CREEPSHOW (1982)

Of the 666 or so horror anthologies made back in the day, CREEPSHOW is probably the most well-known and the most entertaining.  Is it also the best?  I would think so since the majority of them were just "Bleh!"  Anyway, horror legends George Romero and Stephen King got together to make a light-hearted horror anthology as a homage to the EC horror comics from the 1950's and it works thanks to a quick pace, dope special effects and a seriously impressive cast.

Father's Day

A small but wealthy family gathers together for their annual dinner and bitchfest.  They leisurely sit around smoking and drinking while recounting old stories.  Like the one where Great Aunt Bedelia beats her father to death with a marble ashtray.  Maybe next year they can tell the story about how father came back from the dead and started fucking people up. 

The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill

To me this is the highlight of the movie simply because I love watching Stephen King's hilarious overacting as a backwoods lunkhead who sees a meteorite crash near his shack.  He rushes over to the crater and has a daydream about selling the meteor to the local college's "Department of Meteors" for two-hundred bucks.  Then he gets some "meteor shit" on him and his dream turns into a nightmare.

Something to Tide You Over

Another great story.  This time around Ted Danson and Gaylen Ross get on the wrong side of Leslie Neilson and end up acting out a pre-THE VANISHING (1988 version) roleplay on a beach.  You'll never look THE NAKED GUN the same ever again.

The Crate

The Crate is truly the highlight of the entire movie.  Not only is it straight-up unnerving and scary, but the acting is outstanding!  I'm not going to ruin it by giving away the story.  Let's just say some people at an old university find a crate hidden away under a staircase and it was hidden for a reason!  Great acting, great pacing, great character development, great lighting, great special effects...The Crate is fucking swell.

They're Creeping Up on You!

I have some mixed feelings on this one.  Not because it's bad, no it's an excellent story, but it's too goddamn icky for me to enjoy.  I still watch it anytime CREEPSHOW is on, but I usually have my handsome face scrunched up like a Taco Bell-eating billy goat just blasted thirteen dry-wet farts right up my handsome nostrils. E. G. Marshall did a really good job in this segment.

The five stories are book-ended by a short prologue and epilogue featuring a father talking mad shit to his young son about how horror comics are a bunch of "horror crap".  He throws away the comic, but the boy soon gets his revenge for his dad being such a pain in the neck.

Yeah, CREEPSHOW is old as fuck, but it's still enjoyable.  Honestly, the only standout thing that I would change is a wider shot when garbage collector Tom Savini throws that metal trashcan. Looks like he got some serious air on it.

Part 2 - Creepshow 2 (1987)
Part 3 - Creepshow 3 (2006)

A THIEF IN THE NIGHT (1972)

Patty wakes up to news on the radio that millions of people have disappeared overnight.  She goes to find her husband, but that motherfucker is gone!  Oh, shit.  The viewer is then treated to an extended flashback that shows Patty attending some kind of bummed out youth ministry where a teenage speaker is droning on about death.  She wisely leaves to go to a carnival.  While there, she meets her future husband.  Fast-forward and he gets saved (a.k.a. becomes a Christian), but Patty never does.

So now Patty is stuck in this post-Rapture shitshow time period called the Tribulation where everything is, I'm guessing...terrible, but unfortunately the budget is so low and the storytelling so poor that all we know for sure is the government is now forcing people to get an identification mark on their body and that Patty refuses to get the mark.

Overall, I was severely disappointed in A THIEF IN THE NIGHT.  I was seriously hoping for it to be 1) a hard-hitting story about Christians getting persecuted and shit-talked nonstop before getting zipped up into Heaven and then the shit talkers see the folly of their ways and getting saved only to be tortured 24/7 by an evil worldwide government. -or-  2) so goddamn cheesy that I hurt myself laughing at it.  Either way would have been cool, but instead we get 3) a slow-moving, poorly written story that can't even fill the 69-minute runtime.

A THIEF IN THE NIGHT was reportedly made for a budget of $68,000 and it definitely shows.  Small cast of non-actors, slow story that goes nowhere, zero special effects, poor lighting, high school play level sets, "a super evil credit card" and a big action scene composed of a lone woman running through the empty streets of Des Moines, Iowa while two guys in a van drive around looking lost.  Exciting stuff. 

As far as the evangelical Christian scare film genre goes, A THIEF IN THE NIGHT is important (and worth watching) because it's one of earliest examples of the genre, but it is painfully boring to get through nowadays.  That said, from what I can tell, it traumatized entire generations of children who were forced to watch it in church back in the day.

[Update 7/2022: I was adding some pictures to the PINK FLAMINGOS review and I realized that it was released in 1972 also. The same year as A THIEF IN THE NIGHT, but with a budget of only $12,000!]

Part 2 - A Distant Thunder (1978)
Part 2 - Image of the Beast (1981)
Part 3 - The Prodigal Planet (1983)