Shudder offers ‘Creepshow’
Several people in the cast and crew of “Creepshow,” Shudder’s series adaptation of the 1982 Stephen King-written horror movie, claim to have been personally affected by the film. But writer Joe Hill is in rare company, having actually contributed to both.
“I was a child actor in the first film,” said Hill, the son of the prolific horror author and an accomplished genre writer in his own right. “I played a little boy named Billy, who uses a voodoo doll to get even with his abusive father for stealing his horror comics.”
While shooting the original, George Romero-directed “Creepshow,” Hill spent a week in the care of legendary special effects artist Tom Savini, who served as a mentor of sorts to the young actor.
“Tom Savini is like the godfather of gore. He’s the original master of gross-out special makeup effects,” said Hill. “He was like my first rock star: He had this badass leather jacket and biker boots and eyebrows kind of like Spock from ‘Star Trek.’ I spent the whole week watching him disfigure movie stars and create memorable monsters, and by the time I left, that’s what I wanted to do. I just wound up doing it on paper instead.”
Closing the circle on that strong first impression, both Hill and Savini are back for the TV version of “Creepshow,” and in the same episode, no less: Hill lent his short story “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain” to the final episode of the horror anthology, which Savini directed.
The six-episode first season, airing on Thursdays, features 12 vignettes inspired by the ‘50s-era horror comics that the film and its 1987 sequel sought to evoke. Helmed by “The Walking Dead” executive producer Greg Nicotero, the series shares the same campy, accessible — but still scary — tone that made the original film popular and features a bevy of stars like David Arquette, Kid Cudi, Big Boi, Giancarlo Esposito and Tobin Bell, among others.
Actress Adrienne Barbeau is another holdover from the original, starring in the series’ first vignette, “Gray Matter,” based on a short story by King. John Harrison, who served as an assistant director on the first movie and composed its theme song, also returned to direct multiple stories. For Nicotero, who himself did effects work for “Creepshow 2” alongside Savini, paying homage to the original was more than just fan service.
“The original ‘Creepshow’ was the first movie set that I ever visited when I was 16 years old,” he said. “I never realized until then that you could actually get hired to do that as a job. ‘Creepshow’ was kind of the movie that redirected my career path from being a doctor to getting into special effects and creature design. It made me realize that this was not just a hobby but a viable profession.”
With its playful tone and emphasis on gore, “Creepshow” is unlike the “elevated” horror films that currently dominate the box office.
In fact, Nicotero leaned into the show’s campier elements in recognition of the genre’s long journey to its current status: mainstream acceptance and popularity.
“Back when I was a young kid, nothing like this would have ever been on television,” he said. “Even in movie theaters, horror stuff was kind of lowbrow. Like, if you were going to see a horror movie, seven out of 10 people would be like, ‘Why would you go see that? What’s wrong with you?’”
Horror veteran Arquette, a mainstay of the “Scream” films who stars in the story “Times Is Tough in Musky Holler,” was an early fan of the genre and saw the original “Creepshow” “a ton of times.”
“I’ve just always loved horror,” he said. “I think as a kid if you like movies and being scared, you see a few of the classics. There’s something really exciting (about horror) when you’re younger.”
“People are just now understanding the genre a little more and having fun with it,” Arquette added. “When ‘The Omen’ and ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘Halloween’ came out, that was another renaissance time period for horror films. The fact of the matter is, if things are making money, (filmmakers have access to) better writers, studios, producers, directors and actors. It’s like television now. People used to never do TV and then they started making really high-quality television.”
But while horror and television have both grown in refinement and popularity, the genre has largely splintered into two tonal subgenres, each of which thrives in a different medium. While psychological horror movies like Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” and social thrillers like Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” and “Us” have found major success on the big screen, campier, more accessible horror projects like “Creepshow” and “American Horror Story” dominate the realm of TV.
“There’s obviously room for very intense, elevated horror,” said Hill. “The horror of high ideas and existential terror, stuff like ‘Hereditary’ or this story called ‘In the Tall Grass’ that I wrote with my dad for Netflix. Those kind of very intense David Cronenberg-ian explorations of the psyche and the soul.
“I think really relentless, heartbreaking, in-your-face, grubby horror might wear people out,” he added. “It’s one thing for two hours, but another for 10. But that said, great filmmaking and cinematic storytelling will thrive in any media. I think elevated horror can succeed on TV, but I think the fun horror might find a better footing.”
Either way, horror fans stand to benefit. The proliferation of streaming services and the increase in original series make for a greater swath of options in the genre.
“There’s a lot more for every niche taste,” said Hill. “There is now a fairly large horror space where before, in the ‘90s, you just had ‘The X-Files’ on TV. Now you’ve got ‘NOS4A2,’ ‘The Terror,’ ‘Creepshow’ and ‘Stranger Things.’ ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ in some ways could arguably be defined as horror. It’s certainly horrifying. So the explosion of all the streaming outlets only means there’s more demand so more horror content is inevitably getting made. But I think maybe the one surprise is how good most of it is. There hasn’t been a lot of stinkers.” (“NOS4A2” is based on the novel by Hill.)
One reason to emphasize the genre’s lowbrow aspects, according to Hill? The genre performs best, artistically speaking, when it includes elements of comedy — its unlikely but close relative.
“If you sit down and watch the Three Stooges and you see Larry hit Moe over the head with a sledgehammer, you laugh,” he said. “If you watch ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and Leatherface hits a teenager with a sledgehammer and blood flies everywhere, you scream. What’s interesting is they’re both the same scene, but they speak to your reptile brain, the deep brain, in a different way. And ‘Creepshow’ is a space where you can do both, get the laugh and the scream within moments of one another.”