Don’t call it a Gremlins rip-off. You’ll only annoy co-writer/director Stephen Herek, who claims that the script for his 1986 movie about little monsters who destroy a small town was written well before Joe Dante’s 1984 movie about little monsters who destroy a small town even existed (the real influence here might be the 1983 film The Deadly Spawn).
I say we go along with Herek because this is some entertaining garbage from the 80s trash bin, indefensible kiddie comedy-horror swill that’s good for one more little nostalgic look-see as an adult. If you were a fifth grade boy when this first hit the video stores, your mom probably rented it for you and you probably liked it a lot. We’re talking cinematic Coco Puffs. It’s chock full of the usual vitamins and minerals.
There’s the kid hero (14 year old Scott Grimes) who’s always in trouble. There’s old-fashioned gross-out effects. There’s low-budget spaceships. There’s an alien named Ug. There’s a great awful hair metal song (“Power of the Night” by the fictitious Johnny Steele). There’s also the fast pace, the dumb jokes and the over-the-top total destruction that mark a true 80s classic.
The worst part is when one of the critters eats so much in one night that he grows into a giant Super-Mega-Critter… that we never get to see beyond brief hints. Guess the producers couldn’t afford a big furry suit. On the bright side, if they blew their special effects budget on the cool stop-motion moment where one of the alien bounty hunters—guys with featureless glow-stick heads who land on Earth to kill the critters with flamethrowers—morphs his face into a human visage, complete with skin forming over a skull, then I’d say they spent their money wisely.