In Which We Discuss Skeleton Crew and Creepshow 2

I've read Skeleton Crew before.  It has some of my favourite King stories in it, including Mrs Todd's Shortcut and The Word Processor of the Gods.  But this time, one of them stood out to me.  It was The Raft which reminded me of something I'd watched as a child, which has both horrified and baffled me, for years.  There was something about teenagers on a raft, being eaten by goop.  That matched the story.  But also something about a Native American chief who scalped people and was also made of wood?

On a hunch, I looked up Creepshow 2.  I didn't know for a fact that it existed, but it turned out to be exactly the movie I was vaguely remembering.  So I've decided to watch the whole thing via youtube.

It opens with the same character originally played by little Joe King (not kidding) and the Man in the Terrifying Mask.  He's delivering the latest issue of Creepshow, the comic the whole of the previous movie was based around.  With the most eighties animation you can imagine in the needlessly alarming and lengthy title sequence!  Animated Not Kidding seems curiously unperturbed.

This thing opens with almost five minutes of animated titles.  This may be why my grandmother let me watch this at the age of five.  She was firmly convinced that animation was for children. Thank god she never watched Felix the Cat.

We open with the story I only remember the ending of - Old Chief Woodenhead.  There's a little old store in the middle of a desert that used to be a town, with a painted wood Chief standing guard outside.

Then a real life Native American shows up.  He wants to make a couple of purchases on credit, and offers the treasures of his tribe as collateral.

Shortly after he leaves, a group of teenagers show up to wreck the place on their way to Hollywood.  One of them is a member of the same tribe and quite alarmingly insane.  Chief Woodenhead most decidedly does not approve of this and starts moving.  Very creakily.  He stops only to give a muppet-like shriek before touching up his warpaint and heading off for vengeance.  He goes, shoots people, and comes back with Dances-With-Crazy's scalp.  I'm sure I remember that bit coming after the bit with the goop and the raft.

Then we go back to the framing story, in which poorly animated Not Kidding has ordered some Venus Fly Trap Bulbs from the adverts in the back of Creepshow.  I wonder if anyone involved in the production of this thing knew that Venus Fly Traps grew from seeds?  I've got some growing on the windowsill.

Now the Raft.  I don't remember the beginning, which is odd, because I definitely saw the bit with the scalp.  It has haunted me, mostly because it was a lot scarier in my half-remembered imaginings than in reality.  The teenagers are wonderfully eighties; you can tell because their names include LaVerne and Randy.

The goop is also less creepy than imagined from the story or remembered from childhood.  It looks more like a lump of prop than the amorphous oily blob in the story. But hey, the teenagers are smoking - how eighties!

The melted flesh effect makes the blob a whole lot creepier, admittedly.  I wonder how much of the big guy getting sucked through the raft they're going to show?

...oh, all of it.  At least it was quick.  How did they get his flesh to bubble like that?

Oh, shame.  Randy doesn't get to have sex on screen like he does in the book.  But he doesn't stay on the raft to die!  He makes a swim for it!  Go Randy!  Stop looking back and use your arms more!

Randy makes it out and stays half an inch from the edge of the sea while he gloats at the amorphous blob.  He almost deserves to be eaten.  The goopblob burps afterwards.

Poor animated Not Kidding is being picked on by teenagers.  I get the feeling Stephen King knew a lot of dickish teenagers; that or there was just a plethora of them in the eighties.

The third story is The Hitchhiker, and this is one I genuinely don't remember.  A lady - who I rather like, despite her being an adulterer and, very quickly, a murderer - runs over a hitchhiker.  Who proceeds to start following her.  As a ghoooooooost.  Or possibly a zombiiiiiiiiie.  Oooooooooh.


...this is actually quite spooky when you watch it alone at night.  Happily, it very quickly dissolves into ridiculousness.

After the hitchiker gets his revenge, we return to the framing story in which the bullies fail to realised that the Venus Fly Trap Bulb they destroyed was not the first Not Kidding has ordered.

Back to Skeleton Crew, which also includes The Mist.  I've seen the movie before so I didn't watch it again.  I dont really like the ending of the movie.  It ends on a much more downbeat note.

James Smythe's post on the book focuses on three stories; The Jaunt - inspired by The Stars My Destination -, Beachworld, and Survivor Type.  I remembered The Jaunt because it's a nice bit of sci-fi horror and Survivor Type because I really rather wished I hadn't read it.  It freaked me out and stayed in my head.

I didn't remember The Reaper's Image, which was odd, because that was a very nice snappy bit of horror, which I really quite enjoyed.

The next book is It, which is one of Stephen King's most famous novels but which I've never read before.  I bought it awhile ago, on Kindle, when it was reduced.