'Creepshow' – The Double Bill Post... (Episodes 3 & 4)

Because not only am I loving this show but I ate something that disagreed with me, yesterday, and I was up most of last night being ill... I thought to myself, instead of just lying there and waiting for the cramps to stop, why don't I lie there and wait for the cramps to stop and watch some more 'Creepshow' at the same time? I didn't take much convincing, I let the dodgy stomach sort itself out and watched some great TV :o)

I've got a busy one tomorrow so will be trying to keep this post fairly 'to the point'. Lets see how that one goes...

'All Hallow's Eve'

A group of kids terrorise the neighbourhood on Halloween and... It's really obvious why they're doing it and what it all means. It's all signposted so heavily, to begin with, that you start to wonder why you're watching it and whether you might want to do a little sneaky skipping to the next story.... And aren't these kids kind of a little too nice anyway? It was at that point that I realized that I'd missed the point entirely and 'All Hallows Eve' turned into this thing where I didn't know who to feel sorry for the most.. Don't get me wrong, there is a heavy dose of fear injected into the proceedings, raising questions that drive the plot forwards. There are a couple of jump scares and moments of horror too, something for everyone really. At it's heart though, there's a real bittersweet feeling to 'All Hallow's Eve' that not only accentuates the horror but will also leave you really hoping that these kids don't have to come back and do it all again next year.

'The Man in the Suitcase'

One of the things that I'm really enjoying about 'Creepshow' is how they mix up the stories so you don't get too much of the same thing one show atfer the other. After the sombre feel to 'All Hallow's Eve', it was onto 'The Man in the Suitcase' which was just terrifyingly glorious.

A traveler returning from a trip finds a man squeezed into his suitcase when he gets home. Not only is the man in his suitcase but he spits gold coins when attempts at removal result in any kind of pain. His friends exploit the suitcase man for his magical powers but they may be the ones who come out of this worse off...

'The Man in the Suitcase' is all about using a cool concept to look at just what evil people are capable of when faced with a captive man who spits out gold coins when being electrocuted. It's a concept that will only stretch so far which is convenient as this story is only twenty minutes long; plenty of time to really torture a man in a suitcase and then hit the viewer with a twist that is no surprise but does have a particularly creepy moment right at the end. The airport staff clearly knew what was going on the whole time, I don't know why that messed with my head so much but it did. They knew, dammit! They knew...

'The Companion'

Onto the next episode then and a reminder that 'Creepshow' has always had a moralistic heart to and the series is no different. Bad people always meet the end that they deserve so you know what's going to end up happening when a young boy is seen escaping his abusive older brother, even when this evil scarecrow turns up. The ending is a foregone conclusion but what's really worth the price of entry is the game of 'cat and mouse' played between boy and scarecrow. There were several point where the tension had me taking little breaks to play on my phone. Turns out that I really don't like scarecrows, who'd have guessed?

The story of the scarecrow's creation has its moments but it's the moments where the boy uses fear as a means to face his own fears that make this a tale worth sticking with. We all love to root for the little guy and apparently this includes that creepy puppet that cackles it's way through the start of each show...

'Lydia Layne's Better Half'

And what a story to end this post on... And another reminder that there are no grey areas in 'Creepshow'; the bad guy always gets theirs, or bad lady in this tale...

Successful businesswoman Lydia Layne accidentally kills her girlfriend in an argument gone terribly wrong. It shouldn't be too hard to get rid of the body but it turns out that it's actually harder than it looks when there's an earthquake and the elevator dies with you and the dead body stuck in it.

Damn this one was creepy, especially when you have to wonder if the elevator actually died at all. Was it all in Lydia's head...? Whatever the answer to that one, the end result was twenty or so minutes of Lydia going slowly mad while Danielle Lyn's 'Dead Celia' is just an awesome piece of acting with not a word spoken but the anger coming through so clearly that you can almost feel it.

You know how it will end but the way it's drawn out, you won't be entirely sure until those final climactic moments.

Looking back at the four stories that I've covered here, they are all united by that theme of 'bad people getting what they deserve' and it feels like a real throwback to the 'Creepshow' of old (at least the bits I've seen on Youtube). I guess what that means is that we get to see horrifying, scary stuff happen to people but that's ok because they had it coming? Well, it works for me :o) Two more episodes to go...