Horror Movie Watch: Critters

This October, I’m attempting an ill-advised viewing of (at least) thirty-one horror movies. I’ll watch (on average) one movie a day, after which I’ll write some things about said movies on this website. Be forewarned that all such write-ups will contain spoilers! Today’s movie is a fitting tale (given it’s Canadian Thanksgiving) about creatures that can’t stop eating: Critters (1986). Directed by Stephen Herek (who deserves a lifetime achievement award from the Academy Awards because he directed Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure!), this movie was suggested by Arsenal Pulp Press publicist, writer, and seriously one of the most fun people I know, Cynara Geissler.

As always, a big thanks to Toronto’s Queen Video for existing, as that’s where I’ve obtained most of these movies. Patronize them. Patronize them often. (The manager looks kind of like Rob Corddry.)

What happens:

In my wayward childhood, I’m sure I saw at least one sequel to Critters (there are four), though I don’t think I saw the original recipe. Possibly I saw the third movie, which features a young Leonardo DiCaprio. Critters always occupied a particular space in my mental catalogue of movies from the ’80s: a bit gorier and scarier than Gremlins, not quite as adult and scary as Ghoulies. After watching it, I might have to re-adjust those rankings. (Gremlins is certainly scarier.)

Prior to the opening titles, viewers are taken to Prison Asteroid Sector 17, where, we’re informed, eight prisoners named ‘Crites’ are being delivered. Somehow, the prisoners (who we don’t see) commandeer a ship and make a daring escape. The space warden calls in two bounty hunters – glowing green faceless beings who are dressed kind of like the Imperial Guard in Return of the Jedi (if that means anything to you nerds) – and tells them to bring back the Crites, dead or alive. We then cut to the setting for the remainder of our story: an idyllic farm in Grover’s Bend, Kansas, home to Jay and Helen Brown, their teenaged daughter April, and their slightly younger son, Brad. Like most movie families of the 1980s, the older April is sophisticated and interested in boys, while Brad is a li’l stinker, interested in fireworks and tormenting his sister. Mom Helen (Dee Walace, from Cujo) is tireless and unappreciated. Dad Jay works hard and good-naturedly threatens his kids when they act up. They also employ a local man named Charlie to work on the farm.

Speaking of Charlie, he’s just spent the night in jail for public drunkenness. Police receptionist Sally informs the sheriff, Harv (M. Emmet Walsh), that he’s been making ridiculous claims about hearing aliens through his fillings. They let him go with a warning. Meanwhile, in deep space, the bounty hunters learn the Crites are heading for a planet called ‘earth.’ They rapidly study earth history to help them blend in. They’ll also need to shapeshift into human form, so one bounty hunter transforms (through a fairly gruesome process) into popular hair-metal rocker, Johnny Steele. Back on earth, Brad goofs off with hired man Charlie (who dresses almost exactly like Forrest Gump) by blowing things up with fireworks. (This is called ‘foreshadowing.’) That’s when April shows up at the farmhouse with her new boyfriend, Steve, straight outta’ New York. (The vanity New York licence plate on his sweet sports car reads ’2 GR8.’)

Steve stays for dinner – and, atypically for a New York boyfriend in movies, is very polite! – while Brad is sent to bed without supper for slingshot-related reasons. After dinner, April secrets Brad away to the barn and the two start making out, hard. Brad, from his window, sees them go to the barn, but he then sees something far more remarkable – some sort of meteor crashing in the field behind the house. Brad and his dad go to investigate and find only a mutilated cow. They head back home, thoroughly disturbed. But make no mistake: that was no meteor, but the Crites’ escape ship crash-landing on earth. And they’re about to introduce themselves to the local police force.

Jeff, local bumpkin police officer, sees a hedgehog or something run across the road while he’s driving, and he veers off into a ditch. Exiting his vehicle, he looks around for what he thinks must be a dog or opossum. Before he knows what’s hit him, a barb shoots into his leg and he’s dragged under his car, never to be seen (alive) again. Back at the Brown farm, mom Helen sees red eyes at the kitchen window. She calls for Jay, and the two of them soon find the phone line – then the electricity – in their home has been cut. They head out to the storm cellar to find the power box, and Dad, dressed for the local bowling tournament, heads down alone with his flashlight. He finds an animal in one corner that, without warning, leaps at him and begins savagely biting his shoulder. Jay is barely able to escape from the cellar; he emerges, bloodied and woozy from a barb the animal shot at him.

At this point, I should probably describe the titular critters. Like a twisted version of Sonic the Hedgehog, the Crites are gray-black animals that look like a hybrid of a porcupine and opossum, but with many, many more teeth. They ball up, Popple-style, and move by rolling around like a speedy tumbleweed. They also shoot tranquilizing barbs from their back that incapacitate their victims. And they aren’t fussy eaters: they eat cows, people, cars, garden utensils – whatever’s handy. You can see why the bounty hunters want to find them quickly. Their first stop upon earthfall is the murder scene of poor Jeff. The bounty hunter who’s yet to take human form decides to shapeshift into the dead police officer, but he shapeshifts into what he looks like as a bloodied corpse. (I should also point out that only their bodies change shape. The bounty hunters still wear their crimson, Dune-esque spacesuits, keeping a low profile.) They get into the car and drive it, backwards, down the highway.

Meanwhile, Steve and April are still heavy petting in the hayloft. But when Steve reaches for the radio knob, he comes back missing fingers. A Crite makes short work of the poor New York native, feasting on his guts. April screams and defends herself with a pitchfork, but she realizes she can’t hold off the critter for long. Luckily, Brad shows up with one of his fireworks and throws it into the monster’s mouth. The bounty hunters show up at the local church, causing a bit of a scene when the one who doesn’t look like Johnny Steele takes on the minister’s form and the other shouts, ‘We came for the Crites!’ (At first, I thought he shouted ‘We came for the Christ,’ and I figured he was in the right place.)

The Browns, realizing they’re under siege, make plans to leave. Jay loads his shotgun and takes his family to the truck. But it’s mostly been eaten by the Crites. And when they go for Steve’s car, a Crite jumps out at them. They seem to be growing! The Browns retreat to the house, but not before blowing one Crite apart with the shotgun. Before long, the Crites are breaking into the house through the chimney and windows, and the family hides in the bedroom. What follows is a fairly ridiculous scene of the critters making mischief – ripping apart pillows, eating an E.T. doll – all set to the series’ terrible Sega-like theme song. With the family trapped in the bedroom and Dad in kind of rough shape, Brad offers to go out the window, grab his bike, and go for help. However, the Crites are waiting for him. After a mad chase, he finally runs into the bounty hunters, who follow him back to the farm.

Mom takes control of the situation with the shotgun, and soon the bounty hunters arrive to assist, blowing the house to hell with their futuristic weapons. Sheriff Harv arrives, as well, very confused about what is happening. One of the Crites has grown to massive proportions and, a la King Kong, carries April off with him to his spaceship. Brad bikes after them, literally runs into Charlie (on his bike), and the two sneak into the crashed spaceship. They rescue April while the monster Crite is busy getting the ship back into working order, but Brad drops his totally awesome, extra-large firework in the process. Luckily, once they’ve escaped, the bounty hunters, who drove over with the sheriff, help him make a molotov cocktail (!.), which they toss into the escaping spaceship, exploding it over Kansan airspace. The bounty hunters (somehow) rapidly rebuild the Brown homestead with their magical space powers, and – after he thanks them for their help – give Brad a special communication device, and are all like, ‘Call me!’ (I imagine this device figures prominently in the many sequels.)

Takeaway points:

• Critters represents a strange moment in Hollywood that is probably best described as the ‘kid-ifcation’ of the horror film. I guess filmmakers realized that adolescents and pre-teens comprised a big portion of the horror audience (especially on home video). And with the relatively new PG-13 classification, they could make movies that followed the formula and tropes of horror, with the violence and terror somewhat watered down. The movies also usually included great dollops of humour and science fiction – think of movies like Gremlins and Monster Squad (both of which are superior films to Critters). But Brad is clearly the protagonist of Critters, and the male adolescent fantasy fulfillment of Brad saving the day, with his mischief becoming an asset against the alien hordes, is straight out of The Last Starfighter, where a teenager’s video game addiction leads him to become the leader of some sort of alien resistance. The resulting kid logic and silliness, melded with some really bloody scenes, makes for an interesting tonal mix.
• With the Crites landing in a field in Kansas, it’s easy to read Critters as a looking-glass version of the Superman story. After all, they’re both immigrant parables. But whereas the Superman story, written by the children of Jewish immigrants, tells the story of a benevolent immigrant who wants only to help and assimilate, Critters, written by Domonic Muir (of which I know little), portrays the imagined dangers of immigration: these immigrants are escaped convicts, come to literally eat us, house and home. This reading is emphasized all the more by taking place in Kansas, where all of the characters (save one extra) are very white. (Though, to be fair, horror movies aren’t overly reflective of North America’s diversity in general. The only other person of colour I can recall in the movies I’ve watched so far the heroic truck driver of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.) Perhaps the movie is simply reflecting mid-80s anxieties about immigration from Mexico (and other countries), but there’s no denying that foreign entities pose a major threat in Critters. Maybe the screenwriter felt betrayed by Reagan when, in 1986, he granted amnesty to 3 million undocumented Mexicans living in the U.S.
• Another small observation, but it was refreshing to see April as the sexual instigator in Critters – so different from many other horror movies of the 1980s. April is a free-willed individual, making all the first moves with Steve. (Steve, instead of the dickish 80s boyfriend we’re all expecting, is polite, good with parents, and a bit of a slow-starter on the romance.) It’s a great scene when a horrified Jay asks his wife, ‘Helen, have you talked to her …?’ And Helen scoffs, ‘Years ago.’ Compare that portrayal of teenage girlhood to countless slasher films of the same era.

Truly terrifying or truly terrible?: It’s pretty terrible. You certainly won’t be scared by Critters; it’s definitely the RC Cola to Gremlins‘ Coca-Cola Classic. But it certainly was a fascinating time-capsule with some impressive special effects.

Best outfit: There are a surprising number of quality outfits in Critters. Helen displays an impressive range of Stepford Wife apparel, and Jay’s bowling shirt has to be seen to be believed – pink and sea foam with a Ghostbusters homage on the back. The bounty hunters have pretty excellent uniforms, as well. As some shell-shocked churchgoers report to the sheriff, ‘They were wearing really funny-looking clothes.’ ‘Like they was [sic] from Los Angeles!’ But Steve wins the prize. Not only is he wearing an open pin-striped shirt with a crest (!), he’s got his sunglasses clipped in the middle of his gray V-neck, and is rocking a rat-tail. Hello, Operator? I’m here to report a fire – in my pants!

Best line: In some light father-son banter, Jay warns Brad, ‘You miss that bus, I’mma skin you and hang your bones out to dry!’ Parenting!

Best kill: You can’t beat the initial shotgun kill of a Crite. Two Crites stand on the Browns’ porch, and one says to the other (in their Crite language, subtitled for English speakers), ‘They have weapons.’ The other replies, ‘So what?’ and is promptly blown to smithereens. His friend shouts, ‘Fuck!’

Unexpected cameo: Critters is a treasure trove of ‘I-think-I-recognize-that-actor’ appearances, but none is more stunning than the appearance of a young Billy Zane portraying April’s New York boyfriend, Steve, who has an actual rat-tail! Honourable mention goes to Ethan Phillips, playing the police officer Jeff here. Star Trek Voyager watchers will know him better as Neelix.

Unexpected lesson learned: Even if his hit single is played non-stop on MTV, most people in Kansas won’t recognize Johnny Steele if he shows up at their church with an automatic weapon.

Most suitable band name derived from the movie: Disturbance at the Bowlarama Lanes. (A line spoken by police receptionist, Sally.)

Next up: The Nun (2005).