Creepshow (novella)

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Creepshow

Publisher's info
Title:	Creepshow
Author:	Stephen King
Penciler:	Bernie Wrightson; Michele Wrightson
Inker:	Bernie Wrightson; Michele Wrightson
Colorist:	Bernie Wrightson; Michele Wrightson
Cover artist:	Jack Kamen
Cover inker:	Jack Kamen
Cover colorist:	Jack Kamen
Publisher:	Plume
1st printing:	July 1982
ISBN:	ISBN 1501163221
Page count:	64 pages
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Creepshow is a 1982 horror novella written by Stephen King and published by Plume, a Penguin Comics imprint. Based on the film Creepshow, the graphic novel consists of five stories, two of which are included in the film.

Synopsis[]

"Father's Day"[]

Nathan Grantham, the miserly old patriarch of a family whose fortune was made through bootlegging, fraud, extortion, and murder-for-hire, is killed on Father's Day by his long-suffering spinster daughter Bedelia. Bedelia was already unstable as the result of a lifetime spent putting up with her father's incessant demands and emotional abuse, which culminated in his orchestrating the murder of her sweetheart.

The sequence begins seven years later when the remainder of Nathan's descendants including Nathan's granddaughter Sylvia, his great-grandchildren Richard, Cass, and Cass's husband Hank — get together for their annual dinner on the third Sunday in June.

Bedelia, who typically arrives later than the others, stops in the cemetery outside the family house to lay a flower at the gravesite and drunkenly reminisce about how she murdered her insufferable, overbearing father. When she accidentally spills her whiskey bottle in front of the headstone, it seems to have a reanimating effect on the mortal remains interred below. Suddenly, Nathan's putrefied, maggot-infested corpse emerges from the burial plot in the form of a revenant who has come back to claim the Father's Day cake he never got. Before obtaining his long-desired pastry, the revenant avenges himself on Bedelia and the rest of his idle, scheming, money-grubbing heirs, killing them off one by one, which includes some apparent supernatural abilities such as making a heavy tombstone move by will.

The final freeze-frame shows the undead Nathan in the kitchen triumphantly carrying a platter that is crowned with Sylvia's freshly severed head and covered with cake candles. The corpse gurgles hoarsely at a terrified Richard and Cass, "It's Father's Day, and I got my cake! Happy Father's Day!"

Appearances[]

Characters[]

Nathan Grantham
Bedelia Grantham
Sylvia Grantham
Richard Grantham
Cass Blaine
Henry Blaine
Mrs. Danvers

Locales[]

Items[]

Father's Day cake

"The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill"[]

Jordy Verrill, a dimwitted backwoods yokel, thinks that a newly discovered meteorite will provide enough money from the local college to pay off his $200 bank loan. Instead, he finds himself being overcome by a rapidly spreading plant-like organism that begins growing on his body after he touches a glowing green substance within the meteorite. Jordy is eventually cautioned by the ghost of his father not to take a bath. But when the itching from the growth on his skin becomes unbearable, Jordy succumbs to temptation and collapses into the bathwater. By the next morning, Jordy and his farm have been completely covered with dense layers of the hideous alien vegetation. In despair, he reaches for a shotgun and blows the top of his head off. A radio weather forecast announces that heavy rains are predicted and the audience is left with the dire expectation that this will accelerate the spread of the extraterrestrial plant growth to surrounding areas.

Appearances[]

Characters[]

Jordy Verrill
Jordy Verrill's boss
Jordy Verrill's doctor
Jordy Verrill's father

Locales[]

Items[]

Meteorite
Shotgun

"The Crate"[]

A college custodian Mike drops a quarter and finds a wooden storage crate, hidden under some basement stairs for 148 years. He notifies a college professor, Dexter Stanley, of the find. The two decide to open the crate and it is found to contain an extremely lethal creature resembling a Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, which despite its diminutive size promptly kills and entirely devours Mike, leaving behind only his boot. Escaping, Stanley runs into a graduate student, Charlie Gereson who is skeptical and investigates. Gereson and Stanley find that the crate has been moved back under the stairs and Gereson is killed by the creature as he examines the crate. Stanley then flees and informs his friend and colleague at the university, the mild-mannered Professor Henry Northrup, of his recent experience.

Appearances[]

Characters[]

Creatures[]

Fluffy the Crate Beast

Locales[]

Amberson Hall

Items[]

Crate

"Something to Tide You Over"[]

Richard Vickers, a wealthy psychopath whose spry, devil-may-care jocularity belies his cold-blooded murderousness, stages a terrible fate for his unfaithful wife, Becky, and her lover, Harry Wentworth, by burying them up to their necks on the beach below the high tide line. He explains that they have a chance of survival - if they can hold their breath long enough for the sand to loosen once the seawater covers them they could break free and escape. He also sets up several closed-circuit TV cameras so he can watch them die from the comfort of his well-appointed beach house. If you look closely at the desk next to his bed, you can see the same ashtray the was used to kill the grandfather from "Father's Day". However, Richard is in for one hell of a surprise of his own when the two lovers he murdered return as a pair of waterlogged, seaweed-covered revenants intent on giving him a dose of his own deadly punishment. He tries in vain to shoot them but they both remind him that "You can't kill someone if they're already dead!" The final scene reveals that Richard has been buried in the beach at low tide, facing the approaching tide (and the sight of two sets of footprints disappearing in the surf). While the tide is rising, he laughs hysterically and screams "I can hold my breath for a long time!"

Appearances[]

Characters[]

Richard Vickers
Harry Wentworth
Becky Vickers

Locales[]

Items[]

Television

"They're Creeping Up on You"[]

Upson Pratt is a cruel, ruthless businessman whose mysophobia has him living in a hermetically sealed apartment controlled completely with electric locks and surveillance cameras. During a particularly severe lightning storm, he finds himself looking out over the steel canyons of New York City as a rolling blackout travels his way. When it hits his apartment tower, the fun begins for the audience, and the terror begins for Mr. Pratt. The ruthless tycoon now finds himself helpless when his flat becomes overrun by countless hordes of aggressive multi-sized cockroaches — perhaps symbolizing the revenge of all the "little people" he has spent his entire life stepping on. As the cockroaches begin to overrun him, he locks himself inside a panic room, only to find the cockroaches have already infested the room. With no way to escape, the roaches swarm on him, and eventually grotesquely burst out from his corpse.