Creepshow season 3, episode 3 brings monsters and spiders.
I don't remember ever noticing the name Jeffrey F. January before, but IMDb informs me that he has been racking up assistant director credits for more than twenty-five years, including being first assistant director on multiple episodes of the Shudder anthology series Creepshow, and on nearly 80 episodes, as of right now, of The Walking Dead. January has also directed four episodes of The Walking Dead, so I have definitely seen his work before - but it's the Creepshow segment The Last Tsuburaya that finally make me take notice of him. I was impressed by his work here.
The Last Tsuburaya was written by Paul and Stephen Langford, a duo that previously wrote the Creepshow stories Skincrawlers and The Right Snuff. This time they've crafted a story about an exceptionally wealthy douchebag - we're talking someone who can toss around 10 to 20 million like it's nothing - named Wade Cruise, quite well played by Brandon Quinn. Cruise acquires the titular work of art, which has been kept locked up in a crate for a hundred years without anyone taking a peek at it, for ten million. Then he throws a party so a bunch of people can witness him opening that crate and look at the painting. Cruise is the only one who sees the painting, which he describes as a "masterpiece". Then he sets it on fire. 10 million spent just so he could put on a shocking display and gloat over the fact that he's the only living person who has seen the last Tsuburaya painting. Fittingly, he's soon being tormented by the monstrous creature that was depicted in that painting.
I thought The Last Tsuburaya was a really well made addition to this series, with a look that somehow made it appear to have a higher budget than a lot of the other segments on this show. I'm sure it didn't, but the way it visually overcame the low budget is part of why I was so impressed with it. I also thought it was well-written, but maybe a little over-written. It is quite a long segment, and in the end some of the characters didn't seem necessary. The artist named Geesa (Jade Fernandez), who is kind of selling herself to Cruise in a way, doesn't have much purpose in the long run, and it seems like she was only around to give Cruise a reason to toss out exposition revealing how much of a dick he is.
The second segment contained in this episode is Okay I'll Bite, written and directed by John Harrison, who has been involved with the Creepshow franchise ever since he composed the score for the 1982 film. The story centers on Elmer Strick (Nicholas Massouh), a man who has been imprisoned for euthanizing his sick mother, and during his time in prison he has been gathering "pets" in the form of large spiders. While behind bars he has been manipulated and bullied into participating in a drug-cooking scheme with a crooked guard and a couple of his fellow prisoners... and we know exactly where this story is going from the moment we see Strick getting pushed around and taking care of his spiders. Since it was so predictable, it felt like it was taking too long to get to the point. And when the ending came along and was rather underwhelming, it really made Okay I'll Bite feel like it had gone on for too long.
The Last Tsuburaya and Okay I'll Bite both being long segments caused this episode to end up with a running time of 53 minutes, making this the longest episode out of all three seasons of Creepshow. It didn't need to be as long as it is, it feels like it could have been trimmed down a bit... but instead of cutting down the segments, they short-changed the Creep. The silent host of this series doesn't make an appearance at the beginning like he usually does, quickly stops by in the middle, and then doesn't show up at the end, either. The Creep should not be left out of an episode the way he was largely left out of this one.
But it's a good episode anyway, The Last Tsuburaya segment especially.
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