Just the Ticket #105: Critters

Happy Halloween, Ticketholders!
College is getting harder, leading me to question my career choices despite the fact that my true passion is looking less and less lucrative with each passing day.
That passion, of course, is writing, in all of its forms. I have started several new posts over the past year, and am making incremental progress on my two novels, but between school, work, and a precarious personal life that I have made all the more precarious by my own selfish hands, I have lacked the drive, focus, and time to finish any of them.
Which brings me to today's offering--an offering of personal redemption and torture. As I had previously done with Tremors, I have taken it upon myself to review another cult horror franchise that is as inexplicably entertaining as it is creatively mediocre. Or mediocrely creative; I haven't decided yet. If the title of this post didn't give it away, I'm talking about the five movies and one web series that make up Critters.

Originally believed to be a cheap cash-in on the Gremlins franchise (although how two movies and a short-lived toy line of Furby ancestors could be considered a franchise boggles my mind), Critters was actually written first by Don Keith Opper (who has a key recurring role in the first four films, and whose brother, Barry, co-produced the sequels) then heavily re-written to eliminate many of the similarities to Gremlins (which came out in 1984), delaying the first movie's release to 1986.

Despite its wacky premise, the first Critters is as boring as a cardboard cutout of styrofoam dog shit. But it is not lacking in talking points. Critters begins in space, with two faceless bounty hunters getting assigned to hunt down a ravenous, invasive alien species they call Krites. The Krites have, of course, set a...course...for Earth, where they are eventually dubbed Critters by the late-80s hick citizenry of Grover's Bend, a small American town that sounds more like a Muppet-specific bowel disorder. When they come into close proximity with Earth's atmosphere, the bounty hunters intercept a broadcast of a hair-metal video, and one of them, named Ug, takes on the appearance of the lead singer, played by brilliant theatre actor Terrence Mann. Enter the bland characters. In between the very, very, VERY few kill scenes in this movie, the majority of the early runtime is devoted to the Brown family: a forgettable mother because progress, a father whose dialogue consists only of empty threats of physical abuse because that was the face of the 80s, I guess, and their son and our main human character, Bradley (played by then-first-timer Scott Grimes, whom you may or may not know as one of the Barrel Girls Killers from Dexter). Bradley's only friend (because pedophilia wasn't being openly addressed back then) is a mentally stunted but fully grown-ass man with a drinking problem who claims he can hear alien broadcasts in his teeth. This is Charlie, played by screenwriter Don Keith Opper at his reddest and neckiest, but with the "M-O-O-N, that spells Charlie" turned up to eleven. Elsewhere, we have the slimeball deputy who's so obviously going to die first that he should just be credited as "Pervert Dragged Under His Patrol Car Bleeding and Screaming," and Sherriff Harv, played in this film by M. Emmet Walsh, whom you may or may not remember as the grandfather from Home Improvement who bitched about Vietnam and wanked off to Douglas MacArthur. Harv is the grizzled old Sherriff of a small, middle-American hick town, and that's pretty much all we needed to know, apparently. Elsewhere, the two bounty hunters engage in fish-out-of-water hilarity that comes from exactly three sources: They are no-nonsense badasses in a horror-comedy, their laser guns are giant and phallic, and one of them looks like a celebrity. Meanwhile, the Critters are comically small, hedgehog-like things with glowing red eyes and ear-to-ear mouths full of razor-sharp teeth. They can roll up into balls and shoot their barbs at their victims like hedgehogs do, but also multiply by means that are never shown or explained, eat anyone and anything that looks or smells appetizing, thereby making them larger, hunt in packs, and speak Mogwai because Gremlins sound effects. They eat a bunch of people, including Bradley's father, the aforementioned Deputy Perv, and Bradley's sister's asshole boyfriend. See? this movie has a thing about killing assholes, and the cast is so boring and one-note that I forgot the main character has a sister. Speaking of which, she gets kidnapped by the Critters for...a food source? Mating? Plot contrivance? Yeah, that last one sounds right. Anyway, the survivors and bounty hunters go to the Critters' ship to rescue her and kill the monsters, but the Critters blow up the Browns' farmhouse in an explosion so awesome that when the Critters' ship is also blown up...by Charlie of all people (because nepotism and writing credit), they re-use the farmhouse explosion! Ahh, editing.... For helping them kill the Krites, Ug gives Bradley a communicator that can also rewind time or something, rebuilding their house, putting their cat in the mailbox (oh, yeah, they have a cat, too. His name is Chewie, like in Star Wars and the Ms. Marvel comics. And irony because he didn't get eaten. And he just got back from Abu Dhabi...), and planting sequel bait in the barn. The End.
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Critters 2: The Main Course snaps up that sequel bait two years later, with Ug, Charlie, and the still-faceless second bounty hunter (whose name is Lee, according to Wikipedia...Ug, Lee, Ugly, get it? So clever...) trolling the galaxy for your children's nightmare fuel, when they finally receive news that the sequel bait on Earth is giving off signs of life. Hyper-advanced alien civilizations capable of relativistic, interstellar travel, and it takes them two whole years to discover that the Krites are still on Earth? Really?

Somehow, the four, tiny Krite eggs have not only grown in size, but also multiplied into several dozen. Once again, Critter reproduction is neither shown nor explained, it just is because there needs to be plot escalation. Speaking of the plot, it's Easter! And what would a Critters movie be without a handful of cartoonishly blatant assholes to eat first? Yes, this will be a pattern going forward. There's the greedy antique dealer who sells the Krite eggs to the head of the daycare center, the dealer's chauvanistic teenage assistant, and the power-hungry, incompetent new Sherriff of Grover's Bend, who was elected after Sherriff Harv (now played by Barry Corbin, who you may or may not recognize from the Command & Conquer cutscenes) was disgraced during the fallout of the first film. Yeah. This is one of those Ghostbusters II-type sequels where all of the eyewitnesses got Trump brain and decided to ignore glaring empirical evidence that something weird killed a lot of people. Luckily, Bradley Brown (again played by future Dexter victim Scott Grimes) hit puberty early and decided to return home after being laughed out of Grover's Bend for telling the truth about the Critters, just in time for a few of them to hatch during the annual Easter Egg hunt and start chowing down on the local asshole buffet. And just in time for early puberty, that pile of braces and cooties he went to kindergarten with is attractive now; I wonder if this will be a barely addressed and awkwardly acted but conveniently fulfilled romance arc? The answer is as immediately obvious as my sarcasm. On the more interesting and unpredictable, fanservice-y side of the plot, Charlie, and Ug-Lee land on Earth and start searching for the Krites. Lee finds a Playboy centerfold and decides to be her, because cheap 80s sci-fi needed half-naked alien women in studded leather bikini armor. Again, all of the bounty hunters' comedy comes from exactly three sources: They are no-nonsense badasses in a horror-comedy, one of them is having an identity crisis, and one of them is Charlie. Also, the voice of Mandark from Dexter's Laboratory (not to be confused with just Dexter) runs a burger joint called The Hungry Heifer (because racial and environmental sensitivity didn't really exist yet, either), for which the director's wife wrote and performed the jingle. For the next week, it will be the stupidest, most annoying, catchiest song you'll ever wish you never heard.

No one believes Bradley when he insists that the new Sherriff wasn't eaten to death by faulty farm equipment that doesn't exist, until he, his grandmother, and his new love interest-at-first-sight are attacked by the Critters (which no longer grow when they eat, but still do all of the other things that Critters do), forcing Bradley to use the communicator for the second and last time in the series. In addition to sort of maybe reversing time, it can now apparently turn any nearby door into exploding Kryptonite and summon three no-nonsense badasses to your living room--well, two no-nonsense badasses and Charlie. Now so overwhelmed by Critters that they can no longer suspend belief, the remaining townsfolk plan to lure the monsters into their town's major source of income and blow it up. But the Critters combine into a giant ball almost instantly, which somehow lets them survive the explosion despite all of their faces being completely exposed. This is a cool visual, but makes no logical sense and is only ever used twice in the series. Charlie once again saves the day (because nepotism and writing credit again), this time by crashing the bounty hunters' ship into the giant ball of fur, eyes, and teeth, the wreckage of which looks suspiciously like that of the beef processing plant that just exploded a few minutes earlier. And before you ask, no, the communicator isn't used to restore the factory this time. This time, Grover's Bend is economically fucked. Lee is dead, Charlie ejected from the ship just before it crashed, everyone says their goodbyes to each other, Ug floats away to a ship that conveniently appeared to replace the crashed one, Bradley gets the girl, and everyone "important" in the movie says "fuck this town" and gets on a bus. Except for Charlie. He gets to be Sherriff now! Evidence of sarcasm increasing! Too bad the Critters aren't still around to eat everyone because anyone who thinks that "Sherriff of an economically bankrupt town" is a step up from "intergalactic bounty hunter" is a giant asshole begging to be eaten! Just look at his face when Harv throws him the badge; even a moron like Charlie knows he's getting the shitty end of the toilet brush in this deal. Critters 2 is a big improvement over the first movie in terms of entertainment value and spectacle, but it's mostly predictable and the ending really pissed me off.

With the character arcs in Grover's Crap Chute having been forcibly concluded, a new cast is introduced in Critters 3, subtitled You Are What They Eat. Snore! As with the second installment, Critters 3 is more entertaining and spectacular than its predecessors. Its main flaw, however, is that its plot is highly predictable and over-reliant on coincidence.

A widower and his two children (an older sister and a younger brother) are on a road trip because he has wanderlust and unresolved grief issues, which cause his daughter, Annie (played by retired actress Aimee Brooks) to be a typical, rebellious, angsty 90s film kid. When they hit a rest stop (which just happens to be near Grover's Bend) to fix a flat tire, the kids meet Josh (played by Leonardo Di Caprio...yes, you read that correctly; a young Leonardo Di Caprio is in a Critters sequel), who happens to be Annie's age, have a dysfunctional family of his own, and look like Leonardo Di Caprio. So already, we have our romantic pairing for this entry in the series. And because they also happen to run into Charlie, who apparently decided between films that Grover's Bend is a ghost town, Harv is an asshole, and hunting Critters would be less of a waste of his time than being Sherriff of Grover's Intestinal Blockage, we also have a too-convenient excuse to turn a family road trip movie into a Critters sequel. Which means we must also now appoint at least two blatant asshole characters to get eaten first. Enter Frank, a crooked handyman who runs eviction scams and sabotage operations on the tenants of the apartment complex where Annie and her family live. Frank works for a slumlord (played by porn star William Dennis Hunt), who just so happens to be Josh's stepfather. So when the family arrives home from their trip with Krite eggs incubating on their RV's undercarriage, guess who gets eaten first!?

The Critters are back to their old tricks (save for the growing and conglomerating into a giant ball of fur, eyes, teeth, and campy, epic awesomeness), but because they have to be effective killing machines in a high-rise, they can do a four- or five-foot standing jump now, and because they are hedgehog-inspired, they can also spin-dash up an almost vertical laundry chute that spans multiple floors. That's right, this movie ripped off Sonic the Hedgehog. They even used that power tool noise that Sonic makes when he's charging up. I'm not sure if I should continue being disgusted by this or be impressed that the whole production didn't get sued by Sega for copyright infringement.

But back to the cast. The only other characters of note are fellow tenant Rosalie (played by Diana Bellamy, who played "the kind, fat lady" in any 90s movie or TV show you can think of with a kind, fat lady in it) and Marcia (played by Katherine Cortez, doing her best to inspire the Marge Gunderson archetype but landing squarely on the comedic relief side of the fence), a phone company employee who serves as both a moral juxtaposition to Frank and a potential love interest for Annie's father, Clifford.

There's decent, if somewhat predictable, building of suspense (notwithstanding that this movie takes place in a literal building of suspense), and Di Caprio acts the hell out of his part, giving strong signs of what we now know his career has become. Even Don Keith Opper steps it up as Charlie--in the absence of Terrence Mann's Ug--bringing an unexpected level of badassery to his usual character beats of wacky, awestruck dimwit, that might almost pass for character growth if you don't blink too often. But the Critters, as always, are played more for laughs and jump-scares than actual horror. People get eaten, Charlie blows shit up, the building catches fire, there's a race against time and an awkward, daring escape, the Critters die, the couples couple, everyone's happy, Charlie disappears, the movie ends, and the sequel baits. To be continued.

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In the spirit of Moonraker, Leprechaun 4, Hellraiser: Bloodline, and Jason X, Critters 4 goes into space!

But how does it get there, you ask? By re-treading the post-credits scene from the last movie, of course! After the survivors of Critters 3 realize that Charlie vanished, the film catches back up with him in the basement laundry room of the burned-out apartment building, where he finds the last two Krite eggs incubating in the dryer. He's about to destroy them when Terrence Mann makes a holographic cameo as Ug to tell him that a collection pod is on its way to Earth to claim the Krite eggs. Yeah. Apparently, after all of Charlie and Ug-Lee's desperate attempts to eradicate the most dangerous invasive species in the Universe in the last three movies, the Vaguely Represented Council of Space Bureaucrats has an anti-extinction policy that was never mentioned until now because the plot demands it and bureaucracy always makes sense.

After almost dying when Dr. Mario drops a giant, metal pill on him at terminal velocity that also re-collapses the wrecked apartment building, Charlie must put the two Krite eggs inside the pill-shaped pod. But it isn't as simple as "open door, throw eggs inside, shut door." The collection pod conveniently has room for one more, human-sized specimen and is fully automated to not have any means of escape. So Charlie gets frozen and bounces around the solar system for fifty years, when the pod is snatched up by a salvage ship, run by a greedy captain and his bullying, drug-addicted, and equally greedy cargo specialist sidekick, a.k.a. Meal #1 and Meal #2. The captain, played by Anders Hove, is an entertainingly over-the-top performance on par with his usual, soapier roles. But in the end, he doesn't even matter. On to what you came here for, if you came here at all. The ship is piloted by Fran (played by Angela Bassett, continuing the tradition of award-worthy actors accepting early roles in Critters movies), and the crew's snarky engineer is Al Bert (because there had to be a snarky nerd whose name is also his nickname, played by Brad Douriff, ensuring this is the closest we will ever get to having a Chucky sequel in space). There's also Ethan (played by Paul Whitthorne), who we are told has "a father back on Earth...I think," and though no surnames are given for most of the characters, Ethan's appearance and the passage of fifty years hints that he might be the son of Josh and Annie from the last movie. Ethan also serves as one of the closest things this movie has to a prediction of the future. Apparently in the future, there will be these young humans called teenagers who are lazy, entitled, angsty, cynical, and obsessed with technology. What??? The next thing you'll tell me is that someone who was previously well-liked and got famous for doing well in their chosen profession will attain a position of political power and become a greedy, evil dictator who turns on his friends at the drop of a hat.

Spoilers?

Speaking of which, the crew receive a transmission from Terrence Mann, this time going by the name of Councilor Tetra (which is as good as slapping one of those red name stickers on him that says, "Hello, my name is Ima Villain"). He directs the crew to dock at the nearest space station, which they find out is abandoned, has a failing nuclear core, and is run by an annoying artificial intelligence named Angela (because set direction needed to be more confusing for Bassett?) with Serious Technical Difficulties in her logic circuits. After realizing they may have been screwed over, Captain Meal #1 decides that he's better off breaking open the capsule, taking the payday for himself, and leaving everyone else to die. Somehow, disabling the cryogenic unit makes the Krite eggs hatch immediately and they exit the pod, conveniently deciding not to eat the unconscious Charlie or the strung-up, unconscious, defenseless Ethan as they go, because...assholes smell better than main characters? In one of the coolest, but also most disappointing scenes in the movie, the two creatures eat their way down the captain's throat and lay eggs in his chest, wasting a perfectly good opportunity to rip off Alien, as the new eggs hatch offscreen. But not to worry; your movie rip-off quota does not go unfulfilled! Charlie wakes up, frees Ethan, and the two of them rip off the duct crawl from Die Hard and the compactor scene from Star Wars. Meanwhile, the cargo asshole breaks into the space station's pharmacy to steal all of the drugs, where he earns the title of Meal #2. Ethan also gains access to the medical wing, and he and Charlie learn that the Krites may have been genetically engineered there as a planet-clearing species for intergalactic real estate (because now we're ripping off The Langoliers and Dragon Ball Z?). The usual Critters plot beats ensue, with the running and the chasing and the eating and the shit-blowing-up and the ticking clock, until Councilor Tetra and his Kylo Ren clones show up to save? The day? Nope. They just want the Krite eggs, probably so they can continue the mass-production operation that was abandoned on this space station. And plot twist! Tetra is actually Ug! He attained a position of political power and became a greedy, evil dictator who turns on his friends at the drop of a hat. Who could have predicted that? I mean, I didn't exactly see the how or why coming, but with evidence of my sarcasm now at maximum, who could have predicted that? Ethan rips off Home Alone to dispatch the Definitely Not Storm Troopers, Ug kills the voice of Chucky, Charlie completes his character arc by having the balls to shoot Ug--in the actual most badass scene in this movie--and the survivors steal Ug's ship to return to Earth, leaving the Krites to get nuked into extinction in the background. The end!

But not really! There's a web series that used to be on Shudder, called Critters: A New Binge. I may come back to it when I have the money or the ability to watch it "any way I can," but for now, there's one more movie to consider in the franchise, called Critters Attack! I'm not expressing excitement, that's just how the title looks.

I suppose that if anything positive can be said about 2019's Critters Attack!, it's that the movie subverts most of the expectations set forth by the previous films. It opens in small-town America, as the first one did, with two African-American children--I can't explain why, but regardless of the technical incorrectness of this safer term, I feel awkward about it being okay to say Black again--who will serve as our main characters for the evening. One is Phillip, a stargazing boy who catches sight of two UFOs. The other is his older sister, Drea, who is angsty because their mother is dead and their uncle isn't coping well, just like Annie was in the second film. Oh, and she hates college for some reason, We are briefly shown a mature-looking but goofy, awestruck teenage boy riding a bike through the woods, making us wonder if this will be the new Charlie-like character. But he's not. He's Meal #1, despite not being given any asshole-like qualities to receive comeuppance for. However, the movie does make good on that wasted Chestburster moment from Critters 4, which I appreciated. Meanwhile, the main characters' uncle is a mean, white, alcoholic police officer who doesn't understand their grief, doesn't listen to what they have to say, and sends Drea off to work in a scene that, in light of recent cop-on-black events, has only taken a year to age poorly. You'll know what I'm talking about when you see it. Contrary to expectations, though, he does not get eaten, and neither does she. Drea is a poorly acted, whiny little bitch-stick in the shit-smelling mud that is this movie. In fact, most of the dialogue lands in the diarrhea minefield between Disney Channel sitcom acting and Cinemax After Dark Original Series acting. Case in point, after being asked to deliver food to the college she hates because the original delivery guy was Meal #1 and Drea's been rejected twice despite the fact that her mother and best friend were willing to do Cinemax After Dark to get in, she meets a boy so handsome that he's ugly (and as such is never seen again despite being set up as her love interest), to whom she actually utters the line, "I'd love to come with you." I wish I was kidding. Soon after, Drea's best friend gets her a side-job babysitting for the dean of admissions, and her brother, who has a crush on the dean's daughter (a professional Lacey Chabert impersonator, apparently), decides to tag along. After some awkward, pointless dialogue, we shift focus to some campily acted, asshole forest rangers. One learns that a turd in the face is worth not pissing off the owl in the bush, leading to the best shower scene in any horror movie since Psycho and Slither. With his vision obscured by shampoo, he mistakes a Critter for his bath towel, and proceeds to act out the "teaching Bart to shave" scene from The Simpsons. As thinly designated assholes, the rest of the rangers are soon eaten as well. Tired of being painfully awkward for the viewing audience, Drea, Phillip, discount Lacey Chabert, and her brother, discount Billie Jo Armstrong, decide to go for a walk in the woods, where they encounter a white, female Krite who was wounded when her ship crashed. The kids patch her up and make nice, but the males come calling, triggering a dragged out chase full of horror movie tropes like car trouble, disabled phone service, jump scares, person-eating, and trying to convince the skeptical redneck cop that weird shit is killing people. Interspersed through all of this, the movie builds up the return of Dee Wallace, who played Bradley Brown's forgettable mother, Helen, in the first film. Since then, it seems that Helen Brown has changed her name to Aunt Dee to circumvent copyright complications, and become a Critter hunter. Things stay formulaic and get increasingly boring until Aunt Dee finally shows up in the last ten minutes to team up with the kids and the queen Krite to slaughter all of the males. The Critter ball from the second movie makes a brief return as well, gets blown up in a matter of seconds, and Critters Attack! Ends! It was intended as a modern reboot of the first film, and like the first film, it only has entertaining moments when the characters are either badass or just bad. The rest is padded with generic horror movie mechanics that create a lull between the "good" parts. The moments when expectations are subverted will either work for you or feel unfaithful, depending on your opinion of the series up to this point. The attempts to blend CGI with the original practical effects designed by the Chiodo Brothers (Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Team America: World Police) are few, but obviously not seamless. the acting is mostly terrible, the main characters are unlikeable verging on painful to watch, and the introduction of a female Krite (a species where the males have been inexplicably seahorsing it for the past four films) is an unnecessary addition to the series.

Critters isn't the best or the worst horror movie franchise out there, and is most likeable when it hits those extremes in earnest. It could make a little more sense with respect to some of the details, some of the performances (or entire movies of performances) could have been better, the Critters could have been scarier, the threat escalation could have been even more ridiculous at times, there were a few pacing issues in the first and last films, and some of the main characters could have made better choices, but all things considered, I don't regret seeing it through to the end.

Here are the grades:

Critters: D-

Critters 2: D+

Critters 3: C

Critters 4: C+

Critters: A New Binge: TBD

Critters Attack!: F+

I have more GFT Retrospective, Anime-BAW, and Just the Ticket in the works, so stay tuned for me to get my Grover's Mental Blockage cleared up, and have a Trump- and COVID-free 2021!