About twenty years ago, I ran a horror fan fiction website where I also served as "creator and showrunner" on an anthology series in the vein of anthologies I had grown up loving, like Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt. One of the episodes I wrote for that text-only show was somewhat inspired by Night of the Creeps and featured strange, worm-like creatures infiltrating people's bodies. Because of that, I think it's really fun that the first season of Shudder's anthology series that continues the Creepshow franchise features a story in which strange worm creatures have infiltrated people's bodies.
In Creepshow, that story is called Skincrawlers, and it was directed by Roxanne Benjamin (who also directed the Lydia Layne's Better Half segment for a previous episode) from a script by Paul Dini and Stephen Langford - writers you might not expect to be involved with Creepshow, since Dini is primarily known for his work on superhero cartoons and Langford's credits consist largely of episodes of family-friendly sitcoms. The writers did bring a rather light touch to their story, and Skincrawlers feels even lighter due to the fact that it stars horror-loving stand-up comedian Dana Gould.
Gould plays Henry Quayle, an overweight man who looks into a weight loss procedure called Skin Deep by Sloan, something new that has been created by Dr. Herbert Sloan, played by Chad Michael Collins of the Sniper franchise. (And any time a horror story features someone who's named Herbert and is in the medical profession, I immediately assume that the character was named in honor of Herbert West from Re-Animator.) Skin Deep works like no weight loss procedure ever has before, and that's because it involves fat-sucking leeches that Sloan discovered in the Brazilian rainforest. When Henry sees that he'll need to have leeches attached to his body, he decides to keep the extra pounds... but eventually changes his mind, and agrees to get the procedure done on live television.
Trouble arises when the procedure broadcast coincides with a solar eclipse. As is mentioned, solar eclipses can cause abnormal behavior in animals, and that certainly is the case with these newly discovered leeches. The effects in Skincrawlers aren't so convincing when they're CGI or when they put prosthetics on thin actors to make them look overweight (so they can play the same character before and after the Skin Deep procedure), but in the end this segment mainly serves as a showcase for the practical gore effects the series' creative supervisor Greg Nicotero and his team can pull off. It is a lot of fun, and those effects do look awesome.
This was the season 1 finale of Creepshow, and it originally aired on Shudder on Halloween. Because of that, I have said that it's surprising the All Hallow's Eve segment from another episode hadn't been saved for the finale. That would have been appropriate for the original airdate, but it's also appropriate that the gore-soaked Skincrawlers was paired with the second story featured in this episode. That's because the second story was directed by special effects legend Tom Savini.
Savini did the effects for the original Creepshow (while Nicotero was in the effects department on Creepshow 2), which was written by Stephen King. King's son Joe Hill plays the young child in the wrap-around segments of the first film, and has said that Savini basically doubled as his babysitter on the set. So it's a nice touch that Savini was brought on to direct a segment based on a story written by Hill. The story told in the second half of this episode is By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain, with author Jason Ciaramella handling the adaptation of Hill's story and earning his first screen credit in the process.
By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain was inspired by legends of the Loch Ness Monster and sightings of similar creatures around the world. It takes place in the small town of Mansi, where Lake Champlain is said to be home to an aquatic creature called Champy. At the center of the story is a teenage girl named Rose (Sydney Wease), whose father was obsessed with the legend of Champy in his final years, before he drowned in the lake. Since her dad passed away, Rose's mom (Gena Shaw) has been dating the abusive alcoholic Chet (James Devoti)... and if you know how these sort of anthology stories go, you can probably guess what's going to happen to Chet.
But Chet's fate doesn't come along until after Rose, her love interest Thomas (Connor Jones) and little brother Joseph (David Alexander Kaplan) discover that Champy is indeed real. And they find that out when the corpse of a large, dinosaur-like creature washes up on the shore of the lake.
Savini hasn't had as many chances to direct as he has wanted to over the years; in fact, the 1990 version of Night of the Living Dead remains his only feature thirty years down the line. So it's very cool that Nicotero brought him in to direct for the Creepshow series, and I always love seeing people who worked on the original Creepshow films come back to work on this show. Viewers expecting Savini to bring a bloodbath to the screen will be disappointed, there's not much in the way of gore in this half of the episode, but By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain is a decent, interesting story. While it doesn't take the season out with a bang, it works well enough.
The director wasn't the only tie back to the original Creepshow film in the segment, either. It begins with a voiceover by a radio DJ, with Adrienne Barbeau providing the vocal performance. Not only did Barbeau have a memorable role in Creepshow, she also appeared in the first segment of the first episode of this series, so her inclusion here gives the whole season Barbeau bookends. She also played a radio DJ in John Carpenter's The Fog, so her vocal cameo here is a nod to that as well.
Overall, I really enjoyed the first season of Creepshow, and feel that Nicotero did Stephen King and the late, great George A. Romero proud with this show. It's a worthy successor to the two Creepshow films Romero and King worked on together - and I can't wait to see season 2!
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