November 11, 2025 • 11 mins
Today I take a look at critters , the 1986 sci-fi horror
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Critters was released in nineteen eighty six, and it was
at a time when horror saalt this kind of shift,
from tarring slashes and gothic monsters to gimmecky pint sized
horrors that blended terror with camp comedy. These creatures often
came with a mix of practical effects, puppetry, and dark humor,
making them perfect for VHS era cult fandom. This trend
(00:21):
seemed to come after the success of Gremlins in nineteen
eighty four, which grows to one hundred and fifty million globally,
which mixed horror and comedy and presented it as a
family movie. Dremlins kind of paved the way for other
small creature horror flicks to be made, including Goolies, another
camp horror which featured tall, dwelling demons, and of course Critters.
Those ravenous and strangely intelligent little fur balls from out
(00:43):
of space. They have burning red eyes. They are around
the size of a balling ball, with mouths full of
razor sharp teeth that are just as big as their head.
They can also roll up into balls to chase down
their prey, and they also shoot poisonous spikes from their body.
A perfect blend of sci fi, menace and mischeis horror,
and these critters or Chrits are not just mindless, murderous creatures.
(01:04):
They are actually highly intelligent. They can pilot spaceships, and
they can chow down and torment their prey with gleeful malice.
This movie was very much a practical effects movie. The
critters or Chrits were nothing more than hand puppets with
radio controlled eyes, and they came in all different shapes
and sizes. We had a thirteen inch puppet, a twenty
six inch puppet, and we also had a four foot
(01:26):
costume which featured at the end of the movie, which
they use spurringly because it looked kind of goofy when
you showed the whole thing. Now, I remember this movie
being quite scary as a kid. Actually I found it
downright terrifying. But how does it hold up now? On
the distant asteroid and a galaxy far far away, the Christs,
which are small, furry, carnivorous aliens, escape from a galactic
(01:49):
prison transport, and with the escape of the Crits, two
shape shifting bounty hunters are dispatched to Earth to recapture them.
Next we meet the Brown family in rural Kansas. Further
j mother Helen played by d Wallace Stone, who famously
played the mother in Et teenage daughter April and young
son Brad. And young Brad clearly as a student of
(02:09):
Spielbergie in Mischief and he tries the all thermometor in
the hot Water trick to skip school. But little does
he know that his mother has been through this before.
Helen Brown isn't just any mother, She's d Wallace Smith.
She's already raised one alien loving kid this time. Of course,
she's not going to fall for it, okay, one hundred
and six. Next we get introduced to our small town
(02:31):
police force and Charlie, a quirking mechanic who believes in
aliens and works on the Browns farm. Little does he
know that the two alien Bounty hunters are ready to
Earth and they get a kind of full cultural download
on human life by seeing a few historical events as
such on the screens for a few seconds. That should
do it, and then they simply get bored and switch
over to MTV to watch the most eighties rock star
(02:53):
you have ever seen, the fictional Johnny Steele and one
of the Bounty Hunters decides that this is the perfect
look to fit in on Earth, a famous rock star
who no one will notice. Now back in the family,
see Brad and Charlie using the explosives and being somewhat
reckless with a slingshot. Yeah, I could see nothing going
wrong here. That's a perfect shot. And after Charlie shoots
(03:16):
April in the ass with the slingshot in what I
considered to be an incredible bit of bad luck, Brad
takes the blame and is sent up to his room
where he has his time out and makes some more explosives.
His family really need to keep an eye on this kid.
And what I found funny was that Brad's father takes
away the slingshot, but it's more than happy to leave
(03:36):
all of these homemade explosives in this possession. Later that night,
Brad notices his sister and young Billy Zane head over
to the barn to get it on whilst the earlier
spacecraft cart in the Crits crashes nearby and Brad and
his father go to check it out, and they notice
that something has been feeding on their livestock, and somehow
they fail to see the massive glowing spaceship that is
(03:56):
just to their left as they walk away, and it
isn't long before the It's child down on a local
cop and we see them rolled up into these spiky
little balls as they hunt their prey. And I thought
this was a clever way to showld the creatures in
movement when you consider the just handpuppets. It was a
really creative way to show how they hunt and how
they move. And another way they portrayed the crites in
(04:17):
movement is to get a POV shot from their height
as they are moving towards a farmhouse, and that gave
me evil dead vibes, you know, with the demon going
through the forest. The families soon find themselves fighting to
stay alive as a critus invade the farmhouse. Meanwhile, the
Bounty Hunters have landed on Earth, but one of them
still hasn't taken a form. He's a little bit picky.
(04:38):
But the Banty Hunters come across the dead cop, and
the Banty hunter, who has no old face, decides that
the face of a corpse is just a perfect way
to fit in the face of an eighties rockstar and
the face of a corpse. These are the best Bounty
Hunters I've ever seen. Meanwhile, back at the firm, the
crites killed Billy Zane and some chickens before Brad throws
them in. It explosive at one of the critters, which
(05:00):
and simply either passes out or dies but doesn't explode.
In a really bizarre scene, the bounty hunters crash into
a church and the zombie bounty hunter decides that it's
probably not a good idea to disguise himself as a
dead man, takes the appearance of the preacher in front
of everyone, and then thus seas to shoot the place
up for absolutely no reason at all. These Bounty Hunters
(05:21):
are not discreet. Meanwhile, back at the farm, the Brown
family offending off the Christs, which we learn can actually
speak to each other, and they like to drop the
f bomb now and again. Now back with the bounty hunters,
they decided that they should check out the local bowling alley,
(05:42):
you know, in case some of the Christs decided they
want to knock some pins down, and the bounty Hunters
decide that they're going to try the hand at bowling,
and I'm not quite sure that they read the rules.
After demolishing the pins, they walk into the bur area
where Charlie just so happens to be, and once again
the bounty hunter, who just can't seem to decide what
(06:04):
kind of face he wants, takes on Charlie's appearance. This
guy just can't make his mind up. And then the
bounty huntos aggressively asked the bartender were the crits, which
makes absolutely no sense as no one on earth knows
what a crit is, And then after absolutely blasting the
bar area to Kingdom Come, they carry on their search
for the CRTs elsewhere. Back at the Brown farm, the
(06:25):
Crites have invaded the house and after nearly burning down
the place, the Browns barricade themselves in the upstairs bedroom
and Brad decides to go for help and what's hiding
in the bar and he witnesses one of the crits
growing in size and the next bit really made me laugh.
These highly advanced aliens that have flown a ship across
the universe try to have a conversation with a stuffed
(06:46):
e te toy, and I must admit this is where
the movie started to feel a little like Gremlin's to
me in some ways, especially the silliness. Meanwhile, Brad has
(07:08):
stopped a police car on the road, which just so
happens to be driven by his friend Charlie and his
favorite rock Star, but we know that it is the
two worst bounty hunters ever. Back at the farmhouse, the
family decide to make a break for it, and things
look pretty bleak. Luckily, the hero bounty hunters arrive and
blow the entire front of the house off. And seriously,
(07:35):
these guys are just the worst. The crates are actually
rolling past them on the floor and instead of aiming
down with their guns, they just blow a hole in
the wall. They are just shooting anywhere. These guys are
just a nightmare, and they even attack a local cop
it was turned up to help. They actually throw him
through the window. Brad at this point is upstairs looking
(07:56):
for his cat and he is attacked by the massive crwds,
which he saw in the barn. Luckily, Rockstar Bounty onto
her eyes and takes a shot at the massive crket
and totally misses and blows a hole in the wall.
The massive cr jumps out the window and kidnaps April
and takes her to its ship. What's following the giant cright,
Brad bumps into Charlie the real Charlie, not the bounty
(08:16):
onto one. The four foot crte has took Brad's sister
on board its spaceship and they're getting ready to take off,
but Brad sneaks on board and wakes up his sister,
and the crits give chase, but Charlie and his sister
just make it out, but Brad drops one of his
giant firecrackers that he made earlier, and as a ship
takes off, Charlie and Brad light a Molotov cocktail and
(08:37):
throw it through the open door, which ignites the massive firecracker.
But the Crate's are spiteful little shits and they blow
the brown house to smother ens before the firecracker explodes
with the force of T and T and they are defeated.
And with that, the worst bounty hunters ever decide that
they've done a pretty good job, and they head back
to the ship and Brad fangsome for what. I'm not
(08:57):
sure they literally did not thing, apart from blow the
shit out of everything and everyone. In fact, I'm pretty
sure that the bounty hunters only got one critter, and
that critter was stuck headfirst and a toilet bowl and
had nowhere else to go, and then it was expertly eliminated,
along with the toilet and the bathroom. I mean seriously,
(09:18):
the toilet in Lethal Weapon iiO was in better shape
after being blown out of the house. After the sun rises,
the Brown family standing in front of the demolished house,
and this is a bit that I found the most amusing.
Brad was given a communication device by one of the
bounty hunters and he notices that it's blinking, so he
presses a button and the house simply rebuilds itself. Walls, furniture,
(09:41):
the mail box, even the curtains are put back up.
It's like extreme makeover, the Alien edition. And it all
seems like a happy ending. But as a movie ends,
we see some krite eggs in the burn nicely sitting
up a sequel, and all man, did we get some sequels,
three in fact, not including the twenty nineteen Critters, which
was a straight to video release, And we also got
(10:03):
Critters and New Binge, which were ten minute shorts shown
on Shudder back in twenty nineteen. And these two projects
were kind of like a reboot of the franchise. These
movies really scured me as a kid, and I remember
thinking it was a really scurry, violent movie, but as
an adult, I see it for what it is. It's
an eighties pint sized creature feature that blends horror and
(10:23):
canceliness perfectly. I think if it wasn't for the blood
and the kills, it would almost be a family movie,
but they decided to go the other way and lean
more into sci fi horror. On the whole. Critters is
a great little eighties sci fi horror movie that was
a lot of fun, and admittedly it still is. Four
Critters was released in nineteen eighty six, and it was
at a time when horror saalt this kind of shift,
from tarring slashes and gothic monsters to gimmecky pint sized
horrors that blended terror with camp comedy. These creatures often
came with a mix of practical effects, puppetry, and dark humor,
making them perfect for VHS era cult fandom. This trend
(00:21):
seemed to come after the success of Gremlins in nineteen
eighty four, which grows to one hundred and fifty million globally,
which mixed horror and comedy and presented it as a
family movie. Dremlins kind of paved the way for other
small creature horror flicks to be made, including Goolies, another
camp horror which featured tall, dwelling demons, and of course Critters.
Those ravenous and strangely intelligent little fur balls from out
(00:43):
of space. They have burning red eyes. They are around
the size of a balling ball, with mouths full of
razor sharp teeth that are just as big as their head.
They can also roll up into balls to chase down
their prey, and they also shoot poisonous spikes from their body.
A perfect blend of sci fi, menace and mischeis horror,
and these critters or Chrits are not just mindless, murderous creatures.
(01:04):
They are actually highly intelligent. They can pilot spaceships, and
they can chow down and torment their prey with gleeful malice.
This movie was very much a practical effects movie. The
critters or Chrits were nothing more than hand puppets with
radio controlled eyes, and they came in all different shapes
and sizes. We had a thirteen inch puppet, a twenty
six inch puppet, and we also had a four foot
(01:26):
costume which featured at the end of the movie, which
they use spurringly because it looked kind of goofy when
you showed the whole thing. Now, I remember this movie
being quite scary as a kid. Actually I found it
downright terrifying. But how does it hold up now? On
the distant asteroid and a galaxy far far away, the Christs,
which are small, furry, carnivorous aliens, escape from a galactic
(01:49):
prison transport, and with the escape of the Crits, two
shape shifting bounty hunters are dispatched to Earth to recapture them.
Next we meet the Brown family in rural Kansas. Further
j mother Helen played by d Wallace Stone, who famously
played the mother in Et teenage daughter April and young
son Brad. And young Brad clearly as a student of
(02:09):
Spielbergie in Mischief and he tries the all thermometor in
the hot Water trick to skip school. But little does
he know that his mother has been through this before.
Helen Brown isn't just any mother, She's d Wallace Smith.
She's already raised one alien loving kid this time. Of course,
she's not going to fall for it, okay, one hundred
and six. Next we get introduced to our small town
(02:31):
police force and Charlie, a quirking mechanic who believes in
aliens and works on the Browns farm. Little does he
know that the two alien Bounty hunters are ready to
Earth and they get a kind of full cultural download
on human life by seeing a few historical events as
such on the screens for a few seconds. That should
do it, and then they simply get bored and switch
over to MTV to watch the most eighties rock star
(02:53):
you have ever seen, the fictional Johnny Steele and one
of the Bounty Hunters decides that this is the perfect
look to fit in on Earth, a famous rock star
who no one will notice. Now back in the family,
see Brad and Charlie using the explosives and being somewhat
reckless with a slingshot. Yeah, I could see nothing going
wrong here. That's a perfect shot. And after Charlie shoots
(03:16):
April in the ass with the slingshot in what I
considered to be an incredible bit of bad luck, Brad
takes the blame and is sent up to his room
where he has his time out and makes some more explosives.
His family really need to keep an eye on this kid.
And what I found funny was that Brad's father takes
away the slingshot, but it's more than happy to leave
(03:36):
all of these homemade explosives in this possession. Later that night,
Brad notices his sister and young Billy Zane head over
to the barn to get it on whilst the earlier
spacecraft cart in the Crits crashes nearby and Brad and
his father go to check it out, and they notice
that something has been feeding on their livestock, and somehow
they fail to see the massive glowing spaceship that is
(03:56):
just to their left as they walk away, and it
isn't long before the It's child down on a local
cop and we see them rolled up into these spiky
little balls as they hunt their prey. And I thought
this was a clever way to showld the creatures in
movement when you consider the just handpuppets. It was a
really creative way to show how they hunt and how
they move. And another way they portrayed the crites in
(04:17):
movement is to get a POV shot from their height
as they are moving towards a farmhouse, and that gave
me evil dead vibes, you know, with the demon going
through the forest. The families soon find themselves fighting to
stay alive as a critus invade the farmhouse. Meanwhile, the
Bounty Hunters have landed on Earth, but one of them
still hasn't taken a form. He's a little bit picky.
(04:38):
But the Banty Hunters come across the dead cop, and
the Banty hunter, who has no old face, decides that
the face of a corpse is just a perfect way
to fit in the face of an eighties rockstar and
the face of a corpse. These are the best Bounty
Hunters I've ever seen. Meanwhile, back at the firm, the
crites killed Billy Zane and some chickens before Brad throws
them in. It explosive at one of the critters, which
(05:00):
and simply either passes out or dies but doesn't explode.
In a really bizarre scene, the bounty hunters crash into
a church and the zombie bounty hunter decides that it's
probably not a good idea to disguise himself as a
dead man, takes the appearance of the preacher in front
of everyone, and then thus seas to shoot the place
up for absolutely no reason at all. These Bounty Hunters
(05:21):
are not discreet. Meanwhile, back at the farm, the Brown
family offending off the Christs, which we learn can actually
speak to each other, and they like to drop the
f bomb now and again. Now back with the bounty hunters,
they decided that they should check out the local bowling alley,
(05:42):
you know, in case some of the Christs decided they
want to knock some pins down, and the bounty Hunters
decide that they're going to try the hand at bowling,
and I'm not quite sure that they read the rules.
After demolishing the pins, they walk into the bur area
where Charlie just so happens to be, and once again
the bounty hunter, who just can't seem to decide what
(06:04):
kind of face he wants, takes on Charlie's appearance. This
guy just can't make his mind up. And then the
bounty huntos aggressively asked the bartender were the crits, which
makes absolutely no sense as no one on earth knows
what a crit is, And then after absolutely blasting the
bar area to Kingdom Come, they carry on their search
for the CRTs elsewhere. Back at the Brown farm, the
(06:25):
Crites have invaded the house and after nearly burning down
the place, the Browns barricade themselves in the upstairs bedroom
and Brad decides to go for help and what's hiding
in the bar and he witnesses one of the crits
growing in size and the next bit really made me laugh.
These highly advanced aliens that have flown a ship across
the universe try to have a conversation with a stuffed
(06:46):
e te toy, and I must admit this is where
the movie started to feel a little like Gremlin's to
me in some ways, especially the silliness. Meanwhile, Brad has
(07:08):
stopped a police car on the road, which just so
happens to be driven by his friend Charlie and his
favorite rock Star, but we know that it is the
two worst bounty hunters ever. Back at the farmhouse, the
family decide to make a break for it, and things
look pretty bleak. Luckily, the hero bounty hunters arrive and
blow the entire front of the house off. And seriously,
(07:35):
these guys are just the worst. The crates are actually
rolling past them on the floor and instead of aiming
down with their guns, they just blow a hole in
the wall. They are just shooting anywhere. These guys are
just a nightmare, and they even attack a local cop
it was turned up to help. They actually throw him
through the window. Brad at this point is upstairs looking
(07:56):
for his cat and he is attacked by the massive crwds,
which he saw in the barn. Luckily, Rockstar Bounty onto
her eyes and takes a shot at the massive crket
and totally misses and blows a hole in the wall.
The massive cr jumps out the window and kidnaps April
and takes her to its ship. What's following the giant cright,
Brad bumps into Charlie the real Charlie, not the bounty
(08:16):
onto one. The four foot crte has took Brad's sister
on board its spaceship and they're getting ready to take off,
but Brad sneaks on board and wakes up his sister,
and the crits give chase, but Charlie and his sister
just make it out, but Brad drops one of his
giant firecrackers that he made earlier, and as a ship
takes off, Charlie and Brad light a Molotov cocktail and
(08:37):
throw it through the open door, which ignites the massive firecracker.
But the Crate's are spiteful little shits and they blow
the brown house to smother ens before the firecracker explodes
with the force of T and T and they are defeated.
And with that, the worst bounty hunters ever decide that
they've done a pretty good job, and they head back
to the ship and Brad fangsome for what. I'm not
(08:57):
sure they literally did not thing, apart from blow the
shit out of everything and everyone. In fact, I'm pretty
sure that the bounty hunters only got one critter, and
that critter was stuck headfirst and a toilet bowl and
had nowhere else to go, and then it was expertly eliminated,
along with the toilet and the bathroom. I mean seriously,
(09:18):
the toilet in Lethal Weapon iiO was in better shape
after being blown out of the house. After the sun rises,
the Brown family standing in front of the demolished house,
and this is a bit that I found the most amusing.
Brad was given a communication device by one of the
bounty hunters and he notices that it's blinking, so he
presses a button and the house simply rebuilds itself. Walls, furniture,
(09:41):
the mail box, even the curtains are put back up.
It's like extreme makeover, the Alien edition. And it all
seems like a happy ending. But as a movie ends,
we see some krite eggs in the burn nicely sitting
up a sequel, and all man, did we get some sequels,
three in fact, not including the twenty nineteen Critters, which
was a straight to video release, And we also got
(10:03):
Critters and New Binge, which were ten minute shorts shown
on Shudder back in twenty nineteen. And these two projects
were kind of like a reboot of the franchise. These
movies really scured me as a kid, and I remember
thinking it was a really scurry, violent movie, but as
an adult, I see it for what it is. It's
an eighties pint sized creature feature that blends horror and
(10:23):
canceliness perfectly. I think if it wasn't for the blood
and the kills, it would almost be a family movie,
but they decided to go the other way and lean
more into sci fi horror. On the whole. Critters is
a great little eighties sci fi horror movie that was
a lot of fun, and admittedly it still is. Four
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