By Ray Walton

Creepshow (1982) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐

Five grisly tales from a kid’s comic book about a murdered father rising from his grave, a bizarre meteor, a vengeful husband, a mysterious crate’s occupant, and a plague of cockroaches.

Watch on: Prime Video, Apple TV

Before the term “horror-comedy” was cool, before “camp” was lovingly dissected in film essays, Creepshow arrived like a neon-lit hearse packed with pulpy revenge, monstrous crates, and “meteor shit”. Born from the twisted minds of George A. Romero and Stephen King, Creepshow isn’t just a horror anthology, it’s a giddy, gore-splattered love letter to EC Comics, delivered with blue-and-red gel lighting and the kind of theatrical gusto usually reserved for midnight movies and funhouse rides. It’s horror with a wink, where the moral comeuppance hits harder than the scares, and every frame brims with comic book bravado. It’s a film that doesn’t apologize for being over-the-top, it demands you celebrate it. And if you grew up on it, chances are it helped form the backbone of your horror fandom, wrapping grief, justice, and gory delight in panels of pure genre joy.

For my first film class in college, we were asked to list our top five favorite movies. I felt a little embarrassed including this in that list along with A Clockwork Orange, Psycho, Mulhulland Dr., and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I don’t know why 19 year old me felt embarrassed, because this movie is awesome! It may have even been responsible for introducing me to horror fandom, because my mom was buying me Creepshow merchandise that I never thought I would find. Dress shirts, a blanket, turns out I was far from the only person who would put this in their list of favorites. I will probably say this every time I review this, it should have failed miserably, but because the movie knew exactly what it was, a series of campy scary stories, it dialed its goofiness up to 11, embraced that it was a live action comic book, it works brilliantly. While I don’t love Airplane!, this movie is why I love Leslie Nielsen. I love seeing a young Ed Harris dancing like a stoned drunk in pants way too tight for him, and screaming like a puppy during his death scene. This movie did keep me company during a rough patch in my life. While my taste in movies has evolved over the last five years, it still has a spot in my list of favorites. It deserves its tagline, “The Most Fun You’ll Have Being Scared!”

10/10