27 October 2011

October 27th

Critters (1986) directed by Stephen Herek
Here's an '80s horror movie I'd been meaning to watch for years.  Tribbles with teeth escape an asteroid prison and head to Earth for some food.  A couple of shape-shifting bounty hunters find them in a small town in Kansas and some shit hits a fan or two.  It's kind of fun, with goofy-looking critters rolling around and growling at people with their teeth-stuffed mouths.  One of the bounty hunters takes the shape of an '80s hair metal rocker, though he isn't recognized enough in town to make this terribly funny.

I think that my issue with the movie is its tameness.  The critters could be pretty scary, but they've found themselves in a PG-13 movie. Consequently, they do a lot of non-lethal biting on shoulders and inexplicable dragging of people to other places without harming them.  In fact, the nine critters in the movie only manage to eat two people the entire time they're causing havoc.  I guess this was sort of an answer to Gremlins, so things were kept at a '80s kid level of violence.  Still, I can imagine an awesome Critters remake in my head with the critters taking huge and horrific bites of people.  Think Jaws on land with furry aliens.  (6/10)

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