From Horror Movie To Horror Comic: Creepshow (1982)

Posted on July 14, 2024 by bloodlinematt

Welcome back to Rotten Ink! Since I have started doing the “From Horror Movie To Horror Comic” updates, there is one comic that I have been requested to do and that’s Creepshow as so many of you readers love this classic graphic novel and wanted to see it get the Rotten Ink treatment, and well here it is! Creepshow is one of those films that seems to gain more and more of a following as the years pass as newer horror fans discover it and ultimately fall in love with it as it could be one of horror cinema’s most prefect anthology films. Plus The Creep, who is the film’s storyteller and guide through these tales of the macabre, is a true horror icon and has become so popular that he has even sparked action figures as well as has appeared on t-shirts and posters. For this update, not only will we be taking a look at Creepshow the film and the graphic novel, but we will also be talking a little about Monster Bash 2023 as Juliet and I also attempt to visit at least one of the filming locations of Creepshow while we are in the Pittsburgh area. So with that, a thunderstorm is brewing outside and there is a tapping at the window as The Creep says it’s time to talk about Creepshow!

Let’s first start off taking a look at The Creep, who is the main villain in Creepshow, and talk about his ways of helping dealing death to mankind. The Creep is a creepy looking rotting skeleton ghoul with long white hair who is also very much ghostly in nature and loves to share his horrific tales of horror with those who will listen. His grotesque appearance could easily frighten a person to death, as could his sinister toothy smile because his undead look makes him very frightening on the human eyes. He also has the ability to fly and hover around, making him also very dangerous, as he can get at least two stories high. He also seems to have a kind of control or at least can encourage wicked youngsters into committing acts of violence by using voodoo and black magic on their parents or bullies, and this power can make him very evil as he also seems to feed off of fear and even hate that people have for one another. He also is able the spread his messages and gruesome tales via the pages of a comic book he is the host of. And at this time it is very unclear if The Creep has any true weaknesses and what, if anything, can kill him as he mostly stays in the shadows and pulls the strings like a puppet master. While The Creep is more of a spooky storyteller than a killer, he still is very bad as he can help lead people to do very bad things that lead to being severely harmed to even death.

So now that we have taken a look at The Creep, the twisted storyteller, I think it’s now time we take a look at Creepshow, the cult classic anthology film that truly is a masterpiece of 80’s Horror cinema that he is the star of. I want to first remind you that, like always, we will be taking the film’s plot from our pals at IMDB, and then I will write about the film’s production as well as my thoughts about the film. So if you are ready, let’s dive into the world of Creepshow.

Creepshow (1982)

“Five tales of terror are presented. The first deals with a demented old man returning from the grave to get the Father’s Day cake his murdering daughter never gave him. The second is about a not-too-bright farmer discovering a meteor that turns everything into plant-life. The third is about a vengeful husband burying his wife and her lover up to their necks on the beach. The fourth is about a creature that resides in a crate under the steps of a college. The final story is about an ultra-rich businessman who gets his comeuppance from cockroaches.”

George Romero was working with his own Laurel Entertainment and United Film Distribution and after Dawn Of The Dead, Martin and Knightriders, his next film was to be a team up with horror writer Stephen King for Creepshow, a spooky anthology film that was a love letter to the classic EC Comic series like Tales From The Crypt, Vault Of Horror and Haunt Of Fear. While George A. Romero would be the director, the script would be handled by Stephen King who would also appear in the film in one of the segments as a simple minded farmer. The film would have a budget of $8 million and with that they brought in Tom Savini for the film’s special effects and some bigger name actors to join the cast with names like Ted Danson, Leslie Nielsen, Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Richard Gere, Ed Harris and Tom Atkins, to name a few. The film would mostly be filmed around the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area with some parts also being filmed in New Jersey. The film was very heavy on the special effects as many creatures, monsters and deaths depended on them to look good and be the main punch to the gut for the stories being told. And at one point in the film, over 20,000 live cockroaches were used on screen to deliver some chills as well as be the killers for their features segment. And once done, the film would be scored by John Harrison who would go onto do the music on such films as Day Of The Dead and Tales From The Darkside: The Movie. Laurel Entertainment, who were having money issues at this time, ended up selling the films distribution to Warner Brothers who would release the film on November 10, 1982 and would go on to make around $21 million. The film would be very well liked by critics and fans and would get even a bigger fan base once released on home media. The film would be released alongside such other horror films in 1982 as Friday The 13^th Part III, Basket Case, Poltergeist, The New York Ripper, Night Beast, Halloween III: Season Of The Witch, Slumber Party Massacre, Swamp Thing and The Thing ,to name a few showing that 1982 was a great year for horror in the cinema. The film would spawn two sequels as of this updates posting as well as a TV series.

Creepshow was a film that was a must watch at our household as both my brother and I were big fans, and we used to watch it all the time when it aired on HBO as well as on VHS. I can remember telling all my friend on the playground at school about the film as well as how cool The Creep was. I think for me why this film works so well is that each of the five tales are very different and each have their own twists and turns that can bring out fear. Creepshow also brings the viewer many types of horror “killers” as it features zombies, a monster, roaches and even a killer alien fungus and this makes it feel like a pick your poison of what really scares you kind of film. The film has that true comic book feel to it and moments in the film takes inspiration from the shocks of comics as backgrounds change and make you feel like the characters are really trapped in a comic book world. As a kid, one of the things that also stood out to me was the toys in Billy’s room as he had some amazing toys like a Mego Incredible Hulk, the Shogun Warrior versions of Godzilla and Rodan, a Remco Universal Mummy as well as he had Krusher the growing green monster! Plus let us not forget that he also had a Universal Dracula poster on his wall…Billy was awesome! Growing up I think my favorite story was “Fathers Day” as when I was a kid the look of the zombie version of Nathan was so well done and the twist ending of him having a head as his cake was so shocking and stuck with me, but as I got older, I think that “The Crate” became my favorite story in the film as I love the flesh eating monster who unknowingly helps a man get rid of his over bearing wife. Oh and yes, my brother and I would also talk about the fact that Bob Backlund makes an appearance in the film as the Stephen King played character Jordy is watching a WWF match on TV. One other memory I have of the film growing up is that my mom hated the segment “They’re Creeping Up On You” as the roaches busting out of the rich old man in the end grossed her out. Creepshow is one of those films as that I upgraded from VHS to DVD when it was released as well as over the years have the film’s score music on CD as well as have some t-shirts that showcase characters from the film and it really is one I have seen so many times as it truly is a classic fright flick and one that I recommend that everyone should watch. I just cannot say enough on how great this team up is of Romero and King two of the 80’s biggest horror icons really is.

So now that we have talked about the film Creepshow as well as The Creep who is the storyteller in the film I think that it is time that we take a look at the graphic novel that was released around the same time as the film in order to help promote it. I would like to thank Game Swap Kettering for having this GN in stock and making this update possible. I want to also remind you all that I grade these comics on a star scale of 1 to 4 and am looking for how well the comics stay to the source material, its entertainment value and its art and story. So if you are ready, let’s open the pages of Creepshow # 1 and see what The Creep has in store to share with us when it comes to spooky tales.

Creepshow GN # 1 ***1/2
Released in 1982 Cover Price $6.95 New American Library # 1 of 1

The Creep welcomes us to Creepshow and then ushers us to the first tale “Father’s Day” that is set at the Grantham House as family members are in the parlor for Father’s Day waiting on Great Aunt Bedelia who was said to have killed her abusive father. Family is telling Henry, a man dating one of the Grantham’s all about the rumors and dirty secrets of the family. Aunt Bedelia arrives at the house and heads to the family cemetery and sits by her father’s grave and remembers back to the death of her lover that was ordered by her father to look like a hunting accident. She also remembers the day she killed him with an ashtray as he banged his cane against his wheel chair screaming about wanting cake! As Bedelia sits and remembers back, her father rises from his grave and kills her as well as Henry who was sent out to find her when she was late for dinner. In the end after killing another of his kin and making her head into a cake, The Father finally got his cake to the horror of the remaining Grantham family members. The next creepy tale is “The Lonesome Death Of Jordy Verrill” goofball Jordy Verrill watches as a meteor falls from the sky near his farm and when he finds it he by accident burns himself by touching it, he thinks he can sell the meteor to the local college and make some money but when he pours cold water on it the meteor splits and green goo comes out of it and as well gets on Jordy who ends up slightly defeated in his dream of getting money after he cracked the meteor in half. But things gets worse for Jordy as the goo in the meteor makes his body grow a mold that takes his skin over and as well his farm land, in the end Jordy ends his own life but the growing mold is spreading even outside his farm. The next terror tale is called “The Crate” Henry Northrup is a Professor who hates his wife Billie and who gets a call from his friend Stanley after the night janitor finds an old crate hidden under the stairs, that ends up housing a very hungry creature that eats the janitor as well as a student! And Henry comes up with an idea that will solve his wife issue as he will lead her to the creature have it eat her and then he can chain up the crate and drop it into a body of water and things will be better for them both, so Henry drugs Stanley with sleeping pills and after this plan happens we see that the creature is still alive even at the bottom of the water. The next spooky tale is “ Something To Tide You Over” that has Richard Vickers capturing his wife Becky and her lover Harry in the act of cheating and takes them both to a private beach and buries them in the sand with only their heads out, and waits for the tide to come in so they both can drown and even video tapes it and makes Harry watch as Becky drowns just to be even more cruel before the water comes for him. In the end Richard is at home cocky and happy about his double murder when he is visited by his now zombie victims who take him to the beach in order to suffer the same fate as they did. The final tale is called “They’re Creeping Up On You” Upson Pratt is a very rich man who lives in a very nice apartment and he is mad when he finds a cockroaches are all over his living area and demands that the exterminators get their within an hour, but things turn bad for Mr. Pratt when the city has a blackout and thousands of roaches come out to play and cause him to have a heart attack! When the lights finally come back on we find that the roaches have hidden in the body of Mr. Pratt and all escape via his mouth.

This amazing graphic novel was released around the same time the film was released in theaters and once more proves my point that comic books are a great tool to help promote as well as give fans of the films a little something more to collect. And let’s be honest, Creepshow is a graphic novel that almost everyone who reads horror comics has in their collection. The graphic novel has five twisted tales and each bring a different type of horror to the readers, and as you can guess they are the same tales from the movie and these comic versions of the stories do the ones from the film justice and bring some truly memorable chills. The one change that the comic has is that The Creep is the main focus of the segments between the tales and all the parts of young Billy and his father are missing that make up the films over all story arch. And while the film is clearly inspired by EC Comics, this graphic novel is even more so as The Creep truly acts like The Crypt Keeper with his dark humor puns to take us along the journeys of these twisted tales. All five of the stories are very good and well done with many of them having some very impactful moments with Jordy being covered with that mossy mold killing himself and the undead father holding his head cake; they all spark a feeling of dread. I think if I had to choose my favorite story from this graphic novel I would go with “The Crate” as I am a sucker for a good creature and this one delivers as he eats humans and looks very mean and scary, and if I had to choose my least favorite I would say “The Lonesome Death Of Jordy Verrill” as the story is great and all but does not pack as much of a scare as the others, but it does have one of the most impactful downbeat endings. There is lots of blood, death and gross moments in this GN and that will surly please those readers who like the red stuff spilt in their horror comics. The cover for this GN is amazing and very eye catching, and I would also say very iconic, the interior art is done by the master of the macabre Bernie Wrightson and for those who know his style, you know just how great it is, as I love the way he drew the undead as well as the Crate Monster in this book. Over all this is a truly amazing graphic novel and truly is apart of the Creepshow legacy and could even be a bigger part than the sequels and Shudder series in many fans eyes. Check out the artwork bellow to see the style of Wrightson used in this book.

Creepshow is a great film as well as a great graphic novel and both should truly be in every horror fan’s collection. But as you can see, our look at Creepshow is over ,and now it’s our time to take a brief look at Monster Bash 2023 as this was the year that Juliet and I went on a quest to find ata least one shooting location used for the film Creepshow, and we found it as we went to the house that was used for the prologue exteriors. It was great as it looked just about the same as it did in the film…but sadly we were not able to get a picture as the home owner was doing yard work and we did not want to be rude and bother him, but it was a very cool experience of seeing it. But as you can see, we have come to the end of the update and that means we have to leave The Creep behind and head to the Rotten Ink Theater as we talk silent cinema and take a look at the film Speed Spook! So until next time, read a horror comic or three, watch a horror Fflm or two and as always, support your local Horror Host. And again sorry I wish I could have gotten that picture of the Creepshow house for you guys to have seen on that day.

From Horror Movie To Horror Comic: The Shining (1980)

Posted on October 2, 2023 by bloodlinematt

Welcome back to Rotten Ink! As you can see, it’s the start of October, and we are ever so much closer to Halloween 2023. What better way to kick off this month than with a From Horror Movie To Horror Comic update that will take us to the Overlook Hotel in Colorado that needs a new caretaker for the off season, as the last one well…you know. Finally we have a comic based on The Shining thanks to the company Evil Genius Artworks who did a fan made comic featuring Jack Torrance and his family, and this is one I am very much happy to do as I am sure this will make your 2023 Halloween season a little more spooky. So let’s head to the Overlook Hotel and see what is in store for us, and if the spirits have decided if we will always be here.

Let’s first take a look at the killer that makes The Shining so scary, the crazed Jack Torrance! Jack is a family man who takes a job of being a caretaker for the Overlook Hotel that closes down in the winter due to bad storms. Jack himself has had issues in his life, mostly being an alcoholic that has caused him to go into rages and become abusive to his family. Jack is highly smart and is a teacher as well as a writer and has a wife Wendy and a son named Danny who is special as he has what is called The Shining, a gift that gives him powers like telepathic abilities and premonitions. Jack Torrance is also very unstable, and when in the Overlook Hotel, the evil spirits that call it home take over and turn him into a lunatic who can and will commit murder. Jack is very mean spirited and loves to use hurtful words in order to break down his victim; he likes to get into their mind and cause them to be afraid of what he wants and plans to do to them. He has no super strength or powers and is just your normal middle aged man when it comes to his abilities and endurance. But I should also say that at times the evil spirits of the hotel will make themselves known to the victims and will add more fear to the situation at hand. Jack also loves to use sharp objects to deal death and an axe is his weapon of choice to hack away at his human target. Jack’s mental state also makes him very dangerous as he has no feelings when it comes to his mental and physical abuse of his family and gets enjoyment from their fear, that is of course once he is fully mad as a hatter. But Jack Torrance, while dangerous, is still just a normal man who is driven insane by evil spirits and mental illness, so any normal ways of killing a man would stop Jack from being shot, stabbed, burned or even freezing to death. While Jack Torrance is not the most brutal or most powerful killer we have seen on a From Horror Movie To Horror Comic Update, he still is very dangerous and can deal death with his trusty axe.

Now that we have talked about Jack Torrance, the killer of The Shining, I think it’s time we take a look at the film version that sparked this fan-made comic we will be taking a look at. So if you are ready, let’s wander around the halls of the Overlook Hotel and see what horrors await us.

The Shining (1980)

“A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.”

Stephen King is considered one of the world’s top modern horror writers, and Warner Brothers optioned the film rights to his 1977 novel The Shining. This was because director Stanley Kubrick wanted to make the film after reading the book and disliking a stack of other horror novels. The film was in development as he liked the idea of the human personality. The film was written by Kubrick as well as Diane Johnson and was based on parts of The Shining novel by King as the screenplay added elements not featured in the book, as well as even took away characters and situations. The film was mostly shot on sound studios with the sets being created in order to capture the look of an old hotel with the exterior shots being filmed by a second unit. The sets were used as Kubrick liked to work with a small crew as this allowed him to push everyone harder and in his mind, helped him get the performances and look that he wanted to see on the screen. When casting the film the main decision was who would play the character of Jack Torrance and the first pick was Jack Nicholson who would end up taking the role but other names considered included Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro and Robin Williams with Stephen King wanting Martin Sheen, Jon Voight or Michael Moriarty to play Jack. Imagine just how different the film would have been if one of those actors ended up in the role. Other cast brought on were Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, Danny Lloyd, Anne Jackson and Lisa & Louise Burns. It is said that during the filming Kubrick treated actress Shelley Duvall terribly and was downright abusive to her, causing her life long trauma. The film was scored by Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind and is very iconic and is always considered one of the best scores in Horror Cinema. The film was released in theaters on May 23, 1980 and was meet with mixed reviews from both critics and fans, with Stephen King being the one who was not that fond of the film due to the changes as well as Kubrick in general being a monster of a director who was a control freak. But over time the film has built up respect and is now one of the genre’s most well loved films. The Shining was # 12 at the American Box Office for the year 1980 brining in $44,017,374.00 and beating out such other Horror Movies as Friday The 13^th, Motel Hell, He Knows You’re Alone and Guyana: Cult Of The Damned. The film would later be released on all types of home media from VHS to Blu-Ray. And this was a micro write up about the production of this film, and if you want the whole scoop make sure to check out the many books and documentary films about the making of this classic fright flick.

The Shining really is one of those iconic Horror Movies that has even gone beyond just being well loved by the genre fans as many non-Horror fans have it listed as one of their favorite films. The first time I saw the movie was via VHS that my brother and I rented as we had always heard about it via the Horror books and magazines we read and even our parents mentioned the film to us. When we finally saw it, we both ended up being a fan of it with my brother even having at one point a T-Shirt of Jack’s face grinning from behind the chopped up door! And let’s also not kid ourselves, we have all at least once in our lifetime said “Here’s Johnny” and have seen a parody of this film done on film and TV like The Simpson’s who had the super funny “The Shining” segment that was part of the Treehouse Of Horror V episode or even the South Park episode “A Nightmare Of Face Time” that has Randy Marsh going crazy and possessed by the evil spirits from the Blockbuster Video he has bought…both are super hilarious and are worth tracking down and watching if you have not seen them. At one time in my life while I truly like and enjoyed The Shining I did find that it was overrated when it came to making my friends Top 10 Horror Film lists as many of the folks I knew personally who placed it on their list when we were all teenagers only did so as they thought adding a Stanley Kubrick film to their list made them look like a genre fan who had taste and understood the art of filmmaking. It was more about the director than the film itself, as they would later admit to me. I think what makes the film work so well is that the Overlook Hotel setting is very grim and isolated giving you a feeling of dread, and when you learn of the pervious murder committed by the last caretaker, it makes the outlook even grimmer. And I agree with what so many other fans have said: the Overlook Hotel is a character itself in the film and really is the hub for bad vibes and even more sinister spirits. Jack Nicholson is delightfully crazy in the role of Jack Torrance, and his performance is outstanding as we watch an unstable man get more and more crazy as the film goes on, and the look of insanity in his face is chilling. And while some folks are hard on her performance, I think Shelly Duvall did a great job as Wendy Torrance. Plus let us not forget all the wonderful evil spirits of the Hotel from the creepy Grady Twins to the rotting Old Woman In The Bath. They truly help add to the Horror of this film. Is The Shining one of the scariest movies of all time? No, but it is one of the creepiest ones that is well acted, well directed, well scored and has great spooky atmosphere.

The Shining is a film who took the source material and mixed in the vision of a filmmaker who was set in his ways, and while he and the books writer might not have seen eye to eye, what was created is a film that Horror and non-Horror fans can enjoy for centuries to come. So first I need to thank Evil Genesis Artworks and his Etsy shop for making and having this comic in stock and making this update possible. I want to also remind you all that I grade these comics on a star scale of 1 to 4 and am looking for how well the comics stay to the source material, its entertainment value and its art and story. So let’s open the door to Room 237 and hope the old naked lady doesn’t choke us!

Boulder # 1 ***
Released in 2022 Cover Price $6.79 Evil Genesis # 1 of 1

Wendy Torrance walks outside and finds her son Danny sitting by his bike on the curb, and she goes out to check on him, only to find that he is worried that the family’s car will breakdown on his father Jack who has a big job interview to be a caretaker for a hotel. Wendy does her best to calm him down when Danny next asks why his father lost his job, and Wendy tells him that while teaching Jack cut a student from the debate team for not being good, and that the student claimed that he was only let go due to the teacher not liking him. The student then slashed the tires of Jack and was caught by him, and Jack lost his cool and beat the student up and this made him lose his job teaching. Danny remembers back to when his drunk father lost his cool and broke his arm for spreading out school papers. Danny then asks his mother if she wants to live at the Hotel for the winter, and she says sure if that is what your father wants. Wendy then asks Danny if he wants to live there, he says sure as the neighborhood has no kids to play with anyway. Wendy goes inside and tears up as she drinks her tea, and Danny stays outside waiting for his dad to return home.

This comic captures the moments that take place for Wendy and Danny as the movie The Shining starts and follows Jack heading to the hotel for his job interview to become the caretaker. The story is the mother and son having a chat outside about the actions and possible move due to the father of the family who has a bad temper and a drinking issue. The main character in this issue is Wendy Torrance, who is a mother trying to keep her family together and answer the fears of her son as well as try her best to be supportive of her husband even though its clear he is unstable. Danny Torrance is a young kid who has no friends, and is dealing with being special as he has powers he does not understand and also both loves and fears his father who broke his arm at a young age. We also get a look at Jack Torrance as a teacher and see what lead to his firing and that was beating a former student up who made the mistake of slashing his old teacher’s tires. The mood of the comic is dark, and while it does not have gory, bloody moments it’s the dread that each page brings that makes the comic creepy as you know that both Danny and Wendy’s lives are about to truly change for the worse when Jack gets home and tells them he has the job. The comic is a very quick read and is well written and does capture the mood of the film very well as it does feel like a missing scene. The cover is pretty cool and has a crazy looking Jack standing behind his baby son Danny, and there is something uncomfortable about it. The interior art is done by Paul Payne and is fantastic stuff as his art captures the look of the actors and this helps add to the mood of the comic he created. This is one of the better fan comics I have read, and I really do look forward to getting more comic from Payne and reviewing them here at Rotten Ink. If you like the film The Shining, make sure to track down a copy of this limited released fan comic as it is a great read and is a very cool idea. I look forward to more fan comics from Paul Payne in the future. And with that checkout the artwork below to see the art style of Paul Payne used in this one shot comic issue.

The Shining is an iconic Horror Movie that brought the character Jack Torrance played by Jack Nicholson to the big screen off the pages of Stephen King’s novel and will forever be one of the genre’s most loved films. And I have to say that Paul Payne and his fan comic does a great job of bringing the film character versions to comics, and I hope that he continues making these fan Horror Movie inspired Horror Comics as I could think of many that I would love to see him do. For those wondering, his biggest series is “Rambo vs. The Blair Witch” and yes it’s as cool as it sounds. Well as you can see, the wind is turned chilly and that is our cue to leave the Overlook Hotel behind, as we need to get back to the Rotten Ink Arena as Kamala will be in action this Halloween season. So until next time, read a Horror Comic or three, watch a Horror Movie or two and as always support, your local Horror Host. See you next update as we take a look at one of my favorite big man wrestlers of the 1980’s!