Creepshow (Snap Case) (1982) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Being a fan of both Stephen King and George Romero, "Creepshow" has always been among my favorite horror flicks. Campy at times perhaps, but that's the whole point - to bring a comic book feel to film. And it offers a perfect balance of silly comic horror and genuine horror, making for a very enjoyable viewing experience if one remembers not to take it too seriously.
What you get is 5 mini stories, some of them better than others but all offering plenty of shocks and chills. It opens with "Father's Day," where a deceased victim of murder rises from the grave for a nice little Father's Day surprise. One of the better ones. "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" follows, where Stephen King takes on the lead role as a hillbilly who finds a meteor with a nasty habit of making green hair grow on, well, everything. This one is more funny than scary but still good. King does a great job as the clumsy and unintelligent-but-likeable Jordy Verrill. Next up is "Something to Tide You Over," where a vengeful man (Leslie Nielsen) gets even on his cheating wife and her lover (Ted Danson) by burying them both in the sand and letting the tide take care of the rest. This is my second favorite of the bunch. It's cool to see Nielsen take on the role of the "bad guy" for a change. Goes to show his versatility as an actor. Ted Danson is great too. What follows is "The Crate," in my opinion the best one. It's also the longest one. Hal Holbrook plays a loser whose nasty wife gets what she deserves when he finds a mysterious blood-thirsty creature locked away in an old crate. This is the darkest and creepiest of the stories. Pure fun, with top-notch acting from everyone. The final story, "They're Creeping Up On You," is the only one I've never liked. An eccentric millionare with a roach phobia just can't seem to get rid of his little crawling friends no matter what he does. Anyone who doesn't like roaches is advised to skip this one. The final scene will take away your appetite for at least a few days.
Now that I've talked about the movie itself (easily 5 stars), I have to comment on this sorry excuse for a DVD (0 stars). This has to be THE worst transfer ever put on DVD. I used to think it couldn't get any worse than the first edition single-disc transfer of "Scarface," but I was wrong. "Creepshow" was put on DVD just for the sake of putting it on DVD. NO CARE whatsoever was put into presentation. As another reviewer has mentioned, the movie literally "jumps" throughout the entire time. Grain and those annoying "hairs" appear on the screen almost every second. The VHS offers better picture quality; that says a lot. The only bonus feature of this DVD is the trailer, which I suppose is cool, but let's get real. Another slap in the face is the scene selections. The inside of the DVD case advertises 41 scene selections in the "Scene Index" card, but that's misleading, as the movie only has 21 actual scene selections. So if you want to watch one specific scene, 9 times out of 10 you will need to select the *closest* scene to the one you want and end up scanning forwards or backwards to get to the one you really want. Yet another example of a poorly thought-out DVD.
Bottom line: "Creepshow" is a great cult flick that deserves a MUCH better DVD. If you have the VHS stick with that. Only get this DVD if you no longer own a VCR or absolutely must own all of your movies on the DVD format. "Creepshow 2" recently got a new DVD edition that does it justice, so maybe there's some hope that "Creepshow" will eventually get the same treatment someday. Until then, we must settle for this lackluster DVD.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Creepshow (Snap Case) (1982)

Two macabre masters - writer Stephen King and director George A. Romero - conjure up five shocking yarns, each a virtuoso exercise in the ghouls-and-gags style of classic '50s horror comics. A murdered man emerges from the grave for Father's Day cake. A meteor's ooze makes everything ... grow. A professor selects his wife as a snack for a crated creature. A scheming husband plants two lovers up to their necks in terror. A malevolent millionaire with an insect phobia becomes the prey of a cockroach army. Add the spirited performances of a fine cast (Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson, E.G. Marshall and King himself) and the ghoulish makeup wizardry of Tom Savini. Let the Creepshow begin.DVD Features:Interactive MenusScene AccessTheatrical Trailer

Click here for more information about Creepshow (Snap Case) (1982)

Read More...

Nightmares & Dreamscapes - From the Stories of Stephen King (2006) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Stephen King, in the course of 30 years, has become a gargantuan commercial success. And why not? He is wicked scary and chillingly entertaining. But part of King's success is attributed to his ability to raise common, fundamental truths and write characters with universal human flaws in his warped, fantastical stories - truths which any audience can latch onto and flaws which everyone can identify with. It's no different with the fabulous TV cable rendition of his Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Themes of isolation, alienation, mortality, the human condition, and social disintegration are touched on.
This lavish, all-out TNT production doesn't stinge in its mini-series adaptation. I was amazed by the acting talent brought on board: William Hurt, William H. Macy, Kim Delaney (still sexy), Tom Berenger, Samantha Mathis... Stephen King's stories are magnificently and thoughtfully realized by wonderful, fully committed acting, production values of superb quality, and across-the-board earnest efforts by the writers and directors, who honor Stephen King by cleaving close to the spirit of the author's works. The 8 episodes are selected for their diverse storylines and are uniformly excellent. They are, in turn, comedic, meditative, tense, gentle, allegorical, apocalyptic, and, YES, scary. Personal favorites of mine are "Battleground," "Umney's Last Case," and "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band."
For the completists, of the eight episodes, only five are actually from King's Nightmares and Dreamscapes short story collection. "Autopsy Room Four" and "The Road Virus Heads North" are from Everything's Eventual, while "Battlefield" is from Night Shift. TNT's motto is "We know Drama." But, it seems, they also know horror.
Here are the 8 episodes:
"Battleground" - In this terse, funny, cool f/x-laden episode, William Hurt stars as an icy professional hit man who assassinates the CEO of a prominent toy company and ends up waging a one-man war against living plastic toy soldiers from a Jungle Army Footlocker. The little Savage Commando at the end is awesome! No dialogue in this one, which, in a way, enhances Hurt's acting even more. This episode, pretty much a one-man show, pays homage to the 1975 horror movie Trilogy of Terror, which starred Karen Black and the Twilight Zone's classic "The Invaders."
"Crouch End" - A newlywed American couple, superstitious Doris and the more practical Lonnie (Claire Forlani and Eion Bailey), honeymooning in London, are invited to dinner in the neighborhood of Crouch End. A London cabbie earnestly warns Lonnie not to go there but of course, the couple pays no heed. In Crouch End, strange things begin to happen - and weird, scary denizens begin to menace them - and, gradually, they come to realize they've ended up in a "thin spot" - an alternate world. This is an unsettling, spooky tale, as the more they get lost, the more desperate the circumstances become. Another instance of a normal, initially happy couple being faced with weird events and having their personal relationship gradually fall apart.
"Umney's Last Case" - Clyde Umney is a private eye plying his trade in 1938 whose world is upended when a man who looks just like him, named Sam Landry, shows up, claiming to be from the future of 2005. Sam has been writing a series of detective novels, with Clyde as the leading character. Sam and his wife Linda are suffering from the loss of their child, and Sam can't handle it; so he swaps places with Clyde. Everyman William H. Macy, as usual, is superb in both the roles of Clyde and Sam.
"The End of the Whole Mess" - Ron Livingston plays an award-winning filmmaker who, in his final hour of life, narrates the story of how his altruistic brother (Henry Thomas), by chemically finding a cure for all violence, instead brought about the end of the world. This is probably my least favorite story. It has its merits, but it moves at a plodding pace.
"The Road Virus Heads North" - Richard Kinell (Tom Berenger) is a famous horror writer shockingly diagnosed with a form of cancer. When driving to Boston for a book-signing event, he chances upon a garage sale and purchases a painting of a car travelling on the road. Eerily, this painting gradually changes and grows more menacing as Kinell goes along. Now, is the painting real or is Kinell delusional? Or is the painting, in reality, controlling his destiny? The painting is obviously a metaphor for Kinell's suddenly shortened mortality, but knowing that doesn't diminish the viewing of the episode.
"The Fifth Quarter" - Willy Evans (Jeremy Sisto) just never has any luck. Caught in a vicious loop of always making wrong choices, he repeatedly ends up in jail. Finally released but desperate to land that one big score and provide for his hardluck family, he goes in search of a treasure's burial site, aided by one quarter of a treasure map. Will his luck change this time? I couldn't help but root for Willy and his wife Karen (Samantha Mathis), who are inherently good people, but who are stuck in an impoverished situation, with no other recourse but crime. I mean, what would you do? Very good, dramatic character study.
"Autopsy Room Four" - King does his version of the "buried alive" scenario with this "bottle" episode. The story is mainly told thru the eyes of Howard Cottrell (Richard Thomas), who is bitten by a snake and pronounced dead. He is taken to the autopsy room, where the coroners begin talk of cutting him open. But here's the thing: Cottrell isn't dead, merely paralyzed, and desperately trying to let the coroners know it. Richard Thomas does a very good job conveying vulnerable, stark terror while - due to his frozen position on the slab - unable to properly emote. This is nerve-wracking stuff.
"You Know They Got a Hell of a Band" - This is a very cool episode. Kim Delaney and Steven Weber star as a troubled couple on a road trip thru Oregon who get lost and end up in a quaint little town called Rock & Roll Heaven, where the great musical icons of the '60s and '70s are alive and well. It seems like Shangri-La, there's a free concert every night. But, admission comes at a cost: once you enter, you can't leave. Uncanny resemblance between the actors and the musical legends they portray.
I only wish other stories from the Nightmares & Dreamscapes collection had been adapted to the small screen. It would've been interesting to see these following stories interpreted on television: "Suffer the Little Children," "The Ten O'Clock People," "The House on Maple Street," and "The Doctor's Case" (a kind-of posthumous Sherlock Holmes story). *Sigh* but you can't have everything. And what we do have, in these 8 stories, are certainly good enough and thought-provoking enough to tide us over until the next Stephen King project.
From what I understand, extras on this beautiful, slipcase three-disc set include additional scenes, featurettes, interviews and production sketches. Running time: 480 minutes. Screen aspect: Original Aspect Ratio - 1.78, Widescreen (16:9 Transfer).


Click Here to see more reviews about: Nightmares & Dreamscapes - From the Stories of Stephen King (2006)

This hair-raising miniseries is comprised of 8 mind-bending stories each featuring an all-star cast and cutting-edge special effects. Each episode is adapted from on of King's short stories and will feature such notable performers as Oscar nominees William H. Macy, William Hurt, Tom Berenger and other favorites as Kim Delaney, Steven Weber, Henry Thomas, Samantha Manthis, Claire Forlani and others. The series will premiere this summer in a 4-week television event on TNT starting July 12, 2006.
DVD Features:FeaturetteInterviewsProduction Sketches

Get 51% OFF

Click here for more information about Nightmares & Dreamscapes - From the Stories of Stephen King (2006)

Read More...