashion similar to the original Creepshow, features five short, darkly comedic horror stories - although Creepshow make-up artist and actor Tom Savini has said that he considers Tales from the Darkside: The Movie the "real" Creepshow 3.
Taurus Entertainment (rights holders of the original Creepshow) have licensed the rights to Jace Hall, of HDFILMS, a Burbank, California company, to produce Creepshow: RAW, a web series based upon the original film, with pilot episode Insomnia (directed by Wilmer Valderrama and features Michael Madsen) premiering in 2010.
Taurus Entertainment (rights holders of the original Creepshow) have licensed the rights to Jace Hall, of HDFILMS, a Burbank, California company, to produce Creepshow: RAW, a web series based upon the original film, with pilot episode Insomnia (directed by Wilmer Valderrama and features Michael Madsen) premiering in 2010.
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 69%
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