Critters...yes well...

Okay kids I am back with a series that frankly is a doozy.  So strap yourselves down, put in your mouth guard and going out swinging.  This is Critters Collection. 

Spoilers can save your sanity…

New Line Cinema attempting to branch out Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Ator films with Miles O’ Keefe and Son Chiba’s Street Fighter series. Wes Craven’s pet project, A Nightmare on Elm Street truly breathed life into the company and offered with a series of creature features.    Of these modern day monster films, the Critters franchise is born.   In 1986, Critters was released just after the success rate of Joe Dante’s Gremlins and has been a long standing of dispute on cashing in on its popularity but this reviewer says nay nay.   The focus of the movie is around the creatures themselves, the Crites or Critters if you will.   These carnivorous aliens from outer space resembling hedgehogs with more teeth than the entire Osmond family spread like a plague from planet to planet eating whatever they can.    They live to simply eat, breed and the cycle repeats.  LAND SHARKS!!!!

The standard storyline is the aliens attack a small town in Grover’s Bend Kansas thrashing a farm and of all things they attack Billy Zane (Back To The Future 1, 2 and 3, Demon Knight, The Phantom, Titanic) A duo of these faceless bounty hunters Ug and Lee and yes I did not make those names up have a chameleonic head allowing them to blend into whatever society they are hunting in.  Not to mention enough firepower to take on the Bolivian Army.  A family of four fends off the Crites with fire axes, ball bats and of course the old fashioned double barrel boomstick.  We even have a bumbling sheriff and town rummy.  Town rummy Charlie (Don Keith Opper of Android, City Limits, Critters, Critters 2, Critters 3, Critters 4 and Infection) takes off with the two hunters.  All is said and done from the first film but apparently these space mammals lay eggs. (Suck it Darwin!)  

These eggs of course make our way to Critters 2: The Main Course.   Our bounty hunters are off world popping a giant worm creature when they are given a contract that Crites are still on Earth. Hunter Lee has more face shifting issues and he hasn’t settled on one. Ug (Terrance Mann of Critters, Critters 3, Critters 4 and The Dresden Files) seems content to using a popular rock star’s visage. Lee is ambushed by Crites and killed. Ug and Charlie rally together and throw down with said Crites blowing the lot of them off with their ship.   But…did we get every egg again?  Wah wah waaaaaah.   Off to Topeka Kansas to create Critters 3: You Are What They Eat starring Don Opper and Terrance Mann of the previous films as well as Leonardo DiCaprio’s first movie.   A down trodden building owned by a heartless landlord is under siege by Crites so clearly that is a pest issue.  Charlie (Don Opper) tracks and takes out the Crites but Ug (Terrance Mann) is again nowhere to be found until a holographic message sputters out of a wrist unit and Ug explains Crites are now on the endangered species list. Charlie drops the last remaining Crite eggs into stasis but fell into the pod that was to carry it to this Shadow Consul.

 Now this sad bit of sputum was actually an extended film and not intended to be a continuous beyond this film but New Line Cinema said we will shoot 3 and 4 back to back.  Critters 4: They're Invading Your Space Charlie places the Crite eggs in a stasis unit only to goof up yet again and get trapped into the pod only to have slept for 200 years and rescued by a salvage ship. Yeah cue James Horner music, some pulse rifles and a kick ass Sgt Apone.   The crew decides to claim salvage rights on the pod and receive an update from the Shadow Consul and demand the pod, offer an obscene reward and set coordinates to arrange a meeting.  The space station was in shambles and the Crites are loose, eating and breeding.  Charlie is brought to consciousness and up to speed on the Crites so he springs into action, if action was constituted for bumbling and inept.  With a gun fight with the descendant of Ug and his white clad storm troopers, the Crites eat most of them and the surviving crew blow up the station and flee to safety. 

What is the point you may ask?   Well ambition versus common sense is what occurred.  As this is the way of many storytellings, lack of continuity, re-writes and schedule conflicts can create a jumbled mess and while this is not what I would consider viable entertainment but it is an aspect of my childhood.  Well okay the first one is.  The other three are ideal from extremely dumb movie night...

Insatiable? We’ll see.

The Insatiable

SPOILERS…Eh you know the drill.

Man o man I seem to be on a vampire kick this month.  This time I have a flick with some budget and meat on the bones.  No more time to waste, let’s delve into The Insatiable.   Writers/directors Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman (TNT and Earth Vs. the Spider) bring us this modern day macabre L.A. story of an everyday guy (Sean Patrick Flannery of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, The Boondock Saints 1 and 2) who works selling flange pipes and is the super for his building .  His local stop at a convenience store and he offers to get a homeless guy; Sammy (Jimmy Gonzales of Four Christmases and Beewax) something to eat.  The convenience store clerk Ronnie (Brad Rowe of Shelter and National Treasure: Book of Secrets ) is swarmy to a couple of preppy kids buying porno mags with the typical hiding purchases.  Harry and Ronnie chatter for a bit and Harry is on his way out to feed the unfortunate fellow on the street.  He then encounters a gorgeous vivacious redheaded vampire (Charlotte Ayanna of Training Day and The Thirst) feeding that very same homeless man.  Startled as he is, his vampire rends Sammy’s head off and leaps 30 feet straight up and through a window without breaking stride.  Harry hyperventilates, passes out but manages to call the cops afterwards.

 Naturally the lead detective treats him like he is jotting down a drunk’s UFO sighting.  Harry slighted by this reaction and terrified of what he saw, of course he goes to work the next day to get crap from his co-workers; Javier (Jon Huertas of Castle and NCIS) and Chet (Josh Hopkins of Swingtown and Private Practice) about the vampiress.   Follow-up questions with lead detective Michael Roper (Boyd Kestner of The General’s Daughter and Hannibal) seems tedious and awkward.  Harry is shown crime scene photos and he is sickened by it. Detective Roper classifies Harry as a nut that saw what he couldn’t possibly have seen, and tells him to take a hike.   Meeting up with Ronnie at the convenience store, Harry notices a neck wound on Ronnie and points out how wiped he appears.  Ronnie tells Harry how his new girlfriend is just running him ragged from sex.  Hmm sounds better than watching this movie any day but I digress. 

 Obsessed with the vampire; Harry surfs the web trying to get a handle on female vampires.  God only knows how many porn sites came up he had to delete out of and discovers they originate from the demon succubus; in that they feed on a man’s life force in the act of sex and slowly drain them of will and strength.  Harry tries to sleep only having a ridiculous bedtime montage of the past events to he heads over to Ronnie’s place to look in on him.  To his shock and horror Ronnie to has met his fate by the vampiress.   The cops are uninterested in what he has to say, so Harry takes it upon himself to deal out justice Peter Cushing style…..okay he actually contacts a web operator that has a few vampire pages.   Harry deals with a backed up garbage disposal of his neighbor Cindi. (Amanda Noret of Veronica Mars and Bunny Whipped)   Just pointing out that she is drooling over Young Indy here and he is too damn bashful to do anything about it.  Smack upside head!

Destiny or a clogged toilet lends a hand and Harry meets a man that is more than just a resident.  Stuck in a wheelchair but wields a decent sawed off boomstick is Strickland (Michael Biehn of Terminator, Aliens and The Rock) who explains to Harry the heightened senses of a vampire.  If they get your scent they can track you anywhere and given his last scene with her I am sure she got pheromones and urine.   Strickland cross-references the known attacks over the last two months and narrows down a grid pattern that is her hunting grounds.  Yes once again we have technology, geography and obsession to hunt and kill vampires.  A trifle cliché but it is Michael Biehn so I excuse him.   Harry hits a hardware store for some tools of the trade.  Pry bar for boarded up doors.  Wire cutters for chain link fences and a decent sized sledgehammer and railroad spikes for staking.  Guess the old lop the head off and everything is gravy concept is key here.   Trailing her to the lair, the vamp wakes only to plead for her life and doofus Balbo lets her live.   Strickland reams him over the phone and Harry devises a plan to deal with her his way.   Using his contacts at work and a handy welding manual; Harry creates the very first Vampire cage.  The same steel used for bank vaults and is damn certain she cannot get out of there.  Excellent time for a spear through the chest but now she is locked away he hasn’t a fricking clue what to do next.  JACKASS!   Stake her, lop the head off and chuck the body to the sun after soaking both head and body in holy water.   Well that was just my opinion. 

 Begging Harry to be free; Tatiana tells him she needs blood every night or she will waste away horribly.  Not wanting a life on his hands, Harry offers her rabbits and other such creatures like a take-out order, but eventually that is not enough for her appetite.  He starts developing a rapport with Tatiana and she can sense he is a lonely sad man who has never really known love.     Too tempted by our vampiress the lines of morality get crossed and Harry starts feeding Tatiana people including jackass co-worker Javier.  Eh can’t say I blame Harry on that one.  Hell I would have fed that guy to a wood chipper let alone a vampire.   The cops find Harry’s prints on discarded bags of trash containing victims and Harry gives himself to Tatiana.     The moral of the story is to kill the pretty thing before it gets in your head.