Fuji reviews Creepshow 2

[Fuji Vice]

Creepshow 2


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Stephen King and George A. Romero reunite to bring us three more horror stories. In the first, a wooden statue of a Native American comes to life to exact vengeance on the murderer of his elderly owners. In the second, four teens are stranded on a raft in a lake with a blob that wants to consume them. In the third, a woman is terrorized by the hitchhiker she accidentally killed…or did she?

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The second installment of Creepshow, released in 1987, is shorter, but no less entertaining than the first. With more stories from Stephen King at his disposal, George A. Romero stepped out of the director’s chair and chose to produce as well as write the film. While this meant King wasn’t actively working on the project, his inspiration can still be seen in each of the tales Romero ended up using. While there’s less of those this time out, each of them is a home run and a showcase for all the talents involved. That sounds like a pretty good recipe for a sequel to me and while I’m not sure it’s as good as the first, Creepshow 2 is still flat-out entertaining. Ready for three more spine-chilling, bone-shaking, heart-pounding tales of terror? Yep, me too, so lets’ goooooooooooooooooooooooooooo………..

Old Chief Wood'nhead

Our first story has kindly old shopkeeper George Kennedy running a general store with his wife in a town called Dead River. That’s probably a bad place to do business and sure enough they haven’t made any money in months. At least they’ve still got this really cool Injun statue on their front porch…oh, and some jewels from all the local tribes that they drop off as collateral. Kennedy vows to guard them with his life, which is a really bad statement to make in any kind of movie. Less than five minutes later, this brazen display of bravado is rewarded with a shotgun blast to the chest as some thieves make off with the jewels. These aren’t just any thieves though, they include David Holbrook (Hal’s son AKA WORST ACTOR EVER) and a guy named Holt McCallany who spends almost all his dialogue either saying “Hollywood†or “hairâ€, sometimes in the same sentence! This dude is such a psychotic douche that you just can’t wait to see him bite the big one, and he will shortly, because the big Injun outside is ALIVE; and ready to avenge the deaths of his friends. I LOVED this story and thought it kicked things off really well. The classic old-time television show feel (including great music) throughout, Kennedy’s performance and the psycho hair guy all add up to a healthy dose of awesome. 4.5/5

"King of the douchebags."
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The Raft

Next up is The Raft, which I first encountered about twenty years ago in Stephen King’s short-story collection, Skeleton Crew. While it wasn’t the best story in the book, I always felt it had a certain sense of hopelessness to it. The people here are fucked. They are all going to die. Now all that’s left is to see how they react in the final moments of their lives. King is really good at writing stuff like this and Romero adapted the story well. The basic premise is that these four college kids go swimming out to a raft and a big, gelatinous blob appears. It soon devours one of them and the others freak out, but not for long because they get knocked off in fairly rapid succession. The last guy manages to swim all the way to the beach, but then does the stupidest thing ever and TAUNTS the blob! Of course the blob isn’t going to have any of that and dives up onto the beach, engulfing the last moron and winning…something. This would have been a lot better if any of the actors involved were remotely good, but perhaps in casting bad ones Romero made it easier to handle their sickening deaths. Speaking of those, I’ve got to give props to one character being sucked into a hole in the raft until his leg pops up beside his head! That was awesome, the rest was pretty good and there’s even tit. How can you go wrong? 3.5/5

"King of the morons."
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The Hitch-hiker

The final story is a classic tale of a ghostly hitch-hiker scaring a lone driver on a dark and stormy night. This one has been told so many times (most notably in The Twilight Zone) that it tends to get a little stale. Well, Romero obviously said “fuck all that noise†and decided to force you to love his take on it. Right from the get-go I was into this, as Lois Chiles is a former Bond-girl, appearing with Roger Moore in Moonraker. The fact that she’s paying some douche to bang her annoys me since I’d have done it for free and really, who wouldn’t? She’s got a major case of the hotness going on, and she’s also a little loopy as she talks to herself in her car before creaming some dude. This sends the story into full-on crazy mode, as she sees the hitch-hiker again after speeding away from the accident and he says “thanks for the ride ladyâ€. I mention this because I think he says it about 1000 times in the next 10 minutes, but the actor playing him, Tom Wright, is so off the charts with it that it rules! Anyhow, the rest is the hitch-hiker tormenting her in various ways until she finally poisons herself to death with her car fumes. This was anything but stale and a real nifty take on the old classic. I also loved the music here and thought it amped up the chase sequences quite a bit. Finally, there was some good humour here, which I felt was needed after the bleak story before it. 4/5

"King of the one-liners."
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After adding those scores up I see they average out to an 8, which is right where I feel this film should be. I really did enjoy Creepshow 2 more than the first. Whether that was because it was a little shorter or that all the segments were great doesn’t matter to me. All I care about is that it was a lot of scary, a lot of fun and one hell of a great way to kill 90 minutes. 8/10. I’m going to leave you with this quote that appears just after the credits, as I think it’s pretty damn awesome, as well as one parting image of just a little of the nastiness in this movie…enjoy.

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"Juvenile delinquency is the product of pent up frustrations, stored-up resentments and bottled-up fears. It is not the product of cartoons and captions. But the comics are a handy, obvious, uncomplicated scapegoat. If the adults who crusade against them would only get as steamed up over such basic causes of delinquency as parental ignorance, indifference, and cruelty, they might discover that comic books are no more a menace than Treasure Island or Jack the Giant Killer."

"Coming up tomorrow...something something red mask."
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[Wangman Page]

I agree with you on this one being slightly better than the first one.

I think old wooden chief is my favorite of the three and always felt the boon thing was a huge oil slick and kind of a save the planet type flick. The last one always cracked me up and I did love the Thanks for the ride lady over and over again.

As usual you have outdone yourself.

Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk 2

 

[Fuji Vice]

Thanks man, I'm glad you liked the review. Old Chief Wood'nhead is definitely my favourite, gotta' love that George Kennedy.

 

[Mitch Buchannon]

Fantastic review, cannot wait to watch it on Netflix.