ET gets bitten (Critters (DVD))

Member Name: moronboy

Product:	Critters (DVD)
Date:	30/11/00 (198 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funny and daft

Disadvantages: Low budget and slightly weak

The success of Joe Dante's 'Gremlins' (1985) spawned several glove-puppet slasher movies without the wit or bite of that film, but the only alien entry was much the most successful. While 'Gremlins' ranged far and wide, spattering targets as disparate as Walt Disney and bar-room drunks, 'Critters' (1986) is a concentrated piss-take of the traditional small-town B-movie.

The town loon who claims that aliens are transmitting through his teeth is by now a familiar character in sci-fi movies, and Critters does contain that cheesiest of lines "..they're getting bigger..", but generally, the film kicks in with superb performances, smart lines and quite the worst special effects ever seen in a good movie.

Director Stephen Herek is - perhaps damagingly - nowhere near as nasty as Joe Dante (he would later become house director for Disney, making supremely affable versions of 'The Three Musketeers' and '101 Dalmations'), and while he's callous with a couple of subsidiary characters early on, the cast list is quickly reduced to a hardcore of people too likeable to be disposed of. He also only has 8 critters to begin with, so as the action stays rooted to the 'Night of the Living Dead' structure of a lonely house under siege, the frantic scrambling away from the hordes of little devils degenerates into a simple monster-on-the-loose chase, with a pair of giant Critters causing the trouble.

What gives the film its edge is the consistently witty background: the small town sheriff is embodied by sly southerner par excellence M. Emmet Walsh, one of the alien bounty hunters causes endless confusion by constantly changing his face until he finds one that suits him, and there is a long diversion at a bowling alley filled with men wearing increasingly horrifying team shirts. There is a predictable in-joke when a Critter decapitates an ET doll, but far funnier is the spectacle of Mom from Sp
ielberg's film (Dee Wallace) stalking the critters with a shotgun, pulping extraterrestrials and yelling "get out of my house!" at her alien visitors.

The creatures are appallingly wooden and unconvincing, but Herek has fun with their poisoned porcupine quills, rows of jagged teeth and hilarious subtitled dialogue ("Fuck!"); more diverting still are the shape-changing bounty hunters, who have no faces at all until they choose a disguise.

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