A look back at the Critters franchise
As the sun rose on 2021, then set, and then rose again on January 2nd, I decided to watch Critters 2 with my breakfast. Why on earth did I decide to do watch a movie about disgusting, pimply aliens that slovenly chomp up everything that sort of looks like it might be food while I was eating breakfast? Quite simply because I noticed that HBO Max has Critters 2 and Critters 4 available, but not Critters (1), nor Critters 3. Sometimes that’s all it takes to send me on a cinematic adventure, and so here we are.
Seeing as my movie mantra for this long quarantine has been “If you think you are even slightly interested in a movie, you might as well watch it right now.” I simply had to keep going, especially since part 4 had left such an awful taste in my mouth.
So, I present to you my lookback at Critters 1 through 4 and a glance at Critters Attack! I’ll tell ya right now, this is not a deep-dive retrospective that’s going to cover every little detail. This is a formerly published movie reviewer drinking some rum-nog and spewing opinions and easily recalled knowledge about this little 5-movie odyssey from which I’ve just returned.
SPOILER ALERT: This entire article is full of spoilers about Critters 1, 2, 3, and 4. These movies are over 25 years old. You’re either about to step away from this article and watch all 4 movies or you’re just gonna ride this train out of the station. The choice is yours. I’ll include an extra ALERT for Critters Attack! since it’s still fairly new.
First thing’s first:
What’s a Critter? The Critters are actually known as Crites, an alien species of small, furry, dark gray or black, wide-mouthed, red-eyed monsters that love to snack on whatever they find appealing. They might eat your boyfriend. They might eat your bike tires. They’ve also got metallic darts that they can launch from the tops of their heads, which seem to carry some kind of alien poison that leaves a really disgusting wound. They’re mostly furry, but their visible skin is black and gray, pimply and wrinkly. That’s it. Critters are simply little, chompy monsters and the rest of the galaxy hates them. Which brings us to…
Streaming: Critters is for rental only on Fandango, Redbox, AppleTV, and more.
Critters (1986): Boy, oh boy, did little Stevie love this movie when he saw it in theaters, without adult supervision, at only 7 years old. It had everything a kid could want: An opening scene set in outer space with spaceships, asteroids, and aliens! Lots of small, toothy monsters that are blood-thirsty, yet humorous. A pre-teen hero, Brad Brown (Scott Grimes), who’s into sci-fi movies and making homemade firecrackers!
Can you imagine being a 7-year-old dude and seeing Brad’s beautiful older sister, April (Nadine Van der Velde), getting all excited for her big date with a guy named… Steve? “Steve, the dork from New York,” as played by none other than Billy Zane! Can you freakin’ imagine what that does to a 7-year-old’s fondness for a movie?
It elevates it.
Rounding out the Brown family on their quaint Midwestern farm is the dad (Billy Green Bush) and the mom. You know her, you love her! She’s E.T.’s mom, Cujo’s mom, The Howling’s mom, and now she’s even the Critters’ mom. It’s Dee Wallace, everybody!!!
But before we meet the Brown family or any of their quaint country neighbors in Grover’s Bend, Kansas (a loving nod to Grover’s Mills, NJ, from War of the Worlds), we’re introduced to the alien prison warden, Zanti, whose makeup and costuming harken back to Bibb Fortuna from Return of the Jedi (only three years prior). Warden Zanti is furious because some Crites have stolen a spaceship and escaped from his space prison, which is built on a floating asteroid.
So, Zanti summons two bounty hunters, who wind up being addressed as Ug and Lee when they get to Earth. These guys look great! Their heads look like glowing, greenish-white, under-inflated balloons, and they dress like they should be chasing Mad Max all the way to Tomorrow-morrow Land.
As the bounty hunters fly to Earth, they must each choose a human face and morph their balloon heads to look exactly like those faces. Ug quickly finds his ideal face when his ship’s computer shows him a rock video for Johnny Steele’s “Power of the Night,” and we’re treated to a bloody, gooey transformation sequence that leaves Ug looking just like actor Terrence Mann! But bounty hunter Lee just can’t seem to find a face that likes him, so as the movie progresses he transforms into a few townsfolk and confuses the hell out of everybody.
Back on Earth, Brad and Charlie (Don Keith Opper) are playing with firecrackers and shamefully blowing up a Star Wars toy, a Y-Wing Fighter that’s been spray-painted silver. Could you imagine how much money a 1980s Y-Wing Fighter that was used in Critters could fetch on eBay? Neither can anybody because they blew it up! How could Charlie let Brad do that?!
To be clear, Charlie is a grown man who works for Brad’s parents and often laments that his chance at a baseball career was ruined when his dental fillings started picking up alien radio signals. But don’t worry. He ain’t creepin’ on Brad. He ain’t creepin’ on big sister April. He’s just trying to hold a job and silence those alien signals in his teeth.
Well, the Crites crash their ship on the Brown family farm and start eating cows. They eat Deputy Jeff when he foolishly gets out of his car to investigate a “dog” running across the road. They eat Billy Zane while he’s making out with April in the barn (her idea, not Steve’s). These Crites get a lot of munching done before the bounty hunters show up, and do you know why?
Because the bounty hunters SUCK at their jobs. They land their ship, find Deputy Jeff’s corpse, Lee transforms into the decaying version of Deputy Jeff, and rather than following Crite clues that would lead them to the Brown farm, they just steal the deputy’s cop car and go to church. They almost kill the organist with their super guns. Lee transforms into the preacher, which freaks out all the witnesses, and then they drive off to…the Brown family farm?
No! The bowling alley. There, they destroy at least one ball and a set of pins, the TV in the bar, and a handful of masculine egos. Then, for no real reason, Lee transforms, AGAIN, into Charlie, who just happens to be there.
But, just like the church, there are no Crites in the bowling alley so Ug and Lee get back in their stolen police car and drive off to wherever the Crites aren’t. They just happen to run into Brad, who has escaped from the farm on a mission to get help because the Crites chewed through the telephone lines. So, Brad jumps into this police car with the two bounty hunters who look exactly like his buddy, Charlie, and pop sensation Johnny Steele. Any 12-year-old kid would be entitled to flip his lid at this point, but Brad’s got bigger Crites to crunch!
Brad, the bounty hunters, the real Charlie, and even Sheriff Harv (M. Emmet Walsh) converge on the Brown farm to save Brad’s family, but one of the Crites has grown biiiiiig…we’re talking maybe four feet tall. Big Crite kidnaps April as the Crites try to escape on their spaceship. The bounty hunters proceed to obliterate the Brown family’s house with their super guns. For some reason, they’re always aiming upward, even though most Crites are under two feet tall and usually rolling on the floor. The bounty hunters SUCK at their job. Have I mentioned that?
Critters has two types of nostalgia working within it, for better or worse. First, it’s obviously a throwback to the many 1950s sci-fi movies which start in rural America and end in a small battle that will quietly save the world. Second, though the movie is made in 1986, it’s already paying tribute to early ‘80s pop culture with things like the Y-Wing Fighter toy and a classic plush E.T. doll (the weird, pleathery one that would stick to your arm on a hot day).
The Johnny Steele music video is as MTV as it gets. Brad’s dad spends most of the movie in his bowling shirt adorned with a team logo that looks like a pink C3PO cosplaying as the Ghostbusters symbol. Yeah, yeah, I know the pink guy is supposed to be a bowling pin, but it looks a lot like C3PO from the Star Wars: Droids cartoon. You’ll see.
Watching Critters again, 35 years and a thousand other movies later, I will happily proclaim that I still love this movie! And you can tell that a lot of love was put into this movie. They had to make dozens of Crite puppets. They definitely spent a pretty penny on stunts, explosions, special-effects makeup, and props. Nobody seems to be phoning in their performance, even M. Emmet Walsh, whose character is phoning in his commitment to his Sheriff duties. But he’s M. Emmet Walsh. He’s doing exactly what you hire M. Emmet Walsh to do! I won’t spoil the ending for ya, but I’m pretty sure it’s an homage to Poltergeist.
I’ll say it again. I love this movie and there’s a pretty good chance that I also love…
Streaming: Critters 2: The Main Course is on HBO Max and for rental.
Critters 2: The Main Course (1988): This movie’s just as fun as the first! It opens on a distant planet where two masked bounty hunters are tracking down a random alien. But it’s not Ug and Lee. It’s Ug and Charlie! Yup, Charlie is a space bounty hunter now and he, Ug, and Lee (who still can’t commit to a face) are sent back to Earth because it turns out they left some Crite eggs behind at the end of the first movie.
So, space warden Zanti (who looks 100% different this time… and naked) decides that he will not be paying the bounty hunters for the terrible work they did in the first movie. At least not until they go back to Grovers Bend and eradicate those eggs.
Meanwhile, Brad, who now lives in Kansas City, is hitchhiking back into Grover’s Bend to visit his Nana for Easter. Wouldn’t ya know it? Nana has found some Crite eggs and decorated them for the church’s Easter egg hunt. You can bet your basket that those eggs are going to hatch and some newborn Crites are going to jump into the Easter Bunny’s costume and chomp him to death.
Apparently, the whole town blames Brad and the Brown family for the events of the first movie, which is just dumb. Grover’s Bend is full of dumb people. So, Brad shows up alone and tries to keep a low profile so the locals don’t stomp him for letting aliens crash on his farm and destroy his family’s house and… not really harm the rest of the town at all. Okay, they did kill Deputy Jeff and Steve. If anything, the locals should be mad about the bounty hunters who SUCK at their job and messed up the church!
Anyway, when the bounty hunters arrive this time, Lee starts to transform his deflated-balloon head into Charlie’s face, but Charlie blocks his view with a Playboy magazine. This causes Lee to take on the stunning face and barely-dressed body of real Playboy model Roxanne Kernohan (Tango & Cash, Scream Queen Hot Tub Party. I saw this movie when I was 9 years old, in theaters, without an adult. Man-eating monsters and topless Playmates. This was PG-13 in 1988, folks)!
As the bounty hunters track the Crites to the Hungry Heifer restaurant, Brad and his childhood friend, Megan (Liane Curtis) are on a mission to… I’m not even sure. I think they just try to get people to help them fight the Crites, I guess. They visit the retired Sheriff Harv (who retired so hard that he’s now played by a completely different actor, Barry Corbin) and he refuses to lend a hand…for now. He even goes so far as to pack up and drive out of town.
But let me tell ya, when Sheriff Harv decides to strap on his six-guns for the final showdown, it’s a pretty dope moment, which kind of seems completely unearned, in retrospect. But whatever, it’s fun while it’s happening and that’s exactly the kind of movie that Critters 2 is meant to be.
These filmmakers weren’t trying to win Oscars or impress critics. This is pure, popcorn-munching, American schlock designed to make you laugh, scream, and be a little more cautious when you see a furry animal go scurrying across your yard. WATCH OUT!
Among the many highlights of this movie, I’ve got to point out the catchiness of the Hungry Heifer commercial jingle, which is heard several times, throughout. But nothing beats the third-act coup de grace…drumroll, please…the Ball of Crites!
In an effort to win their battle against the citizens of Grover’s Bend, the Crites all form up into a giant ball of fur, poison needles, glowing eyes, and chomping teeth. The ball is so incredible that I don’t even remember how our heroes defeat the damn thing. Do you?
Another highlight comes after cleaning the Crites out of the Hungry Heifer restaurant, when Lee decides to transform into the one and only Eddie Deezen, much to Charlie’s chagrin. But don’t worry, only a few minutes of movie-time pass before Charlie convinces Lee to transform into Roxanne Kernohan yet again. Is Charlie trying to get it on with Lee? I think he might be, but Lee is soon eaten by the Crites, which drives Ug so crazy that he transforms his face back into a deflated-balloon head.
What a movie! As far as I’m concerned, if you’re going to watch Critters, you might as well watch Critters 2 immediately after.
But go ahead and take your time when it comes to getting around to…
Streaming: Critters 3: You Are What They Eat is for rental only on AppleTV, Google Play, Amazon Video, and more.
Critters 3: You Are What You Eat (1991): Let me tell ya something right now. I am not, by any means, making fun of any actors for being in a Critters movie. If somebody asked me to be in Critters 6, I’d say “Give me twice as many lines and half as much money, baby! I want to be all over that movie!” So, with love, I’m saying that we might as well start with the great news: the filmmakers behind Critters 3 had the brilliant idea to cast none other than Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio! How ‘bout that? Two stars of James Cameron’s Titanic (don’t forget Billy Zane in part 1) are in Critters movies!
The first strike against Critters 3 is that it does not open in outer space. No, it opens on a country road with a family singing “The Big Rock Candy Mountain” as they drive home from a vacation. Whoops! Flat tire. Dad (who is a real jag-off throughout this movie) manages to pull into a highway rest stop where many other families are taking a break from the road.
As dad repairs the tire, his kids, Annie (Aimee Brooks, The Hillside Strangler, and tons of TV credits) and her little brother Johnny (played by twins Joseph & Christian Cousins, from Kindergarten Cop) go running off into the woods where cool teen Josh (DiCaprio) saves Johnny from falling down a steep hill.
Two more children show up and Josh leads the group down that same steep hill to explore the woods. But before Johnny descends, we get a point-of-view shot through the eyes of an approaching monster, presumably a Crite! As the kids explore the woods, good ol’ Charlie comes bursting out of a hole in the ground and warns the kids about monsters. He gives Johnny a space crystal that will glow green whenever Crites are nearby. Uh… Pretty sure some Crites are nearby right now, dude.
All the kids get out of the woods and Josh’s snooty father gives him a hard time for being gone so long. Annie and Johnny rejoin Dad and head for home, past Grover’s Bend, toward… The City! Holy smokes! Are we about to get Critters Take Kansas City? Nope. We’re about to get Critters Take a Small Apartment Building and how did they get there? Well, as Dad and the kids pulled away from the rest stop, we see that some Crite eggs have been placed in the undercarriage of Dad’s truck. Like, it really looks like the eggs are balancing atop the rounded surface of the drive shaft. THAT’S NOT A SAFE PLACE FOR EGGS!!!
Cut to: Annie’s small apartment building (lets’ face it, this is Annie’s movie) where tenants are being conned into moving out by the sleazy superintendent, Frank (Geoffrey Blake, Young Guns and The Last Starfighter). Who is the slumlord that’s paying Frank to hurry the tenants out the door? Why, it’s Josh’s jerky dad who we met at the highway rest stop. What a jerk!
Frank is the first to die when he discovers a broken window leading into the basement. Guess who broke it! Guess who hatched out of disgusting eggs, covered in yellowish-green slime, and broke that window, dear reader. Please guess. Have you guessed? You’re right! It’s Crites!!! Oh man, they chomp that sleazy superintendent so good and then start working their way upstairs to eat Annie’s family and their nice neighbors.
While still driving home from that rest stop, Josh and his jerky dad have to stop by the apartment building because they can’t get dead Frank to answer his phone. Huzzah! Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio (Nebraska Jim) has rejoined the movie! He and Annie are probably going to have a crush on each other while saving her dumb little brother from Crites, don’t ya think?
You’re probably wondering when the bounty hunters are going to show up. Well, Ug is off-planet, but Charlie manages to find the apartment building and help the tenants in their fight against Crites!
People get chomped. People get shot with poisonous Crite darts. Crites get burned, bashed, and blowed-up in all sorts of ways, and the movie ends with Charlie finding two more Crite eggs in the building’s basement.
Just as he’s about to destroy them, we find ourselves in what will be used as the opening scene for…
Streaming: Critters 4 is streaming on HBO Max and available for rental.
Critters 4 (1992): Picking up right where part 3 left off in 1991, Charlie has found the last two Crite eggs when he gets a message from space. It’s Ug! Ug orders Charlie to collect the eggs and place them in a special pod that’s just about to crash on Charlie’s location. But Charlie fouls up and gets himself stuck in the pod, as well.
Time passes.
Lots of time passes.
53 years.
Suddenly, it’s the year 2045 and a crew of space-truckers finds the pod containing Charlie and the two Crite eggs. As they bring it aboard, the… um… boss of space (who looks exactly like Ug, who still looks like pop star Johnny Steele) contacts their ship and orders them to bring the pod to a huge space station or suffer the consequences. But slow down, Steve! Tell us who’s on this space crew.
Fine! The ship is crewed by pilot Fran as played by the one and only Angela Bassett (Strange Days, American Horror Story, 911), techy Al Bert (Brad Dourif of Dune, Child’s Play, and so much more), Eric DaRe (Leo from Twin Peaks, Starship Troopers), an annoying captain who’s the first to get chomped, and sad teen Ethan (Paul Whitmore in what is the last movie he might ever act in). They’re on a two-year voyage to someplace called Arion, but now they have to go three days out of their way to drop off the pod or they’ll probably get blasted into dust.
Of course, they get to the space station, it’s a mess, nobody’s there, and it becomes very clear that Critters 4 is basically a retread of Alien. Now, at least they were trying to do a funny, corny, version of Alien, where the monsters are much easier to kill, but it’s just never a good idea to wade into that pool. Many movies have tried and no matter how good they are, when the movie’s over, most of us think, “I should’ve just watched Alien.”
I’m not mad at writer/director Rupert Harvey for writing and directing Critters 4. He served as producer on some cool projects such as Pump Up the Volume, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, and the 1988 remake of The Blob, which is great! Do not believe the haters, The Blob is great. But the Critters just were not a hot property after Critters 2, made for $4.5 million, but only grossing $3.8 million, worldwide (even though it is a delight and maybe the first Easter horror? I don’t even think Night of the Lepus is an Easter horror and, let’s face it, it really should be).
There’s a joyfulness in Critters 1 & 2 that seems to be missing from 3 & 4. I’m not going to dig into what might’ve caused it, and I’m happy to say that joyfulness has somewhat returned in Critters Attack! On top of that, the business of filmmaking/marketing had drastically changed between 1986 and 1992. The video store boom had expanded into a ka-blammo-bammy-bazowie in the early 1990s and, yes, lots of good and bad movies were still opening in theaters, but there was a new way to make money on a movie: make it cheap, put a great cover-box on it, and send it straight to the shelves. Plenty of movies made plenty of money that way, and plenty of “cult classics” wouldn’t be classics at all if not for the rental business…and cable TV.
I can’t find the budget or box office gross for Critters 4, but hey, they tried. There’re a few laughs here and there, the Crites always get a giggle or two out of me, and all it cost me was the push of a button.
Which is exactly how I watched…
Streaming: Critters Attack! is available on Sling and for rental.
Critters Attack! (2019): I couldn’t find the Critters: A New Binge miniseries or I would’ve included it in this article. It’s supposed to be on Shudder, but it just ain’t (frowny face emoji that looks a lot like Steve Moulton).
SPOILER ALERT: Now that I’ve seen the movie, I do have to spoil one thing, so stop reading now or continue at your own risk… Ready?
You sure?
Okay, we’ll get there in a few. First, Critters Attack! Did something very right when they cast Tashiana Washington (Shaft 2019, HBO’s Betty, The Great Pretender) as their lead, a young adult who has set aside her college plans to earn money and help care for her younger brother. The second thing they did right was they brought back Dee Wallace in a big way. There’s something different about her and maybe that was explained in the miniseries, but I might never know.
The Crites are just as chompy and chewy as ever, but now they’ve been filmed in high-def, so they look extra gross and gooey! If you’re watching a movie about monsters that eat everything, you better be in the mood for gross and gooey.
But then there are a few misfires that just should’ve been left out. Like how they’ve changed the way the Crites reproduce, even though we’ve seen them lay eggs in four movies already. Another misfire is that there’s suddenly a special method to kill Crites, but that method fails immediately and our heroes just resort to melee weapons, and those still work just fine.
Lastly, (SERIOUSLY, FINAL WARNING TO BAIL BEFORE THE BIG SPOILER) the thing that really chapped my chops, especially since this movie is very new, is the appearance of a hero Crite. That’s right! Our human heroes find a single Crite that is kind and helpful all throughout their adventure.
And hey, that’s fine. Bringing in a hero Crite after four movies and a miniseries is just fine. But the hero Crite has mostly white hair and Caucasian skin. It is, for better or worse, the first white Crite and the white Crite gets to be the good guy… in 2019, after quite a few years of conversation about how pop culture needs to be more diverse, inclusive, and less white-washy.
They could’ve gone anywhere with this Crite’s look. Pink hair with blue skin. White hair with green skin. Green hair with lighter or darker green skin. I know the idea of a little, green alien in a sci-fi story is complete nonsense, but they could’ve tried. But no. They made a Caucasian Crite with smooth skin and white hair, and it’s the first “good” Critter. MmmmmmmmmmMISFIRE! I’m sorry to say it, but it is.
Now, did they balance it out by having the beautiful Tashiana Washington as their lead and a fairly diverse cast, including Alex Jeaven (Black Beauty on Disney+), Jaeden Noel (The Expanse), Ho Chow (Suicide Squad), and Vash Singh (The Banana Splits Movie)? Well, that’s not for me to answer, but my hat’s off to all those actors because, as I said before, I would say yes to a Critters movie before you could say…kill Crites.
There might be nothing left to do with the Critters after five movies, a miniseries, and a pretty cool short film (Critters Bounty Hunter, 2014), but Critters 1 & 2 are still a great way to spend a rainy night. As for the rest, maybe if you find yourself really craving Crites, go ahead and give ‘em a whirl. It’s your lockdown too, baby! If you think you might want to watch it, you might as well watch it.
Feel free to comment below! You can also send your thoughts on Twitter or Instagram to @bigstevemoulton.
Happy 2021!!!
Married to Horror Fun Facts:
A young Lin Shaye played the small role of Sally in the first Critters film and Sal in the sequel.
Many of you know Lin from her huge body of work but she’s become quite the horror queen since then with films like Nightmare on Elm Street where she played Nancy’s teacher and in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare she played the creepy nurse with the pills! Lin Shaye has gone on to act in big horror hits like Snakes on a Plane, The Insidious Franchise, Ouija, The Grudge (2020), and no one will ever forget her as Magda in There’s Something About Mary.
That’s not it for legacies in the Critters films! We’ve already mentioned Leonardo DiCaprio, Angela Bassett, Brad Dourif, and Lin Shaye but wouldn’t you know it Frances Bay was ALSO in a Critters film! In Critters 3: You Are What They Eat Frances plays Mrs. Menges, an elderly woman in the apartment complex and oh boy does she do her best to fight off those pesky Crites!
Frances Bay started acting in the 1970s and I guarantee she’s a face you’ve seen several times in your favorites shows and movies. Most famously Frances can be recognized as Mrs. Mabel Choate in Seinfeld, “He stole my marble rye!” as well as Grandma in Happy Gilmore and Aunt Ginny in The Middle! However, our undying love for Frances comes from her body of work in David Lynch projects such as Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
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