An underrated ’80s sequel that’s pretty much essential Easter viewing
OK, so Easter really isn’t the best holiday to anchor a horror movie around. You’ve got bunnies and pastel-colored hard-boiled eggs and resurrected messiahs … well, on second thought, Easter sounds like the PERFECT holiday to anchor a horror movie around. Which makes it so surprising/confounding that the holiday never got its corresponding magnum opus a’la Halloween, Black Christmas, April Fool’s Day or New Year’s Evil.
There have been some noble efforts to capitalize/exploit the conceits of the holiday, but as far as I’m concerned the closest thing we have to an ULTIMATE Easter horror movie is, of all possible things, 1988’s Critters 2: The Main Course.
Everybody’s got their opinion on the movie. Some people think it’s better than the first Critters, some people think it’s worse, some people think they’re about even. One thing is for sure, though, Critters 2 is a MUCH bloodier movie than its predecessor — and in my personal opinion, much funnier, too.
I’ll give you a little bit of procedural history on the movie before we move into what makes it such apropos Easter-time viewing. The film was directed and co-written by Mick Garris, who is no stranger to long-time horror fans. A little lost in the shuffle, though, is the co-writer of the movie, David Twohy. He may not be as familiar as Garris (who gave us, among other works, 1992’s Sleepwalkers and Psycho IV: The Beginning), but Twohy’s definitely got quite the resume on him. His subsequent screenwriting credits include stuff like Waterworld, G.I. Jane and The Chronicles of Riddick. But before he moved on to those big-budgeted, big-named motion pictures, he was honing his craft on this oddball horror-comedy sequel.
The Main Course is a rare ’80s horror sequel that doesn’t completely gloss over its forbear. It’s got a couple of returning characters from the first flick, including Don Keith Opper as Charlie McFadden (who is pretty much the Ash equivalent of the Critters franchise.) I’m just going to assume you’ve all seen the first Critters movie because good grief, is it going to sound like an LSD fever dream to those of you who haven’t seen it. Long story short: outer space porcupines invade a small town in Kansas and only these intergalactic bounty hunters with Bon Jovi haircuts can stop them from taking over the Midwest. Even if you haven’t seen the movie, you’re probably aware of its existence from the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, since its the movie Raphael watches in a theater while (poorly) disguised as Dick Tracy. “Where do they come up with this stuff?” Raph famously commented on the film.
So anyway, back to Critters 2. Also returning from part one is the juvenile protagonist Brad Brown (played by Scott Grimes), who’s back in town to visit his grandmother in Grover’s Bend, Kansas. Well, one day some kooky door to door salesman shows up at Granny Brown’s doorstep hawking some weird looking eggs, and what do you know, they just so happen to be Critters eggs. By the way, the official name of the monsters from the series are “Crites,” but I guess it’s cool if we just call them Critters.
And here’s where the Easter hook comes into play. You’ve got a whole bunch of alien eggs, so what better way to incorporate them into a horror movie than by using them as a plot device in a children’s Easter egg hunt? You don’t need me to tell you what happens next — and rest assured, the end result here is nothing short of SPECTACULAR.
Now, it’s not just that the entire plot of the movie hinges on monster Easter eggs. Garris and Twohy went above and beyond to throw in as much Easter kitsch and ephemera in the film as possible, including a downright TREMENDOUS scene where the town sheriff puts on a full Easter Bunny costume and … well, I don’t want to spoil what happens to him, but let’s just say it’s a VERY memorable moment in the franchise.
The fun and games definitely doesn’t end there, though. Pretty much the entire movie is one goofball home run after the other, with so much bizarre stuff going on that I’d sound like a madman if I just started listing them off without any further context. But I will say this: I doubt you’ll find any other Easter-centric movie out there with giant space worm attacks, buxom models lugging around laser cannons and a scene where a space probation officer ALMOST turns into Freddy Krueger. And don’t even get me started on the grand finale, where all of the remaining Crites fuse together in a ginormous fur ball and make a bee line right for the hamburger factory. If that ain’t proper cinema, I don’t know what is.
Who knows if the screen writers intentionally tried to write the ULTIMATE Easter-themed horror movie but either way, they pretty much did. It’s the kind of horror movie that takes full advantage of the holiday iconography without every really becoming beholden to it. It’s an immensely entertaining horror sequel that just so happens to be about Easter, and frankly, the whole thing works so much better this way. Beyond the obvious Easter tomfoolery, the movie also seems to port about some kind of subtle messaging about mass consumption and the fast food industry, although it never becomes too blunt or preachy. In the grand pantheon of ’80s horror sequels, it’s one of the lesser appreciated and deserving of so much more praise. Maybe not a whole lot of praise, but at least more than it gets now.
If you’re looking for some horror material to watch over Easter weekend, Critters 2 is about as perfect as any other movie out there. It’s got the nostalgia factor, it’s got a surprising amount of gore, it’s got a ton of jokes that are actually funny and it just FEELS like appropriate early spring watching. I mean, it sure beats watching a killer rabbit movie like Night of the Lepus, and I guarantee you that Hungry Heifer jingle is going to be stuck in your head indefinitely.
