creepshow 2 [1987]

once upon a time i was a certifiable nut for all things stephen king. i tried to read everything he wrote [i even had a copy of a magazine whose name i can't remember that was devoted to cross word puzzles not because i liked cross word puzzles but because the publication published an article by king along with an author photograph of him in his studio sitting beside a giant word processor (remember those things? word processors were sorta like the betamax for writers, they made typewriters obsolescent and predate regular computer use by a few years)]. and the movies that were based on king's books, like christine, cujo, silver bullet and the stanley kubrick masterpiece of real dread the shining were seminal viewing of my earlier life.

creepshow 2 is another matter. i was very much looking forward to seeing this when it was first released. at the time i was suffering from panic attacks so severe i couldn't stand being in my own skin. i worried that i wouldn't be able to sit in a theater long enough without running out in fear not from the movie but from the cocktail of bad chemicals that made my mind a froth of horror. which might've influence my opinion of this flick. i did manage to sit in the theater and did manage to enjoy the movie enough but this piece of celluliod is second-tier king and does no favors for filmmaker george a. romero who directed the first creepshow and penned this sequel.

creepshow is one of my favorite films, an anthology piece penned by king and directed by romero. the idea was to bring the old e.c. comics to the screen. e.c. comics were macabre affairs that specialized in horror stories with an ironic twist at the end told with a gut-level glee. e.c. comics freaked out parents and politicians who worried over a generation reading such ghoulish delights and so helped usher in the comics code in the 1950s to make safe impressionable minds.

too late because writers like king and filmmakers like romero were already under the influence and pop culture's never been the same. creepshow has a thrilling matinee movie flavor that is both fresh and nostalgic. watching the flick is like spending an evening at the drive-in and to this viewer delivers me to a level of movie-watching bliss.

creepshow 2 feels like it was made for the money. the direction sloppy and too hurried while the stories are not fully realized. this sequal is still an anthology of three stories, none are particularly interesting or gory, but even so there is a certain base level of enjoyment. but even the animation, which successfully mimicked the art of the comics in the first film is slap-dash and woolen in this go-round.

call me a glutton for punishment. i can't tell you who stars in this movie except for george kennedy and dorothy lamour who portray an old couple who own a general store in an economically depressed desert community in the first story called 'ol' chief wooden head'. the story is not bad but my favorite is 'the raft' which is based on king's story of the same name and is about four college kids going to a remote lake for a last swim at the end of the season and are plucked off one by one by some mysterious thing that looks like an oil slick but behaves like a floating pile of sulphuric acid. the last story, 'the hitchhiker' is about an adulteress who runs over the eponymous hitchhiker, over and over and over again.

some of the lines in this movie have over the years entered my own private lexicon. if that might give you an idea of what i think of this movie you must recall that i'm a celluloid masochist and this is flick is good in its badness. not real good but it does hurt kinda good.

not that i'd recommend watching it. i don't have a copy in my collection. i watched it on one of the movie channels last night. i think there's even a creepshow 3 lurking in the delete bins. i haven't worked up the nerve to pick up a copy and watch that one. i don't know. dare i eat a peach? i can hear cleavon little in mel brooks' classic blazing saddles whisper in my ear, dare dare!