The Creepshow films are absolute faves of horror fans, and with talent like Stephen King, George A. Romero, and Tom Savini involved, it’s no surprise that Creepshow 3, an unofficial third film, made 20 years later and involving no one from the first films, didn’t stand a chance of getting any love.
So I’m glad I waited nearly ten years to see it with absolutely no expectations. I just went into it assuming I was getting an indie anthology film.
While the film opens with a macabre animated sequence about a hot dog stand, which comes into play later in the movie, it doesn’t have a narrator between stories. Instead, the stories are linked by settings and characters, a technique I really like—it was also used in Chilling Visions: 5 Senses of Fear.
As for the five stories, it goes something like this:
“Alice” – The first story is totally played for camp/comic value but that doesn’t excuse the fact that it is a mess. A snobbish girl who hates her neighborhood comes home to find her father fiddling with some sort of universal remote. Each time he presses it, her white family changes—first black, then Spanish. Then the girl deforms completely into a monster…and is turned into a rabbit by her neighbor. WTF?
“The Radio” – Indie horror favorite A.J. Bowen lives in a sleazy apartment building and has a shitty life. Then he buys a used radio—that talks to him. It tells him what to do. It starts to improve his life. Then it starts to fuck up his life, getting him to do really bad things. A much more concise tale, this one may not be scary, but it does have a dark, Tales from the Crypt tone and twist.
“Call Girl” – This one is my favorite. It’s violent, gory, and has a freaky faced monster! Oh. And it involves a call girl. Love it. It makes the whole movie worth it.
“The Professor’s Wife” – Silly horror time. A crazy college professor’s former students meet his new fiancée. But convinced he couldn’t score a chick and knowing he’s been trying to build a robot for two decades, they set out to prove the professor actually made her.
“Haunted Dog” – A total dick of a doctor (racist, ageist, uncaring, etc.) is haunted by the ghost of a homeless man he killed when he gave him a hot dog he’d dropped on the ground.
After the fifth story, there’s a segment that pretty much wraps all the stories up in a campy bow and pays homage to the endings of the original Creepshow films.
I have to admit, I didn’t hate Creepshow 3. And it’s not because A.J. Bowen appears in a towel. It’s just plain stupid fun. It really is like the Tales from the Darkside TV show—for every one great scary episode, there were at least four really cheesy ones.
I quite liked it, too. Not on par with the others, but goofy fun all the same. I own the DVD.