Synopsis:

Creepshow is the spawn of horror maestros, Stephen King and George A. Romero. Crafted upon the horror magazines that I grew up on (namely, Famous Monsters of Filmland and Creepy and Eerie), Creepshow is an inventive and nostalgic way of presenting a montage of horrific tales without skipping a beat. The stories are as follows: Happy Father's Day is the first entry in this collection of the macabre and it features none other than a very young and quite dancing-impaired Ed Harris. In any event, the story deals with the death of the family patriarch at the hands of his daughter Bedelia. Every father's day she, along with the remainder of the family converge on the ancestral manse for commiseration and to pay their respects to the not-so dearly departed. As is her custom Bedelia weeps at her father's grave and drinks herself into a stupor. On this particular visitation, Bedelia's rises from the grave in search of the father's day cakes he's been denied since his death of four years prior!

The lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill Features none other than Stephen King in the lead role as the addle brained Verrill. A meteor crashes in Jordy's backyard and visions of wealth (to the tune of $200) dance in his head. Mistakenly, Jordy touches the rock, burns himself and then pours cold water over it to cool the stone down. Much like anything that changes temperatures quickly, the stone breaks and a mysterious liquid gushes forth into the earth. Almost instantaneously, the ground begins to sprout a strange form of flora. Most notably, the flora also sprouts on Jordy! Utterly witless, Jordy watches wrestling as he "blooms" and does little to counteract the effects of his otherworldly visitor!

Something to Tide you Over stars Leslie Nielson in a rare-out-of-character appearance, and a conspicuously coiffured Ted Danson. Neilsen's wife, Becky, and Danson have been having a bit of a Tet' a tet' under the nose of her jealous husband. Once their dalliance is in the open, Richard, (Neilson) seeks to exact his pound of flesh from the lothario and his cheating spouse. Richard's plan is to bury the two up to their necks in sand and let the incoming tide finish the job. As the two await their watery deaths, Richard watches from the safety of his beachfront manse and enjoys the suffering these two endure. Before he drowns, Danson's character vows to get Richard. To which, Richard responds, "you have to hold your breath". Anyway, the couple drown and return to repay Richard for his wet sense of justice.

The Crate Under The Stairs Undoubtedly, my favorite entry, The Crate stars Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau and Fritz Weaver. Weaver and Holbrook are members of academia and Barbeau is Holbrook's dimwitted classless and abusive spouse. During a "meet and greet" gathering, Weaver is summoned by a custodian who has stumbled upon a crate nestled beneath the stairs in Amberson Hall. Upon closer inspection, it's dated 1834 and supposedly bears the booty of an arctic expedition from that date. Instead of the suspected plant and animal remains, the crate bears a rather nasty critter that hasn't eaten in a little over 115 years! Needless to say, the crate's contents and the subsequent events surrounding it gives new meaning to "curiosity killed the cat"! There were actually no cats involved. That just proved to be the only adage I could muster at the moment.

They're Creeping up On You E.G. Marshall plays billionaire industrialist, Upton Pratt. Consumed by the need to have everything around him antiseptically clean, he holds up in a $3200 per month apartment stocked with everything from vacuum sealed sleeping chambers to a private O2 supply to keep out the "disease ridden" air. Naturally, if there's one thing Pratt cannot stand it's bugs. Especially, Cockroaches! Get the picture?! He didn't get to this position of power by being a nice man and he displays his pitiable social skills most prominently when talking to the recently widowed wife of his latest economic conquest. Slowly but surely, his domicile is being invaded by an army of Cockroaches that seek to pay him back for the lives of every Roach he has every stomped, squished, or sprayed to death. Extremely, gross, this episode will definitely get you to itching once the real stars of this segment make their curtain call.

Audio/Video:

I have to say that the audio and video portions were very disappointing. The audio is presented in a very light and dull 2-channel stereo platform that barely fills the listening space. The dialogue while largely clear does suffer by a bit of overlapping at the hands of aural effects competing with dialogue for supremacy. In simpler terms, the audio is too busy for a 2-channel platform. This could have been a great 5.1 presentation given the enormous amount of audio knickknacks found throughout the film. Unfortunately, the audio as presented does nothing for the film and in fact hinders it when jumbling the dialogue and effects. The video is another bone of contention. There are just as many imperfections in the transfer on this disc as in the VHS version of the film I also have. The widescreen presentation looks more like a poorly matted version of the full frame. The colors are washed out and the images lack the clarity and sparkle of digitally rendered films. In short, it looks like a 1st to 2nd generation VHS copy of the film. There are flecks, scratches, and a litany of every transfer error you can think of. Overall, both the audio and video are poor and could have been bolstered to present a decent audio/video presentation. Instead, the resultant transfer is equaled and possibly surpassed in some instances by its wholly analog predecessor.

Extras:

The only extra on the disc is the trailer for the feature. It's in pretty poor shape and is presented in Mono.

Overall:

I am a huge fan of horror and most things scary. On it's face, Creepshow is a great effort by the collaborative genius of King and Romero. It's got both humor and terror and it's still effective 19 years out of the gate! The sole problem that I have with the disc is the way in which the film has been presented. Let's face it, this is not what Warner Brothers is setting its coffers on in the way of a watershed of interest and sales. As such, the title got very little attention in the way of supplemental materials and none in the way of detail and presentation IMO. As a fan of this kind of fare, I found it enjoyable but was tremendously disappointed in the poor presentation of this film. Because of the quality of the audio and video and lack of supplements, I can't highly recommend this title to anyone. Rent the VHS (shudder) and you'll probably get a better picture. It's a great effort that got a crappy hand from WB and because of it's low interest level, it's probably the best we're gonna get. Rent it