In 1954, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham told Congress that EC Comics were creating juvenile delinquents. That horror comics like Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror were warping young minds with their gleeful violence and moral ambiguity. The Comics Code Authority formed, EC folded, and an entire generation grew up being told those comics had been dangerous garbage that nearly destroyed America’s youth.
Thirty years later, those same kids, now successful filmmakers, called bullshit.
Romero and King used their two Creepshow films to mount a full-throated defense of what those comics meant to their generation. These weren’t corrupting influences on youth, they were formative texts that taught kids about consequence, karma, and narrative structure. Not to mention the art By Ingels, Wood, Craig, Orlando, Davis et al was absolutely gorgeous.
Basically, these movies were a middle finger to Wertham’s ghost.
While Creepshow 2 stripped away the first film’s overt comic-panel flourishes and 4-colour lighting (likely due to budget), it still delivered EC’s brutal brand of morality where bad things happened to bad people, and sometimes to good people too, because that’s how the world works. That’s the cosmic joke that Wertham never got.
The film closes with a post-credits quote pulled from Colliers Magazine in 1949, during the height of the first wave of moral panic around comic books:
“Juvenile delinquency is the product of pent-up frustrations, stored-up resentments and bottled-up fears. It is not the product of cartoons and captions… If the adults who crusade against them would only get steamed up over such basic causes of delinquency as parental ignorance, indifference and cruelty, they might discover that comic books are no more a menace than Treasure Island or Jack the Giant Killer.”
Needless to say that erudite and level-headed argument landed on deaf ears. Within a few years, comics were being burned in bonfires.
Every generation finds its EC moment – the discovery that their truth lies in the disreputable art your parents fear. In the 50s, it was comics and rock and roll. For us in the 80s, it was heavy metal and horror films. Different decade, same rebellious message. Same pearls getting clutched.
The real danger isn’t what’s presented in these stories. It’s pretending they aren’t true.
-Pop
Creepshow 2 arrived on home video today in 1987, after a May 1st theatrical release.