what the film does
five stories that overlap in a sprawling suburbia. alice is a teenager whose father buys a universal remote that transforms her body into whatever the buttons do. the radio tells a loser what to do to get rich. the call girl infects her clients. the professor experiments on homeless people. the hot dog vendor serves a doctor’s special recipe to the wrong people. the stories are connected by character crossings, but the connections are labored and the horror is absent.
why this one
this film is in the canon for one reason: it is the example of what a sequel should not be. the original creepshow was made by people who grew up loving EC comics and wanted to recreate that feeling. this film was made by people who saw the title on a shelf and wanted to extend it. the difference is visible in every frame: no visual wit, no practical effects to speak of, no comic-book framing, no EC sensibility.
the film has its defenders in the deep-cuts horror community, who argue that the interlocking narrative structure is more ambitious than the original’s anthology format. they are right that it is ambitious. they are wrong that it succeeds.
what stays with me
nothing from the film. what stays with me is the lesson: a franchise is only as good as the people who understand what it is. romero understood. king understood. the people who made this did not.
on hand
the dvd is the taurus entertainment release in the canon.
image: tmdb poster (id 16304); genuine film poster. baked at factor 0.45, 1200x675