Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Creepshow

Last night I was watching the film Creepshow, a 1982 film written by Stephen King and directed by George A. Romero, on television. The film is a portmanteau horror film, which opens with young Billy (played by Stephen King's son Joe) whose mean Dad throws away Billy's beloved Creepshow comic book. That night Billy is visited by The Creep, a gruesome skeleton, who shows him five stories from the comic's flicking pages. The first story, "Father's Day", concerns an elderly father who killed her father on Father's Day seven years previously and now always visits his grave on the anniversary of his death, but this year her father has come back for his Father's Day cake, in "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" a dim-witted farmer (played by Stephen King) is pleased when a meteor lands on his property because he thinks he'll be able to sell it but the meteor splits and pours out some glowing goo which makes a strange plant-like growth grow everywhere on Jordy's farm and Jordy himself, in "Something To Tide You Over" a wealthy TV producer (Leslie Nielsen) takes revenge on his cheating wife and her lover (Ted Danson) only for them to take revenge on him, in "The Crate" a university professor (Hal Holbrook) gets rid of his nagging wife with the help of a very hungry monster in an old crate, and in "They're Creeping Up on You" a cruel millionaire who lives in an apparently germ-proof apartment is treated to the world's worst cockroach infestation. The film was designed as a homage to the EC Comics horror comics of the 1950s such as Tales From the Crypt, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear, and the film is designed to replicate those comics, with the live action segments fading in and out of animated comics pages, vivid primary colours, captions and camera angles designed to replicate comic book panels. It's a pretty entertaining movie.

Work was pretty dull, however we all got out early today because there was a problem with the water supply. I went along to the New Yorker with my friend Joe for a couple of drinks.

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