Review: Creepshow 3 (2006)

Stars: Kris Allen, Magi Avila

Budget: $3.5 million

Directed By: Ana Clavell, James Dudelson

Sigh okay so we got a third movie in the series. Why do I sigh?
Because this is the dip in the series, even for a anthology lover like me. This creepshow is not like the others. It's less comic style and more just standard film style like any other anthology.

Though one thing this does do in it's difference is to link the stories together. Some of the character from one story will interact with others from one of the other stories.
This is redeeming as it's a new direction possibly to inject something new into the series.

The film is five stories like the first one again which i also appreciated. The only problem is they feel like things i've seen before in something like outer limits or twilight zone. Remotes that can freeze time or a person who might be a robot really. Lets get on with the each segment in my breakdown:

Alice:
This shit is confusing Alice a young girl with an attitude problem comes home to see her father messing around with some kind of remote control. This like so many sci-fi trope is able to change/control aspects of time/space, but not only that it's able to change other things like skin colour etc. The remote has been given to them from someone from another of the segments a scientist down the road. Well each press makes Alice mutate 'show her true ugly form' until her family finally notice just how ugly she is inside. Then the scientist turns her into a small white rabbit at the end.

Rachel The Call Girl:
Possibly one of my favourites of the five and a nice little twist that made me laugh too. A guy (Victor) hires a hooker/call girl (Rachel) to entertain him for the night, only shocker! Shes a murderer. She secures Victor to the bed kills him, then sticks a pillow over his face.
After cleaning herself off she hears his voice saying she killed him, removing the pillow we see Victor is a massive mouthed vampire of some kind, in a twist he then kills her. Placing her corpse with the occupants of the house who he has also killed.

Professors Wife:
Another reasonably funny one but again something i've seen in many other things before, someone seems better than they should be so their a robot right?
Two students go see their professor who has seemingly married a really beautiful woman much better than anyone would have though he could get. The professor is also brilliant in robotics and she also seems very methodical in her actions.
They end up accidentally murdering her looking for cybernetic parts in her body.
Rachel is also seen in this one.

The Radio:
A security guard buys a replacement from the tramp from the haunted dog, the radio tells him to kill people untill he gets to be with a woman he really likes. The radio warns him to kill her but he doesn't as he loves her, she does indeed end up killing him with the gun he's killed others.
She is immediately shot and killed by a pimp from the guys building who then goes back to his car where a radio is also telling him to do things. We see Rachel in this one and the two guys from the professors wife too.

The Haunted Dog:
A doctor doing some kind of community service in a free clinic where he is excessively rude to all of his patients. Karma however bits him in the ass when he one day goes to get a hot-dog from a street vendor dropping the dog he gives the filthy food to a tramp who often troubles him.
He dies and comes back to haunt the doctor, muttering the woods thanks for the dog, or something along those lines. It gives me de-ja-vu from Creepshow 2 thanks for the ride lady from the hitch-hiker. This one also ties a lot of the other stories together too, anyway the doctor gets scared to death.
The hotdog cart guy ends up being the creep too at the end.

If you like anthology films like me and have seen the others you'll want to complete the trilogy and see this otherwise really only watch it if theres nothing else around at the time. THN scores Creepshow 3 a 2 out of 5 stars.

Review: Creepshow 2 (1987)

Stars: Lois Chiles, Tom Savini

Budget: $3.5 Million

Directed By: Micheal Gornick

The second film of one of my favourite anthology series's Based off Stephen King stories this one was directed by Micheal Gornick instead of Romero.

This one is almost exactly the same in tone, comedy horror with the first segment 'old chief wooden head' probably being the most serious of the three.
Notice i say three there, this offering only gives us 3 complete stories. There is like the first one a prologue and epilogue, though also in between each segment we have a an interlude too continue the prologue but mostly to introduce the next story.

There was supposed to be two other segments though they were cut for both budgetary and time restraints. Though Billed as a star Tom Savini plays the Creep but for only a few brief minutes before the segment turns into cartoons and is then voiced by a different actor.

-Prologue-
A young boy with the same name as the kid from the first, though it is not stated he is the same kid at all, travels on his bike to the back of a truck where the shutter flies up and reveals the creep. He is dressed as a delivery guy and throws out a brown paper parcel. It starts to unwrap itself as the live action dissolves into cartoon instead where the delivery guy reveals his identity. He then proceeds to introduce the first proper segment as Billy reads.

Old Chief Wooden Head:
In a town thats still kind of back water with old tensions still between native americans and whites are still tense two old people own an old store. The town is dying out slowly and the owners of the general store are thinking of retiring themselves.
The store is decorated by an old wooden indian used for advertising many years ago. The couple are called Ray and Martha, they are pleasantly surprised to get a visit from an old Indian friend Elder Benjamin. He comes bearing a gift for them, turquoise jewelry as his tribe are indebted to Ray for help he has given them in hard times. Given the valuables until his tribe can pay back the debt they owe the two Benjamin leaves but not before nodding farewell to the wooden statue.
Not long after Sam, Benjamins nephew along with two of his friends, fatstuff and Andy bust into the shop and subject the two to a robbery. However once he demands the jewelry that his uncle left with them the two decline to hand it over. Sam is very vain and says he wants it to make money so he can get to Hollywood and become famous.
In a scuffle both Ray and Martha are fatally wounded by Sams shotgun, the three of them after taking the jewelry and money leave the crime scene. Chief Woodenhead comes to life and then starts to kill the thugs one by one. I won't spoil any further just to say this is the most serious out of the three stories with little to no comedic elements, rightly so as the two old folk are brutally murdered by the three thugs, a good story though.

-Interlude 1-
Billy finishes reading old Chief Woodenhead and then grabs a package addressed to him from the local post office, despite the protestations of the clerk. He replies the package contains a Venus flytrap to which he rolls his eyes at.

The Raft:
Randy and his three friends Deke, Lavern and Rachel all college students find themselves a lake that just so happens to have one of those white floating rafts out from shore. They all decide to swim out there and party it up a little. Rachel is however grabbed and consumed by the 'blob like' floating black good that looks like an oil slick (which she pokes repeatedly)
Terrified the teens argue for a while upon the raft before Deke the more athletic and stronger of him and Randy decides to try for a swim ashore. Before he can however the mass seeps up through the crack in the boards of the raft and pull him through the planks consuming him too.
Then in one of the most stupidest moves ever (after dodging the blob by not standing on the cracks) both Lavern and Randy fall asleep on the deck. Yeah fall asleep with the cracks and a giant blob tar monster that's clever etc!
Well anyway Randy wakes up suddenly realising they fell asleep and for some unknown reason starts to fondle the sleeping Lavern. We see it may have been a ploy for the creature to attack Lavern to give Randy time to escape as Lavern wakes up screaming with the blob attached to her face.
Randy leaps from the raft and begins his swim back to shore, does he make it?
Well you'll have to watch the film to find out!

-Interlude 2-
Billy is seen and chased by the local bully who grabs his box and rips it open seeing the bulb for the plant inside he throws it to the ground and crushes it underfoot. Billy having thrown to the ground manages to get a swift kick into Rhino's nuts and escapes from the gang.

The Hitcher-hiker:
An older business woman awakes next to man, Mrs Lansing, who by her speaking to herself we realise has been cheating on her husband with a gigolo. Seeing it is late she quickly leaves so she can be home before her husband gets back.
Flying down the road at high speed she fails to see a hitch-hiker thumbing for a lift as shes pruning herself in the rear-view mirror. The unlucky man is knocked over and killed instantly, in fear and also the want to get home she just leaves his corpse by the roadside.
Pulling over a little while away from the accident Mrs Lansing thinks she may have gotten away with it, not worrying about the consequences. Suddenly the hiker pops up by her window claiming "thanks for the ride lady!" He keeps repeating this throughout the segment, no matter how mashed he gets.
No matter where she drives though the hitcher keeps reappearing eve when she continuously keeps running him over. He keeps coming back more and more mutilated each time. Does Mrs Lansing make it home before her husband notices or the hitcher kills her?
You'll have to watch it and see!

-Epilogue-
Billy makes the gang follow him for a while until they reach an abandoned junk yard where Billy has a surprise waiting for them!

Overall and considering this was the first one of the trilogy i watched so that make me biased somewhat I like the second creepshow just a tiny bit more than the first one but still it has some flaws like i explained in the raft one, so THN awards Creepshow 2, 4 out of 5 stars