Three episodes, along the lines of George Romero's more famous Creepshow (1982).
In the first episode, a wooden statue depicting a Native American chief revives to take revenge on a boy and his crimes. This is the least successful episode of the film, inspired by a never-ending short story by Stephen King. The main theme is that of revenge, a theme also present in the film's third episode.
In The Raft, based on King's short story of the same name, a group of students decide to spend a day at a beach. While they are on a raft, a strange black, carnivorous spot will show its full appetite. It is the most disturbing and entertaining episode.
In the last story, The Hitchhiker, a woman accidentally runs over and kills a man: without rendering aid out of fear. And the man will know how to return to increase the girl's guilt. Small part for King as a truck driver.
The decent receipts of the first film gave Romero the cue to produce another episodic film modeled after the American (1950s) E.C. Comics.
Directing, however, was Gornick (a frequent visitor to Romero's sets as assistant director and cinematographer) who, for the first time, after working solely on making films for television, turned his attention to the big screen.
Undoubtedly Romero aimed at a purely commercial product, with a rather limited budget. Stephen King handles only the subjects and not the screenplays, as he did for the first film. The popular writer, after proposing five stories, gives Romero carte blanche for the screenplays...
Among other things, King gets the film to be shot in Maine.
Tom Savini, special effects wizard, plays Uncle Creepy: he is no longer a skeleton, but a somewhat deformed-faced old man.
Animation is also used for the "frame" story, the one that serves as the backdrop for the three episodes that make up the film. Uncle Creepy thus also becomes a cartoon, along with the little boy who appears in the prologue and his friends.
Initially, of the five planned episodes, two were eliminated so as not to raise the budget much, and so The Cat Who Came From Hell and Pinfall (gore tale of a boowling team that died in an arson accident caused by opponents ,who wanted to win by the book) were never filmed. The latter episode was probably the most interesting: the boowling team returned from Afterlife to play the game. Blood aplenty and severed heads were the seasonings of the episode.
Overall Creepshow 2 is an aesthetically inferior film to its predecessor, more commercial, but still enjoyable.
Review by Zick
