Sometime in the 1980s, ABC's television news magazine 20/20 did a special report on VHS horror films and their supposed negative influence on children.
While there is always reason for concern about the messages about
violence and gender that children and adults consume in visual media,
reports like these were and continue to be more about sensationalizing
the issue, playing to the fear of parents, and creating a false sense of
nostalgia for the good old days when things were better and more
wholesome. To a lesser extent, the same thing is happening today with
video games. The full extent of such cultural trends can be seen in what
happened over 50 years ago with the debate over comic books that led to
the death of horror comics and the creation of the comics code.
I wasn't impressed with the modern DVD art for Critters, so let's turn our attention now to the VHS art and modern DVD art for Critters 2 (review). Will they be classic, characterless, or criminal?
VHS COVER
Verdict: CLASSIC!
Although this is technically the movie poster, the VHS box art with which I am familiar features the same ball of Krites, but the box art had less text and a red border. This box art for Critters 2 didn't stray too far from the design of the first film's. Instead of a giant Krite, we see the ball of Krites that appears near the end of the film. A striking visual, lovingly painted and detailed, this box art is one I remember from my youth. Although this image feels more static than its predecessor, it makes up for the static design with such an intriguing visual hook.
Modern DVD COVER
Verdict: CRIMINAL!
Wow, these Critters DVD covers really are abortions of Photoshop. This cover is the worst example of lazy digital DVD art I've ever seen. For one, it shamelessly steals the central image of the classic poster -- the ball of Krites -- and then brutally rapes it into submission with radial blur filters. At least the other Critters DVD covers use stock photos. After blurring the shit out of it, some lazy designer pasted it over a nondescript background and photoshopped in some fire that is WAY TOO BIG to be in scale with the stock-photo barn. TA-DA -- new covers for the Critters mass-market DVD release. This probably took, what, six minutes? Maybe four mintues if you don't count all the times the design intern sat there furrowing his or her brow over whether to click "Radial Blur" five or six times.
Did you know I publish Scream Scene, an independent horror zine, from Horror in the Hammer?
This issue features:
A retrospective on Full Moon Features
An interview with Steve Santini, the Dark Master of Escape
An Easter Horror movie spotlight
and Movie Reviews and lots of Independent Art!
Scream Scene #4 (April / May) will be on April 13th at our screening of Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge and then shortly thereafter at Crash Landing. Issues can also be ordered diectly through me at aaron@horrorinthehammer.com
Horror in the Hammer is a group of local artists, musicians, and
promoters in the Hamilton, Ontario area. In addition to our other events
and projects, such as our monthly Fright Night Theatre screenings and
annual Hamilton Zombie Walk, we put out an independent horror zine
focusing on horror from the fan's perspective. I edit and contribute to
the zine. Shawn Hopkins of Evil Tiki Media is our art director.
I may be in the minority here, but I prefer Critters 2 to the first film. Maybe it's because I saw this film first. Maybe it's because the film had a larger budget and could pull off more elaborate effects and more humour. Maybe it's because, as a young boy, I saw Roxanne Kernohan's huge breasts burst forth from a leather suit and this turned me into a life-long breast man. Regardless, I like Critters 2.
SYNOPSIS
After the first film ended with a shot of Krite eggs left in the barn, a sequel was only inevitable. The Brown family has moved out of Grover's Bend to escape the scrutiny and ridicule of their neighbors. However, Brad Brown (Scott Grimes reprising his role) returns to his hometown to visit with his Grandmother for Easter. Little does he suspect that a batch of Krite eggs have been discovered and placed carelessly close to a stove. Inadvertent incubation occurs, and soon a new generation of carnivorous alien furballs hatch. With the help of his old pals the Alien Bounty Hunters (plus Charlie), Brad helps fend off the hungry jaws of the Krites from devouring all of Grover's Bend.
Rating: 4 / 5 Baby Krites
IS IT SHOCKING?
While I suggested that the original Critters was shocking in so far as it was surprisingly violent for a PG-13 creature film, Critters 2 certainly upped the ante in terms of violence but also sexual content. The Krites get a lot more screen time, and their designs are much improved from the first film. They also pull off several more bloody kills. The one everyone remembers is the death of the town Sheriff. Not the lovable Sheriff Harv from the first film (now played by Barry Corbin). No, the Krites tangle with the new Sheriff (David Ursin) who is roped into playing the Eater Bunny at a church function. Unfortunately, he can't get the zipper of his bunny suit to close and a bunch of baby Krites hop in and chow down. While we don't see the actual eating, when next we see the Sheriff his body (still in the bunny suit) charges through a church window and sprawls out bloody and dead for all the traumatized parishioners to see.
What do we tell the kids? I know! T'was a farm accident!
Other people end up on the menu as well, leaving behind bloody corpses. While we see the Krites bite into people here and there, most of the shocking violence is seen in their aftermath. In the film's final set piece, the Krites form together into a giant ball of fur and hungry mouths. Several townsfolk get run over and, well, let's just say they won't be having open-casket funerals.
Not only did they take the shirt of his back but the skin as well!
IS IT SEXY?
I can point back to Critters 2 as a moment in my life, if not the moment, when I realized I was going to be obsessed with breasts for the rest of my adult life. And we have Roxanne
Kernohan to thank for that. In Critters 2, as in the first film, Ug and Lee are Alien Bounty Hunters with the ability to shapeshift. Ug (Terrance Mann) has a preferred look, but Lee can't decide on a form and is constantly replicating the people he sees. When they arrive on Earth in Critters 2, Lee finds the image of a nude centerfold. Suddenly, Lee starts to transform. His chest begins to swell and expand. Slowly, two large, full, glorious, gravity-defying breasts tear through his leather outfit. When the camera pulls back Lee has turned into a blond bombshell: nude model Roxanne
Kernohan. And she's got a big techno-cannon with a barrel that extends when she activates it (suggestive!). You don't see a lot of full-frontal breasts in PG-13 films these days, but that scene awoke something in me at an early age. I still find the whole transformation scene quite engrossing. *ahem*
Unfortunately, Roxanne
Kernohan doesn't stay topless for long. Slipping into a very revealing leather outfit, she goes about killing Krites. Then, to completely screw with prepubescent boys everywhere, she transforms again. She goes from this:
To this:
Ladies and gentlemen, the erotic face of actor/comedian Eddie Deezen. Deezen plays the manager of burger joint in Critters 2, and Lee takes his form for a brief time. Thankfully, Lee turns back into Roxanne
Kernohan for the character's last appearance, but still .... why ruin a good thing?
IS IT SURREAL?
Critters offers a lot more interesting visuals than its predecessor, such as the giant ball of Krites and more shape-shifting effects, but it's still pretty standard stuff. The choice to trade in Roxanne
Kernohan for Eddie Deezen is pretty surreal, I guess.
IS
IT SILLY?
Boy howdy! In order to justify some more scenes of violence and breasts, the Krites had to become more kid-friendly. They began their slide from vicious furballs to ridiculous goofballs. Much like the Gremlins in Joe Dante's 1984 film, the Krites get up to all sorts of wacky puppet hi-jinks. They munch on telephone wires, they invade a burger joint, and they eat hamburger patties. They fall into deep fryers and get the tops of their heads singed bald, to which one Krite exclaims, "Bitchin!" after scoping out his new bald dome in the mirror. For the tone of this film, however, the silliness works. In order to get mileage out of the Krites for a sequel, you have to go over-the-top by necessity. And I still maintain that the Krites are far more interesting in design and character than any of the other Gremlins ripoffs (I'm calling you out Ghoulies!)
In conjunction with my review of Critters (1986), let's compare its original North American VHS box art to its modern DVD art. Will they be classic, characterless, or criminal?
VHS COVER
Verdict: CLASSIC!
Critters had the perfect type of box art for the mid-1980's. Well-produced and eye-catching, it was ready to perfectly target its audience. The thin-line title text in front of a star field evokes associations with other sci-fi films of the era such as Blade Runner or Alien while the two meteors descending out of the atmosphere on a rural horizon establish the film's setting. Then, incongruously smack-dab in the middle of it all, is a big, fat, hairy grinning monster. Lovingly detailed and illustrated, the monster isn't scary but intriguing. Since the film was rated PG-13, this toothy alien is clearly meant to intrigue the kids browsing the movie store. Additionally, the cover's composition leads the eye in a very satisfying circle. Drawn by the creature, the eye is then drawn to the title. From there, the curving arcs of the meteors bring the eye to the barn and back to the the monster. True to the tone of the film while still exaggerating its qualities, the Critters box art is one of the classics.
Modern DVD COVER
Verdict: CRIMINAL!
Oh my God. What is this crispy turd? It looks like someone made this during an afternoon of learning Photoshop from a drop-in course at the local library. Where to start? How about the obvious? Someone went a little nuts with the clone-stamp tool. They couldn't get more than one stock photo of the Critters to paste all over the DVD? They didn't even appear to change the direction of their eyes, so everyone is looking to the left. This cover is also guilty of two counts of Bevel and Emboss Abuse as well as one count of Reckless Drop Shadow. I've bitched a lot about the lack of imagination in modern DVD art, and I point to the whole Critters series on DVD as proof. Worst of all, the composition is painfully static. The beam of light and row of cloned Critters keeps the eye focused on the centre title text (which is just painful to read anyways). This leaves a lot of dead space in the bottom third of the image. Bleck. Throw this one in the stockades. No chance for parole.
One of my biggest influences for starting this blog was the website Critcononline.com. Since 1982, Fred Adelman has been keeping his finger on the pulse of horror with his independent publication Critical Condition and more recently his website. One of greatest resources on his site is the page called "A Visual History of Video Companies in the 80's" that boasts an impressive collection of scans and photos of vintage 80s-era VHS box art.
Recently Critcononline.com went offline and had its account suspended by its domain host. In correspondence I began with Mr. Adelman today, he said that 1000's of sites are hotlinking to his VHS scans and images, stealing his bandwidth and forcing the server host to shut him down.
EDIT: Hotlinking commonly occurs when someone (person A) shows an image on his or her website by linking to the image's source on the server used by someone else (person B). Whenever other people download the image from person A, it costs person B bandwidth. Person A should have uploaded the image to his or her own server and linked to it from there.
I thought it was worth reminding people that lazy actions such as hotlinking to a site's content can do a lot of unintended harm, especially when it threatens such invaluable historical resources as the content that Fred Adelman keeps on Critcononline.com.
While steps are being taken to get his site back up and running with
code to prevent hotlinking, he shouldn't have to do this. In today's digital age, with the availability of free image-hosting services, there's really no need to hotlink. Unfortunately, with so many more people starting up blogs and websites in and out of the horror fandom that there's also a lot of careless image-hosting going on. Some people are just to lazy to take the time and find their own space to host images.
If you want to support a strong horror fandom, stop hotlinking.
Yes, Critters was rated PG-13 upon its release in 1986, but when you compare it to the prior films that helped forge the PG-13 rating in 1984, it's quite clear that Critters and its sequels started out as more than a Gremlins ripoff - Critters certainly had more teeth!
SYNOPSIS
Space. A cliched frontier. These are the adventures of the Krites: carnivorous alien fur balls. After they escape their inter-stellar prison transport ship, two shape-shifting alien bounty hunters are hired to track them down. Their mission: find the Krites and blow them the fuck up. However, the Krites have escaped to Earth and are set to ravage the bucolic town of Grover's Bend and the unsuspecting Brown family who lives there.
Rating: 3 / 5 Krites
IS IT SHOCKING?
I'm going to say "yes" in so far as Critters was certainly surprising. As I mentioned before, Critters is often charged with being one of the many Gremlins rip-offs in the mid-to-late eighties. These were low-budget films such as Ghoulies, Hobgoblins, Munchies, Troll, and Beasties in which the primary appeal was to see small puppet monsters who were vaguely wacky. Critters, however, belongs in a different league. For one, the Krites look pretty good. Designed by the Chiodo Brothers, the Krites looked pretty good despite being obvious puppets (or, in their rolled-up tribble form, prop balls being thrown into the frame). They had a certain kind of charisma an detail. With their mouths full of rowed teeth and big red eyes, they were certainly some of the better designed puppet creatures of the 80's. A significant portion of the film deals with outer space and aliens, so there's also an attempt at alien makeup, model ship photography, and other special effects. The film itself is also surprisingly bloody for a PG-13 picture. It's by no means a gorefest, but the Krites chomp into people and draw blood unlike in Gremlins where the majority of violence against people happens off-screen. In Critters, no one gets mutilated or visibly shredded, but the Krites are no pushovers either. Perhaps in an attempt to differentiate itself from Gremlins, Critters were mildly more savage (although they'd grow increasingly goofy as the series continued)
Run man, that toupee is pissed!
IS IT SEXY?
Not at all. PG-13 does not make for very sexy films. In one sequence, April Brown (Nadine
Van der Velde) and her new boyfriend Steve (a surprise appearance by Billy Zane in his second theatrical role) both go out to the barn for a little fully-clothed making out, but it's a fairly innocent scene and by no means intended to fog any windshields, if you know what I mean. I have it on good authority, however that Terrance Mann turns some people on. Mann plays the human form of Ug, the alien bounty hunter who takes on the image of an 80's rocker he sees on TV (also played by Mann). I don't see it, but maybe Ug floats your boat.
Mann can't figure out if he wants to be a young Bon Jovi or Tim Curry
IS IT SURREAL?
Critters is pretty standard stuff in terms of film-making. There is one neat sequence in which a destroyed house rebuilds itself that is quite visually interesting, but besides this and some mediocre alien effects, there's nothing surreal about the experience.
IS
IT SILLY?
Essentially, Critters is a lighthearted horror comedy that's played with a sense of fun. The premise of carnivorous alien varmints in UFOs is inherently silly. While the Krites are more menacing than any of the other puppet monsters of the 80's, they also have their goofy moments. The Krites are occasionally sub-titled. For example, one of the Krites comes upon an E.T. doll and asks, "Who are you?" before eating it. In another shot, one Krite exclaims, "Fuck!" after his buddy is blown up. Most of the actors play it straight, but
both M.
Emmet Walsh as Sheriff Harv and Don
Keith Opper as Charlie, the UFO-seeing town drunk,
bring some levity to the movie. Without these silly moments, quirky supporting characters, and the over-the-top actions of the Alien Bounty Hunters (whose one apparent strategy is to shoot tiny moving targets with gigantic cannons), Critters would be highly forgettable. Thankfully, it straddles that fine line and tells a satisfyingly fun alien monster story.
