Main cast: Dana Gould (Henry Quayle), Melissa Saint-Amand (Debbie), Hina X Khan (Kelly), Chad Michael Collins (Dr Herbert Sloan), Beth Keener (Suzie), Jason Graham (Randy), Darin Toonder (Professor Jim Scott), Sydney Wease (Rose Philips), Connor Jones (Thomas), David Alexander Kaplan (Joseph), James Devoti (Chet), and Gena Shaw (Leigh)
Directors: Roxanne Benjamin and Tom Savini
Well, this is the final episode of the first season of Creepshow, and it’s just business as usual. These people must be really confident that they are adored by millions of people out there.
The first segment is Skincrawlers, which sees the discovery of an easy and effective way to lose weight. At Skin Deep by Sloan, Dr Herbert Sloan has devised a body sculpting treatment that can turn land whales into body beautiful. What happens is that, while on a trip to the South American jungles, Sloan discovers a new species of leech that feeds on body fat instead of blood. Hence, all it takes to lose weight is to stick a leech on you and voila, in just three days, we can all have bodies that will make others drool.
Henry Quayle is initially skeptical, but after seeing a fellow land whale becomes a gorgeous and svelte babe, he decides to accept Sloan’s offer for a live telecast treatment on a national prime time talk show. The problem is, a solar eclipse that happens once in a hundred years is also taking place on the day of the telecast. You know what they say about eclipses—strange things happen during that time—and say, doesn’t Dr Sloan’s name reminds folks of an infamous mad scientist in a certain cult horror franchise?
Just like those shows with the other Herbert, this segment features some deliciously gory body horror sequence that unfortunately defies logic as well as the principle of conversation of mass. It’s like those Resident Evil games where a human can abruptly transform into a mutant monster ten times its size: just where the extra mass comes from, even Albert Einstein would be hard-pressed to answer were he still alive today. Still, I have lots of fun with the gore.
My bigger issue here is that, while this one is clearly meant to be a satire of sorts, I have no idea what it is satirizing. Is it driving home some kind of body positivism message? Well, the hypocrisy of Hollywood telling people it’s perfectly fine to be obese aside, the episode actually pokes fun at fatties that are desperate to be thin. It’s more of a “know your place, land whales” episode in rather unfortunate ways. Perhaps it is satirizing people’s tendency to seek short cuts when it comes to weight loss? However, Harry’s actions suggest that he’s content for the most part to be fat, so that message doesn’t seem to fit in this episode either. Worst of all, this fellow eats a candy after witnessing all the gore that took place up to that point, suggesting that fat people are so addicted to food that they have zero care about anything else. Not to mention, who knows whether the candy is still safe to eat.
Anyway, just watch for the gore, and don’t think too hard about the rest of the episode, and nobody will get hurt.
The next segment, By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain, is directed by special effects legend Tom Savini, but this one is actually quite meh. A young lady and her boyfriend stumble upon what seems like the corpse of Champ, the neighborhood equivalent of the Loch Ness monster. This is a big deal to Rose Philips because her father died while tracking down Champ, and now she has evidence that her father wasn’t a delusional idiot after all. However, her abusive stepfather shows up intending to seize the monster corpse for his own glory.
This one is over the top ridiculous, but it’s more disappointing than campy because the good guys’ victory is unearned. Rose stumbles upon the corpse by chance, and she doesn’t really do anything to earn her happy ending. It’s handed to her. Where’s the fun in rooting for her, then?
All in all, a pretty meh episode, although the gore in the first segment is fun to behold. I’m giving this episode an extra oogie just for that, heh. Then again, the entire season is meh, with occasional fun moments between long periods of ho hum. Hopefully the people behind this show will have better cards up their sleeves in the future.
