CRITTERS
Hey, I loved it when I was 13
Critters is one of those movies I adored as a young 'un, but find myself somewhat indifferent to today (better go change that comment to the contrary in my Monster Squad review!). Make no mistake, its the best of the spate of the Gremlins ripoffs of the mid-late 80's; but look what it had to vie against for that vaunted title.
A bunch of super-vicious beasts called Krites escape from an alien prison asteroid and blast off to the nearest planetary smorgasbord - that is, Earth. Two alien bounty hunters are dispatched to get the fiends, which have made themselves at home in some unlucky family's barn. They may be the size of cantaloupes, but they're nasty, dangerous and worst of all, foul-mouthed!
These bounty hunters are fairly inefficient, armed with what appear to be leafblowers, already well known to be prone to destroying way more than is necessary to get at their quarry. (they turn off their employer's transmission to them when he starts lecturing them on the topic) They're faceless, so they have to take human form to hunt the Krites on Earth; one of them takes the form of a big rock star (yeah, right) from a music video, and the other can't quite pick a form.
Scott Grimes - who I never could stand, really - stars as the kid in the family, and Dee Wallace-Stone as the mother. Don Opper (who wrote some of the screenplay) plays an apparently autistic handyman. Billy Zane's here too, as the boyfriend of the horny big sister who you just know ain't gonna come out of this with a smile on his face. Watch also for M. Emmet Walsh (given nothing to do), Larry Miller (even less) and if you're sharp-eyed, Otto, the propellor-chopped German mechanic from Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
Other than the often amusing bounty hunters, the Krites themselves are the only reason to see this movie; shooting spines like mythical porcupines, rolling around like soccer balls instead of walking or running, and exchanging sometimes hilarious bits of subtitled, alien dialogue.
One of the more irritating problems is the rock-star persona from which one of the alien bounty hunters takes its form. Yet again in these movies, the people responsible for both writing the music and shooting the music footage show themselves to have absolutely no understanding of rock music, even bad mid-80's rock music. This stuff's from another planet entirely, as always. It's just awful, awful, awful to listen to. I know, this is more of a peeve than a criticism. But it's getting to be a pretty crippling peeve.
But the most devastatingly weak link in this flick is the character played by Grimes. It's not just the actor; this is exactly the kind of kid which is just insufferable in this kind of movie, any kind of movie. He's more resourceful and braver than any adult, spouting off wisecracks like he's some little white Eddie Murphy, and frequently seen running for help/rescuing the sister/rescuing the cat (they have a cat?). If anybody in this movie would've made good Krite-fodder, it's him. And he comes back for a sequel, too.
While Gremlins was content to present itself as itself, with minimal regard for widespread appeal, Critters seems to want to be everything to everybody; tossing in equal amounts violence, saccharine sweetness, vulgarity, juvenalia, smarminess and kiddie-fication. It comes out seeming pretty fragmented and poorly put together, even though it really is frequently a hoot. I can't sit here and tell you that this is a very good movie, but you could do worse, especially in this little corner of the genre.
Gave rise to three sequels, one of which had a young Leonardo DiCaprio, the last two written by splatterpunk David Schow (not that they were any good). Part two featured the Krites all hanging on together in one big ball, rolling over people and skeletonizing them in about half a second (but the rest sucked)! See this one if you're in the mood for this sort of thing, but avoid the rest.