Main cast: Eric Edelstein (Linus), Barbara Crampton (Victoria), Selena Anduze (Janet), Drew Matthews (Zeller), Denise Crosby (Dr Trollenberg), Nicholas Logan (Carson), Brooke Butler (Mallory), and Brittany L Smith (Tara Cartwright)
Directors: Joe Lynch and John Harrison
The theme for the fourth episode of the second season of Creepshow is “I borrowed crap from better sources, but a wannabe will always wannabe!”
Pipe Screams sees plumber Linus hired by the racist, horrible landlord Victoria to find out what is wrong with the old pipes in one of her derelict buildings. He soon learns that those pipes have lead, which is illegal, but Victoria is like, whatever, she’s rich so fix that, peasant. Turns out that a mini-blob monster is living in the pipes, and Linus and the poor oppressed tenants of color band together to use the blob to be rid of the cartoon villain. I’m to believe that the tenants continue to stay in that run-down place, magically happy now that the evil landlord is gone, and I guess the lead pipes are now okay for use or something?
Whatever. This is an astonishingly stupid segment that tries to be The Blob only to be more like the flop. The big reason for this is because this one plays out like a bad episode of Tales from the Crypt, but minus the wit or the self-awareness to make the awfulness still fun to watch. Just whom are these people hiring to write the screenplays? Barbara Crampton snarls and camps it up, but the rest of the cast have all the energy of tranquilized snails, making her come off like she had received a memo that the other cast members hadn’t.
The next segment is Within the Walls of Madness, which is an effort at Lovecraft-ian horror. Carson is the sole survivor of a brutal massacre that took place in a remote research facility in Antarctica, and now he is charged with the killing of his fellow staff members. His bloody stint with an ax is all captured on the cameras, so it looks like he’s getting the death penalty eventually. His attorney Tara Cartwright asks him to tell her exactly what happens, and so he does, much to everyone’s dismay because his story does not lead to a happy ending.
This one… oh boy, I don’t even know where to begin. Its “horror effects” comprise the stroboscope lights coming on and off and dizzying, cheap-looking kaleidoscope effects that may cause seizures in certain people. All the better to hide the fact that they don’t have the budget to do many special effects, I guess, although this also leads me to question why then they even attempt to use this script if they had no money. This segment has twists and turns that can be seen coming from a mile away, and everything about it feels lazily borrowed from better sources, with zero creativity made to make the segment feel even a little less stale. Oh, but it has the lights coming on and off, I guess!
Whatever. One more episode to go in this season, right? Let’s just get it over with.
