Creepshow 2

A second helping of horror tales inspired by an old 50s comic-book series. Original Creepshow director George Romero contributes the screenplay this time, basing it on some tastefully selected Stephen King morsels. Read full review

Working from a script written by original helmer Romero based on a trilogy of lesser works by King, Creepshow 2 is a satisfying little anthology of terror that won't scare you so much as entertain you. Read full review

The production values are downright dowdy. Creepshow looks more like Cheapshow. Yet the strong writing offsets the film's weaknesses. Creepshow 2 may not have the major-league excitement of The Exorcist or Aliens, but in its own right, it succeeds. The persistent screams from the audience tell you that. [13 May 1987, p.D7]

Creepshow 2 is a cut-rate sequel from those two popular masters of horror, Stephen King and George Romero, that plays like leftovers. Fans of both deserve better. The second--and the only one of the three stories that King has published--is the best. This vignette is effective because it's simple and suspenseful, but it's not enough to carry the whole movie. Read full review

The episodes are marginally interesting, but each is a little too long. And each could be fully explained in a one-sentence synopsis. Read full review

Like the nasty comic books of many a misspent youth, Creepshow 2 is, deliberately, a sometimes lurid and overdrawn anthology. It consists of three unconnected tales of modern American death, a Creepshow comic book come to life. It is as if Romero and director Michael Gornick are determined to spare grownups the embarrassment of taking horror seriously. [01 June 1987]

The film's main fare is three Stephen King horror stories, presented as comic books come to life. Stringing them together are scenes about an all- American youngster, a Creepshow comics fan who outwits the neighborhood bullies with his mail-order Venus flytraps. The Creep, who delivers the comics, acts as host for this anthology. It's a complicated framing device, but it puts the film squarely in the camp of kids' movies. [07 May 1987, p.3C]

King and Romero -- the horror genre's equivalent of the daily double -- are back on the storyboard for 2, but with director Michael Gornick in charge, 2 goes nowhere slowly. Part of the problem is that King's short stories simply work better in print. Read full review

First-timer Gornick's direction is so painfully inept that not one of the episodes is even slightly scary, let alone horrifying. The only terrifying thing about Creepshow 2 is the thought of Creepshow 3. Read full review

Tied together with some humdrum animated sequences, three vignettes on offer obviously were produced on the absolute cheap, and are deficient in imagination and scare quotient.

Whereas Romero's approach to this material is distinctly tongue-in-cheek, Gornick makes the mistake of giving the stories a straightforward treatment that merely heightens their inherent weakness. Both pictures use animation to tie things together, though the cartoon work in both is weak. Read full review