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Written by Mandroid3000
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CRITTERS**1/2 out of *****Genres
Comedy
Sci Fi
Tiny Terrors
1986
Directed by
Stephen Herek
Writing credits
Stephen Herek
Domonic Muir (also story)
Don Opper (additional scenes)
Cast
Dee Wallace-Stone .... Helen Brown
M. Emmet Walsh .... Harv
Billy Green Bush .... Jay Brown
Scott Grimes .... Brad Brown
Nadine Van der Velde .... April Brown
Don Opper .... Charlie McFadden
Billy Zane .... Steve Elliot
Ethan Phillips .... Jeff Barnes
Terrence Mann .... Johnny Steele/Ug
Critters is a good-natured mix a small town alien invasion 50s Sci Fi and Gremlins. It succeeds in being entertaining, but never hits the bullseye.
The Critters of the title are the Krills a breed of small, evil alien that are like the Gremlins, but can curl up in balls, roll around, and shoot spikes. The Krills escape from a prison asteroid, pursued by a pair of bounty hunters. The bounty hunters have blank faces that can take on anyone’s features (luckily they also have human bodies). One of them watches some earth TV, an extended clip of a rock star called Johnny Steele who’s singing a song called "Power of the Night”, and decides to use his face. Other than one person calling him Johnny Steele, this choice never impacts the plot, and I suspect it was an attempt to get a hit single out of the movie. The other bounty hunter can’t choose and ends up using various townspeople’s faces, which causes a lot of confusion when witnesses identify him.
Meanwhile the Krills have landed on the Brown’s farm, and are looking for a snack. The father and son find one of their bulls lying eaten on in a field and make the wise choice to go back for their gun before doing any more investigating. But the Krills are already in the barn where they attack the daughter April and kill her boyfriend. The Brown’s are forced to fight off the hungry aliens.
Meanwhile the bounty hunters are trying to find the Krills. They land in town and smash up a church and a bowling alley. But no one knows who the Krills are so this all comes to naught. The sad thing about these scenes is that the idea of these clueless, ultra-violent bounty hunters smashing up a small town is solid, but the scenes just don’t come off.
Back on the farm the Brown’s have locked themselves in the house, and are fighting off the Krills. It’s here we get an extended look at them. They’re well designed creatures. They have an expressive, joyous evil about them, and there are fun scenes of them eating goldfish and biting the head off an ET doll. They’re also not stupid, knowing to run away when they work out that the Brown’s have a gun.
The plot isn’t much more complicated than that, but this isn’t really to the film’s disadvantage. Critters is a fun movie, but I was left with the feeling that it could have been a lot better. A lot of scenes seem to be set up for some great punch line, but it never came. They just ended in a logical, but uninspired, manner. A lot of the characters seemed funny, and were played by actors who could pull off a joke, but the killer jokes never came. It’s still worth a rental, just don’t expect to unearth an 80s classic.
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