Main cast: Bruce Davison (Avery Whitlock), Hannah Barefoot (Angela), Susannah Devereux (Marjorie), Dane Rhodes (Lester M Barclay), Karen Strassman (Leslianne Dowd), David Arquette (Sheriff Deke), Tommy Kane (Don Pomade), Tracey Bonner (Lottie), Kermit Rolison (Pastor Ryan), and Connor Hammond (Ezra)
Director: John Harrison
The word of the day for the fifth episode of Creepshow is “zombies”. That’s right, zombies are present in both segments of this episode.
In Night of the Paw, it’s all about the monkey’s paw… again. Angela is wanted for murder, and she ends up in the home of the mortician Avery Whitlock’s funeral home. He tells her the story of how his wife used the monkey’s paw to make a few terrible wishes, and then he does the same, including wishing for his wife to come back to him in her ghoulish zombie glory. This leads to Angela in his house. That’s right, she is his third and final wish… but what does he want from her?
While ordinarily this would be a decent episode, this one is still a tired reheat of WW Jacobs’s The Monkey’s Paw, and it doesn’t do anything interesting that hasn’t been done so many times before. Everything here is predictable and done to death already, including the whole wishing someone back to life, which is done here three freaking times. Watching this segment is like a race between boredom and having my intelligence insulted—stay tuned to see which one will kill all my brain cells first.
Next is a zombie apocalypse-themed segment, Times Is Tough in Musky Holler. Jumping between the present and flashbacks to the past, this one sees the rise of used car salesman Lester M Barclay, who took control of the town of Musky Holler during the zombie party, and later unleashed his own reign of terror on the townsfolk. Well, during present day, the townsfolk led by Leslianne Dowd have staged a coup, and now they are poised to punish Lester and his minions with the same inhuman methods he used on them in the past.
If you are wondering how this show could muster a budget big enough to accommodate a story of this scale, well, don’t fret. Remember the flat and ugly illustrated comic panels that this show uses now and then at the oddest moment? Well, most of this segment is narrated by Leslianne over these lifeless illustrations. Well, that’s one way to cut cost, but it also means that this is one underwhelming segment powered by ugly-ass illustrations. Why even bother? Can’t they think of a different plot for an episode that can fit within their allocated budget? What results here is a most forgettable, half-baked excuse to showcase some artwork that isn’t pretty enough to warrant such screen time.
After the last two pretty good episodes, this show takes a dive back into ugh-ville with this one. Well, one more episode left in this season. Let’s see if they have any surprises in store for me.
