Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And on today's episode of Weird House Cinema, we are going to be talking about the nineteen eighty six sci fi creature feature Critters. I was going to say it's our first example from the Gromlins subgenre, but it is not. We've actually talked we did Grimlins two last year, that we haven't done Grimlins one. And also I think you covered a sort of Gromlin's adjacent movie while I was out last year.
Yeah, my friend David Streepy came on the show and we talked about the Gate, which, as we'll discuss here, is gromlin esque without being like a like a hard Gromlin or direct Gromlin feature.
But if it's okay with you, I thought maybe we should start this episode by laying out a sort of filmographic timeline of the Gromlin subgenre, or what you might also call like tiny monster movies or small creature features. These were very popular in American cinema in the nineteen eighties, and maybe by kind of laying them out in order we can help get at what these films mean.
Yeah, yeah, because Gromlins are always fascinating, like trying to figure out like how they work, why they work, you know why Grimlins spawned so many imitators, and not just imitators, but also, as with this movie, I think Legitimate clearly had an influence on films that had their own ideas and had something different to offer, but still delivers on that same energy and rides that Gromlin wave.
That's right. Okay, So the first big one is Grimlins nineteen eighty four. This is the mac Daddy. We covered Gremlins two already, as I said, but not the original. So the Grimlins are small monsters that are spawned as a result of improper pet care. So they begin as a cute, friendly, fuzzy little guy called a Magway. And the Magua is great. He's a good buddy, but you absolutely positively cannot get him wet, and unfortunately the humans in the movie spill some water on their maguai, spawning
other creatures like him. They kind of pop off of his back, but they're not exactly like him. They're not nice, they're mean, and these creatures are made even worse when another rule is violated and they are fed after midnight, which the characters are told not to do. That transforms the Mean Magway from just little trickster type things into dull sized, scaly, reptilian chaos demons that exist to mock and destroy all systems of order and organization, including human
life itself. But as we talked about in our feature on Green Rimlins two, the Grimlins do kill people in these movies, yes, but what makes them special as monsters is that killing people is not their main goal. It's just one small part of their broader raisondetra, which is to make a mess. Grimlins exist to make a mess. They are chaos embodied and this goes back to their
origin in folklore from before the film. The standard idea of where Grimlins came from is that British raf pilots in World War Two would blame engine malfunctions on Grimlins. They imagine little monsters that would get into the engines of the aircraft and chew through wires, disconnect things, and cause malfunctions.
Yeah, and in general, I would say the folkloric roots of the Grimlin, or the basic Gromlin is yeah, any kind of diminutive trickster being. So there's a whole host of things that you can hold up to the light as being in the same vein. I think, like the basic that's one of the reasons Grimlins connects so well with an audience when it comes out is because this is not something we haven't seen before to some degree, and say cartoons, it's not something out of keeping with
folkloric traditions, and so we instantly latch onto it. I would argue the other thing that really helps with Grimlins and the more successful Grimlins imitators, even the bad ones, is that there is a handcrafted puppet quality to a true Gromlin, where you know it's a puppet, you know it's an artificial being that's being brought to life via generally some sort of puppeteering, and that adds to the effect and also makes the scares a little safer, and
it creates this special energy that is very consumable by a mass audience.
I think that's a various due to observation, and I want to come back to that when we talk about the appeal of these movies. Okay, but so Grimlins is the first one that's eighty four. Second main one that most people recognize is Ghoulies, which came out either in eighty four or eighty five. I've seen both year cited for its release, maybe in different markets, I don't know. It does seem to have come after Grimlins, because multiple
reviews at the time call it a Grimlins ripoff. However, it seems these two movies were in development at the same time, so I haven't done a deep dive on this, but I think it appears that Goolies was not just like looking at the success of Grimlins and saying, let's do something like that.
We will have to watch a Gholies movie someday. Goolies. If you're not familiar, and if you're not famili it's almost hard for me to believe because having grown up as a child in the eighties going to VHS and later DVD rental stores, but especially VHS rental stores and seeing the box art and or posters for Goolies, it was horrifying because the VHS box art promises one thing, Goolies will crawl up through the toilet and bite you
in the butt. They are That is the threat that is promised on the VHS I'm not saying the movie completely delivers on that concept, but this is just indetachable from the franchise.
The main box art is a green, bald Gholie creature wearing I don't know, like red suspenders and a blue T shirt. I don't know what this outfit means, but it's this green bald creature with sharp teeth popping up out of a toilet bowl with its hands on the seat, and the tagline is they'll get you in the end.
I wish they mean the butt. Yeah. Yeah, so horrifying as a kid, because this is not what you want when to go to the bathroom.
Not at all though. So it's been many years since I saw Gholies. I have only the vaguest memories about it, but I recall this not actually being a thing that happens in the movie. Am I right about that?
I think you're right. My memory too, is kind of an amalgam of different bits from Goolies movies I watched on like late night cable television. I think it might not have been a thing in the first film, and or it might have been like, oh god, we put a Gooli coming out of a toilet on the vhs R. Let's throw in a scene. It might even something like that. I think by the second film they're definitely making sure they get some some toilet humor in there. Well.
The general idea is that this is also a movie with small monsters running around a house killing people, but rather than being an improper pet care situation gone awry, the small monsters in Ghoulies are servants of the devil. They are summoned by an occult ritual to do the bidding of a malevolent Satanic sorcerer.
Yes, they're demons for sure.
Which certainly seems like a more evil and adult kind of spin on the small monster's idea than in Grimlins.
Yeah, because Grimlins there, Yeah, they're pets, they're vaguely some sort of creature out of Chinese fantasy. But yeah, this time servants of the Yeah, you have to take that a lot more seriously because you know that they're underlings for something else, something worse.
Okay, the next big Grumblins movie on the timeline is the one we're talking about today, Critters from nineteen eighty six. How is this one different? Well, the small monsters here are not not little chaos goblins from you know that sound like something out of a folk tale with little pet care rules. They're also not servants of Satan. They are science fiction alien fugitives from an asteroid prison, and
they are here to eat. Their main quality, the main quality possessed by the Crites, as they are called in the film, is that they are hungry and they will eat anything and anyone that's right.
And I would describe them as being kind of little round guys, kind of in the vibe of a cartoon porcupine, but then with just a shark's mouth of teeth, ruby red eyes. But they still have that, they still have attitude. They have that kind of Grimlin's energy where they they're hungry. They're mainly here to eat, but they're up for a little mischief as well.
They're little humanoid hedgehogs that shoot poison quills and have at least three rows of little thornlike teeth. Yeah, and mean nasty eyes and they're like they're vindictive.
They're mean, yeah, but a little bit cute, A little bit cute, a little bit cute too.
Yeah. Now, the poster art for this one is also pretty incredible. I remember this one from the video stores of old because you have this wonderful illustration of a krite, and I don't know if it's a one hundred percent accurate representation of what they look like in the film, but it captures the energy, it captures the mischief in Hunger.
I agree. So when you showed me this picture the poster before we watched the movie, I was thinking, Oh, wow, this is one of those great things where the monster on the box art is fully revealed and it looks awesome and is somewhat misleading, Like, it looks a lot different than it does in the movie. Actually, once I watched the the movie, I was like, it's not as misleading as I first thought. It's basically on track. You know, the eyes are a different color and stuff, but there
is some kind of energy that's different. This monster is just kind of classier looking.
Yeah, it looks like he needs a little suit or something. Yeah.
Also, when you shared the poster with me and chat it, it cropped it so that the title at the bottom was just Ritter.
Ritter versus Critter. Was one of the great missed opportunities of this franchise.
Oh yeah, problem child with Critters. Yeah, all right, but that gets us up to nineteen eighty six. It did not stop there. And by the way, we're not noting these, but there are sequels popping up as we go along to it, So you're gonna also get Grimlins two Gholies, two Goolies, three, Critters two and so forth. But in nineteen eighty seven we get Muncheese. This one is produced by our old pal, Roger Korman. Allegedly he was like, hey,
you know these Grimlin ripoffs, they're making money. Let's do one.
Yeah, these other films as well, as we'll discuss with Critters as well. You know, there are alternate takes on it where they're like, well, this was already an idea and we just tweaked it a little bit. But this is Corman. You know what's up here.
Yeah, he's like, let's do a Grimlins clone. So Munchies was directed by Tina Hirsch. The plot concerns a man who brings a creature that he finds in a cave in Peru back to the United States, and the problem seems to come when someone tries to chop the creature in half and it just turns into two creatures and so on and so on. So it's like it's like Grimlins meets the Legend of the Hydra.
Yeah.
Yeah, And I've never seen this one, but the box art is familiar to me because you basically have what looks like a cross between a Grimlin and one of those trolls with the spiky hair treasure trolls. Yeah. Yeah, looks like a treasure troll and a Grimlin had a baby and then that baby took up drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.
Yes, and it's a pervert. That's the main thing you need understand from the poster is it's like perven on ladies.
Yeah. I don't know if they I mean, I assume this happens in the movie, who knows, But that's what they're selling. It's like, we're the Grimlins, too tame for you. Do you want Raunchy or Grimlins, Well, then meet the Munchies.
So I've never seen Munchies either, but I found a screenshot and Rob, is it just me? Or are the Munchies dressed like the Bounty hunters in Critters kind of?
They have some sort of weird futuristic doll clothing on, don't they.
Yeah, similar color scheme that kind of underlying sort of red brown clay color and then like the black stuff on top. I don't know, it looks similar to me.
Looks like the puppetry has slid a bit from the titles we've discussed already and is moving closer to the title that we're going to discuss next.
The next movie from nineteen eighty eight is Hobgoblins, famous for Mystery Science Theater three thousand. The origin of the monsters here is that they crash landed from space, and then they were kept locked in a vault in a movie studio for decades. Now they have escaped, so it's aliens again. This one feels more like it is ripped from the plot of critters aliens crashing on Earth.
Hobgoblins is, of course terrific, just a terrific film. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the great episodes of ms T three k. It's a perfect film for riffing on, though it also inherently has its own built in campiness and intentional humor, some of which lands. Some of it falls fantastically flat. But when it does fall flat, it flands in such a way that it can then be riffed upon and enjoyed.
I haven't watched this one in a while either, but I remember it having a great quality of scenes that go on way too long and become very funny.
Yeah yeah, yeap, you get all sorts of cool. So yeah, clubs what clubscum? I think they go to clubscum in that.
Yeah, m okay. So that's just a selection of the main ones that came to my mind. I think those are the main franchises you're going to get, are like Gholi's Critters and Grimlins, but there are some other like one offs in between there and addition to all the sequels. So there were a lot of these movies and they made a lot of money.
Yeah yeah, And I think you can kind of divide them up. I kind of divide them up into thinking about like direct Gromlins and indirect Gromlins. So the direct ones are going to be pretty much the films we've already listed, Goolies, Munchies, Hobgoblins, you know, easy to point out and say, hey, if I liked Grimlins, I might like that, et cetera. But indirect Gromlins are going to be situations where you have things in common with Grimlins, and they're still likely to be cash ins to some degree.
If not creative cash ins. Then in many of these cases, like clearly somebody with the money to finance that. Well, this is a great idea because we know these sorts of films actually so. But you may have different things going on. For instance, you might have the effects leaning more into monster suits as opposed to shrieking puppets, and you also might see greater originality in some cases. So for example, the Troll movies are sometimes mentioned as being
Grimlin's ripoffs. And you know, I don't know that I've ever watched the first Troll all the way through, but we talked about Troll two on here. Troll two definitely has Grimlin energy going on, but the creatures are not brought to life in such a way. The creatures are clearly people in costumes that actually comes off more threatening because the costumes are so bad.
I agree in a way, I don't know if I would put Troll two in the Gromlins category, because like the trolls or the goblins, Oh yeah, that's right, they're goblins, not trolls. Yeah, they're people in suits, like, they're not the like the dull sized creatures running around, you know, causing mayhem like that, and they've got a different mo they they're not as mischievous, you know, as the creatures in all the Gromlins movies are. They just want to turn you into plant matter and eat you.
Another film that comes to mind is nineteen eighty five's Cat's Eye, which was of course a horror anthology film based on works by Stephen King, and the title story in it concerns a little troll creature who is It comes out of the hole in the wall to suck out a child's breath at night while they sleep, and the cats are of course blamed for it, but the cat is like one of the direct lines of defense against said troll.
Yeah, the cat has to save the day. I saw that movie when I was way too young to see it, and it scared me.
Yeah, it's a scary looking creature. I think this one they mostly did with a costume though, but with really awesome gigantic sets, so the effects I think are really admirable.
Here. Okay, another thing that's notable in the Gromlin space, while it's not a movie, is I think best seen as part of the cultural phenomenon of Gromlins, and that would be Boglins, released in nineteen eighty seven, a popular line of monster themed hand puppets for kids. You turn your hand into a goblin, Rob, did you have Boglins or do you know what I'm talking about? Oh?
I definitely know what you're talking about. I never had one, but I wanted one at the time. These were created by Tim Clark, who also worked on The Dark Crystal and Fraggle Rock and the Creature and Muppet design areas. For instance, he was on the team that created the mystics for The Dark Crystal and I think I follow him on Instagram because he's brought Boglins back. They've recreated them, new materials and new designs for a new generation. I would totally buy one if it were the kind of
thing that my son enjoyed at all. But I would just be buying it for me, which feels which which I don't feel strongly enough to do.
Rob, you can buy it for you. It's okay, I give you permission.
I only have so much room for fake monsters in the house, you know. And it's just I'm gonna have to let somebody else buy that Boglin and love it well anyway.
With this whole tiny Monster is phenomenon the Gromlins craze. I started thinking, why was this a Why was this such a thing at the time and place it was. Why did groups of tiny, rampaging monsters with mischievous personalities become such a phenomenon in American movies in the mid
nineteen eighties? Like, what about this theme resonated? I think, I don't know this, This is still kind of only half formed in my mind, but I think there is something significant in the fact that these monsters are, in their very essence like toys somehow, they are already merchandise marketed to kids in their original form, but they're dangerous and pretty close to R rated. So there's a kind of ambiguity about the intended audience of a number of
these movies. The original Grimlins. I don't know if so much for Gholies, but the original Grimlins and Critters. These are movies that, on one hand, if you watch them, you'd say, well, I guess this is supposed to be a regular horror movie for adults only, because you know,
they're pretty violent and they have some adult themes. But they're also on the tamer end of adult horror movies, and they have elements that seem like maybe they're supposed to appeal to kids, Like the fact that the monsters are little makes them seem kind of cute in a way, even the ones that are more ugly, and in some cases these monsters explicitly have cute avatars. Allow the Magwi in Gremlins or Critters also are They're somewhere between scary
and cute. They are a little bit cute. Yeah, And I wonder if this led to it seeming like kids could maybe be allowed to watch these movies like Critters is PG thirteen. It's not rated R, but it's a rough PG thirteen. And of course a lot of kids, you know, they love monsters. They love if the parents will let them watch a scary, bloody monster movie, they'll
be into it. So maybe something about the ability of these movies to defy marketing and content restriction pipelines and end up in front of audiences that were technically too young for them was part of the success. What do you think about that?
Yeah, I mean, just looking back on my own childhood, it seemed like a time when more kids were watching films without a lot of parent parental supervision, and so there was more room for films like this to sort of be gateways into other franchises of horror, And I don't know, I guess it's kind of weird though, to think about them, because on one hand, like you're saying, they're not like Disney Family films like you would rent during this time period, but they're not like really really
hard horror with like really strong adult themes. They are this kind of like transitional place where kids could watch it and feel like they're breaking the rules a little bit, but at the same time, like a parental unit might watch this and see and like, well, it's fine, it's fine.
It's not too bad. Yeah, another possible part of the appeal. I was talking to Rachel about this, and we were wondering if maybe the movies are appealing to adults because
the monsters are in some sense kids. So we were talking about whether it's possible that, like maybe a certain generation of filmmakers and audiences, we're all having kids around around the same time, and of course, you know, we love our kids, but there is sometimes a great temptation to imagine our children in their more destructive moods, as rampaging little monsters that have gotten loose in your house, and I can see how that could be part of
the appeal. But of course earlier generations of filmmakers and audiences would have been having similar experiences becoming parents and watching their children unleash a flood of chaos through the home. So that still does leave us back with the question of like, what was so special about this theme in the mid nineteen eighties.
Yeah, I like it. I think part of it is materials. It's the fact that they had to lean on puppetry and the puppetry in the creature effects of other forms. They had to be pretty darn good, even in these cases where where we may laugh at the execution, like hobgoblins. I mean still hobgoblins look pretty good. Maybe not on the same level as Critter, is much less grimlins to grimlins, but they still look pretty good. You can buy into them. And part of that is just the sublime magic of
puppetry as a storytelling medium. A puppet does not have to look one hundred life like because the puppeteer breathes life into it, and that's where the magic happens.
I think that's a very good point, though of course you cite the example of Grimlins too, which has amazing puppetry but also goes well beyond puppetry. And I don't know whatever they were doing with electricity Grimlin. I think that was like animation on film or something.
Yeah, yeah, I mean some of these other like the Gate comes to mind, like they are little demon creatures running around in there, and they use multiple different forms of special effects to bring those to life, include stop motion stop motion, but also people in suits and so forth. So you know it's it's gonna vary you're gonna end up.
Even in this one, there are cases where it's puppetry, and there are cases where it's clearly like a ball of fur that people off off screen or rolling across across the set.
Yeah, I think you might really be onto something about that with the with the effects that like the tactile nature and size of the effects, and also that may connect in a way to what I was saying a minute ago about the the facts that these monsters are already in their original form, so similar to toys, which might have some kind of like merchandising appeal or something.
This movie actually touches on one possible connection, and that is e t Yeah, this film features one of those, and I definitely remember these from my childhood. I never had one, but it's like this kind of like Naga Hyde sort of et plush. That was very weird because, yeah, it's not completely huggable, like it's not soft, that it doesn't have fur, and it's based on Et, which I was thinking about watching this film. It's like Et is of course a classic film, very influential. You know, it
wouldn't have works like Pod People without it. But on the other hand, it seems like the creature design is one of the limiting factors of ET, because Et is just ugly. Et is not cuddly, and you have to like, they did a great job creating even a like an acceptable stuffy based on him. But yeah, you can't help but wonder what would Et be even have been even more successful? Would it kind of like have have even more lasting influence if the creature had looked differently.
I think part of the beauty of Et is the idea that you have to see past what Et looks like, that you get to know that this is a this is a friendly, benevol creature, and when you get to know his personality, Et becomes beautiful but he's not like when you just look at him, he's not cuddly looking.
No, he looks like a coat rack, the coat rack made out of like naked flesh.
He also kind of looks like a like a stalagmite in a way.
Yeah, yeah he does.
Oh but yeah, you were you were mentioning. There's a scene with an ET toy in the movie and the critter or the crite is trying to like communicate with it. It's like booping it, being like, hey, what's up, buddy, But the et does not talk back, So the crit becomes annoyed and I think just bites its head off.
Yeah, yeah, it just bites into it. All right, Joe, what's your elevator pitch for this one?
Well you probably already know by this point, but he basically furry little creatures which are also vindictive sentient fugitives from space jail land in a sleepy Midwest farm village and begin to eat everything in sight, and it is up to two alien bounty hunters and a brave young pyromaniac to stop them.
All right, let's listen to that trailer audio.
Of all the planets in the galaxy, they chose ours, They hide in small places.
This phone is dead.
What they light the dark?
Ju just a minute.
There's nothing cute about them all. They've come a long way and they're hungry Internet, and they're getting bigger.
Critters they bite, all right, If you want to go watch Critters for yourself, well, it's widely available and currently as of this recording, streaming along with only Critters three on Max.
I don't know what David Zaslov has against Critters two and Critters four, but I don't think they are streaming alongside Critters one and Critters three. Masks.
Yeah, yeah, Max, what are you doing?
But if they're out there somewhere, they're not unavailable. And there is also an excellent looking Critters collection Blu ray box set, which features Critters one through four with extras. All right, let's get into the people involved here. The director and one of the screenwriters on this is Stephen Herrick born nineteen fifty eight, accomplished mainstream Texan born director who launched his career with this film in nineteen eighty six. He followed it up on a debut Yeah. I mean,
I mean, I think it's a it's a well executed film. Yeah, and it's very watchable, very enjoyable. So it's not a bad way to start off at all.
I'm not fully being ironic when I say I can see the line from Critters to mister Holland's Opus.
Yes, because yeah, he goes on to do a number of films that I would just roughly describe as feel good. Yeah, there are a lot of feel good elements in this particular film, and you can totally see that being something that he, you know, he took up and ran with and made a career out of, because they absolutely were. And the score also goes along with it. The score is great at times in ways that I really like.
Other times it has that kind of comedy energy where it's like this summer, are you ready for the adventure of a lifetime? The Critters are on the move, you know that kind of thing. Ran odd, no, dear, Yeah, but anyway, more in the score in a minute, anyway. Yeah.
He followed this movie up with eighty nine's Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure Ooh, and did especially well fro himself in the nineties, directing stuff like The Mighty Ducks in ninety two, The Three Musketeers in ninety three, which was very nineties, but also had tremendous cast mister Hollins, Ope is like you said in ninety five one hundred and
one Dalmatians in ninety six. His subsequent work includes a lot of mainstream television two Dolly Parton specials, as well as the twenty twenty three movie Dog Gone, which I think is a movie about a lost dog.
Oh no, well, I hope they get dog back.
Oh, you know, they get the dog back.
Of course, I know this guy's vibe. Now, Yeah, they'll get the dog backed, and Dolly Parton will show up at the end and sing a song and everybody's kind.
Yeah. I mean that. You know, I'm not knocking to people need movies like that. Someone's going to make them, and and this guy's got the skills to do it. I haven't seen most of them, but they seem fine now. Early in his career as an editor, he also worked on such films as eighty two's The Slumber Party, Massacre Android, which is a Kloskinski space movie, Space Raiders in nineteen eighty four City Limits. When when he's been asked about critters,
it's my understanding. He's also he's pointed out that Critters was conceived prior to Grimlins, but that they actually went back in and like had like, they changed it around a bit to make sure that they weren't too close to the Grimlins format, So it sounds reasonable to me now. One of the other writers on this is Dominic Muir,
who lives Live nineteen sixty two through twenty ten. This is his earliest credit on a produced screenplay, but he went on to work on scripts for such movies as two thousand and five, The Ginger dead Man.
OH.
Two and six is Evil Bong and the rest of the Evil Bong movies. All of these are definitely their own thing. But I think these movies, along with other full Moon entertainment style fairs such as like puppet Master and so forth, I think those are all kind of in the shadow of Grimlins as well. Those aren't necessarily creatures, but they're you know, evil, vindictive puppet type things running around killing people.
I haven't enjoyed many a Z grade movie in my time, but I recalled The Ginger dead Man being so painful to get through. It's like voice of Gary Busey, isn't it.
Yeah, he's somehow. I haven't seen them, but he's somehow involved with these pictures. Yeah, yeah, he's the He's in that one. And then Tommy Chong is involved with the Evil Bong franchise, as is Rabbit.
Oh okay, I'd watch it just for Rabbit.
All right. Moving into the cast here. Top billing on this one is d Wallace aka d Wallace Stone, playing Helen Brown, the mom. This is an actor born in nineteen forty eight. She's been a lot of TV and film over the years, but really established herself as a sci fi and horror staple. Her credits include The Stepford Wives from seventy five, Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes from seventy seven, The Howling from eighty one, Et from
eighty two, Kujo from eighty three. In nineteen ninety, she was an alligator to The Mutation, Popcorn in ninety one, and a whole string of more recent films. A lot of times you'll have hard directors working today kind of bring her back in, you know, in part because of the nostalgia of these previous roles she had. So you'll find her in a couple of rob zombie productions, including The Lords of Salem. She also pops up in how in the House of the Devil, she's still very active.
D Wallace is great as always, and you hear I feel like you can really see her filling out the full scale of feel good to feel bad films because you get you know, okay, So at the full feel good end, she's in Et. Great in that. At the full feel bad end, she's in Kujo, just one of the nastiest, most depressing horror movies ever. And then here I'd say Critters is right in the middle. It's right between Et and Kujo.
Yeah, she does a great job in this film delivering the idea of like the brave mom in this kind of traditional, very traditional, almost nineteen fifties household, but is also put through extreme terror by these attacking monstrosities. Now we'll get to the rest of her family in a second. We're gonna go ahead and go to the next build actor and that this concerns the character Harve, who's the local sheriff played by the legendary character actor him EMMITTT. Walsh.
So when we were trying to decide what movie to feature for this week, we saw that m Emmett Walsh was in Critters, and I it was brought to my mind that Roger Ebert had a rule. He said that he thought that no film, I think I'm getting this right, no film featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or m Emmett Walsh could be entirely bad. And I was like, but I bet he broke that rule with critters and gave it a one star. Nope, three stars for critters. He liked critters.
Yeah, he whn't it's crazy about critics too, but he liked critters one. I should also add, in trying to decide which film to cover, here were and I've encountered this conundrum before with the Critters franchise is where do you?
Where do you go? Because all four films have the critters in them, and each one has someone involved in it that makes it seem irresistible, Like I mean, this one you have m m At Walsh and it's the first movie I think it's two is You has David Towey working on the script, and then also Leonardo DiCaprio's perhaps his film debut I don't recall off hand, and in a later version of what I think, four has Brad Doriff and Angela Bassett in it.
So oh, boy.
Yeah. So you know, there's so many reasons to go with each one, we decided to go.
With the first one.
Maybe we'll the next four weeks just do all of them.
Yeah, we'll see. We'll see how this one of the matters for everyone. So anyway. Walsh Yes born nineteen thirty five, still active today, legendary character actor who's been active since the late sixties. Up through the seventies, he tended to play smaller roles in the likes of sixty nine's Alice's Restaurant, seventy one's Escaped from the Planet of the Apes, Cerpaco in seventy three, Slapshot in seventy seven, he's the mad
Shooter in seventy nine of the Jerk. But during the nineteen eighties he this is when he really cemented his status as this desired character actor that is both it can to be threatening but also very humorous and also have this kind of like blue collar mentality he should he pops up in nine he needs to do his Blade Runner playing Bryant. This is Harrison Ford. This is Decker's boss, right, yeah, Deckerd's boss.
Yeah yeah.
And oh and then of course he plays private detective Lauren Visser in the Cohen Brothers' debut nineteen eighty four film Blood Simple. Just a marvelous, villainous performance.
Fantastic in this role. Yeah.
He also has a fun but small role in the nineteen eighty seven Coen Brothers film Raising Arizona. So he's worked continuously in just any and everything, from indie pictures to blockbusters. Can't possibly list them all here. I'll have everyone know, though, that his episode of the nineties Outer Limits, The Refuge, is a really good one. He also did a Tales from the Crypt episode titled Collection Completed, directed by Mary Lambert. All right, now back to the family.
We have Jay Brown the dad, a very traditional again, kind of almost nineteen fifties dad always wants to be working on the car in the basement, tinkering with stuff. He's played by Billy green Bush born nineteen thirty five, American character actor, whose earliest roles included an episode of the original Outer Limits in the early sixties, but he mostly made his name in the seventies, popping up in
films like Five Easy Pieces from nineteen seventy. His other credits include nineteen eighty six as the Hitcher and Jason goes to hell Oh, where he plays Sheriff Landis in his final role before retiring from acting.
What a sendoff. I can't believe it.
Wow, all right, and then of course we have our kid, and we have a great kid in this. This is a great child actor performance, a very fun vision of childhood. Like this is, like you mentioned, he's a pyromaniac. He's really into getting firecrackers and creating more powerful explosives, but in a way that modern parents may watch and be like,
this was not a good idea. But at the same time, had I seen the original Critters back in the day as a kid, I would have loved every second of this, because the idea of standing up to alien monsters with your own childhood ingenuity is just instantly appealing.
Agreed in the very old fashioned picture of the main family shown in this movie that the main character really is like a boy with gumption. Yeah, but he's fun.
Yeah, he's a lot of fun. He's played by Scott Grimes born nineteen seventy one, child actor of the eighties who continues to work in TV and film today. His more recent credits include American Dad, The Oriville, and Oppenheimer.
He's in the cast of Oppenheimer. Okay, you have a kid, you also need a kind of braddy older sister, a teenage older sister, and that's what we have in April Brown played by Nadine van Derveld born nineteen sixty two, eighties teen actor who eventually transitioned into writing and producing children's television. She has the honor of having acted in not one, but two Gromlin's movies because she's also in
nineteen eighty seven Munchies Wow. Yeah. Her other credits include eighty three's Private School, eighty eight Shadow Dancing in eighty nine's After Midnight, a horror anthology written and directed by Jim and Ken Wheat.
She's also great in this, but also continues the trend of not very surprising characterizations. She is the teenager looking to get into trouble.
Yeah now, our next character is Charlie McFadden, who is I guess the sort of the alcoholic geek of the of the picture. He's kind, he's kind of an outcast, but a likable outcast for the most part. He also has energy that may remind one of like a Michael Richards sort of a role you know.
Yeah, he gives a struggling, mostly comedic performance. He is the town drunk who is like always receiving messages from aliens through the fillings in his teeth, he says. And then he has proved right in the end by the alien invasion. But he's also he plays the role very like clumsy, like he's always you know, his bicycle's falling over and stuff, and he's having a hard time.
Yeah. He's played by Don Keith Opper born nineteen forty nine, mostly known for Critter movies, but you'll also find him in that nineteen eighty two Android film that I already referenced, City Limits, which I also reference that's, by the way, an MST three K film as well. He pops up in nineteen eighty six's Black Moon Rising, and various TV projects. He has a very small role in nineteen ninety three he's ghost in the Machine, which we've previously discussed on
Weird House Cinema. Oh and then also he has an additional additional dialogue or additional scenes credit on the script for this picture. So I don't know, maybe he wrote his own lines. I'm not sure what the full story is there. Now someone who's not in All four is April's boyfriend Steve. Steve is played by Billy Zay.
Absolutely unforgivable under use of billy z Ay and Billy Zayne. It's eaten by the crits too early, and they do not they do not get maximum Zaine out of him.
Yeah, I mean he's good.
He has a little bit of you see a little bit of the Billy Zane charm in this role. This is only a second role, following a small part in nineteen eighty five's Back to the Future. But yeah, it's it's weird because they don't do a lot with him, and this film also is just too nice to give us like a deplorable boyfriend that we're okay with the monsters eating. No, Steve seems fine.
Yeah, Yeah, he's all right.
He's a decent guy. He's just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It's funny because it feels like when we're first introduced to him, they're setting him up to be a real jerk, and then he's just not like he seems like a nice guy.
Yeah, even has nice table manners. All right. We also have Ethan Phillips in this playing a less likable character. This is like a deputy by the name of jeff Ethan Phillips was more nineteen fifty five. That's another exceptional character. Actor Treki's know him best as Neelix or Neeelix. I'm not sure how to pronounce this this creature, but he was on Star Trek Voyager, which is not when I
ever watched. But his other credits include nineteen eighty seven's Werewolf, nineteen ninety four is the Shadow, two thousand and five's The Island. He pops up on Better Call Saul, and he had a terrific role on Avenue five that ran two seasons on HBO, where he plays veteran astronaut Spike Martin.
In this he plays like a lazy and lovelorn police officer who's always trying to ask out the dispatcher over the radio.
Yeah. Yeah, he has an unmistakable voice. It is a lot of fun. I've enjoyed him in many things. He's especially good again in Avenue five.
Oh but wait, we really delayed getting to one of the great screen presences in this movie, a character with very few lines but an unforgettable look.
That's right talking about Ugg here. But more as we'll discuss. Ugg is a shape shifting alien, but he takes on the form of Johnny Steele, a rock star that the aliens see on television.
If this is confusing, we'll explain it in the plot section.
So Johnny Steele and Ugg are both played by Terrence Mann born nineteen fifty one. Highly accomplished actor of stage, screen, in television. He's a three time Tony nominee who has played major roles and in just an impressive array of Broadway plays and musicals, including playing Frankenfurter at one point in the two thousand's revival of The Rocky Horror Show on Broadway.
I bet he was great in that role.
Yeah, I just I saw some like kind of crappy footage that was taken of him in the role, and it looks great. And in seeing him in this, especially in the rock Star get up, it's like you can tell, it's like, oh, yeah, this guy was born to play Frankenfurter. Not everybody is, but this guy certainly was. Now on top of his his stage career his musical career on Broadway. Many of you will also know him as the actor playing the multiple elder clones of Emperor Cleon aka Brother
Dusk in the Apple series Foundation. He's incredible in that, with Lee Pace playing the younger incarnations. So basically you have a dynasty of clones in that show, and at any given time, three of them are awake, a child, a mature man, and then an aging man. So you have brothers Don, Brother Day, and Brother Dusk, with the central brother being the one in full command, with Brother Dusk being kind of more in an advisor role and
also as a kind of a scribes role. But it's amazing because even though they are all clones of this original emperor, we see different variations in how they're presented, and it'll carry over from say Lee Pace's performance in one episode to Terrence Mann's performance of that same emperor in the next episode after several decades have supposedly passed. So anyway, I can't say enough nice things about Terrence Mann.
We can discuss to what extent he gets to flex his acting muscles in this film, but his film and TV credits include all four original Critter movies, the Netflix series Since eight, the Dresden Files, and he's also in Big Top Pee Wee. I believe he plays a clown.
He has one of those screen presences that's just hypnotic, like anytime he's on screen, you're looking at him, or at least I was.
Now a quick note here when it comes to the crites, the crites do speak in their own weird alien language. I don't think they had a linguist to invent this, but they do squawk to each other and we get subtitle translations of what they say, and their voices are provided by veteran or certainly now veteran voice actor Corey Burton born nineteen fifty five. He's done so much work again,
can't even begin to mention everything he's worked on. But I know him best from Star Wars the Clone Wars, where he did a number of voices, including the voices of Count Dooku and also the voice of Cad Baine, who he also voices in the Book of Boba Fet.
The crites have no word for thank you, but the Chrit voices are good, despite the fact that you know, it doesn't really sound like a language.
Yeah, it's just they're cartoon creatures. Now, the crits physically were created by the Chioto Brothers Chioto brother Productions. These are brothers Stephen Charles and Edward Chioto, best known for their nineteen eighty eight film Killer Clowns from Outer Space. That is their magnumums, which which is a lot of fun and has some just terrific creature effects in it.
You know, I think the Critters actually look pretty great. I like the creature effects here.
Yeah, they're puppety, but very good, very solid. They did the effects on all four Critters movies. They also worked on nineteen eighty eight's UHF, nineteen ninety one's Ernest Scared Stupid, which I remember enjoying quite a bit in finding scarier than I expected.
I think this is a really common memory. I've talked to other people about this, about this is a movie that's supposed to be funny and for kids, but lots of kids found it actually terrifying. The troll in it.
Yeah, and they're responsible for patrol effects there. They also worked on two thousand and three's Elf. That's the actual Elf movie, the one that you may watch for Christmas this year. They also worked on two thousand and four's Team America World Police, And there has long been talk of a new Killer Clowns movie coming into being. I
don't know where that project currently stands. And then finally, the score is by David Newman born nineteen fifty four, prolific composer for film, mostly working on films that I haven't seen or don't want to see, or have no memory of the score from having seen, which again is not necessarily a bad thing. As I've said before, a film core, a film's score can be effective and kind of invisible, especially when you're dealing with comedies and the like. And it looks like he did a lot of comedies.
This was only his second score, following the nineteen eighty four Tim Burton short Franken Weenie. And you know, some of the feel good music and it is just a little mushy, but I did really like the musical number that they play over the end credits, some fun synthesize they're working there, and then also some of the tensor moments. Some of the action music is also pretty fun.
I know that's your style and that stuff is good. But I'd give him credit also and say that the kind of like mushy sentimental feel good music is important in establishing the feel good themes of this movie, Like it really helps you feel like, ah, okay, we're home on the farm now and everything's okay.
Yeah, and clearly that was important to the film they were trying to make. Yeah, absolutely no problem with it. Like when this like very much rescuing a cat from a mailbox music that kind of yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Okay, you want to talk about the plot.
Yeah, let's get into Critters one.
Here we begin in space, so there's stars twinkling in the background, and then we see a giant, shadowy wad of gray rock floating in the middle distance. A subtitle tells us that this is prison Asteroid Sector seventeen, maximum Security. Then we get some like space space traffic control on the radio channels, there's there's chatter, voices are speaking in English. By the way, we don't have to deal with subtitles
for this. They say radar control. This is Prison Transport nine ninety sixty one, requesting permission to land, and the prison transport ship explains the it has a cargo of eight krite prisoners. Krits is what the aliens are called in this movie. You might think that they're called critters, but actually that just comes from a kid calling them critters later in the film when he doesn't know that
they're called krits. I haven't dug into the origins of this movie to figure out where the word krite comes from, like why they picked that. If it has something to do with cr Tyrian, I don't know.
That would be great criterion collect crite Heian collection, Yes.
Whatever a crit is. The space traffic controller says, they've been expecting the ship for a while, but weren't you supposed to have ten crites rather than eight? And oh yeah, the pilot confirms they originally had ten, but they've had such problems. The crits are eating everything on the ship. Two of them were killed along the way, or they wouldn't have had enough food to make the journey. So these are eating machines whatever they are.
Yeah, I have questions about the ethics of this prison system, but clearly crites are bad news.
So now we're inside the prison facility and we see a humanoid alien sort of zipping around on a personal hovercraft. The alien is wearing insulated armor with hoses snaking around connected to various nozzles. It has a big head like Exeter in this Island Earth, with like scalp flaps connecting its shoulders to its head like a skin hood. The skin is sort of pale blue gray, and this guy is called Zante.
I love how this movie, much like Terra Vision, just kicks off with this unreal, slightly hammy, but well crafted science fiction alien scenario from which we are then going to remove ourselves to re enter a human world.
Yeah, like, nothing else will take place here after the prologue. We're just like seeing this world and then we're going to spend the rest of the movie on Earth. And I kind of like that dynamic. So something goes wrong with the prisoner transfer. People on the radio are calling for backup and they say the crist are up to something, and then there are explosions coming from somewhere, And yeah, I like the little view we get of this like
multicultural alien facility. There are obviously multiple different kinds of sentient aliens working here. It's not just like one species from one planet, and we don't get a great look at most of them. We see just flashes of, like some interesting silhouettes and the shadows and the smoke. And I like stuff like this. I like intriguing little glimpses of an unfamiliar world without too much detail.
Yeah, yeah, just a hint of the interplanetary world from which the crites are.
Arriving anyway, word comes down to the alien control room that the crites have hijacked a ship and escaped. Oh no, And we see close ups of tiny, slimy clawed hands operating levers and pushing buttons in a sci fi cockpit, and we don't see what the creatures look like in full yet. The stolen spaceship blasts its way out of and then soars off into the void and then back on the prison asteroid. The operator announces their next move. They call the Alien Bounty Hunters, and here we are
treated to a suiting up bontage. And this raised a question for me, where does the visual meme of the suiting up montage come from? I mainly associated with Batman movies, starting with Tim Burton's Batman in nineteen eighty nine, but it's in basically all of them. Rob I've got a link actually to a YouTube video I found that's just
a compilation of all the Batman suiting up montages. So the way it usually works is you get extreme close ups of buckles, fastening buttons, snapping, gloves sliding onto hands, gear sliding into holsters in the case of Batman, sometimes you just get like the bat symbol or just like butt cheeks flexing in batpants, so you see all of the elements of the outfit being donned and locked into place before you see the character in full costume. And in the case of Critters, we get the same thing.
With the Bounty Hunters. They have these like kind of weird brown and black studded leather costumes, a little bit sci fi, a little bit conan, the barbarian, a little bit just leather, and we see the buttons snapping, the belts and straps, pulling tight knife going into a sheath, et cetera. But Critters actually came out before the eighty nine Burton Batman, so obviously it didn't get it from there.
I assume this must be something that was in movies or TV shows already, But where does it come from?
I don't have an answer. I would like to explore explore this topic more because I would guess it probably does have something to do with leather and a kind of fetishization of leather. It probably has something to do with biker movies and or like full body leather catsuits. I can't help but wonder if we might find an answer and say nineteen sixty eight's The Girl on a Motorcycle starring Maryann Faith or or something of that nature.
You know, something to wear. Like, clearly the leather costume is key somehow to the vision for the picture, and we're gonna have a filmmaker that's insightful enough to add all those small details leading up to the whole.
Yeah, so you see all the buckles and the clasps and everything before you see the outfit.
Yeah, but I don't know. I this is a mystery to me. I haven't haven't looked into it yet.
Though I will say the suit up montage here has a nice twist because usually I'm used to seeing Batman after this montage is done. But here, when the Bounty Hunters are finally shown in full, they're standing side by side in the dark corridor and they are faceless. Their heads are just smooth, featureless, pale green orbs good design choice.
I like it, Yeah, I think the overall I'm instantly in love with this cotton concept because, yeah, the green, featureless faces this, you know, this has a lot of alien mystery to it. And then their costumes are very like Bounty huntry in the sort of Star Wars since the words because they have they kind of have some very worn and kind of rough looking elements, you know, like they're kind of some of the fabric looks looks
very worn out. But then also like the loll the leather stuff looks like it's very utilitarian, like these are guys or something that are used to getting stuff done.
It's not the clean, new, freshly pressed look of Star Trek.
Here.
Space looks lived in more like Star Wars. Everything's kind of messy and worn out.
Yeah, and they're kind of like space bikers to a certain extent too. Yeah.
Well, anyway, these creatures are now on the case. A Zanti here charges them with tracking down the crits and destroying them before they can feed, and he offers them full payment when the job is completed. So now we cut to Earth. Here we get farmland, golden wheat fields, a windmill, a wooden rail fence, an axe wedged in a chopping block, except why is it a fire axe? It's got that like the Pulaski back. I don't know, but nice homie music letting you know that it's just
a sleepy little village vibe. Everything is a Okay, no flesh gobbling aliens, no bounty hunters roaming around this place. Is doing fine. Inside the house, d Wallace is making breakfast. She's like sizzling bacon and a cast iron pan. There is a bottle of vegetable oil next to the pan. And I don't know if this is what it's implying, but folks, you do not need to add oil to the pan when you're making bacon. Bacon will render its own fat.
Maybe it's vegetarian bacon.
I don't know.
Oh maybe, Okay, no, it's it's it's bacon.
So we meet the Brown family here. The mom is Helen. That's d Wallace. She is kind, loving and self sacrificing. She works hard to take care of her family. You see that she doesn't have a lot of time for herself. Like there's one moment and you know she's like constantly trying to do things for the family and the kid and they're barely noticing. And then there's one scene where she tries to sit down and read a book but
is interrupted by the alien invasion. Though she shows herself to be ferocious later on in the film in beating Chrits with the butt of a shotgun. There are like multiple scenes where the aliens are coming at the family and she's just whacking them with a gun held backwards.
Yeah.
So they initially present a very again kind of like fifties and sixties era TV mom, but then they're able to twist that a little bit and show that, yeah, she can also get in there and kill some crits.
Okay, we got the dad Jay. On one hand, he's just like a real down home, like chicken fried steak of a man. You know, his mother was a tractor, his father was a cow chip, and he wears overalls. And on the other hand, though, he's in some kind of Ghostbusters themed bowling team.
Yeah. Yeah, it took me a while to figure that out. I was like, what is Dad's off brand Ghostbuster where about? And then I realized, Oh, it's a it's a bowling pin. This is the mascot for this bowling team, because we do see it a lot. Yeah, he's a fun character,
like he has very seems very checked out. Like at one point in the film, when April the daughter's about to go on her date there with billy' zayan, he's like, have you had the talk with our daughter, and she's like, yes, of course, I've had the talk with our like clearly twenty five year old daughter at this point, it was years ago, and he's like years ago. Oh. He's also constantly drinking out of mason jars for some reason. Oh yeah, like I think he gets served coffee in a mason jar.
Everyone else is drinking out of glass, normal glassware. He's drinking his coffee out of a mason jar and stirring, if not honey, then possibly jam into it.
It looked like honey. Yes, he was adding honey to his coffee.
Where it's like, okay, dad, whatever, whatever you need. I guess I don't know why that seems so weird. People add honey to their tea, but for some reason, I don't think about that with coffee. Maybe because coffee is already acidic and honey is also acidic.
I've never added honey to a coffee. I mean, it may be some people's thing. If it's your thing, right in, let us know why you made this choice of life. All right.
Now on to the kids you mentioned. April the daughter, she's your classic country girl yearning for a no good city boy with vanity plates on his car, uncreative ones, Billy's Aine's vanity plates. Say what do they say? Too great? G R eight? Come on, Billy's saying that is that's not very good. You're trying to think of it while you were standing in line.
Yeah, and plus it's just it's too prideful. You're gonna get eaten by space aliens with that fanity plate.
April has low tolerance for the geeky antics of her little brother, and she lashes out at him in spite. The little brother with the geeky antics is Brad, the son of the family. He likes to hog the bathroom when his sister needs it. He likes to play hooky, skip school, and manufacture his own firecrackers. But like I said, he has gumption.
Yeah.
So we get to meet the family over breakfast, get to know them, see the tensions between brother and sister. They're they're like tattling on each other about things and running off to school. I don't think we ever see them at school, We just see them later back at home.
Now in the notes here, you point out that they have a chimex. That's how they're making their coffee.
That's right.
Also alarmed me because I didn't even know they had them back then. I didn't. I wasn't exposed to them untill I was in my early thirties or something where I was like, Wow, a bold new way to make coffee. But it's not so bold or so new.
I love pour over coffee and we use a chemex here at home. And yeah, they've been around for a while. They were famous. They were like a famous product design in mid the mid century. I think they're from the forties or the fifties. Originally, there's some kind of thing about like the Kimmicks caraffe being like featured in the the I don't know, Museum of Modern Art or something.
Yeah, oh that's interesting. Yeah, I don't know much about it. But so would you find it out of keeping with the character of the family as otherwise presented here that they have a chemex or do you find it acceptable?
I don't know if it's out of keeping or not. I don't know who normally would use a Kimx at this time, but I just was like, hey, I've got one of those that's in their kitchen, looks just like ours.
I tend to think of it as the coffee maker that coffee shops and sometimes individuals will have on a shelf and if you were to ask about it, they'd be like, oh, it's just for show. Nobody uses that.
Well, it does look nice, but no, it makes.
It because it's a beautiful, beautiful vessel, that's sure. That's for sure.
I think the main thing is is like a simple design. And then it's got these filters, sort of rectangular filters that are a thick kind of paper that is supposed to I guess because of the thickness or something is supposed to make coffee that is like less bitter or I don't know, has like a cleaner taste. I don't know if that's really true. I'm not a coffee geek and I haven't ab tested all this, but yeah, we like the coffee we make in our chimacks.
Cool.
They didn't pay us for that. Oh maybe we should try to get them as a sponsor. We can as seen in Critters, as seen exactly. Yeah, okay. So also we're gonna check in with some more characters at town police headquarters. So we get Harve, the police chief. That's Mment Walsh. He's somehow greasy and creaky at the same time. If this metaphor makes sense. It's like he needs a spray of WD forty, but he got a squirt of chicken fat instead, and now the hinges are squealing louder
than ever. He is the dyspeptic arm of the law.
That's some inimit Walsh magic right there. It's like the that's the perfect formula.
We've also got Sally, his assistant. She's a bit aloof from the here and now because her head is wrapped up in stories she's reading in the tabloids featuring the top headline mister Spock is the father of my baby.
Yeah, she's somewhat checked out.
You also got Charlie mcfatten. This is the otis of the story again. He's the town drunk. He's also an auto mechanic. I think Jay earlier is like working on a car in the basement of the house. I guess they've got like a garage underneath their house. And Jay was like, where's Charlie? So he was supposed to be
there helping him, but he didn't show up. Charlie says he used to have a promising baseball career ahead of him, but then he started receiving messages from aliens in the fillings in his teeth, and this interfered with his baseball prospects, and now his prospects are Rye whiskey and a jail cell every night. Now, let's check in with the Bounty Hunters. Their crews in the galaxy in their ship when they
get a holograph message from their boss, Zanti. Zanti says they have tracked the crits to a solar system with only one planet that supports life. It is called Earth. They should be able to use their shape shifting abilities to blend in when they arrive at Earth. Earth, and he's sending a data tape with information about the planet
and its civilizations. And he also starts telling them not to destroy everything in sight once they get there, but they like hang up on him in the middle of this exhortation.
Yeah, as we'll see, they have a very rough hand when it comes to critter elimination.
Yeah, So they roll the tape containing what aliens know about Earth. It literally says Earth is a culture of many contrasts, like did the Simpsons get it from there?
Maybe?
But they sort of do that the David Bowie thing from the Man who Fell to Earth. They're watching a bunch of random different TV footage spliced together at superspeed. There's like, I don't know, I was just trying to pause it and see what are these things. There's like a dude in a lab coat talking at the camera with a bunch of beakers. There are car crashes, the hydrogen bomb, Robin Hood, I think a Robin Hood movie, aerobics routines from the nineteen twenties. But then finally it
lands on a music video. It's rock and roll.
Oh. I think we also saw just a glimpse of Klaskinski from Android in there as well.
Did we.
Oh?
I think so.
Yeah, the director's own films. That's part of the training.
But you mentioned the rock and roll, and that's key.
Yeah. So once they get to the rock and roll, they slow it down to normal speed because this is educational. The artist is called Johnny Steele and the song is called the Power of the Night. We will hear it many times in the film. You get like, I don't know how many minutes of audio time for the Power of the Night, but it's clearly a favorite of the Earthlings at this point.
Yeah, yeah, rocking.
The Bounty hunters are digging the music, as Johnny Alucard would say, another Johnny, I've just I've wrote down some of the lyrics. Here's one night Times on Fire. We are the heat, the flame is desire burns in the seat. But the Bounty Hunters are like, now that's what I call music, and one of them feeling the power of the night so hard that his face melts, or I guess I should say his non face melts, like the green orb melts away, it dissolves, and then it is
replaced by what is this. It's a human skull with flesh and blood slowly building up around it through a pretty cool reverse melting effect. There are multiple parts of this movie that use reverse footage effects. There's one part later where like a blown up house is reassembled through a reverse footage here, but this is obviously reverse footage to put a mask onto a face. I guess they filmed it maybe melting away, and then reversed it. But by the time it's done, the bounty Hunter is Johnny
Steele from the music video. Looks exactly like him.
Great effects sequence and also just solid choice with the shape shifting aliens choosing a rock star to be their avatar on Earth or one of them does, the other one hasn't made up their mind yet and just can't find something that suits them.
So back on the Brown family farm, Brad and Charlie are playing with firecrackers while Charlie is supposed to be working. Charlie is supposed to be helping Jay fix his truck, but instead Charlie is hanging out with the kid doing firecrackers, I think, repairing his slingshot. And then April brings home her new boyfriend, and by god, it's Billy Zane. The
character is named Steve Elliott. They pull up in a car that is a city car, and unfortunately Steve is a city boy and that does not fly around here. Jay comes and investigates billy Zane's car and he observes that one would not be able to hold much hay in it.
I like Billy Zane's reaction to that line. It's just like a little glimpse of like the natural charisma and an ultimate acting ability of Billy Zaye. You just see a little peak of it here, but you can see why he went on other things.
He's like, yeah, I can't hold much hay in this, and Billy Zaye's like yep. But there's an unfortunate slingshot incident in the scene. So Charlie is trying to demonstrate that he has fixed brad slingshot, and he shoots a pebble at like a coke can up on a fence post, but misses and hits April in the butt, and then she turns around angry, but she assumes it was Brad who did the sling shotting, and Brad heroically takes the
blame even though it was Charlie. He doesn't want Charlie to get in trouble and loses his mechanic job with his dad, so he's like, yeah, okay, I did it.
He's noble, he's a good kid.
Yeah, and he's sent to bed without supper. So we follow Brad to his bedroom where I was looking at the posters. He has posters for Bruce Springsteen, the police as in the band Stinging the Police, not the Police, tree leaves and ferns, the United States map, and he's listening to a cassette tape of Power of the Night. So he is a Johnny Steel fan.
I think we've discussed this before on the show. I Love a Good Kids room represented in a movie. I love to look at all the details and see the what degree they pulled it off and made it believable, to what extent they're acknowledging actual franchises that a child in this time period would have been into, And I feel like they nailed it pretty well. I've seen plenty of especially more recent films, where I'm like, oh, you just you printed out some stock art. Those are not
real movies, those are not real comic book characters. Not buying it. But this one does a good job.
I agree for the most part, except I don't know. I could be wrong about this, but I'm like, were they that many like twelve year olds who really liked the police?
I don't know. Yeah, okay, I don't know why the police here. It would have been, but you know, he doesn't.
Johnny Steele makes more sense.
Johnny Steele makes sense, and maybe he, you know, a different kid would have been more into metal, But I don't really buy that Brad would be. It would have been a metal head, so maybe. I mean, there's all sorts of weird realistically, when you look back in the bands you get into when you start getting too music, sometimes there are weird fits, you know, like that's true. Yeah, look for examples from your own musical paths listeners. I'm sure you can think of some good ones.
I'm just trying to imagine, like Brad sitting there in his bedroom making firecrackers, listening to Walking on the Moon.
Yeah, yeah, rock Sanne Okay.
Well, anyway, while he's in his bedroom being sent to bed without supper as punishment, April and Billy's ay and are having dinner with their parents, including corn on the cob. And oh man, you go home to meet your boyfriend or girlfriend's parents and they have corn on the cob, it just seems like it's recipe for disaster. How do you not get it in your teeth? How do you keep your dignity?
Yeah, I mean maybe that's intentional. It's like there's no way they'll be making out later if we serve corn in the cop But but like we said earlier, this this meal actually goes pretty well, and I feel like the boyfriend is respectful. And also we should note at this point in the film, everyone is still marked safe from critter attacks. We have not had any fatalities. I'm Planet Earth due to critters.
That's right. So but eventually April and Billy z Ain. They leave to go for a ride, I think, but April is actually just taking Billy's Ain in to the barn to make out with him, and he's clearly like freaked out. He's like, I don't know if this is such a good idea of it. She's like, ah, come on, my parents will never think to look in the barn. Meanwhile, Brad sneaks out through his bedroom window and while climbing on the roof, witnesses the arrival of an alien spaceship.
It flies over the farm, causes a mighty rumble, and Jay sees it too. He catches Brad sneaking out, so you think Brad's going to be in a lot of trouble. But then there's a kind of I don't know, there's the thing I liked here. It's kind of sweet, where like the dad catches Brad doing what he's not supposed to do, but he's but instead they're like, okay, well let's go investigate see what this is. It's kind of sweet. Oh but what they find is not so sweet. They
find a mutilated cow. So we're back in cattle mutilation territory.
This is I didn't I don't remember if this came up when we talked about The Return, which is definitely a cattle mutilation movie. So yeah, clearly they're dipping into cattle mutilation panic a bit here.
They say what could have done this? Well, it was Chrits, of course, But we don't see the crits until I think the first time we see them is when Jay the dad has to go down in the basement.
Or wait, is the deputy killed first?
Oh? Maybe? So the police deputy is driving around, something goes out in front of him in the road, He swerves, and then he is He gets out of his car and is attacked by Krits. We don't see them, but there's some kind of furry creature that pulls him underneath the car and gobbles him up.
Yeah, but then comes the basement attack scene.
Right, Yeah, So the phones and the power are out and Jay thinks he has to go back to go into the basement to flip the breaker. But when he goes down there, what is that? There's something moving on the shelf, pulsing in the dark. What could it be? He goes to investigate and it is this strange furry hedgehog like creature that these creatures start jumping out biting him,
and it becomes an actually quite visceral, bloody attack. They like shoot at him with these quills and when this, I guess the elements of a cried attack involve biting with razor sharp teeth, which draws a lot of blood. There are the poison quills, which when they hit you render you unconscious, though typically when they're pulled out people wake up immediately. And then there's also the the crites can move quickly by turning into a tumbleweed and rolling, or like Sonic the Hedgehog.
Yeah, they're kind of like a cross between Sonic the Hedgehog and a mythic version of a porcupine, you know, like the sort of myth that a porcupine can fire it's quills at you. Well, chrites certainly do. And yeah, there's a lot of blood here. I had not. I'm not sure if I ever saw critters one. I think ma I saw critters too back in the day. But either way, not remembering what happens here, I thought Dad
was done for. I thought, like this, he's lost too much blood, he's got too many krites on him, He's done for.
It really did seem that way. There's a lot of peril, but Dad is rescued. D Wallace and Brad are able to grab him and pull him up the staircase out of the cellar and get him to safety. And yeah, like you were saying, there's a lot of blood, there is a lot of blood, just generally in this movie, for PG. Thirteen especially, but the blood is often poorly lit.
So in some of the most violent scenes, it'll be in like a dark room and the blood appears as just like dark wet patches on the clothing rather than like bright red and running.
Yeah, and we don't really get a lot of what I would say like gory human kills. Yeah, most of the gory kills we get really are are krites getting blasted, though sometimes in a very comedic fashion, which we'll get to right.
And we do get another tragic human death. So you know, nobody really cared about this, uh, this police deputy who got eaten. But but now they're going to do it to Billy Zay and I can't believe it. So Crits attack April and Billy Zaine in the barn while they're making out, and they like bite Billy Zane in the stomach and start chomping on his guts. And at this point I was just I was so torn up about it. How could they?
I think this is this is the scene where he reaches for the radio and they bite his fingers off and yeah, yeah, so that's right. Yeah, it's a rough death for this actually, like seemingly likable young man who made the mistake of going to the country.
He should not have should have stayed in the city.
Don't listen to Neil Young. Wait, what do you.
Mean, Oh, are you ready for the country?
Yeah he was not.
No, it seems like a warning. Actually, I think I think he should have listened.
Yeah, that's about christs. I think Neil Young is singing like, are you ready for the country because they've got some crimes.
Uh.
But Brad comes in and he saves the day by convincing a Kright to eat one of his firecrackers, and then it like blows up inside the Kright and you think the Cright's gonna like just like explode with chunks going everywhere, but instead there is a comedic like it's sort of its belly pooches out and then it just like keels over.
Smoke out of the mouth basically like a cartoon coyote ate a hot chili pepper kind of yes, so solid.
So there are a bunch more sort of just krite battling set pieces that I'm not going to recount in detail. The whole way there are battles is the family tries to make it back to the house. They battle krites along the way. There's one part where krights are chasing them, but then they managed to get behind There's like a waist high picket fence that the crits get stuck behind. There's just banging on the picket fence. Then there are also battles inside the house. The family gets in there
and the crates attack them. They fight them in various ways, and yes, there is a scene with a with a critter in the toilet. So that's a milestone achieved.
Absolutely. Yeah. They really seem to just spare no part of this house. They're like, have we had a crate attack in the gift drafting room? No, well let's do it. Let's do it. We have to cover every room in this house.
There's also just random scenes of the bounty hunters, you know, roaming around and going to various places. They go to church and they like accidentally back their car. They steal a police car. Once they arrive. It's the deputies backwards, yeah yeah, and they drive it backwards because they don't
know they're not from Earth. They don't know how you're supposed to drive, so they're driving it in reverse everywhere, and they like back it through the I don't know what you call it, like the porch of a church while church is in session and the reverend is talking about Sodom and Gomorrah. And then they go into the church and the and one of the bounty hunter that had not transformed into Johnny Steel turns into the reverend from the church.
Yeah, he'd previously taken on the form of the dead deputy, so he looked like a zombie previously. This is the non Johnny Steele, the non ug bounty hunter who can't make up his mind, who keeps choosing a new form.
Then they go to the bowling Alley and the reverend one transforms into looking like Charlie, the guy who thinks he's been talking to aliens the whole time. And then eventually they're driving around later and they're gonna make it to the house. So inside the house. Brad, he becomes heroic the son, and he's like he ventures out. He says, I'm gonna go get help. So he goes out and he flags down a police car after being chased by crits of course for a while, and it is being
driven by the Bounty Hunters. So this is the scene where we get the use of the word critters. Brad, not knowing that these are christs, says, hey, there are critters attacking my family. You've got to come help, And the Bounty Hunters do go to investigate, though they're very they're not very communicative. They just sort of like stare at people most of the time.
Yeah, they do a lot of terminatory sort of behaviors, but generally for comedic effects. I love the scene in the bowling alley. The ug character like palms a bowling ball and then he looks down at the pins and just hurls it straight at the pins and shatters them.
It's like he wanted he wanted everyone there to know that he could beat them all at bowling. Yeah, that's just part of his strategy for finding out where the crits are.
Yeah, it's it this. I think it's a it's a specific example of a thing this film does really well, Like it's clearly drawing on these various obvious mainstream sci fi influences, but manages to figure out a way to reweave them into something that feels unique and new.
Yeah. So the bounty hunters arrive at the house on the Brown family farm and they start scouring it for Chrits. They like blow up one of the Krits in a toilet with with their like laser blasters. Meanwhile, Emmett wallsh arrives and is generally not very helpful. He's like shooting at rolling fur balls and missing and then he gets thrown out a window.
Is this the part maybe getting ahead of us, But there's a great scene where we get some subtitles for the Crits. Yes, and they're like, they have weapons, and then the other one says the F word.
It's and I laughed, well, I think one of them says they have weapons and the other one says, so what, And then the one that said the head weapons gets blasted by the and then the other one just says the F word.
It's it's tremendous, but says the F word and it's in the crit language. And then the subtitles tell us what he's saying. So I thought that was legitimately funny.
Now somewhere along here, one of the crites becomes enormous, like it grows up and becomes bear sized, and like Brad sees it grow by watching its shadow in the light of the moon while he's running to get help and then coming to the final showdown, April, the sister is knocked unconscious with the poison quill and kidnapped by the big crit Megacrite is like dragging her back to the spaceship, I guess, for I don't know. Inflight, Snack probably and the remaining handful of Krites are getting ready
to escape. They're like getting the ship, you know, pulling up the landing gear and all that. So in the end, Brad has to save his sister, even though they've been fighting the whole time, along with the help of Charlie the mechanic. So Brad infiltrates the alien ship, pulls April out, and then throws his giant homemade firecracker inside the spaceship.
And then Charlie also helps by igniting the fuse of the firecracker by throwing a Molotov cocktail inside the closing door of the spaceship, and then the Krits, out of just pure spite as they're flying away, shoot a laser beam and blow up the family's house. But then of course the fuse on the firecracker burns through and their ship explodes. So finally the Crites are defeated, not just
by the bounty hunters but by Brad and Charlie. So earthlings, you know, unassuming earthlings to the rescue, and I guess because Brad has proved his worthiness, the alien bounty hunters leave him with a sort of communicator device. It's like a little radio contact thing. And then upon their departure they somehow use the magic power of their ship to reverse footage reassemble the family's house after we saw it like nearly adamized, just blown to toothpicks.
Yeah, they have the technology to do this, and yet to kill a cry they have to manually hunt it down and shoot it with some sort of a space shotgun. Maybe that's just how it is. I don't know.
But so now the family has their house back. All members of the family are safe. Of course, Billy Zain is no longer with us, but the family is all all right, and that seems to go with like the feel good vibes. At the end of the movie, everybody
in the family's okay. But we do get a final stinger, which is the camera sort of like Alli's into the chicken coop and we see these leathery looking studded black eggs in there, and they're in the chicken coop, which I started laughing at because I was like, does this mean the family's gonna like just use them like eggs, like make an omelet?
I would hope not. That would prevent the sequel from taking place, I assume.
So upon reflection, I noticed what I thought was a kind of interesting theme in this film. I didn't notice while I was watching, but thinking back on it, there are many acts of spite in the movie, Like there are multiple times when someone just sort of casually does injury to some other party as they are leaving a scene, like the brother and sister do it to each other early on, the crits do it to the farm while escaping.
They're getting out there, leaving this planet, but they're just like, the heck with you, They just blow up the house. And I don't know what to make of that. But it's there in the subtext, though in all cases the wounds caused by spite are healed at the end of the film.
Yeah, they're just spiteful little creatures. They're hungry and they're hateful, and you never want them to show up on your planet, but if you do, you need to take care of them quickly. And they everyone managed to pull this off, or so it would seem.
Another thing that I think is interesting. We sort of talked about this earlier, but it's a misimpression I had about them, which is I thought of the crites before I watched this movie as just animalistic eating machines, but that's not what they are. They have synians like they talk to each other in their different language subtitled they work machines, they fly spaceships. Does this make them different
from most other movie monsters? I was thinking that actually, most of the creatures in the various Gromlins movies are able to like work machines and communicate and coordinate with one another, whether verbally or nonverbally. That's sort of part of the Gromlin thing, that they're not just mindless, roaring, you know, chompers, but they have intention behind their behavior, you're usually malevolent intention, even if that intention is rather
just sort of like crude impulses. Like they they have plans and they enact them. Does this inform something about the appeal of the Gromlin subgenre.
Yeah, that they're schemers, that they're you know what, they lack in size and perhaps even in like pure visual threat, because generally speaking, they're not the size of bears. But they have they have plans, they have schemes. They're tricky, they're they're little, They're little devils. They're little demons working their mischief in the.
World, getting into the chicken coop, knocking over the fence, eating your billy's and boyfriend. Yeah, causing all kinds of mischief. Well, I think that's all I've got to say about critters. But I enjoyed this one.
Yeah, it's a I think it's a very enjoyable film that holds up really well. So if you haven't seen it and you're looking for just a pretty pretty harmless but fun and at times funny creature feature, I don't think you can go wrong with Gromlins. I'm sorry, I don't think you can go wrong. You can go wrong with Gromlins in general. I don't think you can go
wrong with Critters one though, fun movie. All right, we'll go ahead and close it there, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts on Critters or the Critters franchise, Gromlins movies in general, wright in we would love to hear from you. Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
a weird movie on Weird House Cinema. And if you want to see a complete list all of those movies that we've talked about in Weird House Cinema, you can go to letterbox dot com. That's L E T T E R B O x D dot com. You'll find us on there as Weird House, and yeah, there'll be a list of all the movies we've covered. Also, if you're on Instagram, go to STBYM podcast that's Stuff to Blow Your Mind's account and our social media team has been putting up little video features for these episodes that
have some of the trailer footage. So we always feature the trailer audio if we can find it for the movies we talk about here, but it's also nice to check in on the visuals as well.
Oh yes, huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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