Critters: A Four Course Feast
Directed by Stephen Herek/Mick Garris/Kristine Peterson/Rupert Harvey.
Starring Dee Wallace, Billy Green Bush, M. Emmet Walsh, Terrence Mann, Billy Zane, Lin Shaye, Scott Grimes, Liane Curtis, Lindsay Parker, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nina Axelrod, Don Keith Opper, Brad Dourif, Martine Beswick, and Angela Bassett.
SYNOPSIS:
Limited edition box set featuring the four original Critters movies.
It is time once again for the good folk at Arrow Video to take us back to the video shops of the 1980s and ’90s, to a time when the artwork on a VHS tape could sell the movie and discovering some random nonsense starring somebody you had seen in something more popular was one of the joys of the pre-internet age. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Critters.
Or to put it into its correct context, Critters: A Four Course Feast!, a new Blu-ray box set featuring the four original Critters movies released between 1986 and 1992 (which means no Critters Attack!, the belated sequel from 2019), the peak years for video tape rentals. Critters originally appeared in the wake of Joe Dante’s Gremlins from 1984, and so it was immediately accused of being a knock-off of that movie, but according to producer Barry Opper in the special features, the concept dates back to long before Gremlins went into production and the fact the two movies were released within a short space of time of each other was just one of those Hollywood coincidences. In it, a race of dangerous creatures known as Krites are being held prisoner in a spaceship hurtling through space, but after the small bitey creatures escape and head to Earth, two shape-shifting bounty hunters called Ug and Lee are hired to pursue them.
As is the norm in these situations, the Krites land in a rural farm in Kansas where the Brown family – dad Jay (Billy Green Bush), mum Helen (Dee Wallace Stone, as she was called then), and kids April (Nadine Van der Velde) and Brad (Scott Grimes) – live. The bounty hunters arrive and assume Earthly identities, with Ug taking on the appearance of rock star Johnny Steele (Terrence Mann) and Lee seemingly changing his face whenever he sees someone he likes, including Charlie (Don ‘brother of Barry’ Opper), who works for the Brown’s, and mayhem ensues as the two intergalactic races go head-to-head, with the Brown family caught in the middle.
As Critters proved to be a hit on video, Critters 2: The Main Course was greenlit almost immediately and appeared on shelves in 1988. Directed by Mick Garris, this sequel sees a returning Scott Grimes as Brad Brown, who goes to live with his grandmother after the traumatic events of the first movie. Also returning are Ug (still looking like Johnny Steele), Lee (still changing faces all the time) and Charlie, who has taken on the role of a bounty hunter, and the three of them travel through the galaxy destroying all sorts of alien monsters. That is, until they get the call that there are more Krites on Earth, and so it is back to Kansas for the trio as the mischievous little critters go on the rampage.
Despite not making as much as the first movie, a second sequel came along in 1991, with Critters 3 being sold on the idea that the deadly furballs were now loose in a Los Angeles apartment block, thanks to some clever poster art. But that wasn’t quite what we got, and the legacy of the movie is that it was the screen debut of a certain Leonardo DiCaprio, who, surprisingly, does not appear in the special features interviews to talk about how Critters 3 launched his career. Anyway, DiCaprio is not the star of Critters 3 – and it is hard to work out who is – but this time around it is a single father and his two children who become victims to the spiky Krites after they pull up at a rest stop. Charlie (a returning Don Opper) warns them about the creatures, but he fails to stop some eggs being laid underneath the family car, which then moves onto Los Angeles and the family’s new home in an apartment block.
And so onto Critters 4 from 1992, where the action picks up straight after the previous movie and we are off into space as Charlie (Opper) is accidentally frozen with the last two remaining Krite eggs. Fast forward to 2045 – which is now closer to present day than present day is to when the movie first came out, so chew that one over – and Charlie is rescued by the salvage ship RSS Tesla, which is carrying, amongst others, Brad Dourif and Angela Bassett in its crew. Of course, the Krites also get defrosted and the mayhem continues as the Charlie, the crew of the Tesla and Ug (Mann) – whose reasons for pursuing the Krites may not be as noble as they were before – go into battle once again.
There is a charm to the first movie, possibly because of the inclusion of Dee Wallace (Stone) in the cast – because she was everyone’s favourite movie mother in the 1980s – but mostly because of the 1950s B-movie nature of the setting. The Krites themselves are excellent creations – courtesy of The Chiodo Brothers – and are certainly as menacingly fun as the Gremlins, if a little less individual when it comes to characteristics, and featuring early appearances from Billy Zane and Lin Shaye, * certainly has a lot going for it. Unfortunately, the one thing that lets it down is the pacing, as it starts off fairly nippy and getting to the point but once we get to Earth and have to establish the Brown family the foot comes off the pedal and we spend a lot of time in the Stephen King-ish world of rural America. It helps that we have Dee Wallace (Stone) and Billy Green Bush as our focal points, but it takes its time to get to the fun stuff, and when it does the balance of horror and comedy is a little lop-sided towards the comedy.
However, the balance is readdressed in the second movie, as Critters 2:The Main Course is a little more polished, a little bit gorier and the Stephen King-isms are amplified, no doubt down to having Mick Garris behind the camera. There is also an evolution in the way the Krites attack, and when they all join together to make one giant Krite-ball it is a properly – and, probably, the only – iconic moment for the series.
But then we have the inevitable decline with Critters 3, as the move to the big city – which doesn’t really happen until quite late into the film – might make the scale of the action seem a little bigger, but once the setting leaves the homely setting of the US farmland most of the charm is gone, and without any star names either in front or behind the camera (DiCaprio doesn’t count as he wasn’t a star yet) so are most of the reasons to watch it. Don Opper is good fun, as he is throughout the whole series, and an appearance by Terrence Mann right at the end ties it in with what has gone before, but ultimately, Critters 3 fits perfectly alongside those dull Children of the Corn sequels that cropped up on video at the time, albeit with a little bit more of a sense of humour.
Whereas Leprechaun in Space and Hellraiser: Bloodline set their respective villains in space and had a certain charm about them, Critters 4 just falls flat, despite its antagonists actually coming from space so you would think it would be the natural place to set a story involving the Krites. Alas, money talks and with Critters 4 being shot back-to-back with its predecessor, there was very little budget for special effects, no doubt down to having to pay for Brad Dourif to appear as a scientist. Hiring a scriptwriter who could write some decent gags – which really shouldn’t be difficult, given the goofy B-movie setting – would also have helped, so yet again it is up to Don Opper to carry the movie, and even he looks like he’d rather be somewhere else.
When it comes to the movies themselves, Critters: A Four Course Feast is a mixed bag, with the first two movies being the main draw, and a lot of that goodwill will likely come from VHS nostalgia. However, they do make a fun double-bill if you’ve watched the two Gremlins movies far too often and fancy something in a similar vein. With that in mind, think of the other two movies as extended special features, there to watch if you want them, but don’t feel bad if you don’t as you aren’t really missing anything.
Each disc comes with its own retrospective, featuring interviews with the key production crew and a few of the actors – including Dee Wallace, Don Opper and Terrence Mann – and deleted scenes, trailers and archive audio commentaries. The real gem in this set, however, is that each movie comes with a brand-new audio commentary by film critics Matty Budrewicz and Dave Wain, whose unique insights into low-budget horror movies from this period are essential to get the maximum enjoyment out of the series, especially the third and fourth movies, which are too dry and tedious to watch without them. Also, the vibrant new artwork by Pye Parr is fantastic and finishes off the presentation in a wonderfully lurid way, so all in all, Critters: A Four Course Meal is a worthy set for collectors and fans of the VHS era, but its appeal may be limited for anybody else.
Flickering Myth Rating – Critters – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Flickering Myth Rating – Critters 2: The Main Course -Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Flickering Myth Rating – Critters 3 – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Flickering Myth Rating – Critters 4 – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Chris Ward
