Review #962: 'Critters 3' (1991)

Shot back-to-back with Critters 4, this third instalment of the relatively successful comedy-horror series featuring the oddly cute but deadly crites was the first to skip theatres and arrive straight to video. The movie starts as widowed father Clifford (John Calvin), his daughter Annie (Aimee Brooks) and son Johnny (Christian and Joseph Cousins) drive home from their family vacation. When they are forced to pull over due to a flat tire, Annie and Johnny head to a rest stop to play a bit of Frisbee, where they encounter Josh (Leonardo DiCaprio), a floppy-haired cool-kid with an arsehole of a stepfather (William Dennis Hunter), who just so happens to be the landlord of the family. While stationed there, they encounter alien bounty hunter Charlie (Don Keith Opper) who warns the children of another crite invasion.

After a summary of the previous two movies by the former Grover's Bend sheriff-turned-intergalactic alien killer, the family arrive at their apartment building where a collection of comedy archetypes reside. Some eggs hatch and the usual havoc ensues as the new collection of furry killers travel from floor to floor munching anything they can get their teeth into. The action stops at the apartment building once we arrive there and this is where the budget constraints become obvious. Not that the Critters franchise was ever blessed with innovative special effects or puppet-work, but things seem especially lazy and poorly done here.

With everything taking place in one location, we are forced to sit through set-piece after set-piece, as the crites do little but bounce or roll to the next attack and use their poisoned darts to varying degrees of success, usually depending on who they're shooting at. The attempts are humour are childish, with one of the few interesting characters - no-nonsense maintenance lady Marcia (Katherine Cortez) - left literally swinging from a wire for an extended amount of time in a running joke that quickly wears thin. Similar to Gremlins (1984), there is an attempt to give the critters some kind of personality, but they prove as indistinguishable from one another as they have previously. Worth watching only for the curiosity of seeing future A-lister Leonardo DiCaprio in one of his earliest appearances.


Directed by: Kristine Peterson
Starring: Aimee Brooks, John Calvin, Leonardo DiCaprio, Don Keith Opper
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie