Review by Quin
There’s a movie from 1977 called The Van. If you’re interested, it’s available on youtube in its entirety. It isn’t a horror movie. It’s just a silly movie about teenage guys cruising around in a van looking for chicks. It’s truly awful, but even under the cloud of 70s cheese, you know exactly what you are going to get if you choose to waste your time with it. When I chose to watch the 2012 movie Creep Van, I sort of expected a horror version of The Van, which may have been watchable. But what I got instead was a bad horror parody, and one that ultimately had very little to do with the van of the title. Creep Van has an incomprehensible script, horrendous acting, the parody isn’t funny and the horror isn’t scary. I wouldn’t be offended if you stopped reading here.
Attempting to explain the plot of Creep Van is an arduous task, almost as difficult as sitting through it. Campbell Jackson works at a car repair shop uncleverly called Muffy’s Mufflers. He doesn’t have a car to get to and from work. His boss is an idiot who keeps telling Campbell that he’s going places and then he sends him on errands that he can’t run because he doesn’t have a car. I bet I’ve already lost you. Campbell sees a van for sale and he spends half the movie trying to decide if he wants to buy it and then more time trying to find the owner. Then the owner of the van, who is also a deranged killer, starts looking for Campbell. He doesn’t have much luck either. Throughout all of this, we are subjected to the filmmakers idea of jokes. The film is full of puns and sight gags. Just when I couldn’t take it any more I said to myself out loud, “All this movie needs now is a Lloyd Kaufman cameo” and I swear to God, two seconds later he appeared on screen. This was the only laugh the movie got from me.
If you don’t know who Lloyd Kaufman is – and I’m probably only talking to three of you now – he co-founded Troma Entertainment, and he has got to be the most prolific producer since Roger Corman. Quite a few Troma films are now classics in the horror/comedy genre, but personally, I’d say a large percentage of what they churn out is garbage. But it’s all a matter of taste really. I respect Lloyd Kaufman and he’s actually a pretty good actor. He usually elevates every scene he appears in, but not even he can save Creep Van. Maybe if he had invested time and money into it, it may have been a little better. But we are only left with a Troma wannabe, with a misleading stamp of approval simply because Lloyd Kaufman graced it with his presence.
I guess some viewers will find some of the murders enjoyable to watch. It’s everything you would expect, like death by seatbelt. There is such a serious lack of imagination or substance in this movie. In the realm of ridiculous horror, I would recommend things like Troma’s The Toxic Avenger or Microwave Massacre. Even the endless parade of Puppet Master movies are infinitely better and funnier and even creepier than Creep Van.
Creep Van is everything I loathe about the mixing of horror and comedy. What’s worse is that they did it in sort of a sneaky way. They make you think you’re getting one thing and switch it for something completely different. If you are looking for movies about killer vehicles, you can do so much better with classics like Christine, Duel and The Hearse. And definitely don’t miss one of my personal favorites The Car, from 1977 starring Barbra Streisand’s future husband James Brolin. But please, for the love of evil motorists, do not see Creep Van. A tagline has never been so fitting: “Let the bad times roll!” Very, very bad times indeed.
Creep Van is available now on DVD and VOD in the US from Inception Media Group.