Creepshow IIICreepshow was a lovingly crafted homage to the E.C. horror comics Tales From The Crypt, Haunt Of Fear, and The Vault Of Horror of the 1950s by acclaimed director George A Romero, blockbuster horror writer Stephen King and special effects master Tom Savini. Creepshow really captured the essence of the comics by incorporating a comic book style format with pages turning between stories and comic panels transforming into real life action. The five stories bring to life the “what goes around comes around” morality, over the top characters, campy monster mash ghouls and villains that made the E.C. style of comics so popular.Creepshow is one the best films of the anthology subgenre and was very influential paving the way for the TV series Tales From The Crypt and Tales From The Darkside and introduced us to one of horror’s beloved mascots- The Creep. Romero returned to script the 1987 sequel which was directed by Michael Gornick who was the cinematographer on the original. Creepshow 2 didn’t really capture the magic of the first film but still gave fans an enjoyable movie going experience particularly with the segment “The Raft”. After Creepshow 2 the franchise was left for dead, that is until Jim Dudelson and Anna Clavel decided to inflict a truly horrific movie experience upon horror fans with their dire in name only sequel. Creepshow III begins with sub par title sequence that looks completely amateur and makes no attempt to recreate the Bernie Wrightson influenced animation that was so effective in the first two instalments. This completely cringe worthy opening had me shaking my head wondering what I had got myself into. The first instalment of the anthology Alice is about a teenage girl unhappy with her neighbourhood and family who longs to escape it all and be somewhere different. Alice returns home to find her father trying out a universal remote developed by the mad professor Dayton (who links a few of the stories together). After an argument with her family she says “I wish I was adopted”, her father pushes a button on the remote sending her to another dimension where she finds her self with a different family. She bounces from family to family each a bit more weirder than the first until finally she returns home mutated and is turned into a rabbit by the Professor and forgotten by her family. The makeup effects are effectively gruesome puss filled sores bubble and liquefied skin melts off her, but the story is muddled, nonsensical and didn’t really engage me. The Radio is up next and revolves around a security guard Jerry who is broke and lives in a rundown apartment in a crime ridden ghetto. Jerry buys a radio from a homeless man to pimp out his apartment and gets a lot more than he bargains for. The radio is another one of Professor Clayton’s wacky inventions that talks and convinces him to steal $300,000 from a criminal to better his situation and to get out of town to begin a new life. Jerry ends up killing his neighbours to keep the theft a secret and hits the road with a prostitute called Eva he has been madly in love with but didn’t have the guts to do anything about. The radio warns him that Eva is out to betray him and that he must murder her before she does the same to him. Jerry, guilt ridden over the murders destroys the radio and is killed by Eva who in turn is betrayed by her pimp who also has a talking radio advising him how to better his life. This segment was the most effective to me because it was a lot more inline with the E.C. comics and the stories in the original Creepshow flicks. The third story is Call Girl and is about Rachael who is a hooker- serial- killer terrorizing the city. Rachael is hired for the night by a weird teenager called Victor who she kills while doing the deed. Victor somehow comes back to life as a monster and kills Rachael. How and why this happens is a mystery. This segment has giant plot holes and is a headache inducing incoherent mess. I enjoyed the next segment The Professor’s Wife a lot more because it reminded me of a H.G Lewis gore flick. Professor Drayton invites two of his former students to meet his new fiancée Kathy. The Professor’s students are convinced that the professor has made the women and disembowel her to find out how he did it! The students marvel in how realistic the intestines, brains and severed limbs are until they realise their terrible mistake and hide Kathy in the Professor’s cupboards and refrigerator. The gore looks great in this scene and it’s one of the films redeeming moments. The last story is Haunted Dog and is a rehash of The Hitch-Hiker from Creepshow 2. A mean spirited, selfish doctor doing community service in a free clinic in the ghetto drops a hotdog on the ground and gives it to a homeless man. The man dies after eating it and the doctor is haunted by his ghost until he has a heart attack and dies. Terrible looking CGI, uninspired acting combined with poor scripting make this segment the dullest of the film. The film closes the way it started with mediocre animation that includes a crudely drawn version of The Creep. With Creepshow III Jim Dudelson and Anna Clavel have managed to soil the good name of another Romero classic and like Day Of The Dead 2: Contagium this film is an insult to fans of the genre. How these two hacks avoid the flack Uwe Boll gets really surprises me, show me a petition to stop these two making films and I’ll sign it. Savini has often been quoted in saying Tales From The Darkside: The Movie is the official Creepshow III. Do yourself a favour and check that out instead.
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