Review: Critters (1986)

This Town's A Zoo.

Critters (1986) is the tale of eight escaped convicts (Krites (or Critters to the human race)), menacing razor-toothed furballs, who shoot poison-tipped quills from their bodies, who've come to Earth to feed on everything that moves, and the protagonists, the Brown family and two trigger-happy bounty hunters, who are placed in a race against time to cut the bastards down like kudzu before they devour the whole of the world.

Set in the tiny town of Grover's Bend, Kansas, where hard work, liquor, and bowling are the rewards of life, Critters comes to the viewer as almost standard Sci-fi thriller fare, especially now that two decades have come and gone, but there is such decent skill to the writing (while sometimes uneven) that it leaves one always on guard for the most opposite of emotions: Terror and Laughter.

Scream Queen Dee Wallace Stone headlines as Helen Brown, mother and wife and shotgun-wielding (albeit half-assedly) heroine, who tries to keep her family together even when all hell has broken loose. There to help and eventually lead in this war against the Krites is her smart-assed son, Brad (Scott Grimes), whose love of homemade explosives and comic relief takes the audience along for eighty minutes of enjoyable entertainment.

The writing is pretty good for the most part, especially the little bantering between Father (Billy Green Bush) and Son (Grimes), with some of the best material delivered by the hedgehog-looking furballs. My favorite being a short little exchange that I didn't catch as a kid, but sure as hell caught me off guard when viewing it the other night.

Having introduced themselves to the Browns, the critters have come for dinner in a frantic standoff on the front porch. After a quick exercise in tension (the house is locked and the family must fend off the little terrors as Brad races to unlock the door), the writers (possibly the director Stephen Herek, writer Dominic Muir, or Don Opper, who wrote additional scenes,) throw out this little exchange between two of the critters in subtitles:

Critter 1: They Have Weapons

Critter 2: So What

The shotgun appears in the doorway. Critter 2 explodes into a raspberry spot of goo.

Critter 1: Fuck!

For its age and budget, Critters employs above standard art direction, cinematography, and editing to provide a quick and painless eighty minutes at the movies. In comparison to other 80s films of this genre, one could easily see some "creative inspiration" being used as a model for some of the shots and lighting used, but it doesn't really distract from the entertainment one would expect from a movie like this.

Some of the highlights of the movie have to be M. Emmet Walsh (the great character actor) as Harv, the town's Sheriff, the swiftness of the film's action, the decent suspense, the facial replication scene, and the cheesiness of the song, "Power of the Night," which I swear to God was heard or seen at least a half-dozen times (if not a full dozen) during the movie.

In the end what really separates this from other sub-par movies of its era are all the breaks of humor that are scattered about the moments of tension.

The first time I saw Critters I was probably around ten, around the VHS release of the second one (maybe even before then), and this being the first time in nearly a decade of seeing it (picked it up at Amazon for $5.99 last month), I must say it held a few pleasant surprises. For the Halloween season, Critters comes as a good popcorn flick the whole family can enjoy.

For its Genre/Era/X: Great

Overall: Really Good

Rated: PG-13 for a little blood, guts, two kills, and one use of the word your mother hates most.

If they had left that one word out, I'm almost certain that the 80s raters would have leniently given it a PG rating.

I'm warped, though.

Aside:

It amazes me how many names (big and small) have had a finger in this pudding of a series. Whether it being good casting/scouting/talent-searching/something else, I don't know, but here's just a sampling:

Dee Wallace Stone
M. Emmet Walsh
Billy Zane
Ethan Phillips
Mick Garris
David Twohy
Leonardo DiCaprio
Brad Dourif
Angela Bassett
Anne Ramsay
Scott Grimes

M. Emmet Walsh's picture courtesy of: http://www.releasing.net/

The Theatrical Trailer