Yes, writer/director Chris Columbus made melodramatic mush like Stepmom, but you must never forget the man wrote the immortal Goonies, and did a good job with the Harry Potter films too.
So now the news hits that Chris will make a big screen version of Creepy, which was a famous horror comic magazine back in the 60’s and 70’s that came out through Warren Publishing, the same company who gave us Famous Monsters of Filmland.
Creepy was like Tales From the Crypt, but in a black and white newsprint / standard magazine size format. Like Tales From the Crypt and the other EC Comics, Creepy told scary morality tales for the kids, and there was also a sister publication, which was also from Warren, known as Eerie.
Creepy featured the artwork of Frank Frazetta, Wallace Wood, Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko, Bernie Wrightson, and Richard Corben. The magazine was in business from 1962 to 1983, with Dan and Josh Braun owning the rights to the publication. They will be producing the film for Columbus, which will be a four part anthology.
As the Brauns told Deadline, “We have always been fans of Anthology horror films such as Trilogy of Terror and Tales From the Crypt and it has been our goal to figure out a way to make a great Creepy anthology.”
Columbus himself said in a statement, “I am thrilled to be immersed once again in the world of Creepy and Eerie. They featured some of the most important comic book artists of the time and were incredibly influential in my desire to become a filmmaker.”
Truthfully, this one could be kind of tricky to pull off, because anthology films often don’t work. One of my favorite horror films is an anthology film, Creepshow, which was based on Tales From the Crypt, and the five stories within Creepshow were all enormous fun. Again, not easy to do, although with Stephen King writing the script, and George Romero directing, you’ve got a good foundation to build the house.
So will Chris Columbus take a sharp turn from Harry Potter and I Love You Beth Cooper to deliver a good scare show? Let’s see if this one gets to the finish line, and can give audiences four short stories that get them involved and satisfied, and won’t leave people feeling shortchanged when it moves on to the next tale of terror.
