Ah, fall. It’s a time of transition, crisp air, and distinctive colors; when we replace our cold lemonade and long, humid nights on the patio with hot cider, roaring fires, and violent deaths at the hands of cake obsessed corpses, vengeful totems, and a man eating lake creature resembling a poncho. I am speaking, of course, of the gruesome and markedly 1980s result of a collaboration between author Stephen King and filmmaker George A. Romero: Creepshow!

The first installment of this unlikely hit grossed $21 million domestically upon its release in 1982, and featured five short stories: “Father’s Day”, “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill”, “Something to Tide You Over”, “The Crate” and “They’re Creeping Up On You!”. While each story has its personal, if gruesome charms (not the least of which being the reanimated corpse of Nathan Grantham, whose incessant demands for cake drove his daughter Bedelia to bludgeoning him to death with an ashtray on Father’s Day), the standouts are “Something to Tide You Over”, in which a scorned, sadistic husband played with startling authenticity by Leslie Nielson plans a horrific death for his unfaithful wife and her lover, and They’re Creeping Up On You, featuring E.G. Marshall as a germ phobic businessman who finds himself up to his ears in cockroaches after a put upon employee had all he could take of his boss’s demands.

Creepshow II started where its predecessor left off, continuing to interlace each story between animated sequences based on the pages of old horror comic books. This time around we’re treated to the tales of “Old Chief Wood’n’Head”, “The Raft”, and “The Hitchiker”. Creepshow II ramped up the camp value even further, particularly when a wooden statue in a general store comes to life to avenge a double murder in Old Chief Wood’n’Head, and, my personal favorite, The Raft, when four college students desperately warn one another not to tip the raft as they’re sucked in, one by one, by the aforementioned man eating poncho of doom.

There have been subsequent straight-to-DVD editions of Creepshow, though without King and Romero’s influence, well, let’s just say it would be prudent to move on to Tales from the Crypt.