Posts of Blood: Stephen King & George A. Romero Team

Creepshow.. This was my first introduction to George Romero world and Stephen King as a whole. At the time I more into the Nightmare on Elm and Friday the 13th and wasn’t to aware of the other horror movies that were going around me. I remember I was at my grandparents house for a couple of day in October and my Gandma wanted to watch some spooky movies.. I remember she got House on Haunted Hill, Frankenstein, Halloween and Creepshow(because the video clerk told her about it).

While she as in complete surprise/shock with Creepshow, she still let me watch it hahaha. I believe she said, “Don’t tell your parents” a number of times through out this film hahaha. I’ve always loved the classic EC comic feel to it. EC was based in horror comics, like Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror and the The Haunt of Fear. Romero and King being both fans of the EC comics, made Creepshow to serve as a homage to the 1950’s comic company. Both of them hired Tom Savini to make the effects for the movie and have it give that EC comic feel.

Two of the stories I really remember were the “The Crate” and “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” that actuality featured King as Jordy Verrill. The story of Jordy Verrill was based off King’s short story called Weeds. Now if you haven’t seen this movie, there will be spoilers ahead and you have been warned….. Verrill is backwoods yokel, thinks that a meteorite landing on his farm will provide enough money from the local college to pay off his $200 bank loan. Now the meteorite is too hot to touch, Jordy douses it with water, causing it to crack and spill this glowing blue substance. It comes into contact with Jordy’s skin before soaking into the earth and he finds himself being overcome by a rapidly spreading plant-like organism that starts to grow all over himself, the house and everything he touches.

Jordy begins to panic and pours himself a bottle of vodka, and then falls asleep in a drunken stupor. When Jordy wakes up, thinking this is all a bad dream, he looks into the mirror and sees that he has now grown a beard of weeds. Jumping into a bath,thinking it would help and he is cautioned by the ghost of his father that the plant wants water. The itching from the growth on his skin becomes unbearable, he gives into temptation and collapses into the bathwater. Next morning, Jordy and his farm have been completely covered with dense layers of the alien vegetation. In despair, he reaches for a shotgun and blows the top of his head off. A radio weather forecast comes on and announces that heavy rains are coming, giving the implication that this will spread of the extraterrestrial plant growth to surrounding areas.

Now the story of the “The Crate” was always my favorite. This one is also a short story from King that was written for the Gallery in 1979. King later adapted the story for the Creepshow film in 1982. The story itself as a whole is faithful to the original. There were a few different changes for the movie. The changes include the appearance of the beast to a small Yeti-like creature with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, and the beast destroying the waterlogged crate after being dumped in the 400-foot-deep lake and escaping into the outside world.

In the ninth installment of the Friday the 13th franchise, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, an Easter egg of “The Crate” can be seen – labeled “Arctic Expedition Julia Carpenter Horlicks University“. A crate marked “Ship to Horlicks University via Julia Carpenter” can be seen in The Walking Dead, Episode 1 of Season 5. While trying to escape from Terminus, Rick Grimes, Glenn, Daryl and Bob try to save someone trapped in a container. As they run across the street, the container can be seen off to the right of the screen.

A college janitor, drops a quarter and finds a wooden storage crate marked “Arctic Expedition – June 19, 1834” under a staircase. He would later Dexter Stanley, a college professor about it. The two decide to open the crate and found out that it contains a multi-fanged ape-like creature, which despite its diminutive size kills and devours the janitor, leaving behind his boot. Stanley runs into a graduate student, Charlie Gereson, being rather skeptical. The crate has moved back under the stairs some how and Gereson is killed by the creature. Stanley flees to inform his friend/colleague at the university, Professor Henry Northrup.

Stanley, now traumatized and hysterical, tells Northrup that the monster must be disposed of. Northrup sees the creature as a way to rid himself of his drunk, obnoxious and emotionally abusive wife, Wilma, whom he often daydreams of killing(a classic scene in the story by the way). He contrives a scheme to lure her to the crate, where the beast pops out and beings to maul/eat her. Northrup secures the beast back in the crate, then drops it into a lake, where it sinks to the bottom. He returns to assure Stanley that the creature is no more. Subsequently it is revealed that the beast has escaped from its crate.

References:

“Creepshow (1982)”. The Numbers. Retrieved April 27, 2016.

“Creepshow (1982)”. Box Office Mojo. 1982-12-28. Retrieved 2016-01-22.

Kennedy, Michael (29 May 2020). “Every Future Movie Star in Creepshow”. Screen Rant. Retrieved 6 September 2020.

Tiech, John (2013). Pittsburgh Film History: On Set in the Steel City. The History Press. pp. 39–40.