The morality of Creepshow 2 is pretty straightforward. Of course, this is early Stephen King. Sometimes it’s good to keep things simple. Horror anthologies sometimes work and sometimes they don’t. This one falls somewhere in the middle. Of course, George Romario didn’t direct, although he wrote the screenplay. And King didn’t write the screenplay, as in the first installment, but he shows up for a bit part. Campy and funny, as the first film established, there are a few scary moments, but you get the sense that the bad guys deserve what they get. There are only three regular segments, apart from the cartoon framing, each with a “do something bad, get punished” theme. “Old Chief Wood’nhead” seems to start out insensitively to First Nations people, but it features an avenging statue “cigar store Indian” whole doles out justice. It’s the most disturbing of the three segments since the robbers show no human compassion at all. Of course, the chief gets them.
“The Raft” features less obviously bad protagonists. Four teens drive out to an isolated lake with a swimming platform (the eponymous raft) in the center. They all get high on their way there, and it’s clear the guys want to get their girls to the raft to have sex with them. A mysterious floating blob surrounds the raft and eats them one by one. You start to think Randy might survive for being good but when left alone with Laverne (his best friend’s girl) he begins to seduce her while she’s asleep. None of them survive. The last segment, “The Hitch-hiker,” follows a woman who’s having an affair. Late getting home, she hits a, well, hitch-hiker and ends up as his victim.
The Creepshow franchise is, of course, comedy horror. This film does end with a moralizing message that comic books don’t lead to juvenile delinquency, but rather other factors do. This feels like an important message in days of increasing efforts to ban books. Easy solutions by unthinking adults never solve the “problems” they hope to address. Often what it comes down to is an aesthetic difference rather than true morality. Morals don’t fit across the board, especially if you don’t think through your own motivations. Of course, it’s nice to have a movie where such deep thinking isn’t really required. Kids being eaten alive for being kids may be a bit harsh, but the others in this pleasant little diversion really just get what’s coming to them, and right soon.
