NEW FEATURE! Throw Back Thursday: Critters.

Taken from:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2d/Crittersposter.jpg

Ah, the month of October. The leaves are flinging themselves off the trees, the roads are clogged with rain, and I’m needing a hot cups of tea more often. It’s a great month!

Halloween is just around the corner, and you know what that means… Yep, Horror films galore! So to celebrate this beautiful time of year, I have decided to start a new (hopefully progressional) blog series where just like those totally hip and trendy people on that photo showing website (Instagram for those of you who don’t get my arty-farty language) where they throw back to past Thursdays. What film better to throw back to than my favourite film of all time, the first horror film I can vividly being terrified of, but needing to re-watch it like 832883 times… Critters!

Critters is a sci-fi horror that takes place in a secluded rural town in Kansas (we unfortunately don’t see any links to Dorothy here, though), where the residence look like butter wouldn’t melt and it’s strange to see that most of the town’s inhabitants pro-created.  We are introduced to the Brown family, consisting of a loving Mother, bowling mad handy man Father, and two teenage kids. The Brown residence is the normal TV stereotype family, where Brad teases April about a fancy guy she’s dating, and Harv, being the protective Father he is, scrunches his dusty face about it… My point being they are normal, have a huge farm and life is hunky-dory, until later in the evening the Brown family encounters creatures of a third kind (or something…) The Critters.

As most space monsters do, they eat the Brown’s cattle, make loud noises that startle the Mother, Helen, where we get our first glimpse at their blood red eyes. Terrifying. The Crites go on to half eat Aprils Jonny Depp looking man, and trap her in the barn. Meanwhile, Charlie, the resident town joker and alien believer repeatedly reports that space critters (get it) will be making their way down to our beloved planet anytime soon. Charlie, played by Don Opper, is the first to experience the Crites outside of the Brown residence and calls it into his local jail house.

From there we see that the Crites are pretty smart, can work as a team and will use their porcupine like hairs to send the wary recipient into a debilitating state. They become more scary than the feasible fluff balls they appear, and thus become really rather scary (well, they were to the 5 year old me.)

The end comes nye for the Crites as our great saviours, the bounty hunters, come to planet Earth’s rescue. They transform into pop stars and dead people (seriously, watch below for how cool they look transforming) and blow shit UPPP! After a huge explosion, and many tears the Brown family is save…. Or are they?

Re-watching the film that made me become a horror horder, I am still quite enamoured with Critters, without it being loved due to my childish lust for scary stuff and the turmoil it left me in for years to come, it does have a certain b-horror charm about it. The wonderful animatronics of the Crites powered by the ever amazing Chiodo Brothers is simply breath taking, and the writing of the film in general is pretty great too.

I love this film, and it’s sequels so much so, that when I took a trip to Seattle’s EMP Museum I took about 1,000 selfies with the Critter on display, and nearly cried (sort of…) when I had to leave it.

Love it or hate it, Critters is a great little film to show your young ones if you want them to catch the horror bug young, like my Father, or to just see if you want something cool looking without psychological plot twists blocking your brain’s eye. Long live the Crites!

Until next time,

Jessie.