With ‘Critters’ celebrating 40 years of bite, Matt Konopka looks back at why this film is so much more than a simple ‘Gremlins’ clone.
Released in 1984—the same day as Ghostbusters, no less—Joe Dante’s Gremlins did more than force the MPAA to create the PG-13 rating. In the wake of the hugely successful creature feature, a tidal wave of mini-monster movies followed. You had the Charles Band-produced Ghoulies; the largely forgettable Hobgoblins; Tibor Takács’s demonic terror, The Gate; and my personal favorite, New Line Cinema’s Critters. It would be easy to dismiss any or all of these as simple knockoffs of Gizmo and his brood. But as far as Critters goes, the 1986 film is much more than some clone birthed from the tiny Furby’s back.
The first feature script sold by scribe Domonic Muir (The Gingerdead Man)—one he wrote years before Gremlins came out—Critters combines tiny terror mayhem with an old-school sci-fi setting. Set in the small town of Grovers Bend, Kansas, we meet Brad Brown (Scott Grimes), a Dennis the Menace type equipped with a slingshot and all, but a good heart, as well. His best friend is Charlie (Don Keith Opper), the town alcoholic who works on his family’s farm. After a UFO lands in Brad’s backyard, he and his family find themselves in a battle against Crites, deadly alien furballs who have escaped a galactic prison and landed on Earth for a midnight snack. Cut off from the rest of the town, it’s up to the Browns and a pair of space bounty hunters to stop the murderous critters before they eat everything in sight.
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
Small Beginnings
Originally set up with Roger Corman, Bob Shaye at New Line caught wind of and snatched the film out from under the legendary producer’s nose. As () states in found on of the picture, “People were looking for that type of thing…anything small, they were getting made”. Shaye saw Muir’s script as the perfect opportunity to get in on the trend, offering a larger budget than Corman in return. His one caveat? It had to be kid-friendly.
Funny enough, just like Gremlins, Critters was written to be a hard-R monster movie. The original trailer set to the score of A Nightmare on Elm Street certainly sets the tone for something guaranteed to have kids clutching their favorite stuffed animal…if Critters hadn’t just scared them away from furry things forever. Supposedly, some of the family members even perish in the initial script (my money is on mom and dad). But Shaye insisted they reach a wider audience with a PG-13 rating. Again, like Gremlins, it was the right move.
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
A Gateway Into the Universe of Horror
When I was a monster kid first delving into all things horror, I had a rotation of a handful of films that played in my house constantly. They included Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Ghoulies, The Gate, and, surprise, surprise, Critters. Maybe it was the fact that the vicious little furballs happen to also be so goddamn cute, or that everyone’s favorite movie mom, Dee Wallace (E.T.), plays Brad’s mother, but I adored Critters from the moment my eyes chomped into it. It was accessible, and it marked an important leap from something like Ernest Scared Stupid into a more violent world of horror.
Director Stephen Herek’s (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) debut film is that perfect blend of silly comedy and horror that make it a prime “gateway” film for kids. Right from the get-go, we arrive at a prison ship in outer space. There, we find the mischievous little crites, a pair of Playdough-headed bounty hunters and a holographic alien straight out of a lineup of Star Wars extras. Be still, my monster kid heart.
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
Food for Thought
Call it a knockoff all you want, but Critters is less a Gremlins copycat and more a loving tribute to the ’50s boom of sci-fi monster movies. It features all the hallmarks of the genre. Fiendish aliens that land in the backyard of an unfortunate small town. The picture-perfect, all-American nuclear family that this country obsesses over. Disbelieving cops who don’t understand what’s going on until they’re dragged underneath their own vehicle and into the jaws of hungry crites. Lin Shaye‘s character even looks like she stepped right out of a ’50s ad for vacuum cleaners. It feels like those movies that the filmmakers of the ’80s grew up on, from The Blob to Earth vs The Spider and The Thing from Another World, all of it presented with deep affection for the era.
You might glance at Critters and think it’s nothing but a series of tired tropes, yet the entire intention was to spoof those elements that we had seen in countless horror films before. One specific example that Muir mentions in the Making of Critters is the fact that Brad’s father, Jay (Billy Green Bush) responds to a cut phone line with, “this phone is dead”. Horror fans had seen the phone and power cut in numerous films before. But Bush, a frequent face in Westerns and the like, treats the line like it’s the first time anyone’s ever said it on camera (cue the gut-splitting laughs).
Let’s be real, this is a movie where one of the critters bites a head off an E.T. doll. It’s meant to be bloody fun. You can’t take it that seriously.
Critters also dares to spoof other Gremlins knockoffs that came before it. Namely, Ghoulies. One scene sees a crite set on fire and bounce into the refreshing safety of a toilet bowl. Unfortunately for it, bounty hunter, Ug (Terrence Mann), gets him in the end and not the other way around.
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
A Tiny Terror Film with Bite
But Critters isn’t all jokes and the cute little crites shouting “f***” after Dee Wallace blows one of them away. It brings those sci-fi movies of the ’50s into a more modern and scary world, resulting in a thrilling siege film that scared the hell out of my eight-year-old self. In that sense, it’s more akin to Night of the Living Dead than Dante’s film. With Spielberg producing, Gremlins has that sort of Spielbergian fun-for-the-whole-family feel. And while Critters has the template to bite into that vibe, it’s much more vicious and frightening.
Designed by the Chiodo Brothers (Killer Klowns from Outer Space), the crites have a nasty playfulness to them. Not to mention a hunger that makes them far more dangerous than the gremlins. Poor Billy Zane finds that out the hard way when he gets his fingers bitten off (a scene shredded to pieces by the MPAA, as it once featured the creatures eating a hole in the actor’s stomach). The little bastards shoot poisonous needles that knock their victims out cold. They have glowing red eyes, creepy little peepers achieved by painting them with the same reflective paint as a stop sign. These things are mean little buggers, and they remind us of that the whole way through. They aren’t just sending cruel old ladies out the window. They bite, maim, and eat people alive.
Nor are they all that’s scary in Critters, either.
In a particularly scarring scene that has never left me, we witness Ug transform into a more suitable face for Earth, that of ’80s as f*** rocker, Johnny Steele. Set to his in-universe hit, “Power of the Night”, Ug’s face melts off to expose the muscle beneath, before reforming into the handsome stud. The Hellraiser-coded moment was one of the most horrific things I witnessed at an early age…and I appreciate Critters all the more for it. The film helped to satisfy a craving for meatier horror that went for the jugular.
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
The Power of the Crite
It may come as a surprise, but it’s for that reason that I was a Critters kid rather than a Gremlins kid. Don’t get me wrong, I love both and will concede Gremlins is a better movie. But Critters delivered a bite that Gremlins didn’t have, along with the silly antics and eerie sci-fi tone. It genuinely scared me…and made me laugh…and it still does. You wouldn’t have found a whole lot of kids who held a deeper love for Critters over Gremlins, but they were and are out there. Not in a galaxy far, far away, but here, on Earth, where Critters expanded into a franchise loaded with good humor, gore, and characters we could look up to.
That’s another element that drew me into the jaws of Critters more so than Gremlins and the other tiny terror films that followed. It doesn’t just star a kid who saves the day despite the doubt his family first has in him. That would be enough on its own. But Charlie, the alcoholic town screw-up, also gets his hero moment. As does Ug, wearing the face of Johnny Steele, an “invader” from the “city” in this small town, with their pearl-clutching beliefs. All three outcasts who rise above the expectations set on them. A trio of unexpected heroes that I have continued to relate to in different ways throughout my life.
Amongst a handful of others, I have Critters to thank for my love of horror. It became a stepping stone for countless monster kids who grew up on the likes of The Nightmare Before Christmas and found themselves curious about the darker side of the genre. Forty years later, it remains one of the best to follow in the footsteps of Gremlins (even if it was written long before that film).
At the time of this writing, you can stream Critters on Tubi. But be careful, they bite!
