With direction by George Romero and writing by Stephen King you are getting the best of the best in this horror anthology of six stories in Creepshow.

Of the six four are concerned with vengeance of one sort or another. The other two are one man shows and really good ones about people being overwhelmed by extraordinary circumstances.

Author Stephen King heavily made up plays this hillbilly rustic who gets the bad luck of having an encounter with a meteorite. With him it's like that old song on Hee Haw, "if weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all". Seems as though contact with the stuff inside the meteorite turns everything into plant life.

The best is for last though and it couldn't never have been made while Howard Hughes was alive. The story concerns eccentric billionaire E.G. Marshall who lives hermetically sealed like Hughes with an overriding fear of our six legged creature. After having endured an attack of bedbugs in my dwelling two years ago I kind of related to what Marshall was going through. His fear is cockroaches and in the end he gets his comeuppance from same.

If your taste runs to black comedy you can't help not liking Creepshow although you may find the other segments better than my favorites.

I think it's fair to say that CREEPSHOW is one of the greatest horror anthologies in the history of cinema, and perhaps the greatest of all American variants. It helped pave the way for the long-running horror anthologies TV series of the '80s and '90s like TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE and TALES FROM THE CRYPT, and it reminded audiences - who were drowning under a sea of slashers, lest we forget - that horror could be creative and fun.

There are five tales here, with a fun and goofy wraparound story that pays homage to the film's comic-book roots. Clearly George Romero and writer Stephen King are having a lot of fun playing with genre staples. The first episode is a nice zombie outing, featuring a youthful Ed Harris and some funny dialogue. The second story is an out and out comedy riff on Lovecraft's THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE; King's performance is a hoot. The third story is the most serious of the five and features Leslie Nielsen in an unusually villainous performance and Ted Danson the object of his hate; a more psychological horror yarn, this one, and effective for it.

The fourth episode is the creepiest and best plotted. It involves a dusty old crate and its sinister inhabitant, and it benefits from the performances of central cast members Hal Halbrook, Fritz Weaver, and the delightfully irritating Adrienne Barbeau. The last story is the most simple and sees E.G. Marshall battling against a host of cockroaches, and is the most memorable of the lot thanks to some exceptionally gruesome special effects work. It's also my favourite, being the monster lover that I am.

Billy is punished for reading comic horror Creepshow. The Creep invites him to five tales. In Father's Day, the old patriarch Nathan Grantham was killed by his daughter Bedelia. During a family gathering, Nathan is resurrected and takes revenge while getting the cake. In 'The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill', Jordy Verrill (Stephen King) is a dimwit farmer who finds a meteorite and is soon overcome with extraterrestrial plant life. In 'Something to Tide You Over', wealthy Richard Vickers (Leslie Nielsen) takes revenge on his wife and her lover Harry Wentworth (Ted Danson) by burying them up to their necks in the beach. In 'The Crate', college professor Henry Northup (Hal Holbrook) is informed of a deadly creature inside of a crate and he sees an easy way to get rid of his hateful wife Wilma (Adrienne Barbeau). In 'They're Creeping Up on You', ruthless business Upson Pratt (E. G. Marshall) has sealed himself up in his high tech apartment due to his germophobia. There is a blackout and his apartment is overrun by cockroaches.

The first two tales are forgettable. The third one burying alive Ted Danson is not. It is the most compelling tale in the whole movie. It works on every level from the acting to the writing. The fourth one has a couple of interesting actors and the last one is creepy as hell. I'm not that afraid of bugs but people who do would really get unhinged over that one. The wrap-around story with Billy could probably be better. I'm sure they could have found a better actor than Stephen King's son. Teaming up horror icons like George A. Romero and Stephen King doesn't guarantee anything but this one worked out great.