Springfield Leader and Press from Springfield, Missouri • 81

TJieNewsLeader Sunday, November 14, 1982 9g Entertainment Horror master King likfes to grab and not let go (Lurid details in review, below). Stephen 'j tung from the Crypt" and "The Vault of Horror" that were favorites of young fright fans. "I had two stories that were previously published in men's magazines, and they sortof fit the E.C. Comics style," Kingsaid. They were "The Crate," a tale about a 100-year-old crate found in the basement of a college, containing a long-dormant monster who eats everyone in reach; and "The Lonesome Death of Jdrdy Verrill" (originally called which is about a hayseed farmer who touches a meteor in his field, only to find weird grass and weeds beginning to grow all over his body and his house.

'Steve said he'd write three more stories and deliver a finished script in 60 days," Romero said. The other three "Creepshow" stories involve returns from the grave, neck-deep burial on a low-tide beach and a bug-phobic millionaire attacked by billions of cockroaches. By Jack Garner Gannett News Service NEW YORK Stephen King, a young horror story author who has become one of the top-selling writers of his day, sat at a table at the Drake Hotel here recently and tried to describe why he enjoys frightening the daylights out of his many readers. "I like the idea of grabbing somebody by the arm and taking them around a dark corner, saying to them, 'Psst, I've got something to show After a pause, he added quietly, 'Then I dont let them go." "Part of iFls an attention-getting device. You always know when you've reached people because they scream, or write letters to say that I've kept them up all night, and I write back and say, that's In eight years the former high school teacher from Maine has published no less than 11 best-selling books, including "The Shining," "The admiration society.

King lists Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" as one of his favorite films. Romero says of King: "He has his finger on the pulse of what our fears are. He talks to you as though he's your neighbor, and he puts everything in a frame of reference that's familiar to all of us. "Warner Brothers initially put us together to do "Salem's Lot' as a theatrical film. And that's how we met.

We started working on it when Warners pulled back and decided to do it for television, so we bailed out." Eventually, Romero said, he and King "started talking about the old E.C. Comics we read when we were kids, and envisioned them as an anthology movie. The next morning, Steve came down to breakfast and said, 'I have the title it's I fell down what a title!" E.C. Comics were lurid, violent horror comic books like "Tales Brian DePalma's "Carrie," Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and television's Cpt" with varying degrees of success. But now he's taken hjs celluloid fate more firmly in his own hands, as screenwriter of an original horror anthology film entitled'Creepshow," which now is opening around the country.

It stars E.G. Marshall, -Viveca Lindfors, Carrie Nye, Hal Holbrook, and Fritz Weaver. The real, live director King has been watching is a horrpr movie master, a Cult favorite named George Romero, who is best known for films involving real, dead characters called zombies. His best-known film is an independent cheapie called "Night of the Living Dead" whicji came out of Pittsburgh in 1968 to earn a reputation as one of the most popular and gruesome horror movies ever made. The writer and the director are a rather blatant two-man, mutual "I think 'Creepshow is a kind of jolly movie," King said.

"It's got blood, violence and all that, but, at the same time, it's like fairy tales. True, it's but if someone did a graphic version of 'Hansel and Gretel or 'Little Red Riding they'd be R-rated too." By both King's standards as a -horror writer, and Romero's as a horror movie directork, "Creepshow" is a rather gentle, humorous excursion. King, for example, has let his two sons, aged 10 and 6, see "Creepshow." He said his daughter, 12, could also see it if she wanted, but she's not a horror fan. "On the other hand, I haven't let my kids see "The Shining' or because they both deal with parents who are.very angry with their children, homicidal toward their -children. They're big league 1 disturbing." Stand," "Carrie," Lot," "Cujo," and "Danse Macabre." He's just become the first writer to ever put books simultaneously on three best-seller lists hardcover fiction mass-market Npaperback and trade paperback He has stood by and watched three of his books being turned into movies Ml 'annai success Though predictable, 'Creepshow' has class Review CREEPSHOW (North Town A Warner Bros.

release; produced by Richard Rubinstein; directed by George A. Romero; original screenplay by Stephen King. -MPAA rated: R. THE CAST Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Fritz Weaver, Nelsie Neilsen, Carrie Nye, E.G. Marshall and Vivica Lindfors.

By Jack Garner Can you get nostalgic over gruesome, Do you long for the days when people were threatened by their own phobias and net some knife-wielding sicko? $fl" vex yt- M- Ut. tJwW 1 1 11 S'-dt "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill," in which a hayseed farmer (played with appropriate hamminess by Stephen King himself) stumbles upon a mysterious meteor, filled with ever-growing green slime that eventually takes over his body. "Something to Tide You Over," in which a cuckolded husband buries his wife and her lover at the ocean's edge at low tide, with only their heads above the sand. "The Crate," about a horrifying discovery in the basement of a college building, an 80-year-old box left over from an artic exploration that contains something that's still alive! "They're Creeping Up On You," in which a greedy, eccentric millionaire confronts an army of cockroaches. The last two stories are the most successful.

"The Crate" features the best horror sequences in the film, and builds legitimate suspense. It also contains good performances from Fritz Weaver and Hal Holbrook, as college professors, and Adrienne Barbeau, as Holbrook's bitchy, nagging wife (who we all know will get her comeuppance.) "They're Creeping Up On You" is the best character study in the movie, with veteran actor E.G. Marshall obviously having tons of fun playing such a despicable meanie. unuuue uy sumeuung as simple as uieir own greed and selfishness? Those days are remembered with partial success in the new horror movie anthology, "Creepshow." It's written with a fafr amount of wit and style by horror master Stephen King, and directed with energy and garish, comic book colors by George Romero, of "Night of the Living the film attempts an affectionate parody of E.C. Comics (such as "Tales from the Crypt" and "The Vault of While "Creepshow" captures the ambiance of this kind of horror, the biggest flaw is its predictability in most instances.

A "plus" is King's framing device for the film. It opens with an angry father forbidding his 10-year-old boy (played by his real-life son) from reading such a trashy comic book as "Creepshow." The magazine is thrown out with the trash. As storm- swept winds turn the pages for us, we're introduced to each of five stories: "Father's Day," which tells of a venge Jack Garner is a reviewer for Gannett News Service. ful return trom me grave Dy ine painarcn of a family of money-grabbing, self-centered eccentrics. Creepshow," a parody of the 1 950s E.C.

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