Creepshow

Colour, 35 mm
USA, 1982, 120 min
Section: Midnight Screenings

Synopsis

Experience, if you dare, five jolting tales of terror that mix bloodletting with black humor from screenwriter Stephen King and director George A. Romero. This anthology captures the macabre spirit of the classic 1950s EC comics (which King and Romero claim influenced their career paths) right down to the colours, camera angles, and storylines in which some unpleasant characters meet with unspeakably dreadful fates. The episodes are framed by a prologue and epilogue in which an actual comic plays an important part. EC stands for Educational Comics and these stories present object lessons in things not to do – for instance, don’t open ancient crates that obviously have been sealed for good reasons, don’t speak ill of the dead, and don’t cheat on your spouse. Among the well-known performers, watch out for a very young Ed Harris, Adrienne Barbeau (the former Mrs. John Carpenter), Leslie Nielsen and horrormeister King as fungus-beset Jordy Verrill.

About the director

George A. Romero (b. 1939, USA) grew up in New York and attended the Carnegie-Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began his career producing industrial films and television commercials. He’s one of the top names in the modern horror film, thanks to his first feature, the low-budget cult classic Night of the Living Dead (1968), and its sequels Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead (2005). His early works, made in and around Pittsburgh, tap into the zeitgeist of social commentary. His filmography includes There’s Always Vanilla (1971), Hungry Wives (1972), The Crazies (1973), Martin (1977), Knightriders (1981), Creepshow (1982), Monkey Shines (1988), The Dark Half (1993), and Bruiser (2000).