Creepshow's John Harrison Talks Returning to the Franchise With Season 4

Nearly 40 years after George A. Romero and Stephen King's Creepshow landed in theaters, Shudder revived the concept for an all-new TV series that captured the spirit of the original movie, yet shifted formats for the streaming age. The series has largely kept the spirit of the original movie alive while also bringing contemporary filmmakers into the fold, but one of the integral components of the original film, John Harrison, has returned to offer a more direct connection to the film that has become a cult classic among audiences. While Harrison composed the score of the original Creepshow, he directed two segments in Season 4 of the series. Creepshow Season 4 premieres on Shudder, AMC+, and AMC on October 13th.

Based on George A. Romero's iconic 1982 horror-comedy classic, Creepshow is still the most fun you'll ever have being scared. A comic book comes to life in a series of vignettes, exploring terrors ranging from murder, creatures, monsters, and delusions to the supernatural and unexplainable. You never know what will be on the next page...

ComicBook.com caught up with Harrison to talk the new season of the series, the lasting legacy of the franchise, and more.

ComicBook.com: There're so many other anthologies that have just been released over the years, what do you think it is about that original Creepshow and the concept of it that has just really resonated with fans over the years?

John Harrison: Well, I don't want to get too pretentious about it, but I think that part of it is that, first of all, it's a lot of fun. It's very creepy stories told exceptionally well by a master. And so, first of all, it's very, very well done. And you don't get the sense that you're really slumming it when you watch Creepshow. You're watching a really high-end movie. So I think that's one of the reasons it's held up for so long. But I think it's just the kind of storytelling, the stories, are very succinct. It's an anthology, so you're not spending two and a half hours trying to get to the point, and there's a place for that, of course. 

But in these horror stories, I don't want to call them bite-sized, because they are certainly more than that, they have a way of getting under your skin really quickly. And then you move on to another story and it's got a completely different tone, style, and everything else that can really be different from the other ones. Therefore, you're constantly amused and entertained and hopefully frightened.

This might surprise you to hear, but horror fans can be a bit cynical about reboots or remakes or revivals or whatever. So if somebody was apprehensive about getting involved in the new Creepshow, if they were like, "George Romero's not involved, Stephen King's not involved, who the heck cares about that?" what do you think it is about the TV show that does really capture the spirit of that original movie?

Well, I have to point the finger at Greg Nicotero then, because even though Greg was not involved in the original Creepshow movie, he certainly was part of the whole Romero tribe, if you will, for many, many years, and has carved out a career on his own in terms of monster making and special effects and his own directing with things like The Walking Dead. We certainly give him the bonafides to enter this world, so that's number one. But I also want to give him credit and those of us who he's asked to join on this little odyssey of trying to maintain ... There's been a very definite directive to maintain the spirit and the fun and the style that George and Steve created back in the day. We are not reinventing the wheel here. We are trying to live up to the style that was created back then because that's what people still love, and we want to deliver that to them.

Yes, we have the advantage of some new technology and we have the advantage of some storytelling freedom that maybe we didn't have back then. But I would really say to anybody that's skeptical, you've got to jump in and have a look because you'll find a lot of stories that will give you the same thrill that you had when you watched the original movie. Not to take anything away from the original movie, it's The Godfather, but we tried to live up to it. 

You bring up a good point about how Greg is masterminding things or serving almost as a mentor. Is there much collaboration between all of the filmmakers who are involved to either try and unify the tone or look of an installment or is the freedom in how you can set yourselves apart with each story?

Well, it's a little bit of both because Greg chooses all the stories. So, right from the jump, he has a continuum and a style that is uniform for the entire season. But each director, I think, that he is asked to be a part of it is going to bring something unique to it. That's the beauty of the anthology, that you can have different moments from different points of view throughout an entire season.

One unifying factor that has been very helpful, I think for all of us, is the inclusion of Rob Draper, who was a cinematographer. Rob was not involved in the original Creepshow, but he did the Tales from the Darkside TV series and he shot Tales from the Darkside: The Movie with me for Paramount. So first of all, he's a veteran of anthologies. He knows and loves the genre and the original Creepshow. And Greg enlisted him right from the get-go to be the cinematographer on this series so that he could bring a consistency of style and tone to the whole series. I think that other creatives involved Greg's shop, KNB Effects, all of us have been pulling in the same direction. I had the advantage of being George's first assistant director on the original movie, so I go back, I know what it's all about. But having these other team members has been really a wonderful way to keep it consistent. 

What was it about "Smile" and "Baby Teeth" that really excited you as a filmmaker? Did Greg just think you'd be a good fit for them or was it that they really caught your interest?

Well, I was lucky because Greg picked them and he sent them to me and said, "I think I'd really love you to do these two." When I read them, I thought, well, he knows me. It was a really good choice. And the reason I really loved them is because they're very different. 

"Smile" is a very odd, psychological horror story. There's not a lot of violence, not a lot of bloodletting. It's really all in the guy's mind and what's really happening to him and his wife for something that happened to them a long time ago. "Baby Teeth," on the other hand, is typical Creepshow. A young girl has an encounter with the Tooth Fairy, which is a little bit different than what she expected, let's put it that way. And it's got a very interesting and fun monster in it. For me, doing these two was just a lot of fun because I could exercise two different styles and have two different approaches. 

Speaking of that creature in "Baby Teeth," what was the design process like for that? Was it a fully formed idea of what it would look like? Was it a collaboration between you and KNB? 

It was mostly KNB. With these schedules and budgets, we don't have a lot of time, at least the director doesn't, for too much of the input into that. And besides, we're dealing with KNB, and what could be better? So Greg had an idea. Once he had settled on the story, I think he and his team had started to put together ideas for what this little creature could look like. When he showed them to me, I thought, "Well, geez, there's not much I can add. This is really great. Now the question is, how can I shoot it to its best effect?" And that's what I brought to the table. 

You've worked on so many cool projects over the years, you've worked on other anthologies like Monsters and Tales from the Darkside. Do you think those projects could ever earn a similar revival or do you think, especially Tales from the Darkside and Creepshow, there's so much common DNA between those two TV shows and those two movies, do you think Creepshow's scratching that itch? Or do you think both Monsters and Tales from the Darkside are their own unique things, their own perspectives, that they're worth bringing back for a new generation?

Well, I think that they do have their own unique identity. I don't know, the question you're asking is almost more of a business question than it is ... Would I love to see a series of Monsters, would I love to see a series of more Darkside episodes? Sure. You got the money? I'll go do it. It's really a matter of a distributor, a network, or whoever who would want to pull that off. 

Is there enough of an appetite for it? Yeah, I think so. There are a lot of anthology series now on TV. I think it's a storytelling paradigm that people like. I think that's been proven. I remember in the '90s, George and I used to go around L.A. and try to sell anthology series and we couldn't get arrested. We had a couple of ideas and we partnered up and we were going around town, couldn't get arrested.

I don't know, exactly, what tipped the balance. Both his movie and my movie were very successful, so I don't know why people didn't see it. But they didn't, until into the 2000s, and now there's a lot. I think, in general, there's a breaking point there, too, that horror, for a long time, was considered a low-rent arena in Hollywood. The movies made money and they made a lot of them, but it wasn't until ... Genre was a very hard sell in television for a long time. And then, somewhere around the 2000s, it started to happen. 

I did the Dune miniseries, Ron Moore did Battlestar Galactica. They were hugely successful. All of a sudden, people started to say ... Genre and the Sci-Fi channel started coming up with stuff, people started to say, "Maybe genre really has a place." And now you turn on the television and everything's genre all the time. So it's maybe just a matter of timing, who knows?

For years, the various iterations of Dune were more like cult classics. You really had to find people super passionate about Dune to have a conversation. And now, what the most recent movie did and this upcoming movie is doing, it's taking it to a whole new level. I was just curious what your thoughts on that were, whether you enjoyed the movies or if you're just excited about the fact that the popularity of it will introduce new audiences to what you did with Dune?

Well, all of the above. I'm very excited about it. Richard Rubenstein and I were still involved in the development of several attempts to try to get it off the ground after my miniseries. And, maybe fortunately, some of those never came to pass because I think what Denis Villeneuve has done is just fantastic. And I love him as a director. 

I wasn't involved at all in the latest movies except to have my name put up there, but I think it's just fantastic and I'm really looking forward to the new ones. I hope it does introduce a whole new audience to the Dune world. If they are able to get back and see my miniseries, I'm very proud of them. We were able to ... I think the success of them, they won a couple of Emmys and they were hugely successful here and abroad. I think they gave people faith that Dune actually could be adapted again. 

The David Lynch version has its strengths, but clearly the run time that your miniseries was able to tap into helped make them understand that this cannot be contained to one two-hour experience. And clearly they've learned that lesson, I like to think entirely because of you.

Well, thank you very much. I'll take that.

Lastly here, and this might be something super specific, it might be completely off your radar, but when Eli Roth made his Grindhouse trailer, he used your music from Creepshow in "Thanksgiving." And now he's finally made his Thanksgiving movie into a full feature, is that something that you're at all involved with? Was it just a totally random selection of your piece of music for that trailer and now he's doing his own thing, or are you involved at all with this new Thanksgiving?

No, I'm not involved with it at all. I've been aware of it. Now, back in the day when Quentin [Tarantino] and Robert [Rodriguez] were doing the Grindhouse movies and Roth was going to do the ... They called me and said, "Listen, we love this piece and we want to put it in there and would you give us permission?" And, of course, I said, "Yes." But he's finally getting a chance to do it, so he's going to put his own imprimatur on it, and I'm sure the music that he'll choose will be pretty creepy. 

Creepshow Season 4 premieres on Shudder, AMC+, and AMC on October 13th.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.