When Creepshow came out in 1982, it felt like a splash of lurid color ripped straight from the pages of EC horror comics. George A. Romero directed with style, Stephen King supplied pulpy stories, and the result was a mix of camp and menace that captured the spirit of twisted morality tales. Five stories, bound together by a sharp comic-book aesthetic, gave it both variety and energy. A sequel seemed inevitable, and in 1987, Creepshow 2 arrived with Romero stepping back into the role of screenwriter while his longtime cinematographer Michael Gornick took the director’s chair.
Right away, the difference is clear: the sequel is leaner, offering just three stories instead of five. There’s plenty of gore, gallows humor, and supernatural justice, but it never reaches the same heights as the original. It feels smaller, less ambitious, and sometimes clumsier, though still worth a look for horror anthology fans.
The film keeps the comic-inspired wraparound, this time featuring a character called the Creep (played under prosthetics by Tom Savini, voiced by Joe Silver). He hands a horror comic to a boy named Billy, and the in-between segments play out in stylized animation. These cartoons have a scrappy charm, but compared to the bold comic panels of the first film, they look more like Saturday morning fare than a subversive homage to EC. The subplot of Billy plotting revenge on bullies with a monstrous Venus flytrap works as connective tissue, but it never gathers the same punch as the original film’s voodoo doll wraparound.
The first full story, “Old Chief Wood’nhead,” is a straightforward revenge tale. George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour play an aging couple who run a nearly bankrupt general store in a fading desert town. Outside stands a wooden Native American statue, and when the couple is murdered by local punks, the statue comes alive to avenge them. The killings are bloody and satisfyingly cruel: arrows pierce torsos, scalps are torn away, and the gang’s preening leader, obsessed with Hollywood dreams, gets his vanity stripped down to nothing. Kennedy’s performance gives the early scenes heart, and his quiet dignity helps anchor what might otherwise feel like a pulpy caricature. Still, the imagery around the Native American statue feels dated today, leaning on stereotypes even while it tries to present the figure as noble. It’s an entertaining start, but also one of the segments most in need of critical distance.
The second story, “The Raft,” is the one that sticks in the mind of most viewers. Four college kids drive out to a secluded lake, where they swim to a raft floating offshore. Almost immediately, they notice a strange black mass spreading across the surface of the water. It’s alive, hungry, and it begins dissolving anyone unlucky enough to touch it. The setup is elegant in its simplicity, a perfect example of King’s knack for taking an ordinary setting and twisting it into a nightmare. The deaths are grimly inventive: skin is pulled apart, bodies dragged screaming into the water, bones stripped down in seconds. The claustrophobia of being trapped with no escape gives the story a relentless dread.
But watching it now is a different experience than when it first played in theaters or even in the VHS days. When I first encountered “The Raft,” I loved it, the sheer hopelessness, the cruelty of nature personified, the way it seemed to laugh at youthful invincibility. Years later, when I revisited the film, one sequence changed how I saw it entirely. In the middle of the segment, one of the male characters takes advantage of a sleeping friend, and the film presents it as though it were a tender, romantic moment. The shot is filtered with gauzy softness, set against gentle music, and it reads like an attempted seduction scene. In reality, it’s an assault, and the way the movie frames it is gross, clumsy, and hard to sit through.
This sequence reframes the story on repeat viewings. The character’s eventual death comes quickly afterward, and looking at it again, it’s clear the filmmakers intended this as his punishment. Within the EC Comics formula, sins are always answered in kind, and his violation is answered with brutal, inescapable justice. That doesn’t make the way it’s presented less troubling; it’s still tone-deaf and exploitative, but it does highlight how much of the film’s morality relies on setups for punishment. What once felt like my favorite segment now feels complicated: still powerful in concept, still frightening in its nihilism, but marred by one of the most uncomfortable missteps in the series.
The final story, “The Hitchhiker,” returns to a faster, pulpier tone. Lois Chiles plays a wealthy woman hurrying home after cheating on her husband. On the drive, she runs over a hitchhiker and flees the scene. Unfortunately for her, the man she killed won’t stay dead. He appears again and again, mangled but grinning, clinging to her car and croaking the same line over and over: “Thanks for the ride, lady!” What follows is essentially a chase with death itself, equal parts grotesque and absurd. Chiles sells her character’s panic as the hitchhiker grows more battered yet more persistent, and Tom Wright plays the decaying figure with a sickly charisma. It’s repetitive by design, but the gag works, and the story rides its grim humor to the end. The conclusion is abrupt, but it sticks in the mind, leaving the audience laughing and wincing at the same time.
Taken as a whole, Creepshow 2 is a bit uneven but an entertaining follow-up. It has its moments of gore and dark comedy, and two of its stories, “The Raft” and “The Hitchhiker”, linger in memory long after the credits roll. Yet the film feels diminished compared to its predecessor. Without Romero’s direction and without the comic-book visuals that gave the first film such a unique personality, it often plays like a straightforward anthology rather than a subversive love letter to pulp horror. The smaller number of stories also hurts; with only three, the pacing feels a bit stretched at times, and weaker moments stand out more.
Still, there’s a reason the movie has stuck around in horror fandom. It’s scrappier, cheaper, and messier than the original, but it carries that EC Comics DNA in its bones. Everyone gets what’s coming to them, whether it’s arrogant criminals, predatory college kids, or an unfaithful spouse who thought she could escape fate. The punishments are cruel, the humor is grim, and the morals are delivered with a wink.
Arrow Films has packed this 4K Ultra HD limited edition of Creepshow 2 with an impressive collection of extras that go a long way toward recontextualizing the film. The newly restored 4K transfer from the original negative is the headline feature, presented in Dolby Vision with a choice of mono, stereo, and surround mixes that give fans flexibility in how they experience the movie. Beyond the technical polish, the release shines in its supplemental material: Michael Gornick’s audio commentary provides a candid look at the challenges of stepping into Romero’s shoes, while interviews with Romero himself, Tom Savini, Daniel Beer, and Tom Wright dig into both the creative process and the on-set atmosphere. These pieces highlight the collaborative nature of the production and give faces and voices to stories that fans may have only speculated about before.
The disc also delivers a wealth of archival and newly produced material that will appeal to horror historians and casual fans alike. The special effects featurette Nightmares in Foam Rubber dives into the practical gore and creature work with interviews from Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero, while Berger’s segment on Rick Baker adds a personal angle to the world of FX artistry. Rounding out the package are behind-the-scenes reels, an image gallery, and a collection of trailers and TV spots that reflect how the film was marketed in the late ’80s. Perhaps the most exciting inclusion is the limited-edition booklet featuring Jason Mayoh’s comic adaptation of Pinfall, the unfilmed segment originally planned for Creepshow 2. Along with an illustrated essay by Michael Blyth, reversible sleeve artwork, and overall premium packaging, this edition not only restores the film to its best-ever presentation but also celebrates the wider mythology of the Creepshow franchise.
Creepshow 2 is not the equal of the first film, but it remains a fascinating snapshot of 1980s horror: part scary campfire tale, part cautionary comic strip, and part midnight movie. It may stumble in places—sometimes badly, but it never loses sight of the twisted justice at the heart of the series.
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