Shudder gets spooky with an animated Creepshow

Our final pick for 31 Days of Halloween is A Creepshow Animated Special, which can only be seen on horror movie streaming platform Shudder.

Shudder added so many great movies, series and specials for October this year, and A Creepshow Animated Special was an especially good one, since it was added just two days before Halloween. Thanks to COVID-19, there has been a giant lag between seasons one and season two of the Creepshow series, so this special was a nice little tidbit to make the wait a little easier.

The special is fun-sized at only 45 minutes long, and includes two different stories, which are of course hosted by The Creep. First up is Survivor Type, based on a short story by Stephen King. Since I am a fan of King, I was very familiar with the story, which is one of his more disturbing pieces.

A drug-dealing surgeon is shipwrecked on a deserted island, his only companions the sea gulls and the dead body of a woman he doesn’t know. This island is not a hotbed of resources, and food is scarce, especially since our surgeon has broken his ankle and can’t exactly walk around looking for something to eat.

Making matters worse, his ankle starts to develop gangrene, and he knows he is going to have to amputate. He very badly wants to survive, so he manages to do the self-surgery. But he is really, really hungry, and that amputated foot is just sitting there…

Keifer Sutherland provides the voice acting for the character, and the nasty little tale is carried out to its grisly end soon enough.

Our next story is Twittering from the Circus of the Dead, adapted from a short story by Joe Hill (NOS4A2, Locke & Key). For those who don’t already know, Hill is Stephen King’s son, and trivia alert: he played the boy in the wraparound story for the original Creepshow film.

A family of four are on a vacation road trip, and what is the teenaged daughter supposed to do to keep from constantly fighting with her Mom? Blake decides that the best course of action is to tweet throughout the trip.

Joey King (The Act) voices Blake, and it’s a tall order, because her tweets tell the entire story. Things get grisly when Dad makes a pit stop at The Circus of the Dead attraction. Blake tells her followers all about the show; including how the female barker walks on stilts to keep her away from the other performers, who are dressed as zombies. Or are they?

It’s a great tale, exactly right for Halloween, and as most Creepshow stories do, it ends on a dark note. Keep your eyes open for some Easter Eggs in both of the stories, you might spot some familiar faces.

This was a really enjoyable special, and I loved that the animation looked like a comic book, rather than slick computer animation. The tales were perfect for Creepshow (and for Halloween), and the voice acting was great. I hope Shudder continues to crank out this type of special periodically.

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Will you be watching the Creepshow animated special as a treat this Halloween? Let us know what you think in the comments section.