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I've told you before, I didn't
want you to read this crap. I

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never saw such rotten crap in my
life. Where do you get this?

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Who sells it to you? I'm
talking to you, young man? You

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want to answer me when I'm talking
to you. You remember who puts the

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frigging bread on the table around here, don't you stand? Don't be too

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hard on him. All the kids
read him, my boy, isn't all

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the kids? I want to know
where this is going, Billy in the

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garbage, right into the freaking garbage. Now you got any smart mother about

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that? In the books you'll keep
in your dresser those ones in a year,

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underwear those sets books. Damn,
you didn't have to hit him.

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Not only do I find out he's
reading this crap, he's a snoopers.

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Well da, then for me to
get your cofflin day. The windows are

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open downstairs. I better get down
a clothes and the rain will get in.

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No, I'll do it. I
got some garbage I want to throw

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away, Daddy, Please don't throw
it away. I'm sorry. The next

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00:00:58,799 --> 00:01:00,960
time, young man, I find
you with a worthless piece of like this

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00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:03,880
again, you want to sit down
for a week, buddy, boy,

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remember that fuck it. Anthologies have
long been synonymous when not just horror films,

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but horror in television, books,
and even comics. This week's film

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is a homage to all of those
means of media, but yet it found

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a way to stand all on its
own as one of the greatest anthology films

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made. Our next film honoring director
George A. Romero this month is nineteen

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eighty two's Creep Show. This film
teams up two masters of horror, with

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Ramero wrecting and the script being written
by horror king Stephen King. The film

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features five tales of horror and has
a star studded cast featuring Ted Danson,

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Ed Harris, hal Holbrook, Leslie
Nielsen, Adrian Barbou, and even Stephen

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King's stars in one of the tales. To tell the story of Creep Show,

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we must first delve into some history. Creep Show was a homage to

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the ec comics of the fifties and
sixties, the comics Vault of Horror,

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Haunt of Fear, and Tales from
the Crypt. If that sounds familiar,

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it was because it was made into
a very successful HBO series in its own

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right. These comics became insanely popular
due to the stories in graphic artwork they

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depicted. Eventually they became the target
of politicians and parents alike. Such is

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the parent in the opening clip of
this film, which was the opening clip

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of our review. Our next clips
explain a brief history of EC comics.

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First, the late publisher William Gaines
explains how the artwork drove the popularity of

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the comics and what each prime artist
brought to the table. And then we

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will hear how the comics became targeted
by politicians and parents and eventually led to

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not just their downfall, but the
downfall of EC comics itself in the nineteen

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fifties, if comics were killers,
the mild manner, publisher William M.

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Gaines was public enemy number one.
My father had been instrumental in starting comic

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books back on the thirties, and
he had a whole stable of comics which

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included The Flash and Wonder Woman and
number of others, and he sold out

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his entire business to DC. He
then went back in business and started little

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comic books for children he called the
Outfit Educational Comics. When Max Gaines was

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killed in an accident, Bill,
who was planning to be a chemistry teacher,

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decided to concoct his own comic book
formula. He changed the name to

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Entertaining Comics and started publishing Western War
and Prime comics. Eighteen fifty, editor

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Al Feldstein conducted a creepy experiment in
an issue of Crime Patrol. We introduced

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the cryptive Terror, and I kind
of based it on what I've envisioned when

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I used to listen to Archobs,
Lights Out or The Witch's Tale on radio.

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Gaines and Feldstein quickly realized that horror
could be a hit. We were

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so excited that we went ahead and
changed the titles to Tales from the Crypto,

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The Vault of Horror, The Haunt
of Fear soon followed, and by

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early nineteen fifty, the first Horror
comic books were selling half a million copies

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per issue. Russ Cochrane, who's
been reprinting the original EC series, was

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typical of the kids that got hooked
on EC Horror. I had about stopped

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reading comic books when I was fourteen
fifteen years old. I'd sort of outgrown

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the superhero comics, and all of
a sudden I picked up an EC comic,

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and here were comics that were written
better and drawn better than anything I'd

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ever seen before, and they hooked
me right back in. Feldstein continued to

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create cover art and write stories based
on Gaines's ideas, but they soon began

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to draw on a gruesome group of
artists to bring EC's tales of terror to

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life. Every story was written for
the artists who drew it. Graham always

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got the dripping, rotting corps of
slimy cookie stuff oozing out of the solid

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kind of things, and Johnny Craig, who wrote his own stuff. Everything

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was nice, clean looking, except
terrible things were going on in this beautiful,

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clean situation. Joe Orlando could go
either way. He could have a

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clean job, or he could have
an who's job, and he did a

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lot of either. Orlando himself remembers
the awe inspired by another Easy alumnus,

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Zach Davis. Didn't sweat, and
we all envied him that he just tossed

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it off. And he's just pure
genius. You know. It was roomed.

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He could do four complete pages a
day if he wanted to, and

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we'd counted up. Oh my god, he can make that much money.

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EC artists were, remember, the
most talented in the history of comic art

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I and now outcry leads to the
end of EC comics. But not everyone

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appreciated the joke, and in nineteen
fifty three, a Senate subcommittee convene to

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find out if comics created juvenile delinquents. My name is William James. I

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was the first publisherman these United States
the published horror comics. I'm responsible I

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thought of them. I don't if
you remember Mayor Walker who once said I

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never knew a woman to be ruined
by a book, and I never knew

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a child would be ruined by a
comic book. There's just under nonsense.

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We were really the most shocked people
in the world. We discovered that we

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were these terrible people who were causing
juvenile delinquency in America, which is what

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happened, and would put us out
of business. The controversy helped kill the

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horror comics, but EC score stories
wouldn't stay buried. Since this film is

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a homage to the aforementioned EC comics, it couldn't jus be a simple horror

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anthology on film. It had to
have the look in the feel of a

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comic book that had come to life. Romero did this by using many tricks

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such as bright vibrant lighting to indicate
horror. Instead of implementing traditional cuts in

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the film, Romero and his crew
used comic book blocks to indicate passages at

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time in text blocks to establish areas
and if more time had passed or an

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exact amount of time. In our
next clip, lead animator Rick Catizone speaks

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on how this comic look was achieved
for the film by using animation and why

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it is so key to the film
success. But if you reels and it's

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almost something that would be impossible to
capture, and so they suggested that probably

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sell animation would be the better way
to go with that, and so we

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created animation segments of the actual comic
book that would cause it to blow down

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the street and land in the garbage
can so on, still be able to

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open to the page that they needed
it to, and then we would zoom

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in and do match dissolves. The
other part of the problem that they were

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dealing with was that Tom's creep at
the window the o reason We're going to

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have a big crane pulled back over
the whole neighborhood with the creep floating in

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the air and so on, and
I believe that it was a budgetary consideration.

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I believe the crane was going to
become a twenty thousand dollars shot probably

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and that wasn't in the budget.
And they thought, well, you know,

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it is an ec comic takeoff,
and it seemed natural to have the

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creep through a flash of lightning and
a is all change into an animated creep

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because the EC comic book characters were
always hand drawn, so it seemed natural

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to go to a hand drawn creep
as well. The animation process was pretty

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involved, particularly with the creep,
because you're trying to achieve a character,

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and of course you're trying to achieve
motion that's interesting and believable, and so

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the process of course is doing drawings
by hand, frame after frame. Actually

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we do key drawings first and then
these are some of the drawings. You

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can see the detail in the drawings. The key drawings are done first,

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and then I decide how many drawings
should go in between, and then those

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are filled in afterwards. Try and
get the key poses first, to get

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the dynamic action for the main elements
of the motion, and then we fill

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it in afterwards. And then he
flies back over the name prove it here,

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of course, and that he points
down towards the garbage can here near

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the end and zooms in. It
was really difficult in terms of drawing the

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hands. The hands on some of
the parts of this are acting on a

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different level, but it was actually
pretty difficult to draw because there's no flesh,

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and so when you have bony segments
that are basically cylindrical. It became

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some very demanding drawing and it was
one of the better challenges that I've had

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in my career. As I stated
earlier this week, I chose to do

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this review in this specific way because
I felt that to choose just a handful

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of scenes from this great film would
be way too difficult. That is,

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because all five stories shown in this
film are truly great. There is no

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way or no fair way to choose
which wants to include. To be honest,

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that could be a whole month of
reviews all in itself. That's how

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great this film really is. Our
final clip is our Man of Honor himself,

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George A. Romero discussing this film
on a Pittsburgh talk show shortly before

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its release. Of note hear how
Romero separates this film from the horror films

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that were popular during the eighties,
and he has a very special and hilarious

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story regarding the villains of the final
story of this film stories based on a

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young child's it's a comic books.
I guess the real story of the movie

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is about a comic book. And
we go into the comic book and there

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are five stories in it, and
the pages turn and the drawings turn into

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to live action stories. Yeah,
well, thank you. It's it's a

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lot of fun. Steve Wright's traditional
Gothic horror. This isn't a typical as

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many of the horror films recently have
been what they call Dyson, slice slash

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your movies, and this isn't like
that at all. It's uh, this

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is really gothic, has its root
in Gothic traditions, and Steve believes it's

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much more frightening when you know that
something's behind the door. Your imagination makes

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it a lot more frightening. Once
you see the monster, you start dealing

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with it. It's sort of resolved
so much of the time and creep Show

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has spent saying don't go in there, don't put your hand in that box,

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and it's more anticipatory than it is
shock and it's it's one of the

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things about I mean, I like
all the variety of the shows, as

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you say, doing you know,
the five different stories, but there are

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certain parts of it that are really
very very realistic, and those are the

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things that are are most frightening,
you know, dealing with the situation that

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could could possibly happen. That.
Yeah, I think it's hard for me

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for I would like to think that
I will never have to you with three

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00:14:00,440 --> 00:14:05,879
million cockroaches coming up up out of
drains and things. But that, you

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00:14:05,919 --> 00:14:09,480
know, I understand you had a
great search to find those bugs. Well

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00:14:09,519 --> 00:14:13,120
it wasn't really a search. It's
just that, you know, and everyone

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00:14:13,159 --> 00:14:18,200
says, boy, moviemakers really go
to some extremes to pull off the scenes

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they need. The fact is,
cockroaches are very expensive. Plain old American

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styled cockroach cousts at a laboratory read
under laboratory conditions fifty cents of peace.

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And we needed in order to fill
that room about fifty thousand of them,

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and it was actually more economic.
We sent entomologists to Trinidad and they got

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the real article out of caves down
there, and we had to go through

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government clearances and everything to bring them
in and make sure that they were you

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know, they weren't infested with any
infected with anything and all that. So

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it was all done under supervised programs. These guys were they were, they

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were. But when you bring them, you bring them into this country.

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Cockroaches I thought, were afraid of
light. I mean, well, that's

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part of the trick. They don't
take direction well, so you have to

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sort of trick them into doing things. And the only way we could get

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them to move one way or move
another way would be to have they they'll

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run from light into darkness. So
when we needed them to run that way,

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we would just make it dark over
there and put a lot of light

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over here, and they don't go
running that way. You really can't get

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them to do very much. They
don't have a big repertoire of talents,

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but they're creepy. Yeah, oh
yeah, that's true. Now, the

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book itself, the script was written
by Steven Steve King. Yeah, Steve

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and I have become really good friends
over this project, and we're going to

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do another. We're doing one of
Steve's novels called The Stand, which was

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00:15:46,879 --> 00:15:52,399
the novel right after The Shining and
that's hopefully we'll be one of the next

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00:15:52,399 --> 00:16:00,039
projects that we do. Sadly,
romeros In King's version of The Stand was

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never made. However, in good
news, Unlike last week's film, this

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film found great success at the box
office. It was released November tenth of

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nineteen eighty two and garnered over five
million dollars it's opening weekend, making it

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the number one film that week.
Overall, it made over twenty one million

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dollars, making it the highest grossing
horror film for Warner Brothers that year.

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This film success also led to a
revival for O anthologies both in cinema and

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00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:44,039
TV. Tales from the Dark Side, which was created by Romero, Tales

190
00:16:44,080 --> 00:16:51,120
from the Crypt, and the Twilight
Zone revival of the eighties all odetta gratitude

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00:16:51,120 --> 00:16:57,039
to Creep Show for them being brought
to the small screen in for theatrical releases.

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00:16:57,919 --> 00:17:06,200
Films such as Tales from the Hood
in Monkey Shines became monumental classics in

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00:17:06,279 --> 00:17:11,880
their own right and showed that I
anthologies could be successful on the large screen

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00:17:11,960 --> 00:17:19,119
as well. Without the success of
Creepshow, one could argue that all of

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those would have never found the successes
that they have. This film has spawned

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00:17:26,440 --> 00:17:32,240
two sequels, one in nineteen eighty
seven and a direct to video release in

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00:17:32,400 --> 00:17:40,599
two thousand and seven. In twenty
nineteen, the fledgling streaming service Shutter announced

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Creepshow would be made into a series. It has aired since and was recently

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00:17:45,839 --> 00:17:52,079
renewed for its fourth season, set
to begin next month. This just shows

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the lasting legacy of this film and
adds to the legend of two mass of

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horror. I hope you joined me. Next week, when we continue our

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00:18:04,160 --> 00:18:07,920
month long tribute to George A.
Ramero, we will look at one of

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00:18:07,960 --> 00:18:15,559
his rare non horror films, the
nineteen eighty one drama Night Writers, starring

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00:18:15,880 --> 00:18:22,160
Ed Harris for W M and H
and Matt Connerton Unlench. This has been

205
00:18:22,200 --> 00:19:55,240
a classic film review with Eric Filcher
boke ug a book Uger boke uger uger

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00:19:55,319 --> 00:22:02,960
bug bog buker bok book. It
is im