Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: on today's episode of Weird House Cinema, we are going
Speaker 3: to be talking about the nineteen eighty six sci fi
Speaker 3: creature feature Critters. I was going to say it's our
Speaker 3: first example from the Gromlins subgenre, but it is not.
Speaker 3: We've actually talked we did Grimlins two last year, that
Speaker 3: we haven't done Grimlins one. And also I think you
Speaker 3: covered a sort of Gromlin's adjacent movie while I was
Speaker 3: out last year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my friend David Streepy came on the show and
Speaker 2: we talked about the Gate, which, as we'll discuss here,
Speaker 2: is gromlin esque without being like a like a hard
Speaker 2: Gromlin or direct Gromlin feature.
Speaker 3: But if it's okay with you, I thought maybe we
Speaker 3: should start this episode by laying out a sort of
Speaker 3: filmographic timeline of the Gromlin subgenre, or what you might
Speaker 3: also call like tiny monster movies or small creature features.
Speaker 3: These were very popular in American cinema in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: and maybe by kind of laying them out in order
Speaker 3: we can help get at what these films mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because Gromlins are always fascinating, like trying to
Speaker 2: figure out like how they work, why they work, you
Speaker 2: know why Grimlins spawned so many imitators, and not just imitators,
Speaker 2: but also, as with this movie, I think Legitimate clearly
Speaker 2: had an influence on films that had their own ideas
Speaker 2: and had something different to offer, but still delivers on
Speaker 2: that same energy and rides that Gromlin wave.
Speaker 3: That's right. Okay, So the first big one is Grimlins
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four. This is the mac Daddy. We covered
Speaker 3: Gremlins two already, as I said, but not the original.
Speaker 3: So the Grimlins are small monsters that are spawned as
Speaker 3: a result of improper pet care. So they begin as
Speaker 3: a cute, friendly, fuzzy little guy called a Magway. And
Speaker 3: the Magua is great. He's a good buddy, but you
Speaker 3: absolutely positively cannot get him wet, and unfortunately the humans
Speaker 3: in the movie spill some water on their maguai, spawning
Speaker 3: other creatures like him. They kind of pop off of
Speaker 3: his back, but they're not exactly like him. They're not nice,
Speaker 3: they're mean, and these creatures are made even worse when
Speaker 3: another rule is violated and they are fed after midnight,
Speaker 3: which the characters are told not to do. That transforms
Speaker 3: the Mean Magway from just little trickster type things into
Speaker 3: dull sized, scaly, reptilian chaos demons that exist to mock
Speaker 3: and destroy all systems of order and organization, including human
Speaker 3: life itself. But as we talked about in our feature
Speaker 3: on Green Rimlins two, the Grimlins do kill people in
Speaker 3: these movies, yes, but what makes them special as monsters
Speaker 3: is that killing people is not their main goal. It's
Speaker 3: just one small part of their broader raisondetra, which is
Speaker 3: to make a mess. Grimlins exist to make a mess.
Speaker 3: They are chaos embodied and this goes back to their
Speaker 3: origin in folklore from before the film. The standard idea
Speaker 3: of where Grimlins came from is that British raf pilots
Speaker 3: in World War Two would blame engine malfunctions on Grimlins.
Speaker 3: They imagine little monsters that would get into the engines
Speaker 3: of the aircraft and chew through wires, disconnect things, and
Speaker 3: cause malfunctions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in general, I would say the folkloric roots
Speaker 2: of the Grimlin, or the basic Gromlin is yeah, any
Speaker 2: kind of diminutive trickster being. So there's a whole host
Speaker 2: of things that you can hold up to the light
Speaker 2: as being in the same vein. I think, like the
Speaker 2: basic that's one of the reasons Grimlins connects so well
Speaker 2: with an audience when it comes out is because this
Speaker 2: is not something we haven't seen before to some degree,
Speaker 2: and say cartoons, it's not something out of keeping with
Speaker 2: folkloric traditions, and so we instantly latch onto it. I
Speaker 2: would argue the other thing that really helps with Grimlins
Speaker 2: and the more successful Grimlins imitators, even the bad ones,
Speaker 2: is that there is a handcrafted puppet quality to a
Speaker 2: true Gromlin, where you know it's a puppet, you know
Speaker 2: it's an artificial being that's being brought to life via
Speaker 2: generally some sort of puppeteering, and that adds to the
Speaker 2: effect and also makes the scares a little safer, and
Speaker 2: it creates this special energy that is very consumable by
Speaker 2: a mass audience.
Speaker 3: I think that's a various due to observation, and I
Speaker 3: want to come back to that when we talk about
Speaker 3: the appeal of these movies. Okay, but so Grimlins is
Speaker 3: the first one that's eighty four. Second main one that
Speaker 3: most people recognize is Ghoulies, which came out either in
Speaker 3: eighty four or eighty five. I've seen both year cited
Speaker 3: for its release, maybe in different markets, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It does seem to have come after Grimlins, because multiple
Speaker 3: reviews at the time call it a Grimlins ripoff. However,
Speaker 3: it seems these two movies were in development at the
Speaker 3: same time, so I haven't done a deep dive on this,
Speaker 3: but I think it appears that Goolies was not just
Speaker 3: like looking at the success of Grimlins and saying, let's
Speaker 3: do something like that.
Speaker 2: We will have to watch a Gholies movie someday. Goolies.
Speaker 2: If you're not familiar, and if you're not famili it's
Speaker 2: almost hard for me to believe because having grown up
Speaker 2: as a child in the eighties going to VHS and
Speaker 2: later DVD rental stores, but especially VHS rental stores and
Speaker 2: seeing the box art and or posters for Goolies, it
Speaker 2: was horrifying because the VHS box art promises one thing,
Speaker 2: Goolies will crawl up through the toilet and bite you
Speaker 2: in the butt. They are That is the threat that
Speaker 2: is promised on the VHS I'm not saying the movie
Speaker 2: completely delivers on that concept, but this is just indetachable
Speaker 2: from the franchise.
Speaker 3: The main box art is a green, bald Gholie creature
Speaker 3: wearing I don't know, like red suspenders and a blue
Speaker 3: T shirt. I don't know what this outfit means, but
Speaker 3: it's this green bald creature with sharp teeth popping up
Speaker 3: out of a toilet bowl with its hands on the seat,
Speaker 3: and the tagline is they'll get you in the end.
Speaker 2: I wish they mean the butt. Yeah. Yeah, so horrifying
Speaker 2: as a kid, because this is not what you want
Speaker 2: when to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 3: Not at all though. So it's been many years since
Speaker 3: I saw Gholies. I have only the vaguest memories about it,
Speaker 3: but I recall this not actually being a thing that
Speaker 3: happens in the movie. Am I right about that?
Speaker 2: I think you're right. My memory too, is kind of
Speaker 2: an amalgam of different bits from Goolies movies I watched
Speaker 2: on like late night cable television. I think it might
Speaker 2: not have been a thing in the first film, and
Speaker 2: or it might have been like, oh god, we put
Speaker 2: a Gooli coming out of a toilet on the vhs R.
Speaker 2: Let's throw in a scene. It might even something like that.
Speaker 2: I think by the second film they're definitely making sure
Speaker 2: they get some some toilet humor in there. Well.
Speaker 3: The general idea is that this is also a movie
Speaker 3: with small monsters running around a house killing people, but
Speaker 3: rather than being an improper pet care situation gone awry,
Speaker 3: the small monsters in Ghoulies are servants of the devil.
Speaker 3: They are summoned by an occult ritual to do the
Speaker 3: bidding of a malevolent Satanic sorcerer.
Speaker 2: Yes, they're demons for sure.
Speaker 3: Which certainly seems like a more evil and adult kind
Speaker 3: of spin on the small monster's idea than in Grimlins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because Grimlins there, Yeah, they're pets, they're vaguely some
Speaker 2: sort of creature out of Chinese fantasy. But yeah, this
Speaker 2: time servants of the Yeah, you have to take that
Speaker 2: a lot more seriously because you know that they're underlings
Speaker 2: for something else, something worse.
Speaker 3: Okay, the next big Grumblins movie on the timeline is
Speaker 3: the one we're talking about today, Critters from nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3: How is this one different? Well, the small monsters here
Speaker 3: are not not little chaos goblins from you know that
Speaker 3: sound like something out of a folk tale with little
Speaker 3: pet care rules. They're also not servants of Satan. They
Speaker 3: are science fiction alien fugitives from an asteroid prison, and
Speaker 3: they are here to eat. Their main quality, the main
Speaker 3: quality possessed by the Crites, as they are called in
Speaker 3: the film, is that they are hungry and they will
Speaker 3: eat anything and anyone that's right.
Speaker 2: And I would describe them as being kind of little
Speaker 2: round guys, kind of in the vibe of a cartoon porcupine,
Speaker 2: but then with just a shark's mouth of teeth, ruby
Speaker 2: red eyes. But they still have that, they still have attitude.
Speaker 2: They have that kind of Grimlin's energy where they they're hungry.
Speaker 2: They're mainly here to eat, but they're up for a
Speaker 2: little mischief as well.
Speaker 3: They're little humanoid hedgehogs that shoot poison quills and have
Speaker 3: at least three rows of little thornlike teeth. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: mean nasty eyes and they're like they're vindictive.
Speaker 4: They're mean, yeah, but a little bit cute, A little
Speaker 4: bit cute, a little bit cute too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, the poster art for this one is also
Speaker 2: pretty incredible. I remember this one from the video stores
Speaker 2: of old because you have this wonderful illustration of a krite,
Speaker 2: and I don't know if it's a one hundred percent
Speaker 2: accurate representation of what they look like in the film,
Speaker 2: but it captures the energy, it captures the mischief in Hunger.
Speaker 3: I agree. So when you showed me this picture the
Speaker 3: poster before we watched the movie, I was thinking, Oh, wow,
Speaker 3: this is one of those great things where the monster
Speaker 3: on the box art is fully revealed and it looks
Speaker 3: awesome and is somewhat misleading, Like, it looks a lot
Speaker 3: different than it does in the movie. Actually, once I
Speaker 3: watched the the movie, I was like, it's not as
Speaker 3: misleading as I first thought. It's basically on track. You know,
Speaker 3: the eyes are a different color and stuff, but there
Speaker 3: is some kind of energy that's different. This monster is
Speaker 3: just kind of classier looking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like he needs a little suit or something. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, when you shared the poster with me and chat it,
Speaker 3: it cropped it so that the title at the bottom
Speaker 3: was just Ritter.
Speaker 2: Ritter versus Critter. Was one of the great missed opportunities
Speaker 2: of this franchise.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, problem child with Critters. Yeah, all right, but
Speaker 3: that gets us up to nineteen eighty six. It did
Speaker 3: not stop there. And by the way, we're not noting these,
Speaker 3: but there are sequels popping up as we go along
Speaker 3: to it, So you're gonna also get Grimlins two Gholies,
Speaker 3: two Goolies, three, Critters two and so forth. But in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty seven we get Muncheese. This one is produced
Speaker 3: by our old pal, Roger Korman. Allegedly he was like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know these Grimlin ripoffs, they're making money. Let's do one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these other films as well, as we'll discuss with
Speaker 2: Critters as well. You know, there are alternate takes on
Speaker 2: it where they're like, well, this was already an idea
Speaker 2: and we just tweaked it a little bit. But this
Speaker 2: is Corman. You know what's up here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like, let's do a Grimlins clone. So Munchies
Speaker 3: was directed by Tina Hirsch. The plot concerns a man
Speaker 3: who brings a creature that he finds in a cave
Speaker 3: in Peru back to the United States, and the problem
Speaker 3: seems to come when someone tries to chop the creature
Speaker 3: in half and it just turns into two creatures and
Speaker 3: so on and so on. So it's like it's like
Speaker 3: Grimlins meets the Legend of the Hydra.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I've never seen this one, but the box
Speaker 2: art is familiar to me because you basically have what
Speaker 2: looks like a cross between a Grimlin and one of
Speaker 2: those trolls with the spiky hair treasure trolls. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: looks like a treasure troll and a Grimlin had a
Speaker 2: baby and then that baby took up drinking beer and
Speaker 2: smoking cigarettes.
Speaker 3: Yes, and it's a pervert. That's the main thing you
Speaker 3: need understand from the poster is it's like perven on ladies.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know if they I mean, I assume
Speaker 2: this happens in the movie, who knows, But that's what
Speaker 2: they're selling. It's like, we're the Grimlins, too tame for you.
Speaker 2: Do you want Raunchy or Grimlins, Well, then meet the Munchies.
Speaker 3: So I've never seen Munchies either, but I found a
Speaker 3: screenshot and Rob, is it just me? Or are the
Speaker 3: Munchies dressed like the Bounty hunters in Critters kind of?
Speaker 2: They have some sort of weird futuristic doll clothing on,
Speaker 2: don't they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, similar color scheme that kind of underlying sort of
Speaker 3: red brown clay color and then like the black stuff
Speaker 3: on top. I don't know, it looks similar to me.
Speaker 2: Looks like the puppetry has slid a bit from the
Speaker 2: titles we've discussed already and is moving closer to the
Speaker 2: title that we're going to discuss next.
Speaker 3: The next movie from nineteen eighty eight is Hobgoblins, famous
Speaker 3: for Mystery Science Theater three thousand. The origin of the
Speaker 3: monsters here is that they crash landed from space, and
Speaker 3: then they were kept locked in a vault in a
Speaker 3: movie studio for decades. Now they have escaped, so it's
Speaker 3: aliens again. This one feels more like it is ripped
Speaker 3: from the plot of critters aliens crashing on Earth.
Speaker 2: Hobgoblins is, of course terrific, just a terrific film. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's one of the great episodes of ms
Speaker 2: T three k. It's a perfect film for riffing on,
Speaker 2: though it also inherently has its own built in campiness
Speaker 2: and intentional humor, some of which lands. Some of it
Speaker 2: falls fantastically flat. But when it does fall flat, it
Speaker 2: flands in such a way that it can then be
Speaker 2: riffed upon and enjoyed.
Speaker 3: I haven't watched this one in a while either, but
Speaker 3: I remember it having a great quality of scenes that
Speaker 3: go on way too long and become very funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeap, you get all sorts of cool. So yeah,
Speaker 2: clubs what clubscum? I think they go to clubscum in that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, m okay. So that's just a selection of the
Speaker 3: main ones that came to my mind. I think those
Speaker 3: are the main franchises you're going to get, are like
Speaker 3: Gholi's Critters and Grimlins, but there are some other like
Speaker 3: one offs in between there and addition to all the sequels.
Speaker 3: So there were a lot of these movies and they
Speaker 3: made a lot of money.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And I think you can kind of divide
Speaker 2: them up. I kind of divide them up into thinking
Speaker 2: about like direct Gromlins and indirect Gromlins. So the direct
Speaker 2: ones are going to be pretty much the films we've
Speaker 2: already listed, Goolies, Munchies, Hobgoblins, you know, easy to point
Speaker 2: out and say, hey, if I liked Grimlins, I might
Speaker 2: like that, et cetera. But indirect Gromlins are going to
Speaker 2: be situations where you have things in common with Grimlins,
Speaker 2: and they're still likely to be cash ins to some degree.
Speaker 2: If not creative cash ins. Then in many of these cases,
Speaker 2: like clearly somebody with the money to finance that. Well,
Speaker 2: this is a great idea because we know these sorts
Speaker 2: of films actually so. But you may have different things
Speaker 2: going on. For instance, you might have the effects leaning
Speaker 2: more into monster suits as opposed to shrieking puppets, and
Speaker 2: you also might see greater originality in some cases. So
Speaker 2: for example, the Troll movies are sometimes mentioned as being
Speaker 2: Grimlin's ripoffs. And you know, I don't know that I've
Speaker 2: ever watched the first Troll all the way through, but
Speaker 2: we talked about Troll two on here. Troll two definitely
Speaker 2: has Grimlin energy going on, but the creatures are not
Speaker 2: brought to life in such a way. The creatures are
Speaker 2: clearly people in costumes that actually comes off more threatening
Speaker 2: because the costumes are so bad.
Speaker 3: I agree in a way, I don't know if I
Speaker 3: would put Troll two in the Gromlins category, because like
Speaker 3: the trolls or the goblins, Oh yeah, that's right, they're goblins,
Speaker 3: not trolls. Yeah, they're people in suits, like, they're not
Speaker 3: the like the dull sized creatures running around, you know,
Speaker 3: causing mayhem like that, and they've got a different mo
Speaker 3: they they're not as mischievous, you know, as the creatures
Speaker 3: in all the Gromlins movies are. They just want to
Speaker 3: turn you into plant matter and eat you.
Speaker 2: Another film that comes to mind is nineteen eighty five's
Speaker 2: Cat's Eye, which was of course a horror anthology film
Speaker 2: based on works by Stephen King, and the title story
Speaker 2: in it concerns a little troll creature who is It
Speaker 2: comes out of the hole in the wall to suck
Speaker 2: out a child's breath at night while they sleep, and
Speaker 2: the cats are of course blamed for it, but the
Speaker 2: cat is like one of the direct lines of defense
Speaker 2: against said troll.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the cat has to save the day. I saw
Speaker 3: that movie when I was way too young to see it,
Speaker 3: and it scared me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a scary looking creature. I think this one
Speaker 2: they mostly did with a costume though, but with really
Speaker 2: awesome gigantic sets, so the effects I think are really admirable.
Speaker 3: Here. Okay, another thing that's notable in the Gromlin space,
Speaker 3: while it's not a movie, is I think best seen
Speaker 3: as part of the cultural phenomenon of Gromlins, and that
Speaker 3: would be Boglins, released in nineteen eighty seven, a popular
Speaker 3: line of monster themed hand puppets for kids. You turn
Speaker 3: your hand into a goblin, Rob, did you have Boglins
Speaker 3: or do you know what I'm talking about? Oh?
Speaker 2: I definitely know what you're talking about. I never had one,
Speaker 2: but I wanted one at the time. These were created
Speaker 2: by Tim Clark, who also worked on The Dark Crystal
Speaker 2: and Fraggle Rock and the Creature and Muppet design areas.
Speaker 2: For instance, he was on the team that created the
Speaker 2: mystics for The Dark Crystal and I think I follow
Speaker 2: him on Instagram because he's brought Boglins back. They've recreated them,
Speaker 2: new materials and new designs for a new generation. I
Speaker 2: would totally buy one if it were the kind of
Speaker 2: thing that my son enjoyed at all. But I would
Speaker 2: just be buying it for me, which feels which which
Speaker 2: I don't feel strongly enough to do.
Speaker 3: Rob, you can buy it for you. It's okay, I
Speaker 3: give you permission.
Speaker 2: I only have so much room for fake monsters in
Speaker 2: the house, you know. And it's just I'm gonna have
Speaker 2: to let somebody else buy that Boglin and love it
Speaker 2: well anyway.
Speaker 3: With this whole tiny Monster is phenomenon the Gromlins craze.
Speaker 3: I started thinking, why was this a Why was this
Speaker 3: such a thing at the time and place it was.
Speaker 3: Why did groups of tiny, rampaging monsters with mischievous personalities
Speaker 3: become such a phenomenon in American movies in the mid
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties? Like, what about this theme resonated? I think,
Speaker 3: I don't know this, This is still kind of only
Speaker 3: half formed in my mind, but I think there is
Speaker 3: something significant in the fact that these monsters are, in
Speaker 3: their very essence like toys somehow, they are already merchandise
Speaker 3: marketed to kids in their original form, but they're dangerous
Speaker 3: and pretty close to R rated. So there's a kind
Speaker 3: of ambiguity about the intended audience of a number of
Speaker 3: these movies. The original Grimlins. I don't know if so
Speaker 3: much for Gholies, but the original Grimlins and Critters. These
Speaker 3: are movies that, on one hand, if you watch them,
Speaker 3: you'd say, well, I guess this is supposed to be
Speaker 3: a regular horror movie for adults only, because you know,
Speaker 3: they're pretty violent and they have some adult themes. But
Speaker 3: they're also on the tamer end of adult horror movies,
Speaker 3: and they have elements that seem like maybe they're supposed
Speaker 3: to appeal to kids, Like the fact that the monsters
Speaker 3: are little makes them seem kind of cute in a way,
Speaker 3: even the ones that are more ugly, and in some
Speaker 3: cases these monsters explicitly have cute avatars. Allow the Magwi
Speaker 3: in Gremlins or Critters also are They're somewhere between scary
Speaker 3: and cute. They are a little bit cute. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: I wonder if this led to it seeming like kids
Speaker 3: could maybe be allowed to watch these movies like Critters
Speaker 3: is PG thirteen. It's not rated R, but it's a
Speaker 3: rough PG thirteen. And of course a lot of kids,
Speaker 3: you know, they love monsters. They love if the parents
Speaker 3: will let them watch a scary, bloody monster movie, they'll
Speaker 3: be into it. So maybe something about the ability of
Speaker 3: these movies to defy marketing and content restriction pipelines and
Speaker 3: end up in front of audiences that were technically too
Speaker 3: young for them was part of the success. What do
Speaker 3: you think about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, just looking back on my own childhood,
Speaker 2: it seemed like a time when more kids were watching
Speaker 2: films without a lot of parent parental supervision, and so
Speaker 2: there was more room for films like this to sort
Speaker 2: of be gateways into other franchises of horror, And I
Speaker 2: don't know, I guess it's kind of weird though, to
Speaker 2: think about them, because on one hand, like you're saying,
Speaker 2: they're not like Disney Family films like you would rent
Speaker 2: during this time period, but they're not like really really
Speaker 2: hard horror with like really strong adult themes. They are
Speaker 2: this kind of like transitional place where kids could watch
Speaker 2: it and feel like they're breaking the rules a little bit,
Speaker 2: but at the same time, like a parental unit might
Speaker 2: watch this and see and like, well, it's fine, it's fine.
Speaker 3: It's not too bad. Yeah, another possible part of the appeal.
Speaker 3: I was talking to Rachel about this, and we were
Speaker 3: wondering if maybe the movies are appealing to adults because
Speaker 3: the monsters are in some sense kids. So we were
Speaker 3: talking about whether it's possible that, like maybe a certain
Speaker 3: generation of filmmakers and audiences, we're all having kids around
Speaker 3: around the same time, and of course, you know, we
Speaker 3: love our kids, but there is sometimes a great temptation
Speaker 3: to imagine our children in their more destructive moods, as
Speaker 3: rampaging little monsters that have gotten loose in your house,
Speaker 3: and I can see how that could be part of
Speaker 3: the appeal. But of course earlier generations of filmmakers and
Speaker 3: audiences would have been having similar experiences becoming parents and
Speaker 3: watching their children unleash a flood of chaos through the home.
Speaker 3: So that still does leave us back with the question
Speaker 3: of like, what was so special about this theme in
Speaker 3: the mid nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like it. I think part of it is materials.
Speaker 2: It's the fact that they had to lean on puppetry
Speaker 2: and the puppetry in the creature effects of other forms.
Speaker 2: They had to be pretty darn good, even in these
Speaker 2: cases where where we may laugh at the execution, like hobgoblins.
Speaker 2: I mean still hobgoblins look pretty good. Maybe not on
Speaker 2: the same level as Critter, is much less grimlins to grimlins,
Speaker 2: but they still look pretty good. You can buy into them.
Speaker 2: And part of that is just the sublime magic of
Speaker 2: puppetry as a storytelling medium. A puppet does not have
Speaker 2: to look one hundred life like because the puppeteer breathes
Speaker 2: life into it, and that's where the magic happens.
Speaker 3: I think that's a very good point, though of course
Speaker 3: you cite the example of Grimlins too, which has amazing
Speaker 3: puppetry but also goes well beyond puppetry. And I don't
Speaker 3: know whatever they were doing with electricity Grimlin. I think
Speaker 3: that was like animation on film or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean some of these other like the
Speaker 2: Gate comes to mind, like they are little demon creatures
Speaker 2: running around in there, and they use multiple different forms
Speaker 2: of special effects to bring those to life, include stop
Speaker 2: motion stop motion, but also people in suits and so forth.
Speaker 2: So you know it's it's gonna vary you're gonna end up.
Speaker 2: Even in this one, there are cases where it's puppetry,
Speaker 2: and there are cases where it's clearly like a ball
Speaker 2: of fur that people off off screen or rolling across
Speaker 2: across the set.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you might really be onto something about
Speaker 3: that with the with the effects that like the tactile
Speaker 3: nature and size of the effects, and also that may
Speaker 3: connect in a way to what I was saying a
Speaker 3: minute ago about the the facts that these monsters are
Speaker 3: already in their original form, so similar to toys, which
Speaker 3: might have some kind of like merchandising appeal or something.
Speaker 2: This movie actually touches on one possible connection, and that
Speaker 2: is e t Yeah, this film features one of those,
Speaker 2: and I definitely remember these from my childhood. I never
Speaker 2: had one, but it's like this kind of like Naga
Speaker 2: Hyde sort of et plush. That was very weird because, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not completely huggable, like it's not soft, that it
Speaker 2: doesn't have fur, and it's based on Et, which I
Speaker 2: was thinking about watching this film. It's like Et is
Speaker 2: of course a classic film, very influential. You know, it
Speaker 2: wouldn't have works like Pod People without it. But on
Speaker 2: the other hand, it seems like the creature design is
Speaker 2: one of the limiting factors of ET, because Et is
Speaker 2: just ugly. Et is not cuddly, and you have to like,
Speaker 2: they did a great job creating even a like an
Speaker 2: acceptable stuffy based on him. But yeah, you can't help
Speaker 2: but wonder what would Et be even have been even
Speaker 2: more successful? Would it kind of like have have even
Speaker 2: more lasting influence if the creature had looked differently.
Speaker 3: I think part of the beauty of Et is the
Speaker 3: idea that you have to see past what Et looks like,
Speaker 3: that you get to know that this is a this
Speaker 3: is a friendly, benevol creature, and when you get to
Speaker 3: know his personality, Et becomes beautiful but he's not like
Speaker 3: when you just look at him, he's not cuddly looking.
Speaker 2: No, he looks like a coat rack, the coat rack
Speaker 2: made out of like naked flesh.
Speaker 3: He also kind of looks like a like a stalagmite
Speaker 3: in a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah he does.
Speaker 3: Oh but yeah, you were you were mentioning. There's a
Speaker 3: scene with an ET toy in the movie and the
Speaker 3: critter or the crite is trying to like communicate with it.
Speaker 3: It's like booping it, being like, hey, what's up, buddy,
Speaker 3: But the et does not talk back, So the crit
Speaker 3: becomes annoyed and I think just bites its head off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it just bites into it. All right, Joe,
Speaker 2: what's your elevator pitch for this one?
Speaker 3: Well you probably already know by this point, but he
Speaker 3: basically furry little creatures which are also vindictive sentient fugitives
Speaker 3: from space jail land in a sleepy Midwest farm village
Speaker 3: and begin to eat everything in sight, and it is
Speaker 3: up to two alien bounty hunters and a brave young
Speaker 3: pyromaniac to stop them.
Speaker 2: All right, let's listen to that trailer audio.
Speaker 6: Of all the planets in the galaxy, they chose ours,
Speaker 6: They hide in small places.
Speaker 2: This phone is dead.
Speaker 6: What they light the dark?
Speaker 2: Ju just a minute.
Speaker 6: There's nothing cute about them all. They've come a long
Speaker 6: way and they're hungry Internet, and they're getting bigger.
Speaker 5: Critters they bite, all right, If you want to go
Speaker 5: watch Critters for yourself, well, it's widely available and currently
Speaker 5: as of this recording, streaming along with only Critters three
Speaker 5: on Max.
Speaker 2: I don't know what David Zaslov has against Critters two
Speaker 2: and Critters four, but I don't think they are streaming
Speaker 2: alongside Critters one and Critters three. Masks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Max, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: But if they're out there somewhere, they're not unavailable. And
Speaker 2: there is also an excellent looking Critters collection Blu ray
Speaker 2: box set, which features Critters one through four with extras.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into the people involved here. The
Speaker 2: director and one of the screenwriters on this is Stephen
Speaker 2: Herrick born nineteen fifty eight, accomplished mainstream Texan born director
Speaker 2: who launched his career with this film in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: He followed it up on a debut Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's a it's a well executed film. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's very watchable, very enjoyable. So it's not a
Speaker 2: bad way to start off at all.
Speaker 3: I'm not fully being ironic when I say I can
Speaker 3: see the line from Critters to mister Holland's Opus.
Speaker 2: Yes, because yeah, he goes on to do a number
Speaker 2: of films that I would just roughly describe as feel good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of feel good elements in this
Speaker 2: particular film, and you can totally see that being something
Speaker 2: that he, you know, he took up and ran with
Speaker 2: and made a career out of, because they absolutely were.
Speaker 2: And the score also goes along with it. The score
Speaker 2: is great at times in ways that I really like.
Speaker 2: Other times it has that kind of comedy energy where
Speaker 2: it's like this summer, are you ready for the adventure
Speaker 2: of a lifetime? The Critters are on the move, you
Speaker 2: know that kind of thing. Ran odd, no, dear, Yeah,
Speaker 2: but anyway, more in the score in a minute, anyway. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He followed this movie up with eighty nine's Bill and
Speaker 2: Ted's Excellent Adventure Ooh, and did especially well fro himself
Speaker 2: in the nineties, directing stuff like The Mighty Ducks in
Speaker 2: ninety two, The Three Musketeers in ninety three, which was
Speaker 2: very nineties, but also had tremendous cast mister Hollins, Ope
Speaker 2: is like you said in ninety five one hundred and
Speaker 2: one Dalmatians in ninety six. His subsequent work includes a
Speaker 2: lot of mainstream television two Dolly Parton specials, as well
Speaker 2: as the twenty twenty three movie Dog Gone, which I
Speaker 2: think is a movie about a lost dog.
Speaker 3: Oh no, well, I hope they get dog back.
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, they get the dog back.
Speaker 3: Of course, I know this guy's vibe. Now, Yeah, they'll
Speaker 3: get the dog backed, and Dolly Parton will show up
Speaker 3: at the end and sing a song and everybody's kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that. You know, I'm not knocking to
Speaker 2: people need movies like that. Someone's going to make them,
Speaker 2: and and this guy's got the skills to do it.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen most of them, but they seem fine now.
Speaker 2: Early in his career as an editor, he also worked
Speaker 2: on such films as eighty two's The Slumber Party, Massacre Android,
Speaker 2: which is a Kloskinski space movie, Space Raiders in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four City Limits. When when he's been asked about critters,
Speaker 2: it's my understanding. He's also he's pointed out that Critters
Speaker 2: was conceived prior to Grimlins, but that they actually went
Speaker 2: back in and like had like, they changed it around
Speaker 2: a bit to make sure that they weren't too close
Speaker 2: to the Grimlins format, So it sounds reasonable to me now.
Speaker 2: One of the other writers on this is Dominic Muir,
Speaker 2: who lives Live nineteen sixty two through twenty ten. This
Speaker 2: is his earliest credit on a produced screenplay, but he
Speaker 2: went on to work on scripts for such movies as
Speaker 2: two thousand and five, The Ginger dead Man.
Speaker 5: OH.
Speaker 2: Two and six is Evil Bong and the rest of
Speaker 2: the Evil Bong movies. All of these are definitely their
Speaker 2: own thing. But I think these movies, along with other
Speaker 2: full Moon entertainment style fairs such as like puppet Master
Speaker 2: and so forth, I think those are all kind of
Speaker 2: in the shadow of Grimlins as well. Those aren't necessarily creatures,
Speaker 2: but they're you know, evil, vindictive puppet type things running
Speaker 2: around killing people.
Speaker 3: I haven't enjoyed many a Z grade movie in my time,
Speaker 3: but I recalled The Ginger dead Man being so painful
Speaker 3: to get through. It's like voice of Gary Busey, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's somehow. I haven't seen them, but he's somehow
Speaker 2: involved with these pictures. Yeah, yeah, he's the He's in
Speaker 2: that one. And then Tommy Chong is involved with the
Speaker 2: Evil Bong franchise, as is Rabbit.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I'd watch it just for Rabbit.
Speaker 2: All right. Moving into the cast here. Top billing on
Speaker 2: this one is d Wallace aka d Wallace Stone, playing
Speaker 2: Helen Brown, the mom. This is an actor born in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty eight. She's been a lot of TV and
Speaker 2: film over the years, but really established herself as a
Speaker 2: sci fi and horror staple. Her credits include The Stepford
Speaker 2: Wives from seventy five, Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes
Speaker 2: from seventy seven, The Howling from eighty one, Et from
Speaker 2: eighty two, Kujo from eighty three. In nineteen ninety, she
Speaker 2: was an alligator to The Mutation, Popcorn in ninety one,
Speaker 2: and a whole string of more recent films. A lot
Speaker 2: of times you'll have hard directors working today kind of
Speaker 2: bring her back in, you know, in part because of
Speaker 2: the nostalgia of these previous roles she had. So you'll
Speaker 2: find her in a couple of rob zombie productions, including
Speaker 2: The Lords of Salem. She also pops up in how
Speaker 2: in the House of the Devil, she's still very active.
Speaker 3: D Wallace is great as always, and you hear I
Speaker 3: feel like you can really see her filling out the
Speaker 3: full scale of feel good to feel bad films because
Speaker 3: you get you know, okay, So at the full feel
Speaker 3: good end, she's in Et. Great in that. At the
Speaker 3: full feel bad end, she's in Kujo, just one of
Speaker 3: the nastiest, most depressing horror movies ever. And then here
Speaker 3: I'd say Critters is right in the middle. It's right
Speaker 3: between Et and Kujo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she does a great job in this film delivering
Speaker 2: the idea of like the brave mom in this kind
Speaker 2: of traditional, very traditional, almost nineteen fifties household, but is
Speaker 2: also put through extreme terror by these attacking monstrosities. Now
Speaker 2: we'll get to the rest of her family in a second.
Speaker 2: We're gonna go ahead and go to the next build
Speaker 2: actor and that this concerns the character Harve, who's the
Speaker 2: local sheriff played by the legendary character actor him EMMITTT. Walsh.
Speaker 3: So when we were trying to decide what movie to
Speaker 3: feature for this week, we saw that m Emmett Walsh
Speaker 3: was in Critters, and I it was brought to my
Speaker 3: mind that Roger Ebert had a rule. He said that
Speaker 3: he thought that no film, I think I'm getting this right,
Speaker 3: no film featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or m Emmett
Speaker 3: Walsh could be entirely bad. And I was like, but
Speaker 3: I bet he broke that rule with critters and gave
Speaker 3: it a one star. Nope, three stars for critters. He
Speaker 3: liked critters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he whn't it's crazy about critics too, but he
Speaker 2: liked critters one. I should also add, in trying to
Speaker 2: decide which film to cover, here were and I've encountered
Speaker 2: this conundrum before with the Critters franchise is where do you?
Speaker 2: Where do you go? Because all four films have the
Speaker 2: critters in them, and each one has someone involved in
Speaker 2: it that makes it seem irresistible, Like I mean, this
Speaker 2: one you have m m At Walsh and it's the
Speaker 2: first movie I think it's two is You has David
Speaker 2: Towey working on the script, and then also Leonardo DiCaprio's
Speaker 2: perhaps his film debut I don't recall off hand, and
Speaker 2: in a later version of what I think, four has
Speaker 2: Brad Doriff and Angela Bassett in it.
Speaker 3: So oh, boy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So you know, there's so many reasons to go
Speaker 2: with each one, we decided to go.
Speaker 5: With the first one.
Speaker 3: Maybe we'll the next four weeks just do all of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see. We'll see how this one of the
Speaker 2: matters for everyone. So anyway. Walsh Yes born nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 2: still active today, legendary character actor who's been active since
Speaker 2: the late sixties. Up through the seventies, he tended to
Speaker 2: play smaller roles in the likes of sixty nine's Alice's Restaurant,
Speaker 2: seventy one's Escaped from the Planet of the Apes, Cerpaco
Speaker 2: in seventy three, Slapshot in seventy seven, he's the mad
Speaker 2: Shooter in seventy nine of the Jerk. But during the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties he this is when he really cemented his
Speaker 2: status as this desired character actor that is both it
Speaker 2: can to be threatening but also very humorous and also
Speaker 2: have this kind of like blue collar mentality he should
Speaker 2: he pops up in nine he needs to do his
Speaker 2: Blade Runner playing Bryant. This is Harrison Ford. This is
Speaker 2: Decker's boss, right, yeah, Deckerd's boss.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And oh and then of course he plays private detective
Speaker 2: Lauren Visser in the Cohen Brothers' debut nineteen eighty four
Speaker 2: film Blood Simple. Just a marvelous, villainous performance.
Speaker 3: Fantastic in this role. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He also has a fun but small role in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven Coen Brothers film Raising Arizona. So he's
Speaker 2: worked continuously in just any and everything, from indie pictures
Speaker 2: to blockbusters. Can't possibly list them all here. I'll have
Speaker 2: everyone know, though, that his episode of the nineties Outer Limits,
Speaker 2: The Refuge, is a really good one. He also did
Speaker 2: a Tales from the Crypt episode titled Collection Completed, directed
Speaker 2: by Mary Lambert. All right, now back to the family.
Speaker 2: We have Jay Brown the dad, a very traditional again,
Speaker 2: kind of almost nineteen fifties dad always wants to be
Speaker 2: working on the car in the basement, tinkering with stuff.
Speaker 2: He's played by Billy green Bush born nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 2: American character actor, whose earliest roles included an episode of
Speaker 2: the original Outer Limits in the early sixties, but he
Speaker 2: mostly made his name in the seventies, popping up in
Speaker 2: films like Five Easy Pieces from nineteen seventy. His other
Speaker 2: credits include nineteen eighty six as the Hitcher and Jason
Speaker 2: goes to hell Oh, where he plays Sheriff Landis in
Speaker 2: his final role before retiring from acting.
Speaker 3: What a sendoff. I can't believe it.
Speaker 2: Wow, all right, and then of course we have our kid,
Speaker 2: and we have a great kid in this. This is
Speaker 2: a great child actor performance, a very fun vision of childhood.
Speaker 2: Like this is, like you mentioned, he's a pyromaniac. He's
Speaker 2: really into getting firecrackers and creating more powerful explosives, but
Speaker 2: in a way that modern parents may watch and be like,
Speaker 2: this was not a good idea. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: had I seen the original Critters back in the day
Speaker 2: as a kid, I would have loved every second of this,
Speaker 2: because the idea of standing up to alien monsters with
Speaker 2: your own childhood ingenuity is just instantly appealing.
Speaker 3: Agreed in the very old fashioned picture of the main
Speaker 3: family shown in this movie that the main character really
Speaker 3: is like a boy with gumption. Yeah, but he's fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a lot of fun. He's played by Scott
Speaker 2: Grimes born nineteen seventy one, child actor of the eighties
Speaker 2: who continues to work in TV and film today. His
Speaker 2: more recent credits include American Dad, The Oriville, and Oppenheimer.
Speaker 2: He's in the cast of Oppenheimer. Okay, you have a kid,
Speaker 2: you also need a kind of braddy older sister, a
Speaker 2: teenage older sister, and that's what we have in April
Speaker 2: Brown played by Nadine van Derveld born nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 2: eighties teen actor who eventually transitioned into writing and producing
Speaker 2: children's television. She has the honor of having acted in
Speaker 2: not one, but two Gromlin's movies because she's also in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven Munchies Wow. Yeah. Her other credits include
Speaker 2: eighty three's Private School, eighty eight Shadow Dancing in eighty
Speaker 2: nine's After Midnight, a horror anthology written and directed by
Speaker 2: Jim and Ken Wheat.
Speaker 3: She's also great in this, but also continues the trend
Speaker 3: of not very surprising characterizations. She is the teenager looking
Speaker 3: to get into trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah now, our next character is Charlie McFadden, who is
Speaker 2: I guess the sort of the alcoholic geek of the
Speaker 2: of the picture. He's kind, he's kind of an outcast,
Speaker 2: but a likable outcast for the most part. He also
Speaker 2: has energy that may remind one of like a Michael
Speaker 2: Richards sort of a role you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he gives a struggling, mostly comedic performance. He is
Speaker 3: the town drunk who is like always receiving messages from
Speaker 3: aliens through the fillings in his teeth, he says. And
Speaker 3: then he has proved right in the end by the
Speaker 3: alien invasion. But he's also he plays the role very
Speaker 3: like clumsy, like he's always you know, his bicycle's falling
Speaker 3: over and stuff, and he's having a hard time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He's played by Don Keith Opper born nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 2: mostly known for Critter movies, but you'll also find him
Speaker 2: in that nineteen eighty two Android film that I already referenced,
Speaker 2: City Limits, which I also reference that's, by the way,
Speaker 2: an MST three K film as well. He pops up
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty six's Black Moon Rising, and various TV projects.
Speaker 2: He has a very small role in nineteen ninety three
Speaker 2: he's ghost in the Machine, which we've previously discussed on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. Oh and then also he has an
Speaker 2: additional additional dialogue or additional scenes credit on the script
Speaker 2: for this picture. So I don't know, maybe he wrote
Speaker 2: his own lines. I'm not sure what the full story
Speaker 2: is there. Now someone who's not in All four is
Speaker 2: April's boyfriend Steve. Steve is played by Billy Zay.
Speaker 3: Absolutely unforgivable under use of billy z Ay and Billy Zayne.
Speaker 3: It's eaten by the crits too early, and they do
Speaker 3: not they do not get maximum Zaine out of him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean he's good.
Speaker 2: He has a little bit of you see a little
Speaker 2: bit of the Billy Zane charm in this role. This
Speaker 2: is only a second role, following a small part in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five's Back to the Future. But yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's weird because they don't do a lot with him,
Speaker 2: and this film also is just too nice to give
Speaker 2: us like a deplorable boyfriend that we're okay with the
Speaker 2: monsters eating. No, Steve seems fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, he's all right.
Speaker 2: He's a decent guy. He's just in the wrong place
Speaker 2: at the wrong time.
Speaker 3: It's funny because it feels like when we're first introduced
Speaker 3: to him, they're setting him up to be a real jerk,
Speaker 3: and then he's just not like he seems like a
Speaker 3: nice guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even has nice table manners. All right. We also
Speaker 2: have Ethan Phillips in this playing a less likable character.
Speaker 2: This is like a deputy by the name of jeff
Speaker 2: Ethan Phillips was more nineteen fifty five. That's another exceptional character.
Speaker 2: Actor Treki's know him best as Neelix or Neeelix. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure how to pronounce this this creature, but he
Speaker 2: was on Star Trek Voyager, which is not when I
Speaker 2: ever watched. But his other credits include nineteen eighty seven's Werewolf,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four is the Shadow, two thousand and five's
Speaker 2: The Island. He pops up on Better Call Saul, and
Speaker 2: he had a terrific role on Avenue five that ran
Speaker 2: two seasons on HBO, where he plays veteran astronaut Spike Martin.
Speaker 3: In this he plays like a lazy and lovelorn police
Speaker 3: officer who's always trying to ask out the dispatcher over
Speaker 3: the radio.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he has an unmistakable voice. It is a
Speaker 2: lot of fun. I've enjoyed him in many things. He's
Speaker 2: especially good again in Avenue five.
Speaker 3: Oh but wait, we really delayed getting to one of
Speaker 3: the great screen presences in this movie, a character with
Speaker 3: very few lines but an unforgettable look.
Speaker 2: That's right talking about Ugg here. But more as we'll discuss.
Speaker 2: Ugg is a shape shifting alien, but he takes on
Speaker 2: the form of Johnny Steele, a rock star that the
Speaker 2: aliens see on television.
Speaker 3: If this is confusing, we'll explain it in the plot section.
Speaker 2: So Johnny Steele and Ugg are both played by Terrence
Speaker 2: Mann born nineteen fifty one. Highly accomplished actor of stage, screen,
Speaker 2: in television. He's a three time Tony nominee who has
Speaker 2: played major roles and in just an impressive array of
Speaker 2: Broadway plays and musicals, including playing Frankenfurter at one point
Speaker 2: in the two thousand's revival of The Rocky Horror Show
Speaker 2: on Broadway.
Speaker 3: I bet he was great in that role.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I saw some like kind of crappy
Speaker 2: footage that was taken of him in the role, and
Speaker 2: it looks great. And in seeing him in this, especially
Speaker 2: in the rock Star get up, it's like you can tell,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, yeah, this guy was born to play Frankenfurter.
Speaker 2: Not everybody is, but this guy certainly was. Now on
Speaker 2: top of his his stage career his musical career on Broadway.
Speaker 2: Many of you will also know him as the actor
Speaker 2: playing the multiple elder clones of Emperor Cleon aka Brother
Speaker 2: Dusk in the Apple series Foundation. He's incredible in that,
Speaker 2: with Lee Pace playing the younger incarnations. So basically you
Speaker 2: have a dynasty of clones in that show, and at
Speaker 2: any given time, three of them are awake, a child,
Speaker 2: a mature man, and then an aging man. So you
Speaker 2: have brothers Don, Brother Day, and Brother Dusk, with the
Speaker 2: central brother being the one in full command, with Brother
Speaker 2: Dusk being kind of more in an advisor role and
Speaker 2: also as a kind of a scribes role. But it's
Speaker 2: amazing because even though they are all clones of this
Speaker 2: original emperor, we see different variations in how they're presented,
Speaker 2: and it'll carry over from say Lee Pace's performance in
Speaker 2: one episode to Terrence Mann's performance of that same emperor
Speaker 2: in the next episode after several decades have supposedly passed.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I can't say enough nice things about Terrence Mann.
Speaker 2: We can discuss to what extent he gets to flex
Speaker 2: his acting muscles in this film, but his film and
Speaker 2: TV credits include all four original Critter movies, the Netflix
Speaker 2: series Since eight, the Dresden Files, and he's also in
Speaker 2: Big Top Pee Wee. I believe he plays a clown.
Speaker 3: He has one of those screen presences that's just hypnotic,
Speaker 3: like anytime he's on screen, you're looking at him, or
Speaker 3: at least I was.
Speaker 2: Now a quick note here when it comes to the crites,
Speaker 2: the crites do speak in their own weird alien language.
Speaker 2: I don't think they had a linguist to invent this,
Speaker 2: but they do squawk to each other and we get
Speaker 2: subtitle translations of what they say, and their voices are
Speaker 2: provided by veteran or certainly now veteran voice actor Corey
Speaker 2: Burton born nineteen fifty five. He's done so much work again,
Speaker 2: can't even begin to mention everything he's worked on. But
Speaker 2: I know him best from Star Wars the Clone Wars,
Speaker 2: where he did a number of voices, including the voices
Speaker 2: of Count Dooku and also the voice of Cad Baine,
Speaker 2: who he also voices in the Book of Boba Fet.
Speaker 3: The crites have no word for thank you, but the
Speaker 3: Chrit voices are good, despite the fact that you know,
Speaker 3: it doesn't really sound like a language.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just they're cartoon creatures. Now, the crits physically
Speaker 2: were created by the Chioto Brothers Chioto brother Productions. These
Speaker 2: are brothers Stephen Charles and Edward Chioto, best known for
Speaker 2: their nineteen eighty eight film Killer Clowns from Outer Space.
Speaker 2: That is their magnumums, which which is a lot of
Speaker 2: fun and has some just terrific creature effects in it.
Speaker 3: You know, I think the Critters actually look pretty great.
Speaker 3: I like the creature effects here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're puppety, but very good, very solid. They did
Speaker 2: the effects on all four Critters movies. They also worked
Speaker 2: on nineteen eighty eight's UHF, nineteen ninety one's Ernest Scared Stupid,
Speaker 2: which I remember enjoying quite a bit in finding scarier
Speaker 2: than I expected.
Speaker 3: I think this is a really common memory. I've talked
Speaker 3: to other people about this, about this is a movie
Speaker 3: that's supposed to be funny and for kids, but lots
Speaker 3: of kids found it actually terrifying. The troll in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're responsible for patrol effects there. They also
Speaker 2: worked on two thousand and three's Elf. That's the actual
Speaker 2: Elf movie, the one that you may watch for Christmas
Speaker 2: this year. They also worked on two thousand and four's
Speaker 2: Team America World Police, And there has long been talk
Speaker 2: of a new Killer Clowns movie coming into being. I
Speaker 2: don't know where that project currently stands. And then finally,
Speaker 2: the score is by David Newman born nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 2: prolific composer for film, mostly working on films that I
Speaker 2: haven't seen or don't want to see, or have no
Speaker 2: memory of the score from having seen, which again is
Speaker 2: not necessarily a bad thing. As I've said before, a
Speaker 2: film core, a film's score can be effective and kind
Speaker 2: of invisible, especially when you're dealing with comedies and the like.
Speaker 2: And it looks like he did a lot of comedies.
Speaker 2: This was only his second score, following the nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: four Tim Burton short Franken Weenie. And you know, some
Speaker 2: of the feel good music and it is just a
Speaker 2: little mushy, but I did really like the musical number
Speaker 2: that they play over the end credits, some fun synthesize
Speaker 2: they're working there, and then also some of the tensor moments.
Speaker 2: Some of the action music is also pretty fun.
Speaker 3: I know that's your style and that stuff is good.
Speaker 3: But I'd give him credit also and say that the
Speaker 3: kind of like mushy sentimental feel good music is important
Speaker 3: in establishing the feel good themes of this movie, Like
Speaker 3: it really helps you feel like, ah, okay, we're home
Speaker 3: on the farm now and everything's okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and clearly that was important to the film they
Speaker 2: were trying to make. Yeah, absolutely no problem with it.
Speaker 2: Like when this like very much rescuing a cat from
Speaker 2: a mailbox music that kind of yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Okay, you want to talk about the plot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get into Critters one.
Speaker 3: Here we begin in space, so there's stars twinkling in
Speaker 3: the background, and then we see a giant, shadowy wad
Speaker 3: of gray rock floating in the middle distance. A subtitle
Speaker 3: tells us that this is prison Asteroid Sector seventeen, maximum Security.
Speaker 3: Then we get some like space space traffic control on
Speaker 3: the radio channels, there's there's chatter, voices are speaking in English.
Speaker 3: By the way, we don't have to deal with subtitles
Speaker 3: for this. They say radar control. This is Prison Transport
Speaker 3: nine ninety sixty one, requesting permission to land, and the
Speaker 3: prison transport ship explains the it has a cargo of
Speaker 3: eight krite prisoners. Krits is what the aliens are called
Speaker 3: in this movie. You might think that they're called critters,
Speaker 3: but actually that just comes from a kid calling them
Speaker 3: critters later in the film when he doesn't know that
Speaker 3: they're called krits. I haven't dug into the origins of
Speaker 3: this movie to figure out where the word krite comes from,
Speaker 3: like why they picked that. If it has something to
Speaker 3: do with cr Tyrian, I don't know.
Speaker 2: That would be great criterion collect crite Heian collection, Yes.
Speaker 3: Whatever a crit is. The space traffic controller says, they've
Speaker 3: been expecting the ship for a while, but weren't you
Speaker 3: supposed to have ten crites rather than eight? And oh yeah,
Speaker 3: the pilot confirms they originally had ten, but they've had
Speaker 3: such problems. The crits are eating everything on the ship.
Speaker 3: Two of them were killed along the way, or they
Speaker 3: wouldn't have had enough food to make the journey. So
Speaker 3: these are eating machines whatever they are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have questions about the ethics of this prison system,
Speaker 2: but clearly crites are bad news.
Speaker 3: So now we're inside the prison facility and we see
Speaker 3: a humanoid alien sort of zipping around on a personal hovercraft.
Speaker 3: The alien is wearing insulated armor with hoses snaking around
Speaker 3: connected to various nozzles. It has a big head like
Speaker 3: Exeter in this Island Earth, with like scalp flaps connecting
Speaker 3: its shoulders to its head like a skin hood. The
Speaker 3: skin is sort of pale blue gray, and this guy
Speaker 3: is called Zante.
Speaker 2: I love how this movie, much like Terra Vision, just
Speaker 2: kicks off with this unreal, slightly hammy, but well crafted
Speaker 2: science fiction alien scenario from which we are then going
Speaker 2: to remove ourselves to re enter a human world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, nothing else will take place here after the prologue.
Speaker 3: We're just like seeing this world and then we're going
Speaker 3: to spend the rest of the movie on Earth. And
Speaker 3: I kind of like that dynamic. So something goes wrong
Speaker 3: with the prisoner transfer. People on the radio are calling
Speaker 3: for backup and they say the crist are up to something,
Speaker 3: and then there are explosions coming from somewhere, And yeah,
Speaker 3: I like the little view we get of this like
Speaker 3: multicultural alien facility. There are obviously multiple different kinds of
Speaker 3: sentient aliens working here. It's not just like one species
Speaker 3: from one planet, and we don't get a great look
Speaker 3: at most of them. We see just flashes of, like
Speaker 3: some interesting silhouettes and the shadows and the smoke. And
Speaker 3: I like stuff like this. I like intriguing little glimpses
Speaker 3: of an unfamiliar world without too much detail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, just a hint of the interplanetary world from
Speaker 2: which the crites are.
Speaker 3: Arriving anyway, word comes down to the alien control room
Speaker 3: that the crites have hijacked a ship and escaped. Oh no,
Speaker 3: And we see close ups of tiny, slimy clawed hands
Speaker 3: operating levers and pushing buttons in a sci fi cockpit,
Speaker 3: and we don't see what the creatures look like in
Speaker 3: full yet. The stolen spaceship blasts its way out of
Speaker 3: and then soars off into the void and then back
Speaker 3: on the prison asteroid. The operator announces their next move.
Speaker 3: They call the Alien Bounty Hunters, and here we are
Speaker 3: treated to a suiting up bontage. And this raised a
Speaker 3: question for me, where does the visual meme of the
Speaker 3: suiting up montage come from? I mainly associated with Batman movies,
Speaker 3: starting with Tim Burton's Batman in nineteen eighty nine, but
Speaker 3: it's in basically all of them. Rob I've got a
Speaker 3: link actually to a YouTube video I found that's just
Speaker 3: a compilation of all the Batman suiting up montages. So
Speaker 3: the way it usually works is you get extreme close
Speaker 3: ups of buckles, fastening buttons, snapping, gloves sliding onto hands,
Speaker 3: gear sliding into holsters in the case of Batman, sometimes
Speaker 3: you just get like the bat symbol or just like
Speaker 3: butt cheeks flexing in batpants, so you see all of
Speaker 3: the elements of the outfit being donned and locked into
Speaker 3: place before you see the character in full costume. And
Speaker 3: in the case of Critters, we get the same thing.
Speaker 3: With the Bounty Hunters. They have these like kind of
Speaker 3: weird brown and black studded leather costumes, a little bit
Speaker 3: sci fi, a little bit conan, the barbarian, a little
Speaker 3: bit just leather, and we see the buttons snapping, the
Speaker 3: belts and straps, pulling tight knife going into a sheath,
Speaker 3: et cetera. But Critters actually came out before the eighty
Speaker 3: nine Burton Batman, so obviously it didn't get it from there.
Speaker 3: I assume this must be something that was in movies
Speaker 3: or TV shows already, But where does it come from?
Speaker 2: I don't have an answer. I would like to explore
Speaker 2: explore this topic more because I would guess it probably
Speaker 2: does have something to do with leather and a kind
Speaker 2: of fetishization of leather. It probably has something to do
Speaker 2: with biker movies and or like full body leather catsuits.
Speaker 2: I can't help but wonder if we might find an
Speaker 2: answer and say nineteen sixty eight's The Girl on a
Speaker 2: Motorcycle starring Maryann Faith or or something of that nature.
Speaker 2: You know, something to wear. Like, clearly the leather costume
Speaker 2: is key somehow to the vision for the picture, and
Speaker 2: we're gonna have a filmmaker that's insightful enough to add
Speaker 2: all those small details leading up to the whole.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you see all the buckles and the clasps
Speaker 3: and everything before you see the outfit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I don't know. I this is a mystery
Speaker 2: to me. I haven't haven't looked into it yet.
Speaker 3: Though I will say the suit up montage here has
Speaker 3: a nice twist because usually I'm used to seeing Batman
Speaker 3: after this montage is done. But here, when the Bounty
Speaker 3: Hunters are finally shown in full, they're standing side by
Speaker 3: side in the dark corridor and they are faceless. Their
Speaker 3: heads are just smooth, featureless, pale green orbs good design choice.
Speaker 2: I like it, Yeah, I think the overall I'm instantly
Speaker 2: in love with this cotton concept because, yeah, the green,
Speaker 2: featureless faces this, you know, this has a lot of
Speaker 2: alien mystery to it. And then their costumes are very
Speaker 2: like Bounty huntry in the sort of Star Wars since
Speaker 2: the words because they have they kind of have some
Speaker 2: very worn and kind of rough looking elements, you know,
Speaker 2: like they're kind of some of the fabric looks looks
Speaker 2: very worn out. But then also like the loll the
Speaker 2: leather stuff looks like it's very utilitarian, like these are
Speaker 2: guys or something that are used to getting stuff done.
Speaker 3: It's not the clean, new, freshly pressed look of Star Trek.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: Space looks lived in more like Star Wars. Everything's kind
Speaker 3: of messy and worn out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're kind of like space bikers to a
Speaker 2: certain extent too. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, these creatures are now on the case. A
Speaker 3: Zanti here charges them with tracking down the crits and
Speaker 3: destroying them before they can feed, and he offers them
Speaker 3: full payment when the job is completed. So now we
Speaker 3: cut to Earth. Here we get farmland, golden wheat fields,
Speaker 3: a windmill, a wooden rail fence, an axe wedged in
Speaker 3: a chopping block, except why is it a fire axe?
Speaker 3: It's got that like the Pulaski back. I don't know,
Speaker 3: but nice homie music letting you know that it's just
Speaker 3: a sleepy little village vibe. Everything is a Okay, no
Speaker 3: flesh gobbling aliens, no bounty hunters roaming around this place.
Speaker 3: Is doing fine. Inside the house, d Wallace is making breakfast.
Speaker 3: She's like sizzling bacon and a cast iron pan. There
Speaker 3: is a bottle of vegetable oil next to the pan.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if this is what it's implying,
Speaker 3: but folks, you do not need to add oil to
Speaker 3: the pan when you're making bacon. Bacon will render its
Speaker 3: own fat.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's vegetarian bacon.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Oh maybe, Okay, no, it's it's it's bacon.
Speaker 3: So we meet the Brown family here. The mom is Helen.
Speaker 3: That's d Wallace. She is kind, loving and self sacrificing.
Speaker 3: She works hard to take care of her family. You
Speaker 3: see that she doesn't have a lot of time for herself.
Speaker 3: Like there's one moment and you know she's like constantly
Speaker 3: trying to do things for the family and the kid
Speaker 3: and they're barely noticing. And then there's one scene where
Speaker 3: she tries to sit down and read a book but
Speaker 3: is interrupted by the alien invasion. Though she shows herself
Speaker 3: to be ferocious later on in the film in beating
Speaker 3: Chrits with the butt of a shotgun. There are like
Speaker 3: multiple scenes where the aliens are coming at the family
Speaker 3: and she's just whacking them with a gun held backwards.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they initially present a very again kind of like
Speaker 2: fifties and sixties era TV mom, but then they're able
Speaker 2: to twist that a little bit and show that, yeah,
Speaker 2: she can also get in there and kill some crits.
Speaker 3: Okay, we got the dad Jay. On one hand, he's
Speaker 3: just like a real down home, like chicken fried steak
Speaker 3: of a man. You know, his mother was a tractor,
Speaker 3: his father was a cow chip, and he wears overalls.
Speaker 3: And on the other hand, though, he's in some kind
Speaker 3: of Ghostbusters themed bowling team.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it took me a while to figure that out.
Speaker 2: I was like, what is Dad's off brand Ghostbuster where about?
Speaker 2: And then I realized, Oh, it's a it's a bowling pin.
Speaker 2: This is the mascot for this bowling team, because we
Speaker 2: do see it a lot. Yeah, he's a fun character,
Speaker 2: like he has very seems very checked out. Like at
Speaker 2: one point in the film, when April the daughter's about
Speaker 2: to go on her date there with billy' zayan, he's like,
Speaker 2: have you had the talk with our daughter, and she's like, yes,
Speaker 2: of course, I've had the talk with our like clearly
Speaker 2: twenty five year old daughter at this point, it was
Speaker 2: years ago, and he's like years ago. Oh. He's also
Speaker 2: constantly drinking out of mason jars for some reason. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: like I think he gets served coffee in a mason jar.
Speaker 2: Everyone else is drinking out of glass, normal glassware. He's
Speaker 2: drinking his coffee out of a mason jar and stirring,
Speaker 2: if not honey, then possibly jam into it.
Speaker 3: It looked like honey. Yes, he was adding honey to
Speaker 3: his coffee.
Speaker 4: Where it's like, okay, dad, whatever, whatever you need. I
Speaker 4: guess I don't know why that seems so weird. People
Speaker 4: add honey to their tea, but for some reason, I
Speaker 4: don't think about that with coffee. Maybe because coffee is
Speaker 4: already acidic and honey is also acidic.
Speaker 2: I've never added honey to a coffee. I mean, it
Speaker 2: may be some people's thing. If it's your thing, right in,
Speaker 2: let us know why you made this choice of life.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: Now on to the kids you mentioned. April the daughter,
Speaker 3: she's your classic country girl yearning for a no good
Speaker 3: city boy with vanity plates on his car, uncreative ones,
Speaker 3: Billy's Aine's vanity plates. Say what do they say? Too great?
Speaker 3: G R eight? Come on, Billy's saying that is that's
Speaker 3: not very good. You're trying to think of it while
Speaker 3: you were standing in line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and plus it's just it's too prideful. You're gonna
Speaker 2: get eaten by space aliens with that fanity plate.
Speaker 3: April has low tolerance for the geeky antics of her
Speaker 3: little brother, and she lashes out at him in spite.
Speaker 3: The little brother with the geeky antics is Brad, the
Speaker 3: son of the family. He likes to hog the bathroom
Speaker 3: when his sister needs it. He likes to play hooky,
Speaker 3: skip school, and manufacture his own firecrackers. But like I said,
Speaker 3: he has gumption.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So we get to meet the family over breakfast, get
Speaker 3: to know them, see the tensions between brother and sister.
Speaker 3: They're they're like tattling on each other about things and
Speaker 3: running off to school. I don't think we ever see
Speaker 3: them at school, We just see them later back at home.
Speaker 2: Now in the notes here, you point out that they
Speaker 2: have a chimex. That's how they're making their coffee.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Also alarmed me because I didn't even know they had
Speaker 2: them back then. I didn't. I wasn't exposed to them
Speaker 2: untill I was in my early thirties or something where
Speaker 2: I was like, Wow, a bold new way to make coffee.
Speaker 2: But it's not so bold or so new.
Speaker 3: I love pour over coffee and we use a chemex
Speaker 3: here at home. And yeah, they've been around for a while.
Speaker 3: They were famous. They were like a famous product design
Speaker 3: in mid the mid century. I think they're from the
Speaker 3: forties or the fifties. Originally, there's some kind of thing
Speaker 3: about like the Kimmicks caraffe being like featured in the
Speaker 3: the I don't know, Museum of Modern Art or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh that's interesting. Yeah, I don't know much about it.
Speaker 2: But so would you find it out of keeping with
Speaker 2: the character of the family as otherwise presented here that
Speaker 2: they have a chemex or do you find it acceptable?
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's out of keeping or not.
Speaker 3: I don't know who normally would use a Kimx at
Speaker 3: this time, but I just was like, hey, I've got
Speaker 3: one of those that's in their kitchen, looks just like ours.
Speaker 2: I tend to think of it as the coffee maker
Speaker 2: that coffee shops and sometimes individuals will have on a
Speaker 2: shelf and if you were to ask about it, they'd
Speaker 2: be like, oh, it's just for show. Nobody uses that.
Speaker 3: Well, it does look nice, but no, it makes.
Speaker 2: It because it's a beautiful, beautiful vessel, that's sure. That's
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 3: I think the main thing is is like a simple design.
Speaker 3: And then it's got these filters, sort of rectangular filters
Speaker 3: that are a thick kind of paper that is supposed
Speaker 3: to I guess because of the thickness or something is
Speaker 3: supposed to make coffee that is like less bitter or
Speaker 3: I don't know, has like a cleaner taste. I don't
Speaker 3: know if that's really true. I'm not a coffee geek
Speaker 3: and I haven't ab tested all this, but yeah, we
Speaker 3: like the coffee we make in our chimacks.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 3: They didn't pay us for that. Oh maybe we should
Speaker 3: try to get them as a sponsor. We can as
Speaker 3: seen in Critters, as seen exactly. Yeah, okay. So also
Speaker 3: we're gonna check in with some more characters at town
Speaker 3: police headquarters. So we get Harve, the police chief. That's
Speaker 3: Mment Walsh. He's somehow greasy and creaky at the same time.
Speaker 3: If this metaphor makes sense. It's like he needs a
Speaker 3: spray of WD forty, but he got a squirt of
Speaker 3: chicken fat instead, and now the hinges are squealing louder
Speaker 3: than ever. He is the dyspeptic arm of the law.
Speaker 2: That's some inimit Walsh magic right there. It's like the
Speaker 2: that's the perfect formula.
Speaker 3: We've also got Sally, his assistant. She's a bit aloof
Speaker 3: from the here and now because her head is wrapped
Speaker 3: up in stories she's reading in the tabloids featuring the
Speaker 3: top headline mister Spock is the father of my baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's somewhat checked out.
Speaker 3: You also got Charlie mcfatten. This is the otis of
Speaker 3: the story again. He's the town drunk. He's also an
Speaker 3: auto mechanic. I think Jay earlier is like working on
Speaker 3: a car in the basement of the house. I guess
Speaker 3: they've got like a garage underneath their house. And Jay
Speaker 3: was like, where's Charlie? So he was supposed to be
Speaker 3: there helping him, but he didn't show up. Charlie says
Speaker 3: he used to have a promising baseball career ahead of him,
Speaker 3: but then he started receiving messages from aliens in the
Speaker 3: fillings in his teeth, and this interfered with his baseball prospects,
Speaker 3: and now his prospects are Rye whiskey and a jail
Speaker 3: cell every night. Now, let's check in with the Bounty Hunters.
Speaker 3: Their crews in the galaxy in their ship when they
Speaker 3: get a holograph message from their boss, Zanti. Zanti says
Speaker 3: they have tracked the crits to a solar system with
Speaker 3: only one planet that supports life. It is called Earth.
Speaker 3: They should be able to use their shape shifting abilities
Speaker 3: to blend in when they arrive at Earth. Earth, and
Speaker 3: he's sending a data tape with information about the planet
Speaker 3: and its civilizations. And he also starts telling them not
Speaker 3: to destroy everything in sight once they get there, but
Speaker 3: they like hang up on him in the middle of
Speaker 3: this exhortation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we'll see, they have a very rough hand
Speaker 2: when it comes to critter elimination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they roll the tape containing what aliens know
Speaker 3: about Earth. It literally says Earth is a culture of
Speaker 3: many contrasts, like did the Simpsons get it from there?
Speaker 5: Maybe?
Speaker 3: But they sort of do that the David Bowie thing
Speaker 3: from the Man who Fell to Earth. They're watching a
Speaker 3: bunch of random different TV footage spliced together at superspeed.
Speaker 3: There's like, I don't know, I was just trying to
Speaker 3: pause it and see what are these things. There's like
Speaker 3: a dude in a lab coat talking at the camera
Speaker 3: with a bunch of beakers. There are car crashes, the
Speaker 3: hydrogen bomb, Robin Hood, I think a Robin Hood movie,
Speaker 3: aerobics routines from the nineteen twenties. But then finally it
Speaker 3: lands on a music video. It's rock and roll.
Speaker 2: Oh. I think we also saw just a glimpse of
Speaker 2: Klaskinski from Android in there as well.
Speaker 3: Did we.
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: I think so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the director's own films. That's part of the training.
Speaker 2: But you mentioned the rock and roll, and that's key.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So once they get to the rock and roll,
Speaker 3: they slow it down to normal speed because this is educational.
Speaker 3: The artist is called Johnny Steele and the song is
Speaker 3: called the Power of the Night. We will hear it
Speaker 3: many times in the film. You get like, I don't
Speaker 3: know how many minutes of audio time for the Power
Speaker 3: of the Night, but it's clearly a favorite of the
Speaker 3: Earthlings at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, rocking.
Speaker 3: The Bounty hunters are digging the music, as Johnny Alucard
Speaker 3: would say, another Johnny, I've just I've wrote down some
Speaker 3: of the lyrics. Here's one night Times on Fire. We
Speaker 3: are the heat, the flame is desire burns in the seat.
Speaker 3: But the Bounty Hunters are like, now that's what I
Speaker 3: call music, and one of them feeling the power of
Speaker 3: the night so hard that his face melts, or I
Speaker 3: guess I should say his non face melts, like the
Speaker 3: green orb melts away, it dissolves, and then it is
Speaker 3: replaced by what is this. It's a human skull with
Speaker 3: flesh and blood slowly building up around it through a
Speaker 3: pretty cool reverse melting effect. There are multiple parts of
Speaker 3: this movie that use reverse footage effects. There's one part
Speaker 3: later where like a blown up house is reassembled through
Speaker 3: a reverse footage here, but this is obviously reverse footage
Speaker 3: to put a mask onto a face. I guess they
Speaker 3: filmed it maybe melting away, and then reversed it. But
Speaker 3: by the time it's done, the bounty Hunter is Johnny
Speaker 3: Steele from the music video. Looks exactly like him.
Speaker 2: Great effects sequence and also just solid choice with the
Speaker 2: shape shifting aliens choosing a rock star to be their
Speaker 2: avatar on Earth or one of them does, the other
Speaker 2: one hasn't made up their mind yet and just can't
Speaker 2: find something that suits them.
Speaker 3: So back on the Brown family farm, Brad and Charlie
Speaker 3: are playing with firecrackers while Charlie is supposed to be working.
Speaker 3: Charlie is supposed to be helping Jay fix his truck,
Speaker 3: but instead Charlie is hanging out with the kid doing firecrackers,
Speaker 3: I think, repairing his slingshot. And then April brings home
Speaker 3: her new boyfriend, and by god, it's Billy Zane. The
Speaker 3: character is named Steve Elliott. They pull up in a
Speaker 3: car that is a city car, and unfortunately Steve is
Speaker 3: a city boy and that does not fly around here.
Speaker 3: Jay comes and investigates billy Zane's car and he observes
Speaker 3: that one would not be able to hold much hay
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 2: I like Billy Zane's reaction to that line. It's just
Speaker 2: like a little glimpse of like the natural charisma and
Speaker 2: an ultimate acting ability of Billy Zaye. You just see
Speaker 2: a little peak of it here, but you can see
Speaker 2: why he went on other things.
Speaker 3: He's like, yeah, I can't hold much hay in this,
Speaker 3: and Billy Zaye's like yep. But there's an unfortunate slingshot
Speaker 3: incident in the scene. So Charlie is trying to demonstrate
Speaker 3: that he has fixed brad slingshot, and he shoots a
Speaker 3: pebble at like a coke can up on a fence post,
Speaker 3: but misses and hits April in the butt, and then
Speaker 3: she turns around angry, but she assumes it was Brad
Speaker 3: who did the sling shotting, and Brad heroically takes the
Speaker 3: blame even though it was Charlie. He doesn't want Charlie
Speaker 3: to get in trouble and loses his mechanic job with
Speaker 3: his dad, so he's like, yeah, okay, I did it.
Speaker 2: He's noble, he's a good kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's sent to bed without supper. So we
Speaker 3: follow Brad to his bedroom where I was looking at
Speaker 3: the posters. He has posters for Bruce Springsteen, the police
Speaker 3: as in the band Stinging the Police, not the Police,
Speaker 3: tree leaves and ferns, the United States map, and he's
Speaker 3: listening to a cassette tape of Power of the Night.
Speaker 3: So he is a Johnny Steel fan.
Speaker 2: I think we've discussed this before on the show. I
Speaker 2: Love a Good Kids room represented in a movie. I
Speaker 2: love to look at all the details and see the
Speaker 2: what degree they pulled it off and made it believable,
Speaker 2: to what extent they're acknowledging actual franchises that a child
Speaker 2: in this time period would have been into, And I
Speaker 2: feel like they nailed it pretty well. I've seen plenty
Speaker 2: of especially more recent films, where I'm like, oh, you
Speaker 2: just you printed out some stock art. Those are not
Speaker 2: real movies, those are not real comic book characters. Not
Speaker 2: buying it. But this one does a good job.
Speaker 3: I agree for the most part, except I don't know.
Speaker 3: I could be wrong about this, but I'm like, were
Speaker 3: they that many like twelve year olds who really liked
Speaker 3: the police?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah, okay, I don't know why the
Speaker 2: police here. It would have been, but you know, he doesn't.
Speaker 3: Johnny Steele makes more sense.
Speaker 2: Johnny Steele makes sense, and maybe he, you know, a
Speaker 2: different kid would have been more into metal, But I
Speaker 2: don't really buy that Brad would be. It would have
Speaker 2: been a metal head, so maybe. I mean, there's all
Speaker 2: sorts of weird realistically, when you look back in the
Speaker 2: bands you get into when you start getting too music,
Speaker 2: sometimes there are weird fits, you know, like that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 2: look for examples from your own musical paths listeners. I'm
Speaker 2: sure you can think of some good ones.
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to imagine, like Brad sitting there in
Speaker 3: his bedroom making firecrackers, listening to Walking on the Moon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, rock Sanne Okay.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, while he's in his bedroom being sent to
Speaker 3: bed without supper as punishment, April and Billy's ay and
Speaker 3: are having dinner with their parents, including corn on the cob.
Speaker 3: And oh man, you go home to meet your boyfriend
Speaker 3: or girlfriend's parents and they have corn on the cob,
Speaker 3: it just seems like it's recipe for disaster. How do
Speaker 3: you not get it in your teeth? How do you
Speaker 3: keep your dignity?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean maybe that's intentional. It's like there's no
Speaker 2: way they'll be making out later if we serve corn
Speaker 2: in the cop But but like we said earlier, this
Speaker 2: this meal actually goes pretty well, and I feel like
Speaker 2: the boyfriend is respectful. And also we should note at
Speaker 2: this point in the film, everyone is still marked safe
Speaker 2: from critter attacks. We have not had any fatalities. I'm
Speaker 2: Planet Earth due to critters.
Speaker 3: That's right. So but eventually April and Billy z Ain.
Speaker 3: They leave to go for a ride, I think, but
Speaker 3: April is actually just taking Billy's Ain in to the
Speaker 3: barn to make out with him, and he's clearly like
Speaker 3: freaked out. He's like, I don't know if this is
Speaker 3: such a good idea of it. She's like, ah, come on,
Speaker 3: my parents will never think to look in the barn. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Brad sneaks out through his bedroom window and while climbing
Speaker 3: on the roof, witnesses the arrival of an alien spaceship.
Speaker 3: It flies over the farm, causes a mighty rumble, and
Speaker 3: Jay sees it too. He catches Brad sneaking out, so
Speaker 3: you think Brad's going to be in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 3: But then there's a kind of I don't know, there's
Speaker 3: the thing I liked here. It's kind of sweet, where
Speaker 3: like the dad catches Brad doing what he's not supposed
Speaker 3: to do, but he's but instead they're like, okay, well
Speaker 3: let's go investigate see what this is. It's kind of sweet.
Speaker 3: Oh but what they find is not so sweet. They
Speaker 3: find a mutilated cow. So we're back in cattle mutilation territory.
Speaker 2: This is I didn't I don't remember if this came
Speaker 2: up when we talked about The Return, which is definitely
Speaker 2: a cattle mutilation movie. So yeah, clearly they're dipping into
Speaker 2: cattle mutilation panic a bit here.
Speaker 3: They say what could have done this? Well, it was Chrits,
Speaker 3: of course, But we don't see the crits until I
Speaker 3: think the first time we see them is when Jay
Speaker 3: the dad has to go down in the basement.
Speaker 2: Or wait, is the deputy killed first?
Speaker 3: Oh? Maybe? So the police deputy is driving around, something
Speaker 3: goes out in front of him in the road, He swerves,
Speaker 3: and then he is He gets out of his car
Speaker 3: and is attacked by Krits. We don't see them, but
Speaker 3: there's some kind of furry creature that pulls him underneath
Speaker 3: the car and gobbles him up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then comes the basement attack scene.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, So the phones and the power are out
Speaker 3: and Jay thinks he has to go back to go
Speaker 3: into the basement to flip the breaker. But when he
Speaker 3: goes down there, what is that? There's something moving on
Speaker 3: the shelf, pulsing in the dark. What could it be?
Speaker 3: He goes to investigate and it is this strange furry
Speaker 3: hedgehog like creature that these creatures start jumping out biting him,
Speaker 3: and it becomes an actually quite visceral, bloody attack. They
Speaker 3: like shoot at him with these quills and when this,
Speaker 3: I guess the elements of a cried attack involve biting
Speaker 3: with razor sharp teeth, which draws a lot of blood.
Speaker 3: There are the poison quills, which when they hit you
Speaker 3: render you unconscious, though typically when they're pulled out people
Speaker 3: wake up immediately. And then there's also the the crites
Speaker 3: can move quickly by turning into a tumbleweed and rolling,
Speaker 3: or like Sonic the Hedgehog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're kind of like a cross between Sonic the
Speaker 2: Hedgehog and a mythic version of a porcupine, you know,
Speaker 2: like the sort of myth that a porcupine can fire
Speaker 2: it's quills at you. Well, chrites certainly do. And yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of blood here. I had not. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure if I ever saw critters one. I think
Speaker 2: ma I saw critters too back in the day. But
Speaker 2: either way, not remembering what happens here, I thought Dad
Speaker 2: was done for. I thought, like this, he's lost too
Speaker 2: much blood, he's got too many krites on him, He's
Speaker 2: done for.
Speaker 3: It really did seem that way. There's a lot of peril,
Speaker 3: but Dad is rescued. D Wallace and Brad are able
Speaker 3: to grab him and pull him up the staircase out
Speaker 3: of the cellar and get him to safety. And yeah,
Speaker 3: like you were saying, there's a lot of blood, there
Speaker 3: is a lot of blood, just generally in this movie,
Speaker 3: for PG. Thirteen especially, but the blood is often poorly lit.
Speaker 3: So in some of the most violent scenes, it'll be
Speaker 3: in like a dark room and the blood appears as
Speaker 3: just like dark wet patches on the clothing rather than
Speaker 3: like bright red and running.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we don't really get a lot of what
Speaker 2: I would say like gory human kills. Yeah, most of
Speaker 2: the gory kills we get really are are krites getting blasted,
Speaker 2: though sometimes in a very comedic fashion, which we'll get
Speaker 2: to right.
Speaker 3: And we do get another tragic human death. So you know,
Speaker 3: nobody really cared about this, uh, this police deputy who
Speaker 3: got eaten. But but now they're going to do it
Speaker 3: to Billy Zay and I can't believe it. So Crits
Speaker 3: attack April and Billy Zaine in the barn while they're
Speaker 3: making out, and they like bite Billy Zane in the
Speaker 3: stomach and start chomping on his guts. And at this
Speaker 3: point I was just I was so torn up about it.
Speaker 3: How could they?
Speaker 2: I think this is this is the scene where he
Speaker 2: reaches for the radio and they bite his fingers off
Speaker 2: and yeah, yeah, so that's right. Yeah, it's a rough
Speaker 2: death for this actually, like seemingly likable young man who
Speaker 2: made the mistake of going to the country.
Speaker 3: He should not have should have stayed in the city.
Speaker 2: Don't listen to Neil Young. Wait, what do you.
Speaker 3: Mean, Oh, are you ready for the country?
Speaker 2: Yeah he was not.
Speaker 3: No, it seems like a warning. Actually, I think I
Speaker 3: think he should have listened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's about christs. I think Neil Young is singing like,
Speaker 2: are you ready for the country because they've got some crimes.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 3: But Brad comes in and he saves the day by
Speaker 3: convincing a Kright to eat one of his firecrackers, and
Speaker 3: then it like blows up inside the Kright and you
Speaker 3: think the Cright's gonna like just like explode with chunks
Speaker 3: going everywhere, but instead there is a comedic like it's
Speaker 3: sort of its belly pooches out and then it just
Speaker 3: like keels over.
Speaker 2: Smoke out of the mouth basically like a cartoon coyote
Speaker 2: ate a hot chili pepper kind of yes, so solid.
Speaker 3: So there are a bunch more sort of just krite
Speaker 3: battling set pieces that I'm not going to recount in detail.
Speaker 3: The whole way there are battles is the family tries
Speaker 3: to make it back to the house. They battle krites
Speaker 3: along the way. There's one part where krights are chasing them,
Speaker 3: but then they managed to get behind There's like a
Speaker 3: waist high picket fence that the crits get stuck behind.
Speaker 3: There's just banging on the picket fence. Then there are
Speaker 3: also battles inside the house. The family gets in there
Speaker 3: and the crates attack them. They fight them in various ways,
Speaker 3: and yes, there is a scene with a with a
Speaker 3: critter in the toilet. So that's a milestone achieved.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. They really seem to just spare no part
Speaker 2: of this house. They're like, have we had a crate
Speaker 2: attack in the gift drafting room? No, well let's do it.
Speaker 2: Let's do it. We have to cover every room in
Speaker 2: this house.
Speaker 3: There's also just random scenes of the bounty hunters, you know,
Speaker 3: roaming around and going to various places. They go to
Speaker 3: church and they like accidentally back their car. They steal
Speaker 3: a police car. Once they arrive. It's the deputies backwards,
Speaker 3: yeah yeah, and they drive it backwards because they don't
Speaker 3: know they're not from Earth. They don't know how you're
Speaker 3: supposed to drive, so they're driving it in reverse everywhere,
Speaker 3: and they like back it through the I don't know
Speaker 3: what you call it, like the porch of a church
Speaker 3: while church is in session and the reverend is talking
Speaker 3: about Sodom and Gomorrah. And then they go into the
Speaker 3: church and the and one of the bounty hunter that
Speaker 3: had not transformed into Johnny Steel turns into the reverend
Speaker 3: from the church.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he'd previously taken on the form of the dead deputy,
Speaker 2: so he looked like a zombie previously. This is the
Speaker 2: non Johnny Steele, the non ug bounty hunter who can't
Speaker 2: make up his mind, who keeps choosing a new form.
Speaker 3: Then they go to the bowling Alley and the reverend
Speaker 3: one transforms into looking like Charlie, the guy who thinks
Speaker 3: he's been talking to aliens the whole time. And then
Speaker 3: eventually they're driving around later and they're gonna make it
Speaker 3: to the house. So inside the house. Brad, he becomes
Speaker 3: heroic the son, and he's like he ventures out. He says,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go get help. So he goes out and
Speaker 3: he flags down a police car after being chased by
Speaker 3: crits of course for a while, and it is being
Speaker 3: driven by the Bounty Hunters. So this is the scene
Speaker 3: where we get the use of the word critters. Brad,
Speaker 3: not knowing that these are christs, says, hey, there are
Speaker 3: critters attacking my family. You've got to come help, And
Speaker 3: the Bounty Hunters do go to investigate, though they're very
Speaker 3: they're not very communicative. They just sort of like stare
Speaker 3: at people most of the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do a lot of terminatory sort of behaviors,
Speaker 2: but generally for comedic effects. I love the scene in
Speaker 2: the bowling alley. The ug character like palms a bowling
Speaker 2: ball and then he looks down at the pins and
Speaker 2: just hurls it straight at the pins and shatters them.
Speaker 3: It's like he wanted he wanted everyone there to know
Speaker 3: that he could beat them all at bowling. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: just part of his strategy for finding out where the
Speaker 3: crits are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it this. I think it's a it's a
Speaker 2: specific example of a thing this film does really well,
Speaker 2: Like it's clearly drawing on these various obvious mainstream sci
Speaker 2: fi influences, but manages to figure out a way to
Speaker 2: reweave them into something that feels unique and new.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the bounty hunters arrive at the house on
Speaker 3: the Brown family farm and they start scouring it for Chrits.
Speaker 3: They like blow up one of the Krits in a
Speaker 3: toilet with with their like laser blasters. Meanwhile, Emmett wallsh
Speaker 3: arrives and is generally not very helpful. He's like shooting
Speaker 3: at rolling fur balls and missing and then he gets
Speaker 3: thrown out a window.
Speaker 2: Is this the part maybe getting ahead of us, But
Speaker 2: there's a great scene where we get some subtitles for
Speaker 2: the Crits. Yes, and they're like, they have weapons, and
Speaker 2: then the other one says the F word.
Speaker 3: It's and I laughed, well, I think one of them
Speaker 3: says they have weapons and the other one says, so what,
Speaker 3: And then the one that said the head weapons gets
Speaker 3: blasted by the and then the other one just says
Speaker 3: the F word.
Speaker 2: It's it's tremendous, but says the F word and it's
Speaker 2: in the crit language. And then the subtitles tell us
Speaker 2: what he's saying. So I thought that was legitimately funny.
Speaker 3: Now somewhere along here, one of the crites becomes enormous,
Speaker 3: like it grows up and becomes bear sized, and like
Speaker 3: Brad sees it grow by watching its shadow in the
Speaker 3: light of the moon while he's running to get help
Speaker 3: and then coming to the final showdown, April, the sister
Speaker 3: is knocked unconscious with the poison quill and kidnapped by
Speaker 3: the big crit Megacrite is like dragging her back to
Speaker 3: the spaceship, I guess, for I don't know. Inflight, Snack
Speaker 3: probably and the remaining handful of Krites are getting ready
Speaker 3: to escape. They're like getting the ship, you know, pulling
Speaker 3: up the landing gear and all that. So in the end,
Speaker 3: Brad has to save his sister, even though they've been
Speaker 3: fighting the whole time, along with the help of Charlie
Speaker 3: the mechanic. So Brad infiltrates the alien ship, pulls April out,
Speaker 3: and then throws his giant homemade firecracker inside the spaceship.
Speaker 3: And then Charlie also helps by igniting the fuse of
Speaker 3: the firecracker by throwing a Molotov cocktail inside the closing
Speaker 3: door of the spaceship, and then the Krits, out of
Speaker 3: just pure spite as they're flying away, shoot a laser
Speaker 3: beam and blow up the family's house. But then of
Speaker 3: course the fuse on the firecracker burns through and their
Speaker 3: ship explodes. So finally the Crites are defeated, not just
Speaker 3: by the bounty hunters but by Brad and Charlie. So earthlings,
Speaker 3: you know, unassuming earthlings to the rescue, and I guess
Speaker 3: because Brad has proved his worthiness, the alien bounty hunters
Speaker 3: leave him with a sort of communicator device. It's like
Speaker 3: a little radio contact thing. And then upon their departure
Speaker 3: they somehow use the magic power of their ship to
Speaker 3: reverse footage reassemble the family's house after we saw it
Speaker 3: like nearly adamized, just blown to toothpicks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have the technology to do this, and yet
Speaker 2: to kill a cry they have to manually hunt it
Speaker 2: down and shoot it with some sort of a space shotgun.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's just how it is. I don't know.
Speaker 3: But so now the family has their house back. All
Speaker 3: members of the family are safe. Of course, Billy Zain
Speaker 3: is no longer with us, but the family is all
Speaker 3: all right, and that seems to go with like the
Speaker 3: feel good vibes. At the end of the movie, everybody
Speaker 3: in the family's okay. But we do get a final stinger,
Speaker 3: which is the camera sort of like Alli's into the
Speaker 3: chicken coop and we see these leathery looking studded black
Speaker 3: eggs in there, and they're in the chicken coop, which
Speaker 3: I started laughing at because I was like, does this
Speaker 3: mean the family's gonna like just use them like eggs,
Speaker 3: like make an omelet?
Speaker 2: I would hope not. That would prevent the sequel from
Speaker 2: taking place, I assume.
Speaker 3: So upon reflection, I noticed what I thought was a
Speaker 3: kind of interesting theme in this film. I didn't notice
Speaker 3: while I was watching, but thinking back on it, there
Speaker 3: are many acts of spite in the movie, Like there
Speaker 3: are multiple times when someone just sort of casually does
Speaker 3: injury to some other party as they are leaving a scene,
Speaker 3: like the brother and sister do it to each other
Speaker 3: early on, the crits do it to the farm while escaping.
Speaker 3: They're getting out there, leaving this planet, but they're just like,
Speaker 3: the heck with you, They just blow up the house.
Speaker 3: And I don't know what to make of that. But
Speaker 3: it's there in the subtext, though in all cases the
Speaker 3: wounds caused by spite are healed at the end of
Speaker 3: the film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just spiteful little creatures. They're hungry and they're hateful,
Speaker 2: and you never want them to show up on your planet,
Speaker 2: but if you do, you need to take care of
Speaker 2: them quickly. And they everyone managed to pull this off,
Speaker 2: or so it would seem.
Speaker 3: Another thing that I think is interesting. We sort of
Speaker 3: talked about this earlier, but it's a misimpression I had
Speaker 3: about them, which is I thought of the crites before
Speaker 3: I watched this movie as just animalistic eating machines, but
Speaker 3: that's not what they are. They have synians like they
Speaker 3: talk to each other in their different language subtitled they
Speaker 3: work machines, they fly spaceships. Does this make them different
Speaker 3: from most other movie monsters? I was thinking that actually,
Speaker 3: most of the creatures in the various Gromlins movies are
Speaker 3: able to like work machines and communicate and coordinate with
Speaker 3: one another, whether verbally or nonverbally. That's sort of part
Speaker 3: of the Gromlin thing, that they're not just mindless, roaring,
Speaker 3: you know, chompers, but they have intention behind their behavior,
Speaker 3: you're usually malevolent intention, even if that intention is rather
Speaker 3: just sort of like crude impulses. Like they they have
Speaker 3: plans and they enact them. Does this inform something about
Speaker 3: the appeal of the Gromlin subgenre.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that they're schemers, that they're you know what, they
Speaker 2: lack in size and perhaps even in like pure visual threat,
Speaker 2: because generally speaking, they're not the size of bears. But
Speaker 2: they have they have plans, they have schemes. They're tricky,
Speaker 2: they're they're little, They're little devils. They're little demons working
Speaker 2: their mischief in the.
Speaker 3: World, getting into the chicken coop, knocking over the fence,
Speaker 3: eating your billy's and boyfriend. Yeah, causing all kinds of mischief. Well,
Speaker 3: I think that's all I've got to say about critters.
Speaker 3: But I enjoyed this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a I think it's a very enjoyable film
Speaker 2: that holds up really well. So if you haven't seen
Speaker 2: it and you're looking for just a pretty pretty harmless
Speaker 2: but fun and at times funny creature feature, I don't
Speaker 2: think you can go wrong with Gromlins. I'm sorry, I
Speaker 2: don't think you can go wrong. You can go wrong
Speaker 2: with Gromlins in general. I don't think you can go
Speaker 2: wrong with Critters one though, fun movie. All right, we'll
Speaker 2: go ahead and close it there, but we'd love to
Speaker 2: hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts on
Speaker 2: Critters or the Critters franchise, Gromlins movies in general, wright
Speaker 2: in we would love to hear from you. Just a
Speaker 2: reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Fridays,
Speaker 2: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird movie on Weird House Cinema. And if you
Speaker 2: want to see a complete list all of those movies
Speaker 2: that we've talked about in Weird House Cinema, you can
Speaker 2: go to letterbox dot com. That's L E T T
Speaker 2: E R B O x D dot com. You'll find
Speaker 2: us on there as Weird House, and yeah, there'll be
Speaker 2: a list of all the movies we've covered. Also, if
Speaker 2: you're on Instagram, go to STBYM podcast that's Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind's account and our social media team has
Speaker 2: been putting up little video features for these episodes that
Speaker 2: have some of the trailer footage. So we always feature
Speaker 2: the trailer audio if we can find it for the
Speaker 2: movies we talk about here, but it's also nice to
Speaker 2: check in on the visuals as well.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 3: producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in
Speaker 3: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
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