‘Creepshow’ on Shudder Review: “Bad Wolf Down” and “The Finger”

Shudder’s Creepshow opens its second episode with Rob Schrab’s fantastic WWII werewolf piece “Bad Wolf Down.” A longtime collaborator of Dan Harmon’s, Schrab cut his teeth on television sketch comedies though genre fans may know him as co-writer of Gil Kenan’s modern classic Monster House. His work here is keen on the extreme comic book lighting and angles, making fantastic use of the show’s “ripped from the page” comic panel conceit in a flipbook werewolf transformation that dances along that tightrope of “cheesy” and “awesome.” Opening with a soldier’s barked “Doc, Rivers, cover that window!”, Schrab (who also wrote the script) establishes:

1. That he’s an NBA fan in this groaner of a callout to legendary player and coach of the LA Clippers.
2. His trademark corny/smart sense of humor will show up throughout this episode. (I especially appreciated a dead soldier named “Nards”. I’m not proud I laughed, but laugh I did.)

Genre fans will also appreciate the character named “Lawrence Talbot” after Lon Chaney Jr.’s original 1941 The Wolf Man and that, like that film, this episode is introduced by the series’ “Creep” visiting a fortune teller. Like the pilot, Creepshow establishes instantly that it knows its stuff and, most importantly, cares about it.

The story follows a handful of survivors from a decimated “Company B”, holing up in a Nazi jail in a small town housing a bunch of dead Nazis and a mysterious woman (Kate Freund) locked in a cell. Soft-hearted Rivers (Callan Wilson) lets her out but treacherous Quist (Nelson Bonilla) locks his mates in and makes his escape from evil Obersturmfuhrer Reinhard Schmelzgerat (Jeffrey Combs), arriving on the scene to avenge his recently-murdered son. It’s all played to the rafters, and we’re consistently a step or two ahead of our hapless boys, but there’s something to be said about a great war pulper in the tradition of “Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders” or – closer to the point, EC Comics’ “Frontline Combat,” mixed with a healthy dose of marauding werewolf action. If nothing else, Bad Wolf Down highlights the pleasure that arises from the gooey murder of Nazis. It’s a pity that so much of our country is now square in the anti- anti-fascism camp, but a few more gentle reminders that it’s good when a werewolf tears off an Obsersturmfuhrer’s lower jaw and we set this country back on its tracks.

The second short is a nifty little tale of the Id written by scholar and author David J. Schow and directed by special effects wizard (and director of dozens of Walking Dead episodes) Greg Nicotero. Insouciantly-dubbed “The Finger”, it’s told as a journal entry in madman Clark’s (DJ Qualls) diary as a flashback-within-a-flashback wherein our hero discovers a mysterious claw-like finger on one of his nightly walks. A loner/loser, he wraps the finger in a torn comic book page, naturally, accidentally spills a bottle of Harrow’s on it (Richie Grenadine of the first episode’s “Gray Matter’s” favorite brew), and discovers that this combined with Clark’s self-loathing and frustration is enough to cause it to reconstitute. A take on Monkey Shines where an otherwise helpless schlep’s thoughts and rage gets avenged by a helper animal, The Finger, now a cool puppet-looking gremlin thing, proceeds to give Clark back a little of the power he’s lost from joblessness and divorce. Leave it to Schow, one of the most clever writers in the business (if you’ve not read “Pamela’s Get”, collected in his DJStories anthology, you should get on that; “Red Light,” too) to give the title a dual-meaning: it’s not just the disgusting little oddity Clark finds, but the way he feels the world has treated him – and how he plans to treat it now in return.

A fun allegory of our recent epidemic of lonesome white guys doing terrible things when left to their own devices, Clark eats instant coffee crystals, talks directly to the camera, and tries not to act surprised when his new buddy brings home pieces of Clark’s enemies real and imagined. The “Creepshow” format is perfect for this dark little tale, giving Qualls exactly enough time to just tear it up at the center of every shot. The creature effect moves a bit like the thing that jumps out of Kane’s chest in Alien, and the relationship that develops between it and Clark is very much like cat mom to fur baby. A moment where it drinks from the kitchen sink faucet is hilarious and sets the tone for the piece as high gallows. To keep things consistent with the first story, Clark calls a debt collector’s robocall a “Nazi bitch,” and its gruesome climax demonstrates just how far the series is willing to go which is… pretty far.

Creepshow is gruesome, smart, fun, and buoyed by top tier talent invested in a project they all seem to love. I don’t know if they can keep it up, but two shows in, four exceptional horror shorts later, and I’m hooked.

Walter Chaw is the Senior Film Critic for filmfreakcentral.net. His book on the films of Walter Hill, with introduction by James Ellroy, is due in 2020. His monograph for the 1988 film MIRACLE MILE is available now.

Watch the "Bad Wolf Down" / "The Finger" episode of Creepshow on Shudder