Creepshow - Gray Matter / The House of the Head

Cody checks out the first episode of Shudder's Creepshow series.

The George A. Romero and Stephen King anthology films Creepshow and Creepshow 2 rank among my favorite films of all time, and they're a tough act to follow for anyone who would want to continue the franchise. A third film was made without the involvement of Romero and King, and it was such a disaster that I try to ignore its existence. Now Creepshow has been turned into a series at the Shudder streaming service, and if there had been any perceived missteps in the making of this show I would not have been able to support it at all. Creepshow (and Romero's work in general) is too important to me, I couldn't go along with a cash-in that didn't try to honor Romero's legacy. Thankfully, the perfect decision was made when Greg Nicotero was hired to serve as the show's creative supervisor.

A special effects artist who also writes and directs, Nicotero is a protégé of both Romero and Creepshow effects artist Tom Savini. He already had a place in Creepshow history, since he visited the set of the first Creepshow and worked in the FX department on the second film, and while putting together this "next generation" Creepshow project he brought along other Creepshow alums. Savini worked on this show, Creepshow composer John Harrison directed some segments, and Rick Catizone - who did animation work on both films - was brought back to do some animation for the show. And the show starts off, as it should, with an adaptation of a Stephen King story.

For this series, the Creep's "hosting" segments are handled just like they were in the first movie. There we only saw the Creep as a skeletal figure wearing a cloak, then the stories that made up the anthology were shown in the pages of a Creepshow comic book. Although the Creep did speak in the second movie, he did not in the first one, and that's the way it is on the show. The first episode begins with the skeletal, cloaked Creep opening a trunk that's full of issues of the Creepshow comic book, then one of the comic books flips open to show us that the first story we're going to be told is titled Gray Matter.

Gray Matter is based on a short story that was published in King's 1978 collection Night Shift, and it's one I'm familiar with since I've read through Night Shift multiple times over the years. It's sort of along the lines of the Creepshow segment The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, as it's a body horror tale of a man gradually becoming something else - in this case, instead of being covered with moss, this guy is being transformed by some kind of fungus or mold that infected him through the cheap beer he drinks every day. A man being transformed into something terrible by consuming too much beer could be seen as a metaphor for alcoholism, but in the end this is the story of a man-eating creature.

Directed by Nicotero from a script by Byron Willinger and Philip de Blasi, the Gray Matter adaptation stars Tobin Bell of the Saw franchise, Giancarlo Esposito of King's directorial effort Maximum Overdrive, and Adrienne Barbeau, who was in the original Creepshow, as a trio of longtime friends in a town that's about to be hit by a category four hurricane. (In the source material it was a blizzard, but a hurricane was a more budget friendly option for the show.) Barbeau's character Dixie Parmalee runs the store where teenager Timmy Grenadine (Christopher Nathan) comes in to buy a case of Harrow's Supreme beer for his dad - and when he implies that he has been dealing with something horrible at home, Bell and Esposito's characters go to check on Timmy's dad Richie (Jesse C. Boyd) while Timmy stays at the store and tells Dixie exactly what his dad has been up to.

Gray Matter is a decent segment of the anthology, and Nicotero packs in some Easter egg nods to other King stories while employing the fun comic book style Romero brought to the original film. That style isn't quite as effective on the show's low budget, but at least the attempt was made. It's no Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, especially since it doesn't have anything close to King's hilarious performance as the title character in that story, but it's a fine way to get the series started, and is gross and slightly creepy. My favorite thing about Gray Matter is really just the fact that the first story in this show is a King adaptation.

Gray Matter takes up just over half of the episode's 46 minutes. Each episode of Creepshow consists of two separate stories, and with the second story of this one Creepshow officially branches away from the works of Stephen King. (Creepshow 3 did as well, but we're ignoring that.) The second story is called The House of the Head, and it's written by Bird Box author Josh Malerman - but again, a perfect decision was made, because this story doesn't throw Creepshow into a whole new world right away. The story isn't King, the writer is new to Creepshow, but the director isn't. Helping the franchise transition away from King is John Harrison, who gave the original film its unforgettable score.

The House of the Head stars Cailey Fleming, the child actor who plays Judith Grimes on AMC's The Walking Dead, a show Nicotero is heavily involved with. The house in question is a doll house that sits in the bedroom of a little girl named Evie (Fleming). This house is inhabited by figurines that make up a family Evie calls the Smithsmiths, but when she gets home from school one day she finds a strange new addition to the house. A figurine of a decomposing but still living severed head. Evie watches in horror as this head terrorizes the Smithsmiths, the family figurines and the head moving around in the house on their own any time she looks away from it. She tries to help by adding other figurines and by taking the head out of the house, but the head is relentless and somehow always finds its way back to the Smithsmiths.

A silent, bloody horror movie plays out in that doll house, and Malerman and Harrison show it in a really cool and clever way. At first I wasn't sure how this concept would be able to sustain 20 minutes or so, but it turned out to be fascinating. The House of the Head proved to be not only a worth addition to Creepshow, but a great one, opening the door for the franchise to feature more interesting stories that didn't originate with King.

As a Creepshow fan, I was pleased with this first episode of the series, and it left me eager to see where the show would be going from here.