I really did enjoy Bruce Davison’s performance as a still-in-mourning widower at a funeral home who wishes for a fugitive-on-the-run (Hannah Barefoot) to kill him, believing a withered old monkey’s paw (seemingly from Mumbai with an Indian fakir’s curse) he wished upon will grant him a “mercy killing”. Barefoot is on the lam because she ended her dying husband’s life with a gunshot (with a silencer) after his begging her to just end his suffering. So Davison regales her with the history of the paw, how his wife (Susannah Devereux) wished for money as their funeral business was nearing bankruptcy resulting in her death (and the proceeds of her life insurance going to him), how he used the paw to call her back to life (she does return, as he must rush to her grave to unearth her, realizing she’s a rotted zombie on the attack!), and in his loneliness begged the paw to send a killer to end his own life. Barefoot rejects the idea of the paw but when attempting to burn it in a fire, Davison hopes to retrieve it, himself catching fire (or so they both are led to believe), with Barefoot using her gun to do as he so desired. She then hopes to use the paw, even after Davison told her about his own wife’s “condition”, to raise her husband from the dead. Using the phrase, “Please rise”, in a morgue full of bodies on slabs proves to be ill-advised…as was the decision to bring her husband back! The special effects for Davison on fire are a bit disappointing, but clearly the budget seemed to go to his zombie wife rotted flesh makeup. Davison’s weary presence and defeated tone reveal just how much the loss and loneliness have taken a toll. I think John Harrison’s story-telling isn’t as bad in this tale, with some reliance on animated cells in the Creepshow comic, as in the second tale of the episode, “Times is Tough in Musky Holler”, which relied so much on animated cells the live action is sacrificed. Times is Tough focuses on locals getting revenge for their town’s tyranny and subsequent attacks/murders on many of their innocent own, with the likes of Dane Rhodes (as a sketchy mayor) and David Arquette (as the vile, head-busting sheriff) sentenced to a peculiar kind of punishment…taking advantage of the supernatural rise of the dead, one of the locals seeking vengeance (Tracey Bonner) delivers an impassioned sentencing while her colleagues led them (which includes a lying gossiper, sheriff’s deputies, and a shady priest) by gunpoint to chairs with chains, piloted to the surface with a lever, resulting in their heads sticking out from holes cut in a football field as a legless, armless zombie chews into each of their heads one by one. There was so much reliance on animated cells, obviously telling us that there was just not enough budget available to even detail the rise of the dead and the reign of Rhodes and Arquette’s terror before their capture and imprisonment before being sent to zombie-eat-face death. Lots of back and forth between Rhodes and Bonner about the back story and how they got to the point when this tale started, but even the zombie unleashed we actually see is quick and not altogether satisfying. Unfortunately, the second of the two tales just doesn’t give us a lot of good meat on the bone. Night/Paw didn’t altogether rock my boat, but Davison kept me captivated with his performance while Barefoot’s own loss and pain is also communicated evidently.
Night of the Paw: 3/5
Times is Tough in Musky Holler: 1.5/5
It took a bit but I finally watched an episode where both tales wowed me in ways most of the other tales couldn’t quite do so wholesale. “Skincrawlers” is right in my wheelhouse: slithery “Tingler spine” eel-like creatures found by accident while looking for fat-melting berries by a scientist (Chad Michael Collins) can actually suck all the fat from overweight folks for a payment not anticipating the biological reaction that results from a solar eclipse. While commenting on many of society’s desire to be “cosmetically appealing” without committing to a lifestyle that expects “putting in the work”, “Skincrawlers” also provides us in great graphic, visceral detail the results of going the less strenuous, disciplined route for something a bit easier, those using Collins’ eel suction method suffering from a rather nasty reaction where the process leaves inside those who choose it “invaders”. Dana Gould is the obese potential client Collins tries to win over but he rightfully questions having an eel attached to him, seeing the grotesque bodily response which includes head explosions, gushing blood splattering and spilling all over the place, and even creatures emerging from the human hosts in greater size with tendrils reaching for other human victims. I think you can tell some of the blood is computer generated but when the bodies hit the floor there’s plenty of brainy bits in the red spill. The creature at the end of the tale wanting Gould is right out of the 80s…this spoke to the sci-fi monster movie fan in me. The beautiful people completely fit after being quite beefy is a bit exaggerated but satires often are. And they all get a lot more than they bargained for hoping for an easy way out. 3.5/5
“By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain” might move a bit gradually and is a very subdued tale despite featuring the menacing James Devoti as a prick stepdad who intimidates his family and expects his wife to wait on his beck and call. Gena Shaw is the careful, obviously nervous and terrified wife while Sydney Wease is the defiant but meek stepdaughter, while David Alexander Kaplan is the little boy seemingly oblivious to what is happening to his family. Connor Jones is Wease’s teen love interest. Jones, with his “Rambo knife”, is also intimidated by Devoti. Wease’s late father was always in pursuit of “Champy”, a type of Loch Ness Monster often said to be seen in Lake Champlain, going through the family savings prior to his death, leaving them destitute. Devoti steps in but he’s a douchebag who seems to get off on making everyone around him worried he might go off on them with some sort of outburst. Wease and Jones eventually locate a long-neck dinosaur-like creature dead on the shore, with a neck wound indicating an attack. Wanting to credit her dead father for the find of the creature, Wease and Jones (the latter carving into its neck their names and date of when they found it) are interrupted by Devoti who plans to undermine them and cash in on the find…what Devoti doesn’t anticipate (after trying to start a fight with the smaller and weaker Jones, pushing him down and threatening him with a knife before Wease bites him, putting herself in danger) is the creature’s very much alive mate! The monsters are cool, and we get them in full form, complete with the giant mate gobbling up human food and investigating the dead body of its mate. These creatures have great chompers, too, and are impressively designed. The Lake Champlain location is foggy, moody, and gray, not a bad atmospheric setting for the creatures to wash up. There’s good emotion in its story, regarding the father who failed to find Champy and the daughter who wishes to champion him with a better legacy than what he left behind, not recognized as a failure (as her mother considered him), given credit. Devoti is the real monster of the tale…and seeing him dino-lunch was quite satisfying. 3.5/5
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