‘Creepshow’ Episode 5 Review: “Night Of The Paw” and “Times Is Tough In Musky Holler”

Shudder’s anthology series Creepshow continues into the fifth episode with a new telling of W.W. Jacobs’ legendary “The Monkey’s Paw” story. Called “Night of the Paw” now, directed by series regular John Harrison and adapted by John Esposito (screenwriter for the Stephen King adaptation Graveyard Shift), it opens with a car accident and a mysterious woman in black, Angela (Hannah Barefoot), who, gravely injured, stumbles to Avery Whitlock’s (Bruce Davison) mortuary/home for help. He saves her, though not without a few grisly surgical procedures, and tells Angela about how a mysterious monkey’s paw granted him and his wife six wishes between them, leading Anglea to his home and eventual role in his fate. Those familiar with Jacobs’ story know that the problems start, as most problems do, with the desire for money. As Creepshow proceeds, it comes clear that one of its main thematic preoccupations will be with the problems that arise from cash: the lack of it, the need for it, the lengths the desperate will go to obtain it. All good horror exploits the era in which it’s created, and the widening economic gulf between the 1% and everyone else is one of the clearest bogeys of this age.

“Night of the Paw” is helped immeasurably by the always-likeable Davison as a desperate old man driven insane by guilt and grief. He’s wished his wife back to life, but he hasn’t thought to… well, that would be telling. Sufficed to say that it’s a lovely twist on the old zombie mythos with one particular moment of gore involving some surgical sutures that made me a little queasy. The splatter in this one is first rate and plentiful, ticking off a couple of boxes on my “I never want to see that again” list involving the rough treatment of hands and romance at the most inopportune moment. The mood is spot-on in its mix of mordant humor and broad moralizing. My only real complaint is a beautiful fire effect towards the end that’s betrayed by a story twist neither set-up properly nor explained later. It’s a missed opportunity for KNB Effects to do create some real burnt nastiness and feels like a bungled opportunity. But I loved the paw itself that takes its design cue from the second “Treehouse of Horror” Simpsons episode, curling a finger each time a wish is ticked off, and the way the effect is used to show how one character is using their wishes in genuinely unfortunate ways. It’s good stuff.

Less successful is John Skipp & Dori Miller’s “Times is Tough in Musky Holler.” With Harrison taking on directing duties again, the short opens in a prison cell in some post-apocalypse with shouty mayor Lester (Dane Rhodes) promising retribution against his unseen jailors. Whether due to budget or time constraints, most of this one is told through comic panels and spoken exposition. It seems the zombies have risen and the small-town government of said Musky Holler have come up with a rather novel solution to the infestation that’s rubbed the townsfolk the wrong way. Revolution ensues and the would-be saviors find themselves now the victims of their own solution. It’s a clear allegory for our current boondoggle with each of our national villains (the politician, the priest, the jingoistic newscaster) represented as a gaggle of backwoods Lonesome Rhodes. Too true, it’s also so broad and obvious an allegory that it doesn’t need to spend the time that it does explaining its premise. It’s time, frankly, that would’ve been better spent on grue.

David Arquette appears as snarling Sheriff Deke, but even his penchant for ham doesn’t elevate the piece beyond a sketch of an outline of a screed. The targets are deserving, of course, as is the excoriation of a movement based entirely on fear and the prejudices of the small-minded who would follow these false prophets, but it’s such a broadside that it feels more insulting than incisive. Its shortcomings are made more glaring by the fact that there’s not much to distract from them. A neat zombie make-up at the end raises the question of why there wasn’t more of that to begin with. Imagine the version of “Times is Tough in Musky Holler” that opens with our villains in the bad spots they end up in and an army of mutilated zombies crawling towards them for the duration. Without that kind of anticipation and without much payoff in terms of blood and guts, there’s just not enough grist to hold on to. It’s the first obvious misfire of the series, but it also feels like the shortest which raises the question of whether meat was chopped off to fit this slot opposite one of the longest shorts. The next episode is the last of the season. I’ll be sorry to see Creepshow end.

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.

Stream Creepshow Episode 5 on Shudder