‘Creepshow’ Season 4 Episode 5 Recap: “Something Burrowed, Something Blue” + “Doodles”

Creepshow Season 4 Episode 5 on Shudder opens with John Espisito’s “Something Burrowed, Something Blue” — a convoluted tale of greed and apocalyptic centipede monsters that need to be fed every fifteen years lest they do horrible things. The caretaker of one such beast is wealthy, ailing Frank (Tom Adkins), who summons his estranged daughter Allison (Kristy Dawn Dinsmore) and her fiance Ryan (Curtis Lum) to transfer responsibilities for the care and feeding of the creature by offering to restore Allison’s inheritance. As Frank is a terrible person and about to die, however, it was never clear to me why he cared whether the world went on after his death or not. For her part, Allison is suspicious but Ryan, lured by the promise of riches, talks her into acceding to her dad’s wishes. 

I was sure the premise was going to be an elaborate ruse in which Frank tosses Ryan and his daughter into the pit, but no, he seems to be on the up and up. The twist is similar to one of the finest episodes of the 1980s reboot of The Twilight Zone called “The Shadowman,” but the resolution still feels hollow. It’s otherwise fine, though, the performances are solid and it’s all worth it in the end to see the great Tom Adkins again in any form. There are moments in it where I think it’s inspired by Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations: sort of a gothic horror set in lush spaces and dedicated to the dismantling of the hedonistic bourgeoisie. It doesn’t commit, though, and seems in a rush to wrap it all up. 

Better is P.J. Pesce’s “Doodles” whose greatest virtue is its concision. In it, aspiring one-panel cartoonist Angela (Anja Savcic), going in for an interview at a New Yorker-style magazine, discovers accidentally that what she draws sometimes comes to pass. I like stories about magic pens and stuff, though it’s never really clarified if it’s an enchanted artifact story or voodoo or something else. No matter as Angela makes for a sympathetic naif in the cutthroat world of publishing. Successful doodler Sonia (Tina Grant) makes for a suitably loathsome foil as dos Tyler McClendon’s publisher Roger, composed all of unctuous smarm and disordered social grace. 

I do wish Angela tried to manifest other things with her drawing once she discovers her powers — that she were more excited about her strange omniscience. Why not draw a nice boy or girlfriend? A career? The story could be about how nothing seems to matter much anymore once you can have anything you want — or how art is about the making of it and the struggle and not nearly so much about the outcome. Does she still create when she doesn’t need to anymore? What if the pen only works when she draws terrible things? Pesce keeps the tempo engaging and Savcic is a great, sympathetic hero who, when the final twist happens, still doesn’t entirely deserve it. And at the end of the day, that’s what Creepshow’s all about, after all.

Walter Chaw is the Senior Film Critic for filmfreakcentral.net. His book on the films of Walter Hill, with introduction by James Ellroy, is now available.