Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 68

THe HARTFORD COURANT: Friday, Novembo. 12, 1982 D8 'Creepshow' Blends Humor, Horror 1 mi nouns is i ion ni I imm TUBNfinE, twin HI phow Ktmsf (liSBI Sixth Annual Holiday Miniatures Fair Saturday, November 13, 1982 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. New Haven Motor Inn Eut 59 off Nenitt-Willw Cms Partial New Haven, Connecticut FILM REVIEW 1 CAROL BURNETT IPG) "ANIJIE'' -SAT. MAT.

1:30 SUN. Doll Houses Furniture Accessories Admission $1.75 Door Prizes 30 Dealers "FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH" (R) SUN. 3(R) TOBE h-, HOOPER'S best set in "Creepshow." But only those who are nauseated by the sight of a bug will be scared by this and they won't be able to watch (heh-heh-heh). The framing story of the film about the boy and his slobbish pop features King's son Joe as the boy, a role he performs like a pro, and Tom Atkins, who is perfect as the heavy-handed "Creepshow" vandal. Made mostly in and around Pittsburgh (Romero's home base), this first of what may well become a "Creepshow" series sometimes lacks Hollywood gloss.

But its inspiration, imagination, and humor make up for its sometimes uneven photography and modest lighting effects, and the neat comic panel camera angling of Michael Gornick and John Harrison's well-calculated suspense music work well together. Best of all, though, is the obvious joy that King and Romero take in scaring people, together with their ability to make us jump on cue. These make this first "Creepshow" a collector's item. "Creepshow" is playing at Showcase Cinemas, East Hartford. Rated it contains some language that will shock those who identify E.G.

Marshall from "The Defenders, "as well as a good serving of Grand Guig-nol. OK for older kids, however. Give 'em a break. TEXAS CHAIN By MALCOLM L. JOHNSON Courant Film Critic Like all films that unreel several barely related stories, "Creepshow" has its ups and downs.

But most of what goes bump in the night, or slithers and crawls across this George A. Romero-Stephen King omnibus of five eerie tales is delightfully creepy. The first collaboration by two of the masters of modern horror is an homage to those long-defunct E.C. Comics of the '50s, which bore such names as "Crypt of Horror" and "Weird Science." Its framework is a cautionary tale of sorts: in the beginning, a benighted redneck confiscates his Tittle son's "Creep-show" comic book; in the end, the old censor gets his just desserts, via a voodoo device ordered by the resourceful lad from that very same comic. In between, various subspecies in the horror genre are surveyed, as the pages of the discarded comic book flip in the wind, and the lead illustrations to each story come alive.

A murdered old to pay back his worthless heirs, and a dumb farmer is turned into a plant person after he drops a fallen meteor. A cuckolded husband devises a fiendish retribution, only to be flooded with fear himself, and a ghastly people eater is loosed from its chained box. Lastly, and most revolt-ingly of all to some people, an army of cock 'KSCJ SAW episode complete with a nerve-wracking shower scene. "Crate" is the the film's "monster" sequence, in which an old box from a forgotten Arctic expedition is discovered hidden away under the stairs in the college science building. Both Fritz Weaver and Hal Holbrook distinguish themselves as a pair of tweedy academic types who respectively free the toothy, slavering Thing in the Crate and make good use of It.

Adrienne Barbeau, the sexy queen of contemporary Bs, contributes a wonderfully vulgar performance as the strident, coarse wife of the long-suffering bog of the English department played by Holbrook in this droll and grisly variation "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Then there are the roaches vs. wicked old Upson Pratt (alias E.G. Marshall, fulminating with four-letter words, his hair teased like Larry Fine of "The Three Marshall gives a bravura, perverse performance as the hateful Upson, and the sterile white retreat of the heartless millionaire, with its only color coming from a glowing old juke box, is the MASSACRE" PROFESSIONAL No. 2 "THE CHILDREN" No. 3 DRACULA'S DOG $4 A CAR LOAD ADMISSION 99 mm riris aim varans air NOV.

13, 14 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. Newington High School OfCC 605 Willard Ave. Refreshments 6J Newington, Conn. Benefit: Karen Marhefka National Honor Society Scholarship Fund AT 2 P.M. roaches stage a nightmarish invasion on a rich, complusively clean old robber baron.

Morality tales all, of course. Revenge is rampant here, and the major crime being punished is, in most cases, greed although adulterers, sadists and just plain rude people don't come out alive either. But neither Romero nor King is really interested in teaching us lessons here, apart from the warning to those neanderthal parents who would dare to tread on their kids reading habits. "Creepshow" is just fun a chance to jerk in your seat one minute and to chortle the next. It's both heavy-handed and subtle.

In the same segment that a molded, melty old cadaver pushes up out of the grave, the maid is called Mrs. Danvers (whom Hitchcock lovers will recall as the chillingly evil housekeeper played by Judith Anderson in This is the first segment, entitled "Father's Day," and its best point is a drippingly arrogant and snobbish performance by Carrie Nye, as the narrator and most gruesome victim of this tale of the crypt. The too heavy traces of Viveca'Lindfors' Swedish accent get in the way of her playing of dotty, tarty-looking, bag womanish Aunt Bedelia, however. And the inserts of comic book devices are a bit too intrusive. (Romero has explained that he wanted to do something more zappy, but didn't have the money).

In cidition to creating the concept and whipping out the script in 60 days, King himself appears in the second segment as a lumbering oaf named Jordy Verrill, whose given name provides the episode's title. This is at once the briefest and least satisfactory of the chapters, although King does indeed "give good idiot," as he himself has put it, in his playing of the rube who sees dollar signs in the hot rock from the sky. The problem is that there isn't either much horror or humor as Jordy and everything he touches turns into an ugly looking fern. Things pick up in "Tide," the most sharply filmed sequence, which also features a strong performance by Leslie Nielsen as the first coolly smiling, later sweatily panicking husband who gets back at his faithless wife and her young lover by planting them in the sand as the sea rises. Especially nice creep makeup here by Tom Savani is paired with neat handling of the old lock-the-door-and-turn-around device to make this the scariest IIMIPIllllMl.ii.llllllllillJIJi I.

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