Critters 2

The annual Easter egg hunt at small town Grover's Bend is about to get awfully harey (okay, at least give me one lame bunny rabbit joke, will ya?) when little eggs found in a barn abandoned two years house those sharp-teeth, human-flesh-eating, mischievous, red-eyeballed, hairy furball Crites soon to crack open with all kinds of carnage in store for the local townsfolk. Even the poor fellow wearing the Easter Bunny outfit isn't spared. Bradley Brown (Scott Grimes, returning from the first film's cast) returns to Grover's Bend to visit Grandma and, sure enough, the Crites hatch and feed not long after he gets off the bus. Terrence Mann and Don Opper also return from the first film, with another bounty hunter alien, landing on Earth by spaceship to make sure all the Crites have been eradicated (Opper has joined Mann, helping tag and salvage the bodies of those rogue aliens they hunt).

I hate teenagers.

I'm a reporter there
Kind of like Jimmy Olsen...with breasts.

This movie has yet another motherless family with daddy (Sam Anderson, a recognizable face, particularly during this time in his career) running the local paper while his peewee daughter is threatened by her Easter egg (an antique salesman trades for them with the local leather-jacketed numbskull bully in town for some cases of beer and Playboy mags, in turn selling some of the Crite eggs to Bradley's aggressive Vegan Grandma, who'll be giving them away, not knowing what are cased inside them) as the older daughter (senior in high school) takes a shine to returning Bradley. I don't know what it is about all these horror movies that have the widower and his kids...

This town can kiss my ass.

Barry Corbin is such a joy to me. He has a way of calling people pussies, forcing the town to "quit their bitchin'", and has this look of "Awww, Hell, we all may die a horrible death, but we can at least do it without griping and pissing, moaning and groaning." You know those actors that just appear on screen, and this smile just pops on your face because there's a sure bet he'll say something cleverly funny that tickles your funnybone? Corbin does it with that trademark drawl and "this is who I am, and I don't give a crap if you like or don't like how I say it" attitude that wins me over every time. When the town elected a new (grumpy) sheriff in a close race to replace Corbin (the poor guy wearing the bunny costume), he felt scorned and when Bradley and Megan (Liane Curtis, Bradley's cutie love interest) and Sally (red-lipsticked, redheaded Lin Shaye, scene stealing extraordinaire, given a much heftier part than the usual cameo) appeal for him to help them against the Critters he's not interested.

We need you Harv. We need a sheriff.
Go check the Yellow Pages.

This here is American Culture. Good Reading. Good Articles.

When Charlie, Ug (Mann), and Lee land on earth, Lee still hasn't found a suitable face/body to morph into, soon discovering a hot babe in a Playboy magazine, taking the shape of shapely bunny, Roxanne Kernohan...to my surprise (I seem to have forgotten this; I have only seen this sequel once back in the early 90s...), Lee is topless, very eyeopening considering the film was rated PG-13. Charlie's expression is priceless. There's this great scene I just loved where Ug and Lee enter a hamburger joint (with the grating nerd, Eddie Deezen, showing up as an employee working the counter), just ransacked by the Crites who are having one hell of a feast, and Lee's extending cannon gun is positioned at her crotch; it's a visual that just cracked me up and Kernohan nails it with just the right look on her face (it was like "Bitchin!"). And, boy howdy, do they lay waste to the Crites and the establishment (it felt like Mick Garris was using the film as a cathartic means to destroy a fast food joint: Take that cow killers!)!

Who are we gonna call? Critterbusters?

Bradley and company have to devise a plan to get all the Crites in one location as to blow them up (it is the usual plot device used in countless crap syfy channel monster movies). So a meat packing plant just on the outskirts of town is ideal for such a plan. Bradley had a thing for dynamite, so getting together some help to plant sticks in the building was a no problem for him. This leads to the expected ka-boom! explosion and the iconic "giant ball of collective critters" rolling out of the fiery wreckage of the plant, over a few people (a neat, momentary visual has the bloody skeleton of a victim just right after the teeth of the collective furball passed over him while he tried to flee), and eventually torpedoed by Ug's bounty space ship thanks to a courageous Charlie wanting to come to the rescue as the critters aimed their roll towards a church full of children.


Damn meateaters!

Probably the big Gremlins-inspired scene comes when the Crites are chowing down in the burger joint, one of the bunch with a bald head after a blast takes its hair off, another falling in cooking grease, not to mention, all the "critter splatter" that results from cannon blasts that explode them into pieces and green goo. There are plenty of sight gags where Crites are run over or an imprint on a wall, with Mick Garris (who not only directed but co-wrote) abandoning any real horror, setting the tone more Looney Tunes and cartoonish, having the creatures played for laughs. I found myself actually laughing out loud a few times and this was far more entertaining than I was expecting. Not to miss an opportunity to give a shout out to their popular franchise's marketable villain, New Line Cinema (who financed Critters 2) executive Robert Shaye has Lee catch the eye of a billboard sign, almost morphing into Freddy Krueger! How cool would that have been?!

I gotta go...where no man has gone before.

Charlie is sober, treated with great love and care by the filmmakers, and treated with some dignity, unlike the first film which rather took a dump on him. His role here is substantially better and more lucrative than in the previous film where he was basically a likable minor colorful local amongst a fine cast. Mann has about the same amount of screen time and his alien is shaken when Lee is brutally murdered by Crites who trap "him/her" in an alley. Ug goes into "nothing-face" while "in mourning" but comes through with a neat trick fooling the Crites using a particular disguise.

I'm back.

Corbin, while at first hesitant to join Bradley, commits and his "gathering of the troops" is one of the resounding reasons I'll return to this movie in the future. I like that Grimes returned to the series one final time and he's a charming kid: his chemistry with Curtis is undeniable and they fit as an item like a glove. Add Corbin to the mix, Lin Shaye, and the wonderful Herta Ware as "fruits and vegetables instead of meat" conscious Nana, along with Opper and Mann, you got a treat of a cast. I could find worse ways to spend 80+ minutes.

It's funny. I was thinking: I can't think of too many horror films set around Easter,  and Critters 2 seems like an ideal choice to be an annual flick for that particular day. It captures the sunny brightness and Easter colors quite well. Good evocation of Norman Rockwell-ish folksy town that would seem ideal for retirees and those seeking the quiet to close the twilight years. This wasn't a film that carries any real nostalgia because I have only seen it once, but it was an entertaining diversion, I thought. I think the series should have probably ended here; it only gets worse from this point forward...