Creepshow - Bad Wolf Down/The Finger

“Bad Wolf Down” 2.5/5

“The Finger” 2/5

 

I still haven’t discovered that one tale so far in the Shudder “Creepshow” series in the first two episodes that really hit a homerun with me yet. Rob Schrab wrote and directed the werewolf tale, “Bad Wolf Down”, a really simple plot set in WWII wilderness, a machine gun skirmish between American and German forces. The standout character is Sgt. Quist (Nelson Bonilla), a really nasty asshole who actually leaves his fellow soldiers in a prison cell with a French werewolf while he runs off to get back to a larger squadron. Those left behind include Captain Talby (David MacDonald), Private Rivers (Callan Wilson), and Doctor Kessler (Kid Cudi), a dwindled company locating a small building with a cell containing a French beauty and German soldiers savaged by something monstrous. The French beauty is accidentally shot by Rivers when her taloned hands reach for his neck, begging the soldiers not to release her from the cell, as the trio see if she is okay with Quist, always loud, obnoxious, ornery, and obtuse, locking them in, fleeing before a Nazi company led by Reinhard (Jeffery Combs!) arrive with machine guns at ready. Reinhard is looking for revenge as Talby stuck a knife in the back of his son. What Talby, Rivers, and Kessler decide is to allow the woman in the cell (Kate Freund) to bite them before Rivers gives her the silver cross on his neck. So the Nazis gas the building and enter in not realizing they will be confronting to their horror three werewolves. To save budget on transformation effects, Schrab cleverly uses the Creepshow comic book sketch art gimmick to show animated cells then just go right into the werewolves in their beast form. So we see the actors at the very beginning stage, animated comic book cells then the live werewolf costumes before soldiers “lose their heads”. Blood scatters and splatters with some viscera here and there. Combs pinned to a wall with Talby’s werewolf reaching into his mouth before his head is plucked from the neck is hilarious. And if you were rooting for Quist to get his comeuppance, this tale sort of gives you a little…he’s subdued with a missing arm and leg but Talby mocks him as he’s about to turn, when the animated cell closes the tale before we actually see Quist die. Sufficed to say I was disappointed.

 

Nicotero’s “The Finger” has DJ Qualls talking to the camera, to us, about his finding a finger on the ground while walking home, a bit of a night owl who prowls for “discarded and abandoned items”. The finger absorbs some of his booze, then some juice in his refrigerator, gradually growing into an actual amphibious type creature with bony arms and legs, a screech, and lengthy fingers. The creature Qualls nicknames “Bob” actually kills folks that annoy and frustrate DJ, returning from its hunts with “trophies”. A heart, severed heads, testicles (a trucker never should have told DJ to fuck himself), and even a tongue, if someone perturbed DJ in any way, Bob would hunt them down, find them, and kill them. DJ had a lot of clean up, that’s for sure. DJ’s dead ex wife and associates he knows bring detectives to his house, until we realize that he’s actually talking to us from a padded cell, all the activity we were privy to before these recollections retold to us. Is Bob actually real or just a created monster from his ID? Written by David Schow, this is grisly and Qualls seems to be having fun, spending a lot of time at his disheveled home with its abundance of empty beer bottles and scattered and disorderly trash. It seems once his ex left him, Qualls just failed to find any motivation to clean up his place. The finger and the creature that manifests from him is up for debate. It could very well be that Bob is merely a figment of Qualls’ imagination. This just abruptly ends, so I felt Schow had more story here that time restraints limited. I don’t know: I could help but feel cheated, as if Qualls’ story was cut short by the 30 minute format. I think you can see in these anthologies how sometimes the 30 minute runtime can be a detriment. Schow’s script has its little quirks that amused me but I just didn’t feel wholly satisfied. Something felt missing as if a chapter was ripped from a book.