In a perfect world, Creepshow 2 would be even better than the original. But sadly, the world is not perfect and we often have to make due with what we have.

Directed by Michael Gornick, who was the cinematographer for Romero’s Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, Day of the Dead and the original Creepshow, this follow-up is based once again on King stories (but screenwritten by Romero).

Creepshow 2 was originally going to be five stories (Pinfall and Cat from Hell went unfilmed, although Cat does appear in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie), but a lower budget forced the film to only include three tales.

PInfall was to be about the rivalry between two bowling teams with one coming back from the dead to kill the other. It reminds me a lot of the story in Haunt of Fear #19, Foul Play!

Instead of what wasn’t filmed, let’s get into what was: In Dexter, Maine, a delivery truck pulls up and drops off the latest issue of Creepshow, with the driver being the Creep himself!

In Old Chief Wood’nhead, an elderly couple named Ray and Martha Spruce (George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour in her last role) live in an old town on its last legs. No one in town has money and soon, the store they own — and their lives — will fade away, too. Chief Whitemoon comes to visit and gives them sacred jewelry to pay back his debt. It’s not money, but the thought is what counts.

As the wise old man leaves, the wooden Indian that stands guard in the store nods to him, which frightens him. It foreshadows what happens next, as that night, the chief’s nephew Sam and his gang rob the store and kill the kindly old couple. Their blood splashes all over the old wooden chief as they depart with the stolen sacred jewels.

The gang plans to go to Hollywood, where Sam thinks his long hair will make him a star. But he and his entire gang are killed, with their scalps and the jewelry left for the old chief.

In The Raft, four teens (one of them is Page Hannah, the sister of Daryl and all of the characters share the surname of the actor playing them) try to go swimming but have to contend with a black blob that wants to kill them all. Again — this is an incredibly simple tale told well. I’d say it’s the highlight of the film, but the more I write about these, the more I remember how much I truly enjoy this movie.

Finally, The Hitchhiker concerns a businesswoman who is trying to get home from a tryst with her lover before her husband notices. Along the way, she hits a man who keeps coming back. And coming back. And coming back. Again, simple idea, but told really well. Ironically, the hitchhiker is played by Tom Wright, who played the civil rights activist who comes back from the head in Tales from the Hood. It’s an amazingly similar role! Even stranger is that Barbara Eden was to play the woman before her mother’s illness caused her to drop out.

Ed French was the original effects guy for this, but got upset when director Gornick asked Howard Berger for advice, as he wasn’t happy with the look of the creature in The Raft. Greg Nicotero and Berger ended up finishing the movie and they enlisted Tom Savini to play The Creep.

Creepshow 2 doesn’t have the gloss of the original. That doesn’t make it a horrible movie. But the original sets a bar that’s incredibly high.

Now that I think about it, there are some great moments in this film. It’s worth checking out. Diabolik DVD has the Arrow blu-ray, which has some gorgeous packaging. Fright Rags has you covered with an entire series of t-shirts and pins for the movie! And Waxworks Records has you covered with the soundtrack!

We’ve been watching so many animated movies lately. And the truth is, so many of them blow away real movies. This movie wrecked us. It’s one of the most emotional journeys I’ve seen in some time and that’s no exaggeration.

Based on an original idea by Lee Unkrich (who directed Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo) and co-directed by him and Adrian Molina (a Pixar storyboard artist who was directing his first film), Coco is all about a 12-year-old Mexican child named Miguel. He dreams of being a musician while the rest of his family is content to make shoes and wonders why he should care so much about his family history as the Day of the Dead draws near.

Miguel figures out that Ernesto de la Cruz (voiced by Benjamin Bratt when he speaks and Antonio Sol when he sings) is his great-grandfather whose leaving the family made everyone hate music. He steals the revered man’s guitar and runs to the plaza to enter a talent contest. However, he has crossed over to the land of the dead and must now reconnect with the relatives he never wanted to know about, earn the respect of his great-grandfather and get back to our world before the sun rises.

Along with the con artist Héctor, who is being forgotten by his family in our world, Miguel will learn the truth about his family, his culture and the music that he loves. I don’t really want to spoil much more than that — this movie was pure joy from start to finish.

This film took six years to make — much longer than other Pixar movies. You can really see the care on the bonus features, where we learn about the inspiration for Dante, the Xoloitzcuintli dog.

Coco also features many Mexican celebrities, including El Santo, Cantinflas, Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Emiliano Zapata, María Félix and painter Frida Kahlo, who saved the Xolo dog breed along with her husband, Diego Rivera. Dante is also inspired by that. Director Lee Unkrich claims that there are more celebrities hidden within the land of the dead, too.

Boasting a cast rich with authentic latino voices, the lone exception is John Ratzenberger, Pixar’s good-luck charm, who has been in every one of their films. Here, he plays a skeleton whose dentist remembers him in the living world.

What really struck me was the gorgeous near-realism of the animation, which contrasted with the cartoony elements. This is the first time that I’ve felt that computerized animation is on a par with the traditional cel era.

This is a bit rough for kids in parts, but ten-year-olds or older should be able to handle it. It comes to Netflix on May 29, so get ready to check it out. And grab some tissues. We cried from start to finish.

Sometimes, a movie is so perfect that you can’t objectively discuss it. Creepshow is that kind of movie — a perfect combination of portmanteau, E.C. comics, goopy special effects and gross-out humor. It’s also the perfect melding of some of the greatest talents in horror — George Romero, Tom Savini, Bernie Wrightson and Stephen King.

This film is King’s screenwriting debut and consists of five short stories (two based on King stories) and a framing element where Billy (played by King’s son Joe Hill) fights with his father (Tom Atkins!) over his horror comics. Soon, the Creep himself comes to his window, asking Billy to come closer as he transforms from a practical effect (that uses a real human skeleton) to animation (done by Pittsburgh-based group The Animators, who also did the Tom Petty video for “Running Down a Dream”).

In the first story, Father’s Day, Nathan Grantham is the old man of the family, rich from a life of murder, fraud and extortion. Finally, on Father’s Day, his long-suffering daughter Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors, A Bell from Hell)  finally rises up against a lifetime of abuse and torture (he even killed the only man she ever loved) and kills him.

Every year on Father’s Day, his family gathers to celebrate his life. And by that, I mean that they talk about how much they hated him. There’s Sylvia (Carrie Nye, wife of Dick Cavett), Richard, Cass and Cass’s husband Hank (Ed Harris, showing up in another Romero film after his star turn in Knightriders).

Bedelia is late, but she has to stop at the cemetery and see the grave. She’s drunk — again — and spills her whiskey all over the headstone, which brings her horrible father back from the dead. One by one, he wipes out his family, all while screaming for his Father’s Day cake. Well, he gets it.

Some minor trivia here — Nathan’s corpse is played by John Amplas, who is a noted theater teacher in Pittsburgh. However, you may know him better as the title protagonist of Romero’s classic Martin.

Up next, The Lonesome Death of Jody Verrill is nearly a one-man show for King. Based on his story Weeds, it’s a Lovecraftian tale (think The Colour Out of Space) of a meteor destroying a simple man. It also has some great old WWWF footage and an appearance by Pittsburgh stage legend Bingo O’Malley.

Something to Tide You Over is a very E.C. Comics story, where a wife (Gaylen Ross) and her lover (Ted Danson from TV’s Cheers) finally get caught by her husband (Leslie Nielsen in a rare villainous role). It’s a simple story told well with incredible effects from Savini, as instead of just zombies, he creates seaweed and salt water damaged undead monsters.

The Crate is the real crowd pleaser of the film and is based on the King short story of the same name. Between Hal Holbrook, Fritz Weaver and Adrienne Barbeau, it’s packed with star power. And the actual beast inside the crate is a Savini tour de force, a perfect monster. There’s also a cameo by Romero’s ex-wife, Christine Forrest.

Finally, in They’re Creeping Up on You, E.G. Marshall rules the screen as Upson Pratt, a Howard Hughes-like man who lives in a sealed apartment because he’s deathly afraid of insects. As in any E.C. Comics story, what you fear the most is what will destroy you.

There’s an interesting object that keeps showing up throughout the film — a marble ashtray that shows up in nearly every scene. It’s the one used to kill Nathan in the first story, but it keeps reappearing. Is it the Loc-Nar of Creepshow?

If you’re from Pittsburgh, Creepshow is a tour of home. There’s an abandoned girl’s school in Greensburg that was used for the majority of the shoot, as well as Carnegie Mellon University, Romero’s own backyard in Shadyside and a mansion in Fox Chapel. The only non-Pittsburgh setting was a New Jersey beach for the drowning scenes.

Soon after the film was released, a comic book adaption was released, with art by comic legend Bernie Wrightson. It was a prize possession of mine throughout my teen years and I dog-ear read it, nearly tearing off the cover.

The prop comic in the film was actually created by E.C. Comics vet Jack Kamen, as was the poster for the film. King had wanted “Ghastly” Graham Ingels, but he refused and Kamen was recommended by former E.C. owner (and publisher of MAD) William M. Gaines.

People love this film. There’s a Creepshow Museum dedicated to the movie that’s packed with replicas, posters and autographs from the stars of the film. And there’s a ton of merch for the film — Fright Rags has released numerous t-shirts; I’ve worn out this one from Pizza Party Printing; Horror Merch Store has masks of Fluffy from The Crate and Nate, as well as the soundtrack; and there’s even action figures of Nate, Harry and Becky (from Something to Tide You Over) from AmokTime!

Synapse Films even released Just Desserts, a making-of film that has interviews with nearly everyone involved that you can find right here.

Creepshow truly is the most fun you’ll ever have being scared. It was followed by two sequels of diminishing quality, but it’s held up for over thirty years. It’s a movie I bring out and watch at least once a year. And now that Shudder is celebrating featuring Stephen King movies on their streaming service, you can watch it whenever you want!

UPDATE: The Creepshow Museum doesn’t just have replicas! They have screen used props, original production materials and many one-of-a-kind items as well. I really appreciate them reaching out to us and setting the record straight!

Adapting Stephen King isn’t always easy. There are folks that have done it well and others that have really done a horrible job. Few folks get multiple chances, but one of them is Tom Holland (Fright Night, Child’s Play, Psycho 2), who made this and The Langoliers.

Unlike most movies, there is not a single person that you’ll truly like or get behind here. It’s a mean-spirited tale about some mean-spirited people. It’s a lot like life, I guess. And yes, I realize that this is a Richard Bachman book, but just about everyone knows that that is really King by now (see our review of The Running Man for more).

Billy Halleck (Robert John Burke, who took over the role of RoboCop in the third installment) plays a corpulent lawyer who defends just about anyone, including Richie “The Hammer” Ginelli (Joe Mantegna, Joey Zaza himself). There’s a ton of practical appliance makeup here to transform Burke into the various stages of Halleck’s weight loss.

After celebrating getting the mobster acquitted in his case, he rides home with his wife Heidi (Lucinda Jenney, The Mothman Prophecies). She chides him for eating so much and says that he should be obsessed with better things, like sex. As she goes down on him while he drives, he slams directly into an elderly gypsy woman.

Billy knows how to play the system, with the police lying on the stand for him and Judge Rossington taking care of his case. Long story short, he isn’t punished.

As he leaves the courtroom, the 106-year-old gypsy patriarch, Tadzu Lempke (Michael Constantine, who also played Windex-loving Kostas “Gus” Portokalos in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which is kind of ironic) touches his face and says, “Thinner.” Soon, he’s losing so much weight that he needs all new clothes.

Fearing he has cancer, his wife sends him to Dr. Houston. Billy hates Houston, as he’s convinced his wife is having an affair with him. They — and a later clinic — can find no scientific reason why he’s losing the weight.

He’s not the only one dealing with a curse. Judge Cary was cursed with the word “lizard” and he’s now turning into one. And the police chief who lied on the stand is becoming a leper.

Billy tries to get the gypsies to remove his curse, but they only increase it. And Galina (Kari Wuhrer from TV’s Remote Control), Lempke’s great-granddaughter, shoots him through the hand with a slingshot. He vows that he will bring the white man’s curse down on all of them.

This instigates a war between the mob forces that Billy has defended and the gypsies, with dogs poisoned, men killed, fake acid thrown in faces, kidnappings and more.

Yet Billy can barely even walk, as the curse has reached its final stages. In an attempt to end the violence, Lempke agrees to remove it and mixes Billy’s blood into a strawberry pie that he must get someone else to eat, as the curse must be transferred. Billy takes the pie to his wife, who eats a slice and dies a husk of a person. But he ignored the old man’s warnings, as he wanted Billy to just eat it himself so he could die clean. Now, Billy’s daughter has also had some, so he’s doomed her. But at least he gets to take out the doctor he hates by offering him a slice.

The producers must have really been hell for writer-director Holland, as they made him do ten rewriters of the script before they agreed to let him start filming. They also convinced him to change the original ending from the book, where Billy just eats a slice himself once he realizes he doomed his daughter.

But that’s not all. Amazingly, Holland was stricken with Bells-Palsy during the filming of this movie. The effects would have been minimized if he’d gotten a steroid immediately, but the producers made him keep working. It took a year and a half for him to recover and his career suffered as a result.

This is a quick moving, down and dirty film. It’s a perfect Sunday afternoon cable film — do people still do that? I do.

If you have the CBS All Access app, you can watch Thinner online. Otherwise, it’s available on nearly every platform and is an easy DVD to find.

FeedShark

Directors are notoriously horrible to the actors in their films. Witness the way Friedkin treated the cast of The Exorcist or how Hitchcock told Tippi Hedren that mechanical birds would be used in a scene in The Birds, only for real ones to be used in an incident that she described as “brutal and ugly and relentless.”

The House of Seven Corpses is all about Eric Hartman (John Ireland, I Saw What You Did), a director who is making a film in an actual haunted house. A zombie is awakened because the actors find The Book of the Dead and use the words in it for authenticity.

Disclaimer: The Tibetian Book of the Dead isn’t a book of evil spells but actually describes the period of time between death and rebirth.

Soon, people start dying left and right, starting with caretaker Edgar Price (John Carradine!) and leading to a grave featuring David, the director’s assistant’s name. One by one, the cast succumbs to the zombie, who finally takes his girlfriend back to his grave.

Director Paul Harrison was a writer on the TV show H.R. Pufnstuf. One wonders how much that experience colors this film. The director is completely out of his mind, screaming and yelling and damaging anyone that comes near to him. Perhaps he’s the real monster.

This is an enjoyable trifle, but nothing to lose your brains over. You can check it out for yourself at Shudder.

If I were writing this review at any time other than 4:40 AM and had more than two hours sleep in the past two days, I wouldn’t be full of hyperbole, pacing through my house, mumbling to myself things like, “Savage Streets is the greatest movie ever made!” and “Why did they make any more movies after this?”

I often discuss movies with my dad and I often describe ones I love as “a piece of shit, but an entertaining piece of shit.” Was I more lucid, that’s probably how I’d describe this film. But seriously, this movie has everything you want to watch in the middle of the night. It is unapologetically 1980’s exploitation filmmaking, a roughie that would never hit the scream today, small or large.

I was trying to suffer through Dude Party Massacre 3 on Shudder. It’s a movie that’s getting a lot of buzz. And I can see why some folks would like it. It’s very Adult Swim in tone, execution and humor. It also reminds me of a Troma movie and my sense of humor is one that enjoys the strangeness that comes from an earnest yet deranged slasher like Don’t Go in the Woods more than something that sets out to be silly for the sake of being silly. To be honest, I was a bit depressed, because I was hoping for something more.

I’ve had Savage Streets in my Amazon Prime queue for some time. It was time for it to rescue me from my doldrums.

Imagine if Pat Benetar’s “Love is a Battlefield” lasted for 93 minutes.  Also, imagine if Pat didn’t use dance to defeat the rival gang, but instead had a crossbow. That is the best summation of this movie that I can give you.

Brenda (Linda Blair, and if I have to tell you what other films Linda has been in, you can never read our site again) and her deaf-mute sister Heather (Linnea Quigley, the only scream queen I know who put out a workout tape) are wild in the streets with their gang the Satins, looking at Playgirl Magazine while dressed as only folks in the 80’s could dress. They keep getting into scuffles with a gang called the Scars, ending with the girls stealing and trashing the gang’s car. Jake, their leader, vows revenge after Brenda goes even further by scratching his face.

Well, he and the gang waste no time. While Brenda is fighting another girl in a locker room brouhaha, the gang isolates her sister and rapes her. You may notice that the gang seems to be more interested in touching one another than touching her sister. Two of them even embrace one another and kiss. These are the kinds of things that you will unexpectantly see in this film. It’s one that rapidly switches tone, going for the darkness of man on woman crime to a wacky scene where the students put drawings of penises on a health room chart. It is a movie that will change that tone on a dime, ensuring that you are never ready for what happens next.

The Scars up the ante by killing Brenda’s soon to be married and pregnant friend Francine (Lisa Freeman, Back to the Future). There’s a Pretty Woman like scene of the girl trying on her wedding dress while everyone watches and again, you aren’t ready for the tonal 180 when the gang throws her off a viaduct.

Meanwhile, policing all of this insanity at the high school is John Vernon as Principal Underwood. He seems like he is barely containing himself from killing every child that is in his educational system.

Earlier in the film, Brenda and her girl gang notice bear traps are on sale. This seems like something that totally makes no sense. Not so. Because when Brenda hunts down the Scars, she uses one of those traps to kill one of the gang members by snapping it onto his neck. Then she takes a crossbow after the rest of the gang.

Sure, Jake escapes. But he really should have stopped when he could have. Brenda douses him in paint and sets him ablaze, just in time for a cop to pull up and watch the guy die. What school do these girls go to?

All of the girls visit Francine’s grave and Brenda comments, “At least we set things right.” Her friend Stevie earnestly looks at her and says, “No Brenda. You set things right.” I almost set my couch on fire in pure joy.

Danny Steinman has few movies on his resume but, chief among them Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, a film I described as “the scummiest, vilest Friday of them all,” as well as The Unseen and this film. And now I’m sad, because I wish he made a hundred movies, ninety-nine of them being sequels to Savage Streets. It also has uncredited direction from Tom DeSimone, who crossed over from porn to make movies like Chatterbox, Hell Night (also with Linda Blair!), Reform School Girls and Angel III: The Final Chapter.

PS – I am loving this long interview with Steinman that you can find right here.

Cherie Curie from the Runaways shot at least one day of footage as the lead in this film before Linda Blair took over, but I can see no one else as Brenda in this movie.

There’s also a subplot that doesn’t matter much at all, with Brenda facing off with cheerleader Cindy over her boyfriend Fadden. Also — Faden owes Jake tons of money for coke.

I really need to let you know how great Robert Dryer is as Jake. He’s pure menace, bringing an edge to this film that shocks you with its brutality.

Also — the dialogue! From the principal yelling, “Go fuck an iceberg!” to Jake intoning ” I am going to cut your heart out and eat it!” and nearly everything Brenda says, this movie is packed with quotable quotables.

This is on Amazon Prime, which is great, because the DVD and blu-ray releases are out of print. It’s the kind of movie that feels so good before the sun comes up. Go Brenda! Shoot those Scars up! Use the beartrap!

UPDATE: Kino Lorber will re-issued Savage Streets on January 5, 2021, with pre-orders generally sent several days in advance of street date. The Blu-ray is loaded with extras featuring audio commentary tracks by actors Robert Dryer, Johnny Venocur, and producer John Strong, along with actors Robert Dryer and Sal Landi discussing the film with cinematographer Stephen L. Posey. In addition, director Danny Steinmann and producer John Strong, along with actors Linda Blair, Linnea Quigley, Robert Dyer, Johnny Venocur, Sal Lindi, and Scott Mayer each offer their own interview segments.

You can also pick up DVDs from RoninFlix! Check out this awesome new cover!

Susan Nomed (Playboy Bunny Bobbie Bresee, Ghoulies) was only ten-years-old when her mother died. During the funeral, she ran from her family to the mausoleum, where the fog rolls in and a demon calls out to her.

Now, twenty years later, she’s the heiress to her family’s fortune. She’s also married to Oliver Farrell (Marjoe Gortner, Starcrash), who is never home, but everything seems fine. However, Susan is starting to go stir crazy, flirting with the gardener, who exudes pure filth. That’s when we learn about the second part of Susan’s inheritance: an ancient curse.

Soon, Susan is turning into a green-eyed demon and having sex with plenty of men, then murdering them in all manner of interesting ways. Want an example? How about her breasts eat a man’s chest and leave him a bloody mess in the bathtub?

LaWanda Page of TV’s Sanford and Son shows up as Elsie the maid and you’ll be shocked to see how racist her role is. Actually, you won’t. We just watched the remake of Thirteen Ghosts (with the early 2000s title that seemed trite even back then, Thir13en Ghosts) and the black maid in that film acts just as stereotypically in that film.

Also, if you’re wondering how good the script is, Susan’s last name is demon backward.

This movie reminds me of late-period Fulci, as its look is very Italian. It’s filled with gore, nudity and a nonsensical plot, but there are times in your life when that’s what you’re looking for.

You can find this one on Amazon Prime and it’s free to watch with your membership!