If You're Dead And You Know It, Clap Your Hands

In 1985, my buddy and I were too young by a year or two to see the unrated Day of the Dead but our moms convinced the theater personnel to let us in unattended. As we sat in that theater and saw the famous 'tongue' zombie shamble into the frame, we knew we were in for a film made strictly for the strong of stomach.

George Romero has affectionately called Day's devoted cult of followers "trolls" and that's an apt description for all old-school zombie fans - not just Day devotees. Once upon a time, zombie cinema held a gnarly, subterranean appeal. Even the comical zombie pics, like 1985's Return of the Living Dead, had an underground edge (a punk edge, in that film's case). Even though Michael Jackson did a zombie dance routine in the biggest music video of all time, real zombies were found on the fringe.

Up until, well, now, the idea of approximating the signature splatter of the Romero Dead films on TV would've been considered impossible but the premiere episode of The Walking Dead got away with showing sights comparable to what Tom Savini fought tooth and nail to keep with a R-rating in his 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead and some of the ghastliness even broached Day of the Dead territory. Courtesy of KNB's Greg Nicotero (a Day of the Dead vet), we saw a rotted zombie with its lower half gone crawling across the ground dragging its entrails. We saw a horse ripped open by a zombie horde and its intestines pulled out. We saw multiple gunshots to the head. And it was all right there on American Movie Classics.

Of course, The Walking Dead is about more than gore (just as Romero's films have always been). With Oscar-winning writer/director Frank Darabont running the show, this is prestige television - the kind of series that will probably win Emmys and all that. On a strictly technical level, it's good. Acting, writing, directing, music, special effects - it's all well above average. But something about the comic has bothered me from the start and it's hard not to carry that over to how I feel about the show. I don't see the comic as being innovative or imaginative. Or even the least bit original. To me, it's like Romero paved the highway and Kirkman is just driving on it.

Romero's latest films regularly get dumped on but while I think some of the criticism is warranted, I like the fact that Romero is still being quirky with his zombies. He's bending the familiar rules, tweaking convention. He could be giving the fans exactly what they want (and be getting a lot less grief) but I get the feeling that's boring to him. He's just not that calculating while Kirkman, I get the impression, is.

Romero approaches his zombie films as a way to keep telling stories that interest him (even if they might not interest anyone else) while Kirkman is shrewdly shepherding a franchise. That's not to say that Kirkman doesn't care about the stories he's telling but whatever paths The Walking Dead might take, whether it goes for ten more issues or two hundred, I expect it's always going to stick to pretty conventional developments (for instance, I bet it didn't take the book long to make the Romero-esque point that people are more of a threat to each other than the zombies are).

I'd be more ok with The Walking Dead if it had just been a miniseries, that Kirkman wanted to get his fanboy rocks off by playing in that sand box and then move on to something more original. But no, this is going to be his cash cow for a long time to come. I don't go into Hot Topic but I'm guessing if there isn't Walking Dead merchandise for sale there yet, there will be. It's also inevitable that there'll be a Walking Dead feature film at some point. And in the meantime, Romero will still be making zombie movies for peanuts - that is if he's still making movies at all.

That Darabont can shape Kirkman's work into good television is likely. So far, the reaction to The Walking Dead has been almost unanimously positive. That's fair. I think there were several moments to savor in the premiere episode. It's a well-produced zombie show that treats the genre seriously so there's no reason not to approve of it, even celebrate it. But I reserve the right to be a troll instead.

Trick Or Treat With The Nightbreed

Around Halloween time, the classic monsters always get lots of love - as it should be. Good luck finding a horror movie marathon that doesn't feature Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, The Wolfman, The Mummy, or newer boogeymen like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. But what about the monsters of Midian?

Based on his novella, Cabal, Nightbreed was Clive Barker's second film as writer/director after his impressive debut with 1987's Hellraiser. Given the quality of Hellraiser, anticipation was high for Nightbreed, a film that was promised by Barker to be the "Star Wars of horror films," and the start of a planned trilogy. Unfortunately, whether it was a case of Barker's ambition not matching his talent this time around or whether heavy interference from the execs at Morgan Creek derailed his plans (or whether a combination of both is to blame), Nightbreed was greeted derisively as being more Howard the Duck than Star Wars when it came to theaters in 1990.

After all the build-up, the movie was a crushing disappointment. It opens wonderfully with the title scrolling slowly across the screen, containing fleeting glimpses of the film's menagerie of monsters. After that, it was pretty much all downhill, save for its astonishing array of night creatures. It's true that Morgan Creek badly fumbled the marketing for the film (making it look like a slasher pic and recycling the posters for 1988's Bad Dreams) but it has to be said that the film itself has issues. Some of those issues might've been minimized had the original, longer cut of the film seen the light of day or maybe not (hopefully one day fans will get a chance to judge that longer cut for themselves) but as is, Nightbreed is a frustrating film - bursting with imagery and ideas but dramatically unsatisfying.

Despite all its faults, though, I can't help but hold some affection for Nightbreed. When it first came to VHS, distributor Media Home Entertainment graciously allowed Barker to deliver an intro to the film (embedded below) that is endearing in its sincerity. The horror genre is filled with hacks looking to make a quick buck but Barker is a true believer, out to preach the gospel. You'd never see the directors behind movies like the Nightmare on Elm Street remake or Piranha 3-D making such an earnest, heartfelt plea on behalf of their films as Barker does here ("I hope the Breed will remain with you, as they remain with me."). It makes you want to give the guy a hug or something.

Sadly, Nightbreed isn't the classic that fans had initially hoped it would be. In fact, it just isn't very good. But a movie with this many monsters (and David Cronenberg as a killer in a button-eyed, zipper-mouthed mask) shouldn't be forgotten. Especially not on Halloween.

A New Stab At Halloween

This Halloween, I decided to do something really novel - watch Halloween. Yes, that Halloween. I know it's traditional to watch John Carpenter's classic at this time of year, what with it being the Halloween season and all but I usually forgo it. I mean, it's just too easy. I always feel that horror fans should dig a little deeper for their scare fare - even if it's just a little deeper into the Halloween franchise.

That used to mean reaching for Halloween III: Season of the Witch but in recent years even that once-reviled title has become a favored seasonal staple among fans. With little place left to go for hidden gems in the franchise - and believe me, I've even tried (and thankfully failed) to get on board with Halloween: Resurrection - I decided to stop making my life needlessly difficult and get back to the original for the first time in, well, I don't know how long.

I couldn't tell you what year it was when I last watched Halloween (somewhere in the mid-'90s) but I'll never forget that I first watched it in 1981 on its broadcast premiere on NBC. It was this showing right here:



In 1981, Halloween was part of recent history. Now it's older to today's kids than 1951's The Thing from Another World and 1956's Forbidden Planet were to Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace in 1978. What I'm saying, basically, is that Halloween is fucking old. Far older than even seems possible. But then I see Jamie Lee Curtis on TV hawking yogurt to help mature ladies like herself poop properly and I'm like, yeah, a lot of time has gone by. Totally.

It's sometimes hard to find new things to notice, even in great movies, once you've seen them so many times but on this latest viewing of Halloween, one moment in particular caught my attention. At the end of the opening shot, after Michael is unmasked, his parents just stand there as the camera pulls back. His mother even calmly puts her hands in her coat pockets - talk about keeping a cool head!

Normally, when parents discover their six year old son holding a bloody butcher knife, some immediate action is called for. Taking the knife out of his hand, running to the house to see who - if anyone - was injured, that kind of thing. But Carpenter had his actors hold their positions as the camera pulls up and away from the scene.

Up front, Carpenter is telling us that he isn't interested in depicting reality. This isn't cinema vérité - it's a fantasy, a fairy tale. This archly artificial composition makes all the subsequent leaps we have to take in the rest of the movie possible. It signals the difference between a movie where we're listening to Donald Pleasence as the voice of reason rather than Simon Oakland. By the end of the film, Dr. Loomis' crazy talk has been proven 100% right and that Michael really is the boogeyman but from the start, Carpenter has put us in a heightened, subtly stylized world where that conclusion fits without question.

Another shot I've seen dozens of times but only now perceived something different about is the sight of Annie's body on the Wallace's bed with Judith Myers' grave.

This is an iconic image and yet it only registered with me on this latest viewing that not only did Michael pose Annie on the bed and not only did he display Judith's stolen headstone but before all that the sick freak made the bed. After all, this is the same bed where Lynda and Bob just contentedly fucked.

The simple explanation as to why Michael would do this is that Carpenter just thought the shot would look better that way. That's the pragmatic answer. However, this is a movie that Carpenter himself as described as about "the revenge of the repressed." Laurie, Michael - and even possibly Loomis himself - all have issues along these lines. Michael, especially, is not cool at all with the idea of sex.

Given that, it isn't such a stretch to regard that well-made bed as being symbolic of his severe pathology. What says "repressed" more than a killer that displays a corpse but is first compelled to smooth over all evidence of other "dirty" deeds?

In regards to Laurie, Halloween's repressed heroine, it occurred to me during this viewing how different this character was from the other horror movie roles that Jamie Lee Curtis went on to play. It's commonly assumed that Curtis portrayed the same "good girl" in Prom Night and Terror Train, that she lived in both of those films because of her character's pure virtue. When Scream came out, part of the slasher "rules" that scripter Kevin Williamson made such a big deal about was that the virgin always lives but both Kim (Prom Night) and Alana (Terror Train) had far more in common with the extroverted Annie and Lynda than with the shy Laurie (just try to imagine Laurie doing a provocative disco dance in front of her high school classmates - hell, she'd have to be hypnotized to accomplish that).

These characters were outgoing (bordering on vivacious), popular, and had steady boyfriends. Clearly they were not wallflowers in the Laurie Strode mold. So without getting lewd or making crass accusations, I'll just say that I think that the cliché of the virginal heroine was broken early on in the slasher cycle and that slasher history, in this particular instance, may need some amending.

In no need of amending, though, is Halloween's prized reputation. It's an easy movie to take for granted (even for those of us old enough to remember a time before Halloween) but seeing it again has given me a renewed appreciation for the consummate skill that Carpenter and co. brought to what in lesser hands would've just been a movie about a thug with a knife instead of a movie that defined horror for a generation. It's so good, I think I'll watch it again next Halloween.

Saw 3-D: The Most 3-D Saw Of Them All!

Is anyone really going to miss it when there isn't a new Saw film taking up valuable theater space next year? While there might be a few diehards out there who'll feel empty inside next October when it's the first Halloween in seven years without Jigsaw, I think Saw 3-D makes it pretty clear that this series is creatively spent. Then again, when has that ever stopped a horror franchise before?

Briefly slated as the director of Paranormal Activity 2 before Lionsgate jerked him back to Saw duty on a contractual matter, Kevin Greutert again proves himself to be one of the series' best directors. That he doesn't deliver as strong a film as he did with last year's Saw VI comes down to the screenplay. Saw VI, arguably the best film of the entire series, was the first Saw to really tell a truly interesting revenge yarn. Saw 3-D, on the other hand, unwisely splits its time between a wrap up of the series' loose ends and a new storyline involving a survivor from a previous Jigsaw attack.

Dealing with the murderous mission of Jigsaw's successor, Det. Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), as he aims to settle his score with Jigsaw's widow Jill (Betsy Russell) should've been enough of a story for this final installment. Instead, scripters Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton (on board the series since Saw IV) make that the film's B-plot while the main story is about Bobby Dagen (Sean Patrick Flannery), a "reborn" Jigsaw survivor who has exploited his trauma for fame and fortune as a self-help guru. This storyline, while involving some of the series' most sadistic traps, is an ill-fit for the series' finale. All the attention paid to Bobby and his entourage makes the Hoffman and Jill material feel squeezed in rather than being the center of this final chapter.

Bringing things full circle, Cary Elwes is back as Dr. Gordon, appearing in limited - but crucial - capacity. Sadly, though, it seems that the creative team finally ran out of ways to involve Tobin Bell (understandable, as his character's been dead for the past four movies) so Saw 3-D gives him the least screen time he's had in any of the sequels - just one measly flashback. Bell always elevated any scene he was in so to have him absent from almost the entirety of Saw 3-D can't help but put the movie at a disadvantage. It's just one more sign that it's time to retire the series.

Then again, I think the series has been nonsense from the get-go. All the tedious moralizing, the half-assed philosophizing, the elaborate traps that would take a team of top engineers to build and implement, the exhaustive research into each victim's back story (call me old-fashioned but I like my slashers to be territorial guys - if you wander into Crystal Lake, or check in to the Bates Motel, or knock on the door of the Sawyer clan's house for gas, you're done) - all of it is asinine. What made Saw tolerable was the conviction that Tobin Bell brought to his role. He was able to sell Jigsaw, no matter how absurd the character's actions and motivations were. With no substantial screen time for him this time around, the movie doesn't have a strong anchor.

That leaves only the gore to carry the day and in true Saw fashion, Saw 3-D does not pull any punches. The 3-D is not an afterthought here - all the traps are designed to take advantage of the process. During the course of Saw 3-D, you see: a woman's midsection buzz sawed, a man ripping the skin off his back while trying to extricate himself from the seat that he's been superglued to, a car wheel turning a woman's head to mush, a man's lower jaw ripped off, a woman impaled through both eyes with metal spikes, a woman burned to death, someone's face torn wide open with the bear-trap mask from Saw, and, well...there's plenty more but you get the idea. And let me tell you, there's barely a cutaway to be found in any of these scenes - it's full-on gore. I'm calling bullshit right now on that whole unrated thing with Hatchet II. If Hatchet II was any more graphic than Saw 3-D, then it could've stood a trim or two and still been effective. This really is about as nasty as a movie needs to be.

The thing is, though, when I sat in the theater watching Paranormal Activity 2 last week, the audience was greeting the events on screen with gasps, whispers, and top of their lungs screams. At Saw 3-D, I only felt boredom from the crowd - as though they were only there out of a weary sense of obligation. Save for some morbid laughs directed at the misfortunes on screen, the audience was aloof and unaffected. Game over.

10 Favorite 2's

Coming of age as a horror fan in the '80s meant that I saw all the horror sequels I could handle (while wishing there had been a few more - come on, why was there never a My Bloody Valentine 2?). A lot of fans lament the preponderance of sequels but I think they're fun and it's easy enough for me to ignore the bad ones. With Paranormal Activity 2 in theaters now, reminding fans that not all sequels are a plague on the genre, I thought I'd give a shout-out to ten of my favorite follow-ups.

In no particular order:

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

The last hurrah for unrated horror in the '80s, with Tom Savini serving up the splatter on one of his last big FX gigs. The movie feels incredibly haphazard - due to the rushed production schedule imposed on Tobe Hooper by Cannon Films - but it's that frantic atmosphere that helps TCM 2 rank as one of the most genuinely unhinged horror films of the '80s. It's been said of the original TCM that when it came to the Sawyer clan, the performances were so convincing it was as though Hooper had found real-life psychos to be in the movie and I think that Bill Moseley achieves that same quality in TCM 2 with his performance as Chop-Top. You can almost feel the madness radiating off of him.

Amityville II: The Possession (1982)

Now this is some real paranormal activity! In telling the bleak tale of the family that preceded the Lutz Family at 112 Ocean Avenue, Long Island, Amityville II: The Possession ramps up the scares considerably from the tepid original. The special effects are nastier (in true early '80s fashion, bladder FX are given a major workout) and the whole tone is seedier. Amityville II's script was penned by Tommy Lee Wallace, who would shortly go on to direct Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and I think it's about time that Wallace that was given more credit as a horror hero in his own right. He's always in John Carpenter's shadow because he worked as a production designer and editor on Halloween and The Fog but, hey, he wrote this movie, wrote and directed Season of the Witch (a movie that gets more fans behind it every year), and directed the ABC miniseries IT. Amityville, Silver Shamrock and Pennywise - I call that a damn strong resume!

Creepshow 2 (1987)

I'll admit - I didn't like Creepshow 2 at first. In fact, I wanted to walk out when I saw it in the theaters. From the start, it was clear that issue #2 of Creepshow was a pretty low rent affair in comparison to the stylishness of Romero's original. Everything about it looked a little half-assed (although Ol' Chief Wooden Head is an impressive creation). But yet, over the years it's crept into my affections. How that happened, I don't know. The movie hasn't gotten any better, that's for sure. But yet that last segment, "The Hitchhiker," kind of makes it all worthwhile. Thanks for the ride, Creepshow 2!

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

I'm not quite willing to call this a better film than the original Hellraiser but I do dig it just a little more. When horror was going soft in the late '80s, the first two Hellraisers were as bloody and extreme as the MPAA would allow. It felt like these were made exclusively for the hardcore fans - there was nothing about them that catered to the mainstream crowd. There were horror movies, red, raw and dripping. What I really love about Hellbound, looking back on it today, is that it's so filled to the brim with old-school FX. This utilizes all the pre-CGI tricks - prosthetic make-up, stop-motion animation, optical FX, matte paintings. You look at this movie and it screams "late '80s" but in a great way. It makes me nostalgic for the way movies used to be made.

Phantasm II (1988)

In 1988, this was the movie of the summer for me. Unfortunately, not many other people felt the same excitement and Phantasm II's weak box office performance made sure that this was the last of the Tall Man on the big screen. Writer/director Don Coscarelli did an outstanding job here, though, putting his bigger budget to good use. The stunts, the action, the FX - it all looked incredible. And while some fans missed Michael Baldwin as Mike, I really liked his replacement, James LeGros. I thought he and Reggie Bannister had a winning comic chemistry that was missing when Baldwin returned as Mike for Phantasms III and IV.

Aliens (1986)

It's popular to give James Cameron shit nowadays because he keeps on making the biggest movies of all time but I continue to love his stuff. And even if I didn't, I would still give him a pass for life just based on this movie. The experience of watching Aliens in the theaters back in the summer of '86 was about as thrilling as they come. Composer James Horner's rousing score has become one of the most familiar in film - thanks to being utilized in countless movie trailers in the years since - but to hear it for the first time here, in tandem with Cameron's taut direction, was an unforgettable adrenaline rush. It's default thing to have women be bad-asses in movies and TV shows these days - it's become a tired cliche of its own - but few actresses carry it off as well as Sigourney Weaver did.

Evil Dead II (1987)

Even though I was a devout reader of Fangoria and Cinefantastique back in the day, when I saw Evil Dead II on the day it came out, I was totally blind-sided by the fact that it was a comedy. Nowhere in any of the on-set interviews that Raimi and co. gave, did they ever mention that they had decided to go completely bat shit with their follow-up. But that's what they did - in a very skilled way, of course. This wasn't some sloppy farce, it was some of the most meticulous movie making that had ever graced a low budget horror movie.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

When fans and critics talk about the greatest sequels in horror, Bride of Frankenstein is usually cited as the best of the best and I've got no problem with that. Personally, though, I've got to give it up for Dawn of the Dead. What a total leap this movie was for Romero and for the genre. Going from the black and white, claustrophobic Night of the Living Dead to the gaudy, satirical splatter-fest of Dawn was a colossal feat on Romero's part. No one could've seen this one coming. Hell, "splatter" wasn't even in the horror vocabulary before Romero himself coined it to describe this film. For years, this had the reputation as the ultimate horror film and, to me, it's still right up at the top.

Psycho II (1983)

As a two decade's later sequel to one of the greatest horror movies of all time, Psycho II had "fail" written all over it. But yet, in the hands of director Richard Franklin and writer Tom Holland - and with Anthony Perkins reprising his most famous role - Psycho II was a success on every level. It pulled in all the iconography of the original film, celebrating Hitchcock's masterpiece, while creating some iconic moments of its own.




Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Bag head Jason forever! When I think of my favorite Part II's, this the first one that always comes to mind. Steve Miner's follow-up to the smash success of Sean Cunningham's original single-handedly forged the future of the Friday franchise. For good or bad, we're still talking about Friday the 13th today because of the choices Miner made here. Had he not decided to stick with the slasher formula of the first film (Cunningham's notion was to make the Friday the 13th name an umbrella title for telling different horror stories - much like was later attempted with the Halloween series) and had he not decided to make Jason the killer (a move not logically supported by the events of the first film, and a creative choice that led Tom Savini to do the FX for The Burning instead of Part 2), Friday the 13th might've been a one-off success rather than becoming one of horror's biggest brand names.

Paranormal Activity 2

A few weeks ago, Hatchet II came out with a big push among the internet horror community to "support unrated horror." Personally, I think supporting scary horror sounds like a better way to go so I'm throwing my endorsement behind Paranormal Activity 2, one of the scariest horror movies to come along since, well, Paranormal Activity.

A common refrain among the positive reviews for this sequel is "I didn't expect this to be any good, but..." and I've got to say the same. Upfront, this movie had a very high likelihood to suck. The idea of a quick, cash-grab sequel to an out-of-nowhere indie hit reeked too much of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000), a movie justly regarded as an instant franchise-killer and just a shit movie altogether. Happily, the team behind Paranormal Activity 2 are clearly a smart bunch who aimed to not repeat the mistakes of that film.

Original PA director, Oren Peli, returned as a producer and the new film's director Tod Williams (The Door In The Floor) and screenwriter Michael R. Perry (a TV writer who contributed to such '90s series as Millennium and Freakylinks) have proved to be completely in synch with the aesthetic established by Peli in the first film. The difference between the two films, from a production standpoint, is virtually imperceptible. Whatever minimal jump up in budget this sequel had has allowed children and dogs to be incorporated into the mix (child and animal actors being wild card factors that a low budget film would usually want to avoid) but other than that, Paranormal Activity 2 uses the same low tech cinematic tools found in the original.

As with Peli's film, Paranormal Activity 2 again demonstrates how effective the simplest scares are if they're executed the right way. A slamming door or a child's mobile moving on its own can be hair-raising if it's part of a story that the audience is engaged in. While some viewers will carp - as they did with Blair Witch - that there's nothing scary about these movies because they aren't explicit, it's heartening to me that so many people have embraced them. It's a sign that everyone isn't completely numb to the old-school appeal of things that go bump in the night.

The story of PA 2, admirably kept under wrap right up until its release, is more of a prequel than a sequel. Rather than focusing on just a tormented couple, here it's a married couple, along with their teen daughter from the father's previous marriage and a new baby that's just being brought home as the film begins. For those who found Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston to be an unlikeable pair, the family at the heart of PA 2 might be more appealing. I understood how Sloat's character rubbed people the wrong way - by design, he was generally a complete ass. But whether the filmmakers were deliberately responding to audience criticism of the first film or not, the family that PA 2 focuses on is extremely likable - even the teenage daughter, a character that would usually be a source of annoyance.

Just to note - once again, we're dealing with people that live well outside the income range of most Americans (this family has enough bread to have a live-in nanny) but outside of making me wonder why horror has inexplicably gotten away from depicting working class, or even middle-class, characters, I have to concede that the actors here are able to sell their characters as accessible, down-to-earth people.

In seeing how effortlessly PA 2 gets us involved with its well-off characters, I flashed back on William Friedkin's botched return to horror, The Guardian (1990). With Friedkin's film, one of the reasons why it didn't work was that as soon as you have a family rich enough to be hiring nannies, it's hard for everyone across the board to naturally empathize with them. These aren't the people next door.

At the time of The Guardian's release, Friedkin stated that horror doesn't work unless it's a blue collar thing and I guess he thought his characters were close enough to qualify as working stiffs but they didn't and Friedkin didn't find a way to make their troubles relatable. PA 2 doesn't have that problem. I'd be very surprised to read even negative reviews of PA 2 that cite the cast as a detriment to the movie.

The escalation of events in PA 2 and how things line up with the original is best left for audiences to discover on their own. I will say I was surprised at how gracefully it all came together, especially for a film that likely involved as much improvisation as this - and that was under the gun to be made quickly, to boot. A lot of films and TV shows today are all about building a mythology and that's something that usually puts me off as it seldom feels like organic storytelling. Here, though, I'd almost be willing to believe that Peli had it all planned from the start.

Speaking of Peli, I've got to say how much I like the fact that I know so little about him. Over the last decade or so, there's been a rise of horror filmmakers who've made a career out of working the horror community. Above whatever other skills they might have, they're experts at selling themselves to the horror fanbase. They say all the right things in interviews (fans eat it up like dogs if they think a filmmaker is speaking their language) and they're tight with all the right people within the online press. Basically, their thing is that they're "one of us." And that would be fine - if their movies were better. In light of that, I find it refreshing - and telling - that Peli doesn't pander at all to the fan community (I can't even recall reading a single interview with him in Fango or Rue Morgue) and yet he makes movies that are actually scary. Which, to my mind, is what someone who really knows horror ought to be doing. Call me crazy.

As you might expect, the ending of PA 2 is left open for a sequel (although off-hand I can't think of too many horror movies that don't naturally allow for a sequel). I'm not sure if I want to see the story continue but then again, I said the same thing after the first film. Whether they go ahead with a third installment or not, PA 1 and 2 can be safely regarded as one of the best one-two punches in horror history.

The Most Fun You'll Ever Have Being Scared

Commercially, Creepshow was something of a minor miscalculation back in 1982. Sure, upfront it looked like the safest bet that anyone had ever made. Bringing together George Romero and Stephen King at their respective peaks? With splatter superstar Tom Savini supplying the FX? How does that NOT add up to the biggest horror movie ever? It wasn't for nothing that Cinefantastique's Creepshow cover story (in their Sept-Oct '82 issue) posed these three titans of terror together and asked the rhetorical question: "Are These The Scariest Men in America?"

But while the $8 million dollar movie (Romero's biggest budget to date) went on to do respectable business (making close to $20 million in the US), it didn't go through the roof. You'd think that horror fans would've been stampeding theaters to support this collaboration but perhaps they did and that just wasn't enough. The wider audience was soft on Creepshow, for some reason. And I think it comes down to the fact that Creepshow was all about paying homage to something that was before the time of the young audience of the early '80s.

Anthologies have always been a tough sell to begin with but Creepshow was also out to celebrate a series of comic books from the 1950s that were unknown to most of the under-21 crowd. The grisly lore of E.C. Comics hadn't made its re-introduction to the popular culture yet (that would have to wait until the debut of the HBO Tales from the Crypt show in 1989) so in wearing its influences on its sleeve, Creepshow came across as a big "huh?" for a lot of people.

Romero was definitely onto something when he said in a Cinefantastique interview in the magazine's April '82 double issue, months before Creepshow's release, that "I don't have a lot of faith in audiences anymore. It seems that if something doesn't click into immediate recognition nobody wants to figure it out or understand it." That's a pretty dead-on description of the initial reception of Creepshow. Unfortunately, this was supposed to be the film that would give Romero and King the chance to prove their box office mettle and give them the clout to do a theatrical version of The Stand. That a Romero-directed Stand never came to be may not be entirely due to the box office performance of Creepshow but had Creepshow been a hit on the level of Dawn of the Dead, rather than quietly coming and going from theaters in the fall of '82, you never know what might've happened.

While Creepshow may have only turned a few heads in theaters, today it's regarded as one of the most well-loved horror films of the '80s. For myself, this was the first R-rated horror movie I was able to convince my mother to take me to so it'll always have a special place in my heart. I had never anticipated a horror film with so much excitement before and despite my mother's reluctance to have anything to do with Creepshow, I was determined not to miss it (this was before our household had either cable or a VCR so if I missed Creepshow in the theaters, I was screwed). About a month prior to seeing the movie, I asked my mother to buy me the Berni Wrightson-illustrated adaptation and I read that thing to death in the weeks before Creepshow came out.

Creepshow has a vibe to it that never fails to pull me in. The movie is so amiable and so imbued with a good time spirit that it overrides any serious critical thoughts. With its replication of a comic book's visuals, it's the most meticulously designed film of Romero's career and it's sadly the last time he was able to have that killer combo of money and artistic freedom. Everything since then for him has been a little compromised in one respect or the other so that makes Creepshow really something to appreciate. If you're a horror fan, you've got to know it like the back of your hand. It's practically a law.

You can't do E.C. right without a moldy corpse crawling out of its grave and "Father's Day" brought it right out of the gate. People always talk about the hallway murder in Exorcist III as being a classic jump scare and, yeah, it is but that rotting hand jutting up into the frame in "Father's Day" as Nathan Grantham bursts out of the ground really does it for me. "Father's Day" showed me that just because I had read the comic adaptation, I was still going to be startled plenty by this movie. Oh, and how can you not love the disco stylings of "Don't Let Go"?

Reading the Wrighton adaptation made it difficult for me to immediately appreciate this segment as the sometimes-goofy looking FX work (no fault on Savini's part - it was just a hard order to fill for 1982) couldn't compare with the nastiness of Wrightson's illustrations. The adaptation played more heavily like a tragedy but the laughs of "Jordy Verill" are essential to the Creepshow experience. Stephen King plays the part of Jordy Verill so broadly that it ought to be a liability but his performance works and when anyone ever busts out quotes from Creepshow, it's usually this segment that they quote from first ("Meteor Shit!").

Having a phobia about the ocean and drowning, the early part of "Something To Tide You Over" is always uncomfortable for me to watch as Ted Danson and Gaylen Ross meet their watery demises. But Leslie Nielsen makes a terrific villain, born to smugly gloat, and all these years later, it's a kick to check out his character's once high-tech, but now primitive, home video equipment. Some might say that two segments about people coming back from the dead is too much for one movie but Savini's work on the wrinkled, water-logged ghouls is so good, it'd be wrong to complain. "Something To Tide You Over" also boasts my favorite score of all five segments.

When I saw Creepshow in the theaters, "The Crate" is the segment that sent my mom and my step-sister hauling ass out to the lobby. When the crate monster made a meal of Mike the janitor, they were out of there. They crept back in eventually but seeing all that blood as Mike was sucked into the crate was just too much. This is arguably Creepshow's best segment, thanks to Adrienne Barbeau heroically tearing into the role of the despicable, shrewish Wilma ("Just call me Billy!"). Every hateful expression she makes is gold.

Creepshow's most famous segment. The tale of a virulent bigot and manic bug-o-phobe who gets his (and then some) during a city-wide blackout, "They're Creeping Up On You" remains a tight little masterpiece of creepy-crawly terror with E.G. Marshall topping Creepshow's preceding portrayals of evil shit-heads with his performance as the wealthy, reclusive Upston Pratt, a man who missed his true calling as a rightwing talk show host. The final scene, as we see where all those bugs have got to, ranks as one of the great gross-outs of all time.

I wouldn't say that Creepshow is my favorite horror movie but yet whenever I rewatch these "jolting tales of horror," it somehow feels like it should be. It's definitely my go-to horror movie for the Halloween season. John Harrison's magnificent, goosebump-inducing score alone makes it choice Halloween viewing ('82 was a damn good year for horror soundtracks, between this and Jerry Goldsmith's Poltergeist score). And hell, I just realized that I've been talking about Creepshow all this time and I haven't even gotten around to saying anything about Tom Atkins as Stan, the comic-hating, asshole dad.

That's how great Creepshow is - you can talk about it forever and almost forget to mention that Tom Atkins is in it. Most movies, that would have to be the first thing you mention, just to keep people from walking away. But that's Creepshow for you.

It's a classic.