Creepshow Season 1 Blu-Ray Review
Creepshow was a 1982 portmanteau film written by Stephen King and directed by George A Romero, a perfect nightmare fuel partnership if ever there was one!
The film was 5 stories of terror based loosely on EC Comics titles like Tales From The Crypt, The Vault of Horror, Shock Suspenstories etc and the Shudder Original series follows the same path, The Creep introduces the terrible tales, and we sit back and enjoy
Season 1 (disc 1)
Disc Menu is done nicely in the Creepshow comic book style with the imagery and text all nicely donw. The theme music and video imagery show us some of the episodes content.
You can choose Play All, Episodes, Set-Up and Bonus from this menu Extra
Play All – plays the episodes in order
Episodes – choose an episode to watch from the first 3 episodes of the series contained on this disc. The pop up menu shows the episodes, again nicely done in the comic style.
Set-up – choose Subtitles English SDH, Spanish, French, Off
Bonus – Choose to have audio commentaries on the episodes, again this allows you to choose an episode to play.
A decaying host “The Creep” opens the series by opening THE CRATE from the ’82 movie, but this time it’s full of Creepshow comics.
Then we go into the first story “GRAY MATTER” This is a Stephen King short that appeared in the collection book Night Shift.
It stars Jesse C. Boyd, Christopher Nathan, Adrienne Barbeau, Giancarlo Esposito, and Tobin Bell.
Superbly acted throughout as you’d expect from the list of stars involved, beautifully shot and really sets the feel for the series, making you want to carry on watching, or bingeing as the case may well be. It’s absolutely chock full of easter eggs, which are nicely pointed out in the audio commentary by Greg Nicotero and Philip de Blasi.
The audio commentary is just as strong as the episodes here, well worth your time.
The second segment in this first episode is The House of the Head, one of my favourite stories in the series, beautifully acted and a fun story. It’s shot fantastically, looking through a dolls house as a severed zombie head mysteriously appears and starts messing with the inhabitants. The audio commentary here from Michael Felsher and John Harrison is a more interview style than the Nicotero one on the first story but it’s great. Lots of explanation from Harrison who directed the segment.
This episode perfectly sets the series up and is very re-watchable.
Episode 2’s segments are Bad Wolf Down and The Finger
In Bad Wolf Down a platoon of soldiers hide in a dilapidated police station during WWII, but they soon discover something more sinister than war has been unleashed inside the building.
In The Finger DJ Qualls plays Clark and he finds a finger. He takes it home and it grows- first another finger, then an arm, then a whole creature. Clark names him Bob, and they get along great, until…
Bad Wolf Down’s audio commentary has Michael Felsher with Rob Schrab and the Finger has Greg Nicotero and David J Schow. Again both commentaries are great, with so much extra info and you can just hear how much these guys love both the source material, Creepshow itself and just making films in general. Great to watch along with these guys.
Episode 3’s segments are All Hallows Eve and The Man In The Suitcase.
A group of young trick-or-treaters terrorise their small town on Halloween in the style of The Purge! How long have they been doing this?…
Imagine finding a man cursed with the ability to spit out gold coins when in pain squeezed into your suitcase, a crazy story this one quite funny and just plain weird. Loved it.
Audio commentary by Michael Felsher with John Harrison for Hallows Eve and Felsher with David Bruckner for Suitcase are again spot on.
Season 1 (disc 2)
The Final three episodes of the first series are contained on this disc, set out in the same way as disc 1
The Companion/Lydia Layne’s Better Half
The Companion – A man brings a scarecrow to life and we all know how well that goes don’t we?!
Audio commentary by David Bruckner with Matt Venne, lots of info really well done as per all of the commentaries in this set.
Lydia Layne’s Better Half – Lydia kills her lover and while disposing of the body, the power goes out in the elevator.The audio commentary on this one by Greg Nicotero and Roxanne Benjamin is great
Night Of The Paw/ Times Is Tough In Musky Holler
Night Of The Paw – A Murderer, a funeral home and a monkey’s paw, what could go wrong?
Times Is Tough In Musky Holler – A whole town turns on the mayor and his cronies who have controlled the town for far too long. One of the maddest episodes in the series, with David Arquette.
Both episodes have commentary from Michael Felsher with John Harrison and again they are great, these also have screenwriters audio commentary with Felsher and John Esposito for Paw and Felsher and John skipp for Holler, great different take on the episodes.
Skincrawlers/ By The Silver Water Of Lake Champlain
Skincrawler – A new weight loss program involving rare leeches that suck the fat straight out of you? sign me up!
Commentary from Greg Nicotero, Roxanne Benjamin and David Gould. Do I really need to say how good these commentary’s are any more?
By The Silver Water of Lake Champlain – a young girl finds a lake monster, a big friendly lake monster…
Michael Felsher and Tom Savini commentary on this one. Savini is very excitable from the get go.
This is a strong two disc set. Creepshow is a great, extremely re-watchable series with each story being beautifully shot and directed. The Blu-Ray comes in a case with a swing tray for the first disc. The cover art and disc art is great and all in Creepshow style.
Acorn Media International could have easily churned out a bog standard Blu here with no extras at all and most fans would have been happy. Instead they’ve given truly high standard audio commentaries which truly add value and it’s great to rewatch the episodes with the commentaries on.
Go out and get your copy now
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