Creepshow digs into Brazilian folklore and deadly drawings.
Adrienne Barbeau played a memorable character in the 1982 George A. Romero / Stephen King horror anthology classic Creepshow – and she was able to return to the world of Creepshow with an appearance in the first episode of the Shudder TV series expansion of the franchise. Tom Atkins also had a memorable role in the original Creepshow, and he finally got his chance to be on the Creepshow TV series in the fifth episode of season 4. It’s about time! Atkins has a major following in the horror community, so it’s almost shocking it took this long for them to decide to cast him in this iteration of Creepshow.
Almost every episode of the Creepshow TV series is split into two separate stories, and Atkins’ role comes in this episode’s first story, called Something Burrowed, Something Blue. This segment was directed by John Esposito, a Creepshow regular who has written seven stories across the show’s four seasons and made his directorial debut with the Meet the Belaskos segment of the previous episode. Esposito also wrote Meet the Belaskos, but with Something Burrowed, Something Blue he was tasked with bringing someone’s story to the screen. The story was written by the duo of Todd Spence and Zak White, making their first contribution to this franchise.
Atkins’ character is an old man named Frank, who doesn’t have long to live. He sends a letter to his estranged daughter Allison (Kristy Dawn Dinsmore), who he hasn’t seen in 15 years, asking her to visit him at his mansion before he passes away. Allison’s fiancé Ryan (Curtis Lum) convinces her to go through with it – and he also gets her to agree to have their wedding at Frank’s place just a few weeks later. The horror twist to this story is that Frank’s house sits over a pit that’s home to Minhocão, a worm-like creature that’s from Brazilian folklore, but all of this is taking place in America. There are terrible repercussions if the Minhocão isn’t fed a live person... but on the bright side, it takes a long time to digest every meal, so it only needs to be fed one person every 15 years. With Frank on his way out, he tasks Ryan with taking care of his pet Brazilian worm monster. And things fall apart from there, as you would expect.
Something Burrowed, Something Blue is a good story for the most part, although there’s a twist that I wasn’t quite sure about... and I also wasn’t entirely on board with the design they went with for the Minhocão. Better decisions could have been made in a couple places, but it was great to see Tom Atkins in Creepshow again anyway.
Spence and White were also the writers of the second story in this episode, titled Doodles. Veteran film and TV director P.J. Pesce had made his Creepshow debut with the segment The Parent Death Trap earlier in this season, and he returned to direct this segment, which is a new take on a familiar horror story set-up: that of an artist whose work starts to have an effect on the world around them. This one stars Anja Savcic as cartoonist Angela, who is pursuing her lifelong dream of getting a job at Timeless Magazine... and unfortunately, it doesn’t take her long to discover that cartoons are a cutthroat business and the head of the magazine is a jerk. But after having a bad experience at her Timeless job interview, Angela also discovers that she has a new, magical ability: if she draws blood on somebody’s picture, they’ll die a horrible death soon after.
At first, Angela benefits from killing people off with her drawing. But anyone who has watched a good number of horror anthologies will know that it’s only a matter of time before Angela will have another reversal of fortune. Doodles doesn’t have much in the way of surprises, but I enjoyed watching it because it was such a familiar horror anthology story. This sort of story is why the format gained popularity in the first place.
And once these two stories have reached their conclusions, we only have one more episode of Creepshow season 4 to go...
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