In the past, Novelist Stephen King … and Director George A. Romero … have shown that they know how to scare people through the poetry of pulp…. In Creepshow they have aimed lower, and hit the mark. The film is an elaborate tribute to Tales from the Crypt and other horror comic books of the early '50s. Five tales play with the theme of moral revenge taken on corrupt humankind by nature, alien forces or the Undead. But the treatment manages to be both perfunctory and languid; the jolts can be predicted by any ten-year-old with a stop watch. Only the story in which [the] Evil Plutocrat … is eaten alive by cockroaches mixes giggles and grue in the right measure.
Richard Corliss, "Jolly Contempt," in Time (copyright 1982 Time Inc.; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission from Time), Vol. 120, No. 21, November 22, 1982, p. 110.∗
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