by Rocky Wood
Unlike the film version this original story clearly underlines the depths of Henry Northrup’s motivation in killing his atrocious wife, Wilma:
Three years before, Northrup had made a run at the vacant English department chairmanship. He had lost, and one of the reasons had undoubtedly been his wife, Wilma, an abrasive and unpleasant woman … it seemed he could always recall the hard mule-bray of her voice, telling some new faculty wife to “call me Billie, dear, everyone does!”
At one point we learn, “…when Wilma insisted on a thing, she did so savagely.”
Henry had tricked Wilma into coming to Amberson Hall using her own nature. The note Henry left said Stanley, his only real friend and the only part of his life Wilma could not control, had gotten into trouble through an indiscretion with one of his female grad students. When Wilma arrived she was “excited and happy … because she was finally going to get control over that last … little … bit” of Henry’s life. By this point the reader is unlikely to have any sympathy for Billie as she suffers her demise.
We have more reason to dislike Wilma in this version compared to the film or comic book as King has the opportunity to delve more deeply into her character. We are normally only satisfied by death in a horror story when it is a villain who expires. The satisfaction readers derive from Wilma’s fate comes from seeing her, rather than the monster in the crate, as the true villain of this tale.
In a classic piece of King prose we read toward the end of the tale, and just before Stanley agrees to go along with Northrup, he, “… thought of the janitor, casually flicking his quarter, and of the quarter coming down and rolling under the stairs, where a very old horror sat squat and mute, covered with dust and cobwebs, waiting … biding its time …”
The story is remarkably effective, well paced with perfectly timed flashbacks, full of intrigue and motive. Most of those attributes were somehow lost in the Creepshow version and it is therefore to be hoped that King will one day relent and give the full text version of the tale a much wider circulation.
48 The Stephen King Story, George Beahm, p.299
Creepshow – Screenplay (1979)
The material in this chapter was compiled using a copy of King’s 1st draft screenplay, dated 1979. While the screenplay has never been published, copies of it circulate freely within the King community. Due to use of that version, the only draft publicly available, readers should note that the screenplay varies in places from the final film version.
The screenplay includes three original King stories as well as two which previously appeared in other versions. The stories from Creepshow were also published in a graphic novel. The five stories are:
Father’s Day (the only versions of this story are the screenplay and the Graphic Novel);
The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill (previously published in two early men’s magazines as Weeds but sometimes titled Will Be Necessary to Stop the Weeds);
The Crate (originally published in Gallery magazine for July 1979);
Something to Tide You Over (the only versions of this story are the screenplay and the graphic novel); and
They’re Creeping Up on You (the only versions of this story are the screenplay and the graphic novel).
The graphic novel was a movie tie-in, published by New American Library in 1982. The art is by Berni Wrightson and the cover art by Jack Kamen. Interestingly, King has not collected a single one of these stories in one of his mainstream text collections. King’s screenplay was produced as the movie Creepshow and released in 1982.
Members of www.imdb.com give the movie the slightly high rating of 6.5 out of a possible 10. George A Romero was the director. The main actors were big screen veteran Hal Holbrook as Henry Northrup, Leslie Neilsen of Naked Gun fame as Richard Vickers, E. G. Marshall as Upson Pratt, Ed Harris as Hank Blaine, with Cheers and Becker star Ted Danson as Harry Wentworth.
Producer Richard P. Rubinstein told a magazine King had written the screenplay in two months and Stephen Jones claims49 that Romero shot virtually the exact script, as written, a very unusual event in the movie industry. Made on an $8 million budget, the movie grossed nearly $20 million in the US market, half of that on its opening weekend, Halloween. It was released on DVD in 1999.
As Beahm points out50 King’s participation in this project marked his first professional involvement in the film and television industry. In Stephen King: The Art of Darkness, Winter describes the film as “…a studied tribute to E.C. Comics …” – Winter’s chapter on this work is highly recommended.
This was only the second visual adaptation of King’s work in which he appeared, on this occasion wonderfully made up in the role of the hapless Jordy Verrill. King’s son, Joe, also appeared as Billy, the original owner of the Creepshow comic book51 . A full listing of King film and television projects, including his screen appearances, appears as a feature panel.
A sequel, Creepshow 2, was released in 1987. That movie included an adaptation of King’s story The Raft, along with two new pieces, Old Chief Wood’nhead and The Hitch-Hiker. King did not write these latter stories. George Romero wrote the overall screenplay. King played a cameo role as a Truck Driver in The Hitch-Hiker segment. Creepshow 2 was released on DVD in 2001.
The quick summary of the Creepshow script from The Complete Guide to the Works of Stephen King reads:
In which a father returns from the dead in a foul mood; a man becomes infested by an alien growth and takes the only course of action open to him; a hen-pecked professor finds an ingenious way of riding himself of his wife; a man takes revenge on his wife and her lover, using the ways of nature to prolong the agony; and a man with a cleanliness fetish, and a disrespect for other humans is visited by his worst nightmares.
How about that for succinct?
No timelines are given for the action in the screenplay, other than The Crate segment, which is set in August 1980. In the following pages we summarize each story segment, providing considerably more detail.
Wrap-Around
The screenplay includes a “wrap-around” segment. It is set in the wonderfully anonymous town of Centerville, USA, where a young boy named Billy had the First Issue Collector’s Edition of the comic magazine, Creepshow. Even though his mother defended his right to it, his father took the comic and threw it away. Later, a trash collector picked the book out of the garbage and pocketed it for his kids. Included among the stories shown in the actual comic book are all the segments we are to see in the movie.
The first issue advertised a “Genuine Haitian Voodoo Doll.” The cover of the second issue advertised Billy with a voodoo doll, which he was apparently using to attack his father!
The “character” introducing each segment is itself called Creepshow. This creature looks like an “old witch, or maybe a rotting corpse.”
Father’s Day
Father’s Day is an original story, developed specifically for this screenplay. Its only other appearance is in the graphic novel, Creepshow. Apart from the Grantham home, described as a “Victorian monstrosity” (shades of The Glass Floor there), no setting is given for this America Under Siege tale. Nathan Grantham was buried in a graveyard behind the house.
On Father’s Day, seven years to the day after Bedelia Grantham killed her father with a glass ashtray, his reanimated corpse rose from the grave and strangled her to death. Nathan Grantham had made the Grantham clan’s money in bootleg, smuggling, extortion and murder-for-hire back around 1910. In his nineties he had a stroke and some time later Bedelia killed him, apparently as cold revenge for his arranging the murder of her handsome would-be lover, Peter Yarbro, in a hunting “accident” many years before. Bedelia had not been indicted for her father’s murder, apparently after her niece Sylvia helped cover up the evidence.
Nathan’s corpse also killed the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (clear homage there), and the other members of the Grantham clan – Sylvia; Cassandra and her husband, Henry Blaine; and Cassandra’s brother Richard.
The Lonesome
Death of Jordy Verrill
The storyline of The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill had previously been published in two early men’s magazines as the short story Weeds. This book contains a separate chapter about that story, which has never been included in a King collection. It was originally published in a men’s magazine, Cavalier for May 1976 and republished in another so-called “skin” magazine, Nugget for April 1979.
In the prose version Jordy Verrill lived near Cleaves Mills, New Hampshire but for Creepshow his farm has relocated close to Castle Rock, Maine. It is therefore classified as a Maine Street Horror story. As a side note King’s editor at Viking from 1979 was Chuck Verrill, a relatively unusual surname and a probably homage, although this surname can be seen on certain mailboxes in western Maine on roads Stephen and Tabitha King (“Mrs. Todd”) would have regularly driven.
The Verrill farmhouse was just off Route 26 and about five miles from Castle Rock. It had seen better times, “probably around 1940.” It had junk in the yard, plastic on the windows and a lot of weeds grew around the house. The Bluebird Stream ran through the property. Jordy himself was a farmer aged about 45 and was not very bright.
One night he saw a meteor crash on his land. When Jordy investigated he found the meteor to be slightly bigger than a softball, regular and spherical. The poor farmer imagined he could sell the extraterrestrial object and pay off his bank loan with the proceeds. But, when he threw water on to the meteor to cool it, the object broke into two pieces. The centre was hollow and a gray liquid seeped from it. Unfortunately, the curious Jordy touched this liquid.
A green, grass like material grew rapidly from the liquid after the meteor split, taking over the farm and also spreading over Jordy’s body. It particularly benefited from access to liquid and when Jordy took a bath to alleviate the itch it brought on, the “weeds” gained a new burst of growth. They finally spread over his entire body and, in extreme pain, Jordy committed suicide by gunshot. Meanwhile, the “weeds” spread across the farmland, heading inexorably toward the nearby town.
The Crate
The Crate was originally published in the magazine Gallery for July 1979 and was reprinted in a number of anthologies. This book contains a separate chapter about that story, which has never been included in a King collection.
In this America Under Siege segment a janitor finds an old crate that had apparently been addressed to a Julia Carpenter in 1834. Mike, working at Amberson Hall of Horlicks University, reported the find to Dexter Stanley, the handsome professor emeritus of the Zoology Department, which was located in the building. When they returned to check out the crate a creature from inside it killed and ate the janitor. When Stanley called a 23-year-old grad student, Charlie Gereson to assist the young man was disbelieving. Insisting on investigating he too was killed by the creature.
In panic Stanley next called upon his chess partner buddy from the English Department, Henry Northrup. Seizing a once in a lifetime chance Northrup used sleeping pills to drug Stanley and conned his own shrewish wife Wilma into meeting him at Amberson Hall. He then lured Wilma into her demise at the claws of the creature. Covering up the evidence of the creature’s killings, he was able to encase the crate in another large box, which he then dumped in the deep water at Ryder’s Quarry. Northrup then happily moved on with his life, without Wilma!
The Creature itself had been sent to Horlicks University in June of 1834, following an Arctic Expedition. It made a chittering sound and had large, green eyes with slit pupils. With a body like a whippet, it was furred, had six spider-like arms with claws, and large teeth. It made a whistling sound just before attacking. Despite Northrup trapping and dumping it in the water at Ryder’s Quarry it escaped. This contrasts with the original story, in which there was no indication of an escape.
This is the only story for which a timeline is given, that of August 1980.
Something to Tide You Over
Something to Tide You Over is an original story, developed specifically for this screenplay. Its only other appearance is in the graphic novel, Creepshow.
The main settings for this story are Comfort House, Richard Vickers’ beach house at Comfort Point, almost certainly in the state of Massachusetts; and the nearby beach, of which Vickers owned “almost 70%.” The house was a tall angular Victorian, with gables, gambrels and turrets, “very much like Norman Bates’ home.” This segment is classified as an America Under Siege tale.
In the segment Vickers discovers his wife, some sort of star, has been having an affair with a bank loan officer, Harry Wentworth. Vickers was a very successful TV producer, with three top rating shows on network TV but was more than a little jealous. Vickers kidnapped Wentworth and, holding him at gunpoint, buried him up to his neck on the beach. After revealing the gun had not been loaded he forced Wentworth to watch Rebecca, who had also been buried, drown on the incoming tide. Wentworth then suffered the same fate.
However, a surprise was in store for our Mr. Vickers. That night the living corpses of Rebecca and Harry chased him. He shot the corpses to no effect and, in terror, he committed suicide by slashing his throat with a razor blade.
They’re Creeping Up on You
They’re Creeping Up on You is an original story, developed specifically for this screenplay. Its only other appearance is in the graphic novel, Creepshow.
This America Under Siege segment is set in the New York apartment of an elderly and very wealthy businessman, Upson Pratt, a man with a nasty disposition. Pratt also had an unnatural fear of bugs, presumably caused by the fact that rats, roaches, bedbugs and silverfish had infested his home when he was a boy.
The ruthless Pratt was in the process of taking over Pacific Aerodyne. After finding control of his company had passed to Pratt Corporation, CEO Norman Castonmeyer shot himself through the right eye. Mrs. Castonmeyer rang to berate Pratt over the suicide but Pratt showed no concern.
That night much of the city was blacked out and bugs began to invade Pratt’s apartment. The first was a cockroach, which he sprayed to death and put in a matchbox. However, the body mysteriously disappeared. Among other bugs that now came into the apartment were some big, ugly ones with greenish carapaces; and “spider-things.” When these bit Pratt they drew blood. Many other types of bugs followed and Pratt kept up a valiant fight using Black Flag and other bug sprays but he was ultimately overcome and killed. After his death one last cockroach climbed out of a nostril!
As the scriptwriter King was able to include numerous links in the screenplay to his other works of fiction and a number of homages. Castle Rock is mentioned as being five miles from Jordy Verrill’s farmhouse. The town is a key location in The Body, Cujo, Gramma, the Nightmares and Dreamscapes version of It Grows on You, The Man in the Black Suit, Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, Needful Things, the Skeleton Crew version of Nona, Premium Harmony, The Sun Dog and Uncle Otto’s Truck. It receives considerable mention in Bag of Bones, The Dark Half, The Dead Zone, Squad D and The Huffman Story; and it is also mentioned in Dreamcatcher, Gerald’s Game, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Riding the Bullet, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, Under the Dome and the Complete and Uncut version of The Stand.
In Christine Jimmy Sykes’ uncle said there was an opening for a janitor at the college where he worked because the other janitor had disappeared! The Crate is set at Horlicks University (where Regina and Michael Cunningham of Christine were teachers) and, of course, one of the victims of the creature in the Crate was the janitor, Mike! The unfortunate students from The Raft attended Horlicks University and, in From a Buick 8, Curtis Wilcox wanted to take science courses at that college. Now, while it is true it’s hard to get into a good college these days, this is one students who intend to graduate may wish to avoid!
The bumbling Jordy Verrill is also mentioned in the notes to King’s unproduced screenplay of Pet Sematary. In that script the Baterman place “looks like the home of Jordy Verrill.” Finally, the screenplay notes that there “may” have been a Letter to the Editor in
the Creepshow comic book that mentioned ‘Salem’s Lot. The comic book did carry a full-page advertisement for Dawn of the Dead and also “may” have carried a Letter to the Editor mentioning Night of the Living Dead. In a nod to the director of both those movies and Creepshow, there was also a feature on George Romero in the comic book.
The Grantham’s housekeeper in Father’s Day is Mrs. Danvers. In Bag of Bones King reminds readers that Mrs. Danvers was Rebecca de Winter’s housekeeper in the Daphne du Maurier novel, Rebecca. The use of this name is an apparent homage.
Considering readers and viewers can access this screenplay in a number of ways, including viewing the DVD/video or reading the graphic novel, and the passage of years, it would seem most unlikely that this screenplay will ever be published. Readers wishing to more fully experience The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill will need to find a copy of Weeds; and those interested in The Crate will need to access Gallery magazine, its reprint in Nugget or one of the anthologies in which it appears. This book also contains separate chapters on these last two tales.
