While there is a long history of anthology horror movies, TV has proven to be the format's natural home. In recent years, anthologies have become increasingly popular--from American Horror Story/Stories and Monsterland to Black Mirror and the reboot of The Twilight Zone, the hunger of fans for short, sharp doses of terror shows little sign of abating. Creepshow is Shudder's small screen update of the classic 1982 George Romero/Stephen King movie, and it's now back for its third season, only a few months after the release of Season 2.

The format remains comfortably familiar. Like the film, Creepshow is a homage to the gaudy, controversial 1950s horror comic books that Romero and King grew up reading. Each story starts the same way, showing us the panels of a comic story, with the skeletal Crypt-Keeper introducing us to this particular tale of terror. The stories are short--each 45-minute episode contains two--and usually fairly light-hearted. They traditionally end with the story's main characters either meeting a gruesome end or exacting some equally unpleasant comeuppance on their adversaries.

With Creepshow Season 3 arriving to Shudder on September 23, we got a look at the first episode of the new season, and overall, the stories so far deliver another satisfyingly varied mix of ghoulish storytelling. The first, "Mumms," focuses on a young kid named Jack, growing up on a remote farm with his troubled mom and paranoid, gun-loving dad, played by Ethan Embry. When Jack discovers that his mom has met a nasty fate and is buried in the garden, he takes matters into his own hands. The second story, "Queen Bee," features a trio of teenagers who break into a hospital where their pop idol, Regina, is about to give birth to her first child. Unsurprisingly, the birth isn't exactly a normal one.