Creepshow 2 (1987)

Directed by Michael Gornick. Starring Lois Chiles, George Kennedy, Holt McCallany, Dorothy Lamour, Paul Satterfield, David Beecroft, Jeremy Green, Frank Salsedo, Daniel Beer, Don Harvey, David Holbrook, Page Hannah, (voice) Joe Silver. [R]

Three more tales of terror under the Creepshow label, based on stories from Stephen King (scripted by George Romero, who directed the original anthology); they’re interwoven with a disposable (mostly animated) framing device. First up, a hoary tale of supernatural revenge involving a cigar store Indian that comes to life, and every story beat is struck in a predictable fashion. The middle tale had the best potential for skin-crawling horror with people stranded on a raft as an oozing slime surrounds them—its yucky feasts are the stuff that The Blob‘s dreams are made of—but uninspired direction and amateurish acting never lets it really get going. The last one, with the hitchhiking victim of a hit-and-run haunting the careless driver (Chiles), could have been told in less than fifteen minutes, but is padded out with a pointless opening and a brief scene that gives it all away shortly after the accident. An awfully unimaginative and flatly-filmed trio, without a real winner in the bunch (though none are painful either). Originally supposed to be five stories like the original Creepshow, but two were cut to keep costs down; one of them (“Cat from Hell”) later showed up in the 1990 anthology pic, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie.

44/100