A group of small, furry aliens makes lunch out of the locals in a farming town.

There’s been four movies in the Critters franchise, all of them about and hour and a half long each, the last two leading directly into each other, though the last movie was definitely set in a vastly different location than the first three. Since they were so short, I was able to watch all four of them in an afternoon. From 1986, 1988, 1991, and 1992, all of them featured practical effects over computer generated effects and for all their work to make the Critters look scary, I actually found them to be precosious and even cute at times. Yes, there’s the eating your face thing, but I feel like they’re just tribbles that got out of the wrong side of the bed and are able to grow legs and feet when they eat too much. It’s a type of low budget / low brow franchise that unfortunately I don’t think we see much of any more.

The acting was on par with what I expected from the franchise, the practical effects were obvious at times, but damn if the series didn’t have heart. I’d love to see another entry in the franchise if they were able to capture this feeling on film again without any use of computer generated Critters.

Some notes from each of the movies:

Critters 1:
Billy Zane (the evil guy from that movie about a boat) and Ethan Phillips (Nelix from Star Trek: Voyager) were here, both of them much younger than I think I’ve seen either actor in roles that ended up not being what I expected from them.

Critters 2:
How did the critters become a giant ball of Critters? How did they stay that way?
Also, lots of nudity from Roxanne Kernohan, who I’ve just discovered was not actually featured in any men’s magazines.

Critters 3:
Leonardo Dicaprio, as a very young man with a shitty step father. The step father situation is resolved to my satisfaction though, spoiler: the Critters ate him.

Critters 4:
Critters in spaaaaace.
Angela Basset as the take no shit navigator of a space ship. I like her, she’s going places I think.