Creepshow – Season 4 Episode 6 “George Romero 3-D; Baby Teeth” Recap & Review

George Romero 3-D

In Creepshow Season 4 Episode 6, Sarah and Martin are the mother and son owners of Book Time Bookshop, a brick-and-mortar bookstore. When their landlord, Cooper, warns them that their lease for the bookstore is up, Sarah and Martin need a miracle to help save their store. Fortunately, while clearing out supplies, Martin and their employee Dawn stumble onto an old crate labelled Image 10 Publishing. They realise that their problems are solved. Image 10 was an old George Romero imprint that published comic books in the Night of the Living Dead universe.

However, their good fortune turns into a fight for survival when one of the zombies from the comic books comes to life and attacks a customer. Martin tries to warn his mother Sarah, but she believes that he is just making things up, especially since you can’t see the zombies without the 3D glasses that come with the comic.

Soon, Sarah and Martin are stuck, and it seems things are going to get worse when Dawn is attacked by an invisible zombie. In a panic, Martin turns to the comic book for help pulling out no other than a comic book version of George Romero. George explains that the reason why the zombies come to life when you wear the glasses is because a disgruntled employee had his cousin place a voodoo curse on them, making the ghouls actually voodoo zombies. George helps Martin come up with a plan to successfully save Dawn, but things aren’t over yet.

Their customer has turned into a zombie himself and uses the glasses to pull zombies from another copy of the comics. Sarah, Martin and Dawn are then attacked by the new zombie horde. Sarah is pulled away by the horde, and just as George begins to come up with a solution on their computer it dies.

As a last resort, George pulls off his arm and writes “Destroy the glasses, destroy the zombies.” With the zombie horde vanquished and the customer zombie killed by George, Dawn and Martin attempt to recover. The segment ends with landlord Cooper entering the store and complaining about the state of the store. A zombified Sarah grabs him and pulls him away to feed. Martin and Dawn leave the store, and Cooper is left to his fate.

The Episode Review

This was very fun. It was a great homage to George Romero. The first frame of the segment was basically a “spot the Easter egg scene.” There were callbacks to previous episodes and previous segments in the first scene alone: a Stephen Bachman poster on the wall, Jay Stratton books on the shelf, and even a Timeless magazine from the previous episode.

Sebastian Kroon’s portrayal of George Romero was fantastic. He was witty, quick on his feet and embodied George Romero perfectly. Him cracking jokes about “how he’s not known for having the best endings to this particular outcome” got a chuckle. Also, adding that he wanted zombies to be called “ghouls” and then subverting that by turning the ghouls into voodoo zombies was genius. The show made them zombies anyway.

It’s not lost on us that the show started with a tribute to Stephen King. It’s only fitting that George Romero, the other creator of Creepshow, gets tribute as well. And it was fantastic. It was entertaining to see that the tributes and homages in this season were all about making fun of the stereotypic faults within Stephen King’s writing practices and George Romero’s endings.

Baby Teeth

Shelby wakes up from having her wisdom teeth pulled to see her mother, Miranda, watching over her. Miranda seems to be just a little bit too overbearing with her only daughter. She even mentions that they have matching iron necklaces, and she keeps Shelby’s baby teeth (including her newly-pulled wisdom teeth, which she asks the dentist for). The reason for Miranda’s overbearing nature is that her own mother left her when she was a baby.

After reaching home, Miranda’s curiosity gets the best of her, and she decides to take advantage of a drugged-up Shelby, by asking her if she is keeping anything from her. Shelby happily obliges, and much to Miranda’s horror, she learns a lot more about her daughter than she wanted, including that Shelby can’t wait to get away from her when she turns 18, and she blames her mother for her father leaving. Shelby ends her venting by telling her mother that because of her clingy nature, she will be all alone.

Distraught by this, Miranda leaves her daughter to rest and goes into the nursery, where she reminisces about Shelby as a baby and adds Shelby’s wisdom teeth with a lock of her hair to a keepsake box that houses most of Shelby’s baby teeth. When she leaves the room, the wardrobe that houses the keepsake box starts to glow.

The next day, Shelby’s friend Katlyn comes over for a visit, and the two start talking about Shelby’s issue with her mother. In the nursery, the wardrobe begins to glow once again, the keepsake box turns over and an unknown creature emerges and trashes the room.  While this is happening, Katlyn decides to search for Shelby’s baby teeth and ventures into the trashed nursery, where she is attacked by the creature.

Shelby and Miranda soon follow and get into an argument about the trashed room. Soon, the argument between mother and daughter is broken up when they stumble onto Katlyn’s body and soon realise that a Fey is in the room. Miranda explains to her daughter that her mother didn’t leave her. She was taken by the Fey that came to take Miranda when she was a baby.

Miranda also realises that Shelby is no longer wearing her iron necklace, the one thing that would protect her from the Fey. As Shelby blames her mother for this event, the fey attacks, ripping off Shelby’s jaw and eating her teeth. Miranda tries to save her daughter by smashing the box but it’s too late. The segment ends with the Fey dying and leaving behind a changeling baby of Shelby.

The Episode Review

This final segment closes season 4 of Creepshow. It ends the show on a medium note. It’s the story of a mother trying to warn her daughter of the curse that plagues their family, only for it to be perceived as overbearing. The added effect of pushing her daughter away is an interesting concept.

The highlights of this segment are the amazing puppeteer work that went into making the Fey. Not only was it creepy, but it also had a resemblance to the Cryptkeeper from Tales from the Crypt, including those big blue eyes. Whether or not this was on purpose is yet to be seen, but it was a good addition. The gore and practical effects were fantastic. Seeing Shelby get her jaw ripped off was enough to make you wince. Bravo!

Was it a good story to end Creepshow season four on? Sure. It probably would have been better to end on “George Romero,” but we can’t complain too much.