Creepshow III (aka Creepshow 3) is a 2006 American horror film directed by James Glenn Dudelson and Ana Clavell (Day of the Dead: Contagium). It is a sequel to the 1982 horror anthology movie Creepshow, by Stephen King and George A. Romero. The film, like the original, consists of five tales of comedic horror, although there is no EC Comics angle this time around. The film was made in 2006, and was released in early 2007. No one from the production of either Creepshow or Creepshow 2 was involved.
Wraparound story
Unlike the first two Creepshow installments in which the wraparound element linking the stories was a horror comic, Creepshow III takes an approach similar to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, in which characters from each story collide with each other during the film. There is also a hotdog stand as a common element in the movie. Brochures, ads and other things from the hotdog stand are peppered throughout.
Alice
Alice (Stephanie Pettee) is a stuck-up, snotty teenager who comes home to find her father meddling with a new universal remote control. Whenever she presses one of the buttons on the device, the whole family except for Alice changes ethnicity (i.e., the “Color and Hue Settings” button makes her family turn African-American, and the “Subtitles” button makes her family turn Hispanic). During this, Alice gradually mutates into what is supposedly her “true form”. Just when Alice thinks everything is back to normal, her father presses another button, revealing Alice’s true form. Her family is absolutely horrified. The story ends with Professor Dayton, the mad scientist from down the street, using another remote control to turn Alice into a white rabbit. Notable in this story is the obvious link to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
The Radio
Jerry (A. J. Bowen) is a part-time security guard who buys a radio from a homeless street vendor; however, this mysterious new radio is far from ordinary as it can have a conversation with Jerry. Very soon Jerry is stealing money and murdering people, all at the whim of his new radio. After escaping with a hooker who lives in his building, Jerry is told by the radio to kill the hooker or she will kill him. He refuses and destroys the radio. Right after, the hooker finds his gun in the car and shoots Jerry, killing him. Moments after she kills him and wipes the gun clean, she is shot in the head. The shooter is revealed to be the pimp living in the same building as Jerry. When the pimp returns to his car, another radio tells him to go and start a new life.
Call Girl
Rachel, a murderous call girl, receives a request from a shy man named Victor, her newest client. Rachel thinks he will be just another easy victim. When Rachel gets there, scenes of a murdered family with their necks ripped out are flashed on-screen, and there is no evidence of Victor living in the house. Rachel then chains him to the bed and proceeds to stab him in the chest, suffocate him by a pillow over his face, and then has a quick shower. She then keeps hearing Victor’s voice saying, “You killed me.” Rachel removes the pillow and reveals a gruesome creature with a large, toothy mouth…
The Professor’s Wife
Two former students come to visit Professor Dayton and meet his fiancee, Kathy. Having been victims of his practical jokes in the past, they suspect that Kathy is actually a robot, which the professor has supposedly spent the last 20 years working on in his laboratory. She also behaves like a robot and does not eat or drink, which further indicates that she is probably mechanical. When the professor is out of the house, they decide to dismantle Kathy to see what she looks like on the inside. To their utter horror, they learn that Kathy really was a human being after all…
Haunted Dog
A cruel, miserly doctor, Dr. Farwell, is working a 30-day court-ordered sentence at a free clinic, where he is very insolent and rude towards his patients. He even goes as far as to show no sympathy towards a young girl with abrain tumor and mocks an elderly woman who is going blind. One day he buys a hot dog. Dr. Farwell accidentally drops it on the ground. He sadistically decides to give the dirty hot dog to a homeless man. The homeless man dies after taking one bite, and he returns to haunt the cruel doctor. The story ends with the doctor having a heart attack from having had too many encounters with his ghostly stalker…
“Those who appreciated the retro-quirk of the first two Creepshow films (and the awesome graphic novel illustrated by Bernie Wrightson) will probably find themselves tempted to smash their faces into a well shortly after this third entry begins. The filmmaker’s have somehow managed to suck everything that was fun about the first two movies out of this third entry and replaced it all with horrible, forced comedy, bad effects, crap acting and a shoddy script. The direction is uninspired, the gore effects decidedly mediocre and the whole thing feels like nothing more than an attempt to cash in on the name in hopes of milking some cash out of the fans of the first two films.” Ian Jane, DVD Talk
“Had Creepshow III been less farce and more camp it might have gotten over how long the stories take to get going, lack of shocks. While there’s some reasonable stuff in here (the gore) as it stands it’s more of a crap show.” R.J. Bayley, Popcorn Horror
“Creepshow III‘s scare factor suffers from its lacking narrative. Most of the stories open with sequences that build towards nothing and add little to the story, serving more to pad out the film than establish anything relevant. What’s funny is that the writer could have used the film’s many instances of downtime to flesh out the characters even a little bit. With the exception of AJ Bowen’s character in the second segment (which was arguably the only good performance in the entire film), all of the characters are flat, dull, and lifeless.” Joe Shaffer, Realm of Gaming
“Stay away from Creepshow 3, especially if you saw and enjoyed the first two. The second story may be half-decent but overall the film is a complete insult to the series and should have been shit-canned at the idea-gathering stage.” Chris Scullion, That Was a Bit Mental
“I didn’t get angry at it for trying to pass itself off as a Creepshow film – it’s fairly obvious in the first five minutes or so that this thing was not going to be nearly as charming as the original film. So I calmly put that out of my head and just let the movie be what it was, which is to say a convoluted mash-up of five of the most retarded quasi-horror stories I’ve ever seen. The stories are thinly strung together; the acting is at times like watching a bunch of hyenas bouncing around throwing poop at each other; and the writing and direction show all the skills of a schizophrenic on acid… BUT, it still has mild entertainment value at some points simply because of its silliness. You also cannot take it even the least bit seriously, and again, remember that it is a Creepshow movie in name ONLY.” The Girl Who Loves Horror
