It is no secret that George Romero and Stephen King enjoyed a close friendship and admired one another’s work.  This is perhaps to be expected from two of the most influential voices in horror.  Their friendship and mutual admiration led them to many ambitious plans to collaborate on projects, perhaps the most successful of which was the anthology film Creepshow in 1982.  An homage to the EC Comics of their childhoods, the film is perfect example of blending horror and comedy and truly lived up its tagline of ‘the most fun you’ll have being scared’.

King wrote the screenplay in 1979 in which he adapted two of his own short stories for the screen (the other three segments and the frame story were original for the screenplay).  The two adapted tales, “The Crate” and “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” (published in story form as “Weeds”), offer an opportunity for further exploration.

Despite the success of Creepshow, and the fanfare of these two segments in particular, the original short stories remain among King’s more elusive writings.  They have never been included in any of his collections and have only appeared in a few hard-to-find anthologies or limited edition, small press collections.  Both originally appeared in men’s magazines – “Weeds” in Cavalier in May 1976 and “The Crate” in Gallery in July 1979.  This was common practice at the time, particularly for newer writers and genre fiction, and indeed many of King’s early stories appeared in men’s magazines before being collected or reprinted elsewhere.  Many of these magazines followed the lead established by Playboy and included fiction and political writings alongside the pictorials (hence the running joke of just having the magazines to read the articles was not entirely a stretch).  While common, it also leads to a rather humorous incongruity between the way in which one encountered the original piece (interspersed between nude pictorials and sex columns) versus the film (presented as a comic read by a child).  Although, perhaps one might find similarities among the advertisements such as x-ray specs to see through clothes (comic books) or how to use hypnotism to convince women to fall for you (a real ad appearing among the pages of “The Crate”).

The stories themselves are fairly faithful adaptations.  The short story ‘Weeds’ is much darker than its screen counterpart.  Jordy does retain some of the same yokel-ish qualities that provide for some levity (for example, his exclamations of ‘lunkhead’ and his disgust over ‘meteor shit’ on his hand), but overall the general poverty in which he lives mixed with the increasing direness he finds himself in as he transforms casts a pall over the story that leaves the reader feeling drained.  The film takes a lighter tone, due in part to King’s own portrayal of Jordy.  As seems to be his style when on-screen, King heavily plays up the yokel qualities to noticeably lighten the mood of the story.  While the story does include Jordy hoping to make money from the University, the added sight gag of Jordy showing up with his bucket to the Department of Meteors in particular shifts the mood from tragic to farcical.  Even Jordy’s eventual demise by his own hand somehow feels less bleak on screen due to the overall tone set throughout the segment.

“The Crate” in story form is much more streamlined and focuses only on the relationship between and the retelling of stories by the two main characters, Dex and Henry, without much of the framing and character-building scenes (such as the garden party).  Although in a testament to her abilities, it is impossible to read “The Crate” now and not hear Adrienne Barbeau’s acerbic voice come through in her fantastic performance as Billie despite only have a few lines of dialogue in the story.  As an aside, her iconic threat to wear Henry’s balls as earrings was ad-libbed by Barbeau; it was so memorable that it was later scripted for her character to use in an episode of the soap General Hospital.  Perhaps the most interesting aspect of “The Crate” is the development of Fluffy.  In neither the short story nor the original screenplay does the beast have the sort of primate features that it does in the film.  Rather it is a furry six-legged beast with either feline or canine features: in the story it is described as having a “bullet head of a young lynx” while in the screenplay with “a body like a whippet”.  Additionally, the screenplay gives it “spider-like arms ending in huge claws”.  This spider-like description almost seems reminiscent of the ‘true’ form of IT encountered by the Losers Club in the sewers.  It should be noted that Romero flatly disliked the spider-ish qualities in both instances, although the eventual design of Fluffy was more the result of Tom Savini’s creative aesthetic than direction from either King or Romero. 

Ultimately, Creepshow remains Romero’s most fun film and stands as a testament of the collaborative spirit and camaraderie among two horror masters.  The two would continue to work together over the next two decades on projects both produced and unrealized.   

Ben Rubin