Critters 3 (1991)
I've been trying to come up with things to say for this film and its sequel for months now. Being early 90s direct-to-video releases, there isn't much data on them. So I apologize for how short this write up is.
After the box office disappointment of Critters 2, the once promising series seemed to be done. For 3 years the franchise kept dormant. However, the late 1980s and early 1990s saw a surge in the idea of shooting movies on a low budget in order for the films to bypass theaters and go directly to VHS. It was akin to the idea of TV movies, but this way, instead of getting sponsers and the TV station to pay for it, you had the movie company pay more or less than a million bucks and hope to recoup the money with movie rental stores buying the rights to rent the film. (It may surprise some of you, but film ownership was not important in the early days of VHS. In fact, VHS was mainly made for the rental market back in the late 1970s, with VHS tapes costing about $100 each.) So New Line was eventually persuaded to fund two Critters films to be shot at the same time, both to be released straight-to-video, and to be released pretty much back to back as well.
The plot of Critters 3 is kind of like the first to films, but set in pretty much one building. There's this teenage girl, Annie, and her younger brother. They are going with their father to their apartment when their tire has a flat. They stop at a rest stop and there they meet Josh. Now Josh is played by a young Leonardo Di Caprio. Supposedly he was 17 when this film came out, but he looks maybe 14. Makes me wonder if perhaps the film was filmed way earlier than it was released and they decided at the last minute to release direct to video? (As I said, there's not much info on these films to find out.) Anyway, it was Di Caprio's first film. Now Josh starts playing frisbee with Annie and her brother, and when the frisbee goes into the woods, they are surprised by Charlie, the village drunk and now alien bounty hunter from the first two films. He's of course hunting Crites again and warns the kids who all think he's just the local crazy. Once the tire is fixed the kids leave. We also find out that Josh's stepdad, who he's traveling with, is a bad guy. He's the family's new landlord. Oh, also some Crites laid eggs under the family car and they are traveling with them to their apartment. Well, I think you can guess how it goes from there. The whole rest of the film takes place in the apartment. Of course Josh and his stepdad show up, people die, there's some funny hijinks with the Crites thrown in, and after everything's over they set up for the next movie which was apparently shot at the same time. Basically Charlie is told by a hologram of his best friend and bounty hunter Ug from the last two films that he apparently can't kill any more Crites. That they are now protected and to give him the eggs he finds.
I didn't like this film as much as the first two. The lower budget is very very obvious and none of the main characters from the first two films are major characters here. It's not a bad movie. It's even fun in some parts. (Like the fat lady getting shot repeatedly by the Crite's quills, which make people partially paralyzed. There's still a bit of blood and menace here, but not much. It's more of a made-for-tv type of movie. Nothing to really offend anyone... Except maybe the huge pair of panties the apartment maintenance guy holds up of the fat lady's. Yeesh!
Critters 4 (1992)
So at the end of the last film, Charlie, intergalactic bumbling bounty hunter, is told by a hologram of his friend an co-worker Ug that he can't kill Crites anymore as the two eggs he's about to smash are the last two and he can't cause a species' extinction and to put the eggs in a transport. Well, somehow Ug gets stuck in the transport too, and it takes him into space and puts him in suspended animation. In 2045, his pod is found by a salvage ship, but once the salvage ship captain reports the pod, Councilor Tetra tells the crew he will pay 3 times what they ask if they'll go to TerraCor, a space station, and hand it over. Everyone on the crew, except the young engineer's apprentice Ethan accept the idea. He just wants to get to earth and see his father, and this is another delay. When they arrive, the station is empty, the core is slowly building to meltdown, and the station computer won't do what it's told. (In fact, it always does the exact opposite, they find out.) Well, after finding this all out, Rick, the captain of the salvage ship, decides he wants all the money for himself and opens the pod. He finds Charlie, but doesn't believe he's the only thing in the pod. So he goes in and is eaten by freshly hatched baby Crites. At this point I should mention the other three characters. There's Bernie, the drug addicted cargo specialist. He's not a nice guy, just like the captain. Then there's the pilot Fran, played by Angela Bassett. She's sort of a mother figure to Ethan, our main character, on the ship. And there's Albert, the head engineer. He's played by Brad Dourif. So, now the Crites have hatched, we soon find they've laid more eggs and are commandeering the salvage ship and setting the course for Earth. Also, a recording was found showing that the station was being used to engineer bioweapons from alien species... Yeah... Now our entrepid crew must work its way through the space station towards their ship avoiding Crites along the way... But then Councilor Tetra shows up... and I'm gonna leave it there, because the ending is sort of a surprise.
Now, I will tell you. This movie doesn't have much Crite action in it. The budget went mostly to the space station sets, I think. Which is pretty sad as there isn't much to look at. White walls mostly. No, this is more character driven, which would be fine if the characters were interesting. They aren't. Brad Dourif does what he can with what he's got, but he's not playing crazy here like he usually does, so that's not much. The film is also essentially bloodless. Most of the comedy comes from the station's computer doing the opposite of what it's told to do, so there's not much to that either. I guess the most amusing thing is that the movie is essentially Alien Resurrection but made 5 years earlier. It even has Brad Dourif in it, albeit a very different character. No talk of "beautiful, beautiful butterfly!" here, thank you very much. And there's the engineering of a pesky alien monster to make bioweapons, which is the plot of the whole Alien franchise. All that's missing is an android and crazy Sigourney Weaver.
This was the second worst Critters film, in my opinion. The space setting, which is usually considered the point when horror series fail (Leprechaun and Jason X) works here. I mean, the Crites are aliens after all. The setting alone makes it better than the last film. It brings a new feeling to the series. What doesn't work is not having the Crites being the focus. The focus is on the corporation coming to take the Crites to make bioweapons and the station close to having a meltdown. The Crites are maybe in 5 minutes of the film. There's really only two attacks. Heck, if I remember correctly there's only two Crites in the whole film! However, I must say the end reveal of the movie is just about unforgivable. I mean it's believable, but it's not something the audience wants to happen, and it leaves the series on a sad note. If you want to know what I'm talking about, watch the film.
So, after all that time dreading talking about these movies, I've finally finished and can now move on to writing about movies that have commentaries or making-ofs to them... that have documentation of their making, or retrospectives so I can actually give you guys and gals some facts and anecdotes. I plan to start a write up of the Child's Play series next, so you have that to look forward to. Also, I started over a year ago doing write-ups for the Star Trek films and only got through the third one, so I plan to get back to that as well. We'll see how it goes.
