CREEPSHOW 2 (1987) Dir: Michael Gornick U.S Blu-Ray Review

Shawn Francis is taking over the site today with three reviews, the first up is a look at the U.S blu-ray release of CREEPSHOW 2. Shawn has already given us his thoughts on the U.K blu of Creepshow 1 so it's quite fitting he follow that up with it's sequel, check out Shawn's words after the Jump..

Written By Shawn Francis 
1987 was a hell of a year. Not only was I graduating from high school but there were also a ton of movies set for release that my friends and me needed to see. In no particular order, just to name a few, there was The Gate, Robocop, Predator, Extreme Prejudice, The Lost Boys, A Nightmare On Elm Street 3, Evil Dead II, The Witches Of Eastwick, The Monster Squad, Hellraiser, etc, etc.

I believe Creepshow 2 was either a spring movie or an early summer one and it was me, Gerry and I want to say a third person, but I can’t be sure. Aaron may have been with us, if that was the case. I remember the night well. As we got our tickets there was this odd looking kid paying too much attention to us. He was short, wore glasses, and had a high-pitched voice. For some reason I presumed he was a college kid. I have no evidence of this just a feeling, since I had never seen him in our school before. It was possible he could’ve been a student of the vocational high school just down the road from the school we attended.

He even bought a ticket to Creepshow and sat right behind us. It was during the final story, the unintentionally hilarious hitchhiker tale where we all started laughing our asses off. I mean a hard, tears-in-the-eyes laugh. We also started shouting at the screen and the kid behind us started to do the same. I had the feeling he wanted to hang with us, or something. I thank God we never officially introduced ourselves to him, he gave me the creeps and when the movie was over we quickly left. Never saw him again at the movie theater. Actually we never encountered him anywhere ever again.

Creepshow 2 is comprised of three tales; two tales less than the first Creepshow. “Ol’ Chief Woodenhead,” is about a wooden Indian in a rundown town that comes to life and seeks revenge once three scumbags who murder storeowners, Ray and Martha Spruce, played by George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour.

The next tale, “The Raft” is about four teens that head off to a secluded lake to hang out on a wooden raft for the day. Their arrival coincides with the arrival of this weird oil slick-like organism that seems to be keenly aware of them and picks them off one by one in good ol’ Blob-like fashion.

The final tale, “The Hitchhiker,” concerns itself with a cheating wife who accidentally runs over a hitchhiker and makes the bad decision to play the hit-an-run card. But this is a Creepshow movie and as you all well know payback in one of these flicks is a bitch. The supposedly dead hitchhiker keeps appearing over and over along the route, and Anne Lansing (Lois Chiles) keeps trying to kill him over and over again..

More similar to the Tales From The Crypt series running on HBO at the time, the wraparound tale has an animated “Creep” introducing each segment while a boy finds something he wants to buy in the back of the current Creepshow mag and sends for it.

I haven’t seen this movie since that theatrical viewing and I noticed this time out the tall, blond guy from “The Raft” segment is Paul Satterfield, who later appeared in Charles Band’s Sci-Fi flick, Arena (1989) and the gigolo in the opening scene of “The Hitchhiker” is David Beecroft whom I’m more familiar with as the hero of Charles Band’s Shadowzone (1990) movie.

Compared to the first Creepshow the sequel is a big let down. It bears at least some resemblance to the first one in how the stories are presented with that comic book overtone, but that’s as far as the EC comics visuals go. The standout tale in this one, and the one my friends and me deliberately went to this movie to see, is “The Raft.” Stephen King’s short story from his Skeleton Crew collection is memorable and so is this short film adaptation. It’s the only reason I’ll be hanging on to this blu-ray.

Image Entertainment finally makes it available on blu-ray. The image quality isn’t as crisp as the Idle Hands (1999) one I recently reviewed (also from Image), but colors are quite good, with The Raft segment looking the best. Probably because it’s set mostly in the sunlit day, everyone has on rather bright colors, and the night scene of the moon sparkling off the creature’s skin shows up nicely in this transfer.

Video/Audio/Subtitles: 1080p high definition anamorphic 1.85:1—DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio—English subtitles only.

For those who love extra features I want you to brace yourself for some bad news. None of them from the 2004 Divimax Edition were ported over. Not even the trailer.