Critters

The Critters in question, aliens escaping from a space prison, are rolling amok in the small town of Grovers Bend, Kansas, where they've penned up Farmer Brown's family. They've cut the phone lines, killed the electricity, and eaten his goldfish. Now they want him. Judging from the title, Spielberg's Gremlins would be the immediate target, and indeed Critters does share a sardonic similarity. In fact, Critters looks like several dozen films without looking like any one of them, the action and characters lifted whole from a dissimilar plethora of cinematic sources and underscored with a sizzling sarcasm which elevates it from its source material. As a local puts it when he encounters the outer-space bounty hunters who've come to save humanity dressed in what look like worn-out Flash Gordon pyjamas (the locals wear bowling shirts with a Ghostbusters logo), 'They must be from Los Angeles.' No they don't make 'em like they used to, they make 'em exactly like they used to, only with a bit more bite.