Season 3 of Shudder’s Creepshow arrives on Sept. 23, with more EC Comics-style tales of monsters, bloodshed and irony. There have been a multitude of named guest stars in the series, including the likes of Molly Ringwald, Giancarlo Esposito, Justin Long, Tricia Helfer and Ali Larter. But it’s especially noted for veterans of earlier horror projects, particularly those with a long career in the genre or with a particularly noteworthy role here.
The list is long, but a few stand out either because they star in particularly strong episodes of the series, or because their performance has a connection to some of their previous work. They’re listed below in alphabetical order.
Arquette’s career traverses a wide array of genres, but it was the Scream franchise in the 1990s that launched him to stardom. He periodically returned to the genre, often in quirky projects like Ravenous, Bone Tomahawk and the giant spider parody Eight-Legged Freaks.
He plays an evil sheriff in Creepshow Season 1, Episode 5, “Night of the Paw/Times is Tough in Musky Holler.” He and the mayor take over their town during a zombie apocalypse and turn it into a despotic nightmare. They even fill the local football stadium with limbless zombies to feed their victims to -- until the tables are turned and they become zombie food themselves. Arquette’s thoroughly nasty character is a twist on his sweet Dewey from the Scream films.
Barbeau is a genre legend, known best for her work in Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing and John Carpenter movies like Escape from New York and The Fog. She also starred in the original Creepshow movie, where her rotten-to-the-core faculty wife gets eaten by a monster in a crate under the department stairs.
Barbeau headed up Creepshow Season 1, Episode 1, “Gray Matter/The House of the Head,” as the kindly owner of a local grocery store, listening to the terrifying story of a young man who came in for beer. It’s the polar opposite from her part in the original film, and her frantic terror at the end of the episode sticks its ironic final twist.
Bell appeared with Barbeau in “Gray Matter,” serving as another actor brought in to get the series started on a strong foot. Bell will always hold a place in horror fans’ hearts as Jigsaw, the trap-obsessed killer in the Saw franchise. It started a late career bloom of horror movies, and the prolific performer’s work in the genre continues.
Bell stars in “Gray Matter” as the town’s amiable law enforcement, who takes a case of beer to what he thinks might be an abusive father in the middle of a winter storm, only to find something much, much worse. His quiet, no-nonsense delivery is very much in keeping with the tight-lipped New Englanders who populate Stephen King’s stories.
Combs has almost 140 credits to his name on IMDB; the majority of them horror films. He shot to genre stardom with 1986’s Re-Animator and Stuart Gordon’s subsequent adaptations of HP Lovecraft stories, and has remained a staple of horror for over 35 years.
He appears in Season 1, Episode 2, “Bad Wolf Down/The Finger,” as a vengeful Nazi commandant who corners three American GIs in a country jail. Combs never phones in a performance, and he dives in the full camp potential of the scenario with barely hidden glee. He doesn’t shy from the cliché either, but paints his villain in sharp strokes that help make the episode's premise work.
Crampton co-starred with Combs in Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, From Beyond and Castle Freak and went on to become a legendary scream queen amid long and steady work in daytime soap operas.
Crampton appears in Season 2, Episode 4, “Pipe Screams/Within the Walls of Madness,” as a wealthy and thoroughly awful landlady who ends up being eaten by a sentient drain clog in the plumbing she never fixes. Crampton knows how to sell her character’s morality play comeuppance, matching Barbeau’s similar moment in the 1982 movie for ear-splitting shriek.
Crosby will always be best known as Lt. Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation. But her post-Trek career has included a number of high-profile horror roles, including the first adaptation of Pet Sematary and a memorable recent appearance on The Walking Dead in which she played a cannibal.
Crosby appears in Creepshow's most overtly Lovecraftian episode, "Within the Walls of Madness,” as a mad doctor intent on summoning the Old Ones back to Earth. She’s murdered by her assistant, who nonetheless plays the strange instrument she possessed, completing her sinister dream.
The original Willard helped make Davison a star, playing a deeply bullied man who discovers the ability to communicate with rats. His Creepshow cameo comes in “Night of the Paw,” playing a mortician who helps a killer on the run.
Davison reveals that he is in possession of a monkey’s paw, which granted he and his wife wishes with horrific consequences. His last wish was for a killer to arrive and put him out of his misery, which his visitor does. She then takes the paw and uses it, with the same deadly consequences.
McDermitt’s career began in stand-up comedy before he hit the horror big time as Eugene Porter in The Walking Dead. He first arrived in Season 4 and has been a cast regular since Season 7.
His character in Creepshow is very typical: an unscrupulous pest exterminator in Season 2, Episode 2 “Dead and Breakfast/Pesticide.” After reluctantly poisoning the homeless indigents of a rundown factory, he finds himself haunted by dreams of being chased by giant insects before inexplicably shrinking down to the size of a bug and being stepped on by his therapist. Creepshow never said it wouldn’t get weird.
The legendary Ted Raimi has roots in the horror genre stretching back to 1981's The Evil Dead, directed by his brother Sam. His appearance on Creepshow is an overt homage to those movies.
Season 2, Episode 1, “Model Kid/Public Television of the Dead” features Raimi – playing a 1970s version of himself – on the episode’s faux Antiques Roadshow attempting to price a copy of the Necronomicon (the Book of the Dead). In the course of the evaluation, the incantation is read and Raimi is transformed into a Deadite. Creepshow’s signature violence and insanity take over from there.
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