The Ones That Got Away. The Lost Segments of Creepshow 2

With summer right around the corner what better way to open the season than to talk about the summer anthologies of Creepshow. I know what you’re thinking, what do these have to do with summer? Well, they just feel like a hot night in July, you rented a few movies from a local video store and it was almost always these or Sleepaway Camp. If you didn’t rent them they were on a TV station along with other horror summer movies like —Jaws.

After the success of 1982’s Creepshow, a sequel was released five years later with Stephen King and George A. Romero attached, albeit in smaller capacities than in the original. In contrast to the first film, which King authored and Romero directed, Romero created the screenplay based on King’s stories for the sequel.

Strangely, just three stories are featured throughout the entirety of Creepshow 2. Two more stories were planned for the sequel, and they were discovered after the book came out. “Cat from Hell” was one of Romero’s stories that made it into his film adaptation of Tales from the Darkside. The other, titled “Pinfall,” has never been made into a film.

According to the Romero Archives, they have three drafts of Creepshow 2, In the initial draft dated January 1984, Pinfall appears alongside Old Chief Wood’n head and The Raft. Intriguingly, there are just three episodes despite promises that there would be five, just like the first anthology.

In the revised version, “Pinfall” is retained alongside “Cat from Hell.” Consequently, “The Hitch-hiker” is left out of the first two drafts and only added in the third. After two more iterations, the final film’s three sections were written. In this light, it’s intriguing to note that “Pinfall” has always been present…  That financial constraint prevented the making of “Pinfall.” There was an issue with the visual effects. Which, you know, Savini and Nicotero couldn’t pull off, I find exceedingly hard to believe. However, that’s only one of the tales I’ve heard.

The length of the movie also should have been taken into account. The completed film runs for more than 90 minutes. An accurate adaptation of the story’s twenty-seven pages would have given us an almost thirty-minute section. I think it would be a fair amount of time and something that would’ve been worth it in the end.

Alternative Creepshow “Creeper” (In the first Creepshow Savini named him Rahul) Our story is described as “a gruesome little revenge story, short, sweet and…heh, heh, heh…striking!” by The Creep. “Pinfall” is what I’m calling it. The opening transitions from a comic book splash page to a real-life scene, where we see Reggie Rambeaux (“likes himself a lot and that, in part, makes us not like him at all”) knocking down some bowling pins. Reggie leads a team of five bowlers called the Regi-Men, who are now showing off at Big Ten Lanes. The Regi-Men are portrayed as a group of Silicon Valley junior executives with razor cuts and Selleck’staches, making them stand out from the stereotypical blue-collar bowler.

Reggie’s rhythm is thrown off by J. Fredrick MacDugal, a regular member of the Big Ten whom the Regi-Men dislike for “always causing a disturbance” with his subpar bowling abilities. Reggie walks over to the elderly guy and scolds him for being distracted; this act of bullying causes MacDugal to have a coughing attack due to his heart condition.

The Bad News Boors, bowling on the opposite side of MacDugal’s lane, are characterized as looking like something out of a Tex Avery cartoon. All of them have permanent beard shadows. The leader of the B.N.B., Chooch Mandolino overhears the conversation and stomps over with his sidekick, To add insult to injury, Louie follows Chooch everywhere, punctuating the bigger man’s every sentence with only one word—”Definitely”), who overhears the argument, stomps over.

While they are within striking distance of the Regi-Men’s current score, MacDugal mentions that he typically bowls on the lanes of his own home (“Just off the billiard room, between the pool and the gym”). MacDugal takes a strong swing after bowling a 7-10 split, something the old man says he’s never been able to do in all his years of bowling. The 82-year-old’s body and the bowling ball tied to it are launched down the lane, knocking down the 7-10 split when it refuses to release from his grasp. The little man is killed instantly when the lane’s pin-sweep descends onto him.

Reggie and his Regi-Men are shocked to learn later at the industrial park that MacDugal was ranked as the world’s tenth richest man (“I certainly would have gone easier on him if I’d known he was rich”). The Boors learn about their new friend’s death at their steel plant (“I guess he wasn’t shittin’ about the pool and the gym”). At the bowling alley, MacDugal’s lawyer C. Hamilton Wilbourforce reveals that MacDugal’s employer has put more than $5 million into an escrow account for the winning team. The Boors and the Regi-Men face off on the lanes, with a TV team present to catch the outcomes. Reggie’s concentration is broken by all the noise and the cameras, giving the Boors a chance to win and take home MacDugal’s millions.

The Regi-Men wreck the Boors’ old Dodge van later that night, leading to the team’s fiery demise on the cliffside. The Regi-Men turn up to the lanes on the next team night wearing black armbands and tell the reporters that they would use MacDugal’s millions to buy the Boors’ specially designed headstones in memory of the deceased bowlers. The Regi-Men bowled all night and continued practising for their last games long after the lanes closed. The team has complete reign over the lanes once the scorekeeper and the after-hours cleaning crew have left.

The Regi-Men end each night by huddling in the locker room and grousing to one another about how hard Reggie has been on them to prepare for a perfect game. The lights suddenly went out. One by one, the Regi-Men are slaughtered in increasingly gruesome ways. Something that looks like a hand grabs at Regi-Man #1’s throat.

The Regi-Men find their way out of the locker room after fumbling around in the dark and discover a huge, burned-to-a-crisp dead man. The crust is peeling away in some places, exposing the underlying bone. As we watch, he looks to rot away right before our eyes. The man snatches Regi-Man #2 by the throat and carries him screaming from the changing room.

As the first fallen Regi-Man is exposed, the surviving Regi-Men dash off to the breaker box. A third Regi-Man is killed as he is snatched by a charred zombie and tossed into an arcade game. Near the concession booth, the fourth Regi-Man is attacked by another corpse, who throws him headfirst into the hot dog rotisserie, cooking away his face before the scene cuts.

Reggie, remaining on the lanes, witnesses the bodies of his deceased teammates with horror. There’s a force pulling towards him. Reggie looks around and notices that another dead body is holding him. “It’s a big body,” the script proclaims. A second, even more, diminutive body lay behind him.

They are both smiling broadly.

Chooch and Louie are here.

Reggie goes into a panic and “squeals like a roped pig” once he figures out who is hitting him. Chooch shoves Reggie’s head into the ball drill at the bowling alley. The bullets drilled three holes, roughly a size nine, into Reggie Rambeaux’s skull.

The episode concludes with a tableau that wouldn’t be out of place in an issue of EC Comics. Bowling with the undead corpse of J. Frederick MacDugal, “out for a high old time bowling with the boys,” on a “parody of team night” with the dead and decaying Bad News Boors. The Boors refuel with “bloody beers” and a round of bowling, this time using the Regi-Men’s limbs as pins (Reggie’s skull is the ball, of course).

However, artist Jason Mayoh did create a comic rendition of the story and it was included in Arrow Video’s special edition Blu-ray release of Creepshow 2 in 2016.

Even though “Pinfall” was never adapted to the big screen in the 1980s, it is still a great King/Romero collaboration. With reboots and remakes a hot commodity anything might happen. One day, perhaps, Chooch and the guys will tell their story on our television screens.