Creepshow III (2006)

Plot
Five tales of terror are brought to life: a serial killer call girl meets a client with a horrible secret; a pair of student's seek to prove whether their old professor's wife is mechanical; a new TV remote wreaks havoc on the life of an annoying school girl; a young man obtains a possessed radio; and a mean doctor gives a homeless man a contaminated hot dog with disastrous consequences.

Review
A complete travesty to the efforts of Stephen King and George A. Romero who brought us the Creepshow films back in the 80s, Creepshow III is a terribly late and lame attempt to revive the series. Made without any involvement (or blessing) from anyone who participated in the original films, Creepshow III is by definition a cheap and nasty cash-in on a popular and nostalgic series. Instead of Romero and King, the film is brought to us by the same goons who made Day of the Dead 2: Contagium, possibly one of the worst "unofficial" sequels ever made. Well the good news guys is that you managed to break your previous boundaries of trash cinema with this unhealthy dose of low budget nonsense.

Based on the old E.C. comics of the 1950s but not actually using any of the stories, Creepshow III has little to be cheerful about. For a start it just doesn't capture any of the atmosphere of the previous films or even the comics. They contained enough macabre and bad taste to chill your blood but also enough dark humour so that you wouldn't take it seriously. There's none of the "comic book" style headers or introductions to any of the stories and instead we're given some really lame animated sequences which look to have been made with a free program that the effects guys downloaded off the net. Where's the spooky "Creeper" character who framed the stories in the first two films? The old stories used to contain some sort of ironic twist or shocking ending and Creepshow III tries to pull the rug from underneath you a few times. However a lot of the twists and turns are telegraphed earlier on the story and thus their impact is watered away. The third story, "Rachel the Call Girl," is guilty of this in a big way as it gives the twist away prematurely and thus the segment turns into a waste of time because you know how it's going to pan out. It's a shame because the story is the best of the five and although that's hardly rooftop-shouting praise, it's the pick of a bad bunch. Creepshow III attempts to be mean-spirited and fiendishly fun but fails on almost levels because the writers just don't know how to set-up the story in the slightest. Punch lines are pathetic and the attempts at comedy and black humour are cheap. Predictability sets in long before the rot. Cheap gore is substituted in where the clever shocks were before. The creative team just hasn't got a clue and I bet they hadn't even seen the first two Creepshow films.

Another of the problems is that Creepshow III contains five separate stories which mean that they're all fighting over time. I'm sure that two of these stories could easily have been binned and the others expanded a little more. As it stands, they're all too short to really get going and the silly one-note premise prohibits the segment from doing anything engaging. Having said that, I'm probably giving the writers more credit than they deserve if I think that they'd be able to flesh out three stories any better! One of the more entertaining aspects of the other two Creepshow films was their use of named actors in some of the skits. The likes of Leslie Nielsen, George Kennedy, Adrienne Barbeau, Ed Harris and Ted Danson all appeared in one of the films and added much needed credibility to whatever story they were in. Here the cast is a bunch of no-namers and no-hopers who overact, can't act or simply phone it in. I'm sure that they'll enjoy the welfare cheques when they're unable to get another role.

Verdict
In future if I see the names of Dudelson and Clavell attached to any sequel, I'm going to avoid like the plague. It'll be a hack job, a cheap and nasty cash-in and an insult to the original as well as the many fans who pay to see this stuff. Creepshow III is horrendous.  For some reason they keep singling out Romero's films! What's the poor guy done to them? I know what I'd do to them that's for sure.