"Leprechaun 2" - Alternate Tagline "One Wedding and LOTS of Funerals!"

Back in the day of the horror franchise reviews (and believe me, every time I type those words, I shudder), I got a few requests to cover the Leprechaun series.  I never did, partially because they just didn't interest me that much, and partly because some of the horror stories that I'd heard about them weren't of the good variety.  I'll never forget these sage words of wisdom from one of my fellow posters on the old Wrestlecrap message board:  "Oh man, the first Leprechaun is like a one-star affair.  You'd have to go into NEGATIVE star territory for the rest of the godforsaken things."

The dude wasn't lying.  Having now witnessed the first two filmsi n the franchise, man, the law of diminishing returns sure does kick in mighty fast in this series about an evil fantasy creature who really, really likes his gold.  While I didn't particularly care for the first movie, it was at least passable at points and contained a couple decent supporting performances.  Compared to the movie in question today, it's Citizen Kane.

Released roughly 15 months after its predecessor, Leprechaun 2 was the last movie in the franchise to be released in theaters.  Understandable, since it was nowhere near as profitable as the first film - it made a little over $2.3 million at the box office on a budget of $2 million.  There really isn't that much else to say about this flick from an informational standpoint - I don't know the director or any cast members besides Warwick Davis as the Leprechaun himself and Clint Howard in a very brief cameo as a tourist.  I'm not sure that it's entirely worth spending five minutes scouring Google for more dirt, either.

THE MOVIE!!

Did you know that every thousand years, a Leprechaun can claim any woman he wants as his bride on Saint Patrick's Day?  Well, according to the universe of these films, he can.  That's the introductory segment we get in this flick, as the Leprechaun chases down his loyal slave William O'Day and informs him of his marital intentions.  And...ugh. 

Maybe it's apparent, maybe it isn't, but the thing that I HATE doing in these reviews more than anything else is explaining the rules of fictional universes, particularly when these universes are as banal as this one.  Christ, my reviews are long enough already without having to recap barely significant crap like this just so that the story kinda-sorta makes sense - you'd think these film-makers could make these freakin' things easy once and a while.  *Takes breath*  Okay, so the Leprechaun can marry any woman he wants who sneezes three times, so long as nobody utters the words "God bless you" during this holy process.  Lo and behold, the woman he has chosen is O'Day's own daughter...and lo and behold, O'Day's conscience wins out as he saves his daughter at his own expense.  The Leprechaun kills his slave in retaliation, utilizing his Jedi-like powers to choke the dude to death with his VERY MIND. 

End introductory segment.

With that, we warp forward 1000 years to good ol' Saint Patty's Day in modern Los Angeles.  And man, you have not seen sad until you've met the stellar cast that we're about to be introduced to.  In a plot move that will surprise no one, Bridget Callum (Shevonne Durkin) is our main character, a teenage girl and descendent of the O'Day family living in modern Los Angeles.  I'd say more about her, but this would imply that she is something more than a talking skeleton.  Her boyfriend is Cody (Charlie Heath), who along with his uncle Morty (Sandy Baron) run a scammy "dark side of Hollywood" tour in the great, grand City of Angels.  We see this amazing operation in excruciating detail throughout the early goings of Leprechaun 2, consisting of driving around suburban neighborhoods while large Africa-American occupants douse the car with water.  If you want an endurance test of just how much tedium a human being can take, these segments of the film make a damn fine one.

Soon enough, Warwick Davis himself appears to barely rescue the film, emerging from a tree and immediately ripping the gold tooth out of some homeless bum's mouth.  Hey, he really likes gold.  If nothing else, I once again have to give it up for Davis - he singlehandedly saves this movie from getting the dreaded NO STAR treatment.  No matter how bad the material, he acts like it's important.  What a trooper.  Utilizing his ever-changing magical powers, he homes in on Bridget's location and commences Operation Nail the Blonde.  Because Leprechauns need nookie too, ya know.

At her house, Bridget is being accosted by Ian (Adam Biesk), a worker at a Go-Kart track that she and Cody had been planning on going to (he had to ditch her to run a tour, an event that is supposed to create all kinds of relationship drama but really just bored me to tears even further).  After striking out miserably, we get death scene #1, and to be fair, it's pretty damn cringeworthy.  For starters, Bridget appears in the garage of her house, beckoning Ian back to cocktease-land.  Only this time, she's not just teasing, as she takes off her shirt and exposes her body double's breasts.  As far as the illusions that the murderous imp conjures up, this one is something else, as mock Bridget's breasts are really LAWNMOWER BLADES.  And, as he leans in to kiss them...OUCH.  You know what they say, kids - if a hot chick attempts to lure you into her house with the promise of sex, she's probably just a leprechaun's fantastical murdering device.  Or something.

Having gotten sick of his uncle's bullshit games, Cody shows up at Bridget's house, very apologetic and wielding flowers.  With very little intrigue, Bridget quickly sneezes three times, and before Cody can say the magic soul-saving words, the Leprechaun himself appears and knocks our hero out cold.  This series isn't very big on intrigue, if you haven't figured it out.  With very little fanfare, the Leprechaun claims Bridget as his bride and absconds to his (actually somewhat cool) underground lair, where we get yet another tedious rule - apparently, Leprechauns can only screw if all of their gold is present.  Yeah.  Since one of his gold coins was dropped in the struggle with Bridget, that sets the rest of our plot back in motion - and believe it or not, we're only halfway done with the movie at this point.

*SIGH*

So Cody - wielding the missing gold shilling - is now a fugitive, as the cops have shown up at Bridget's household and discovered Ian's body along with a note from Cody.  He and Morty are soon chased out of their own house by the Leprechaun, now in full-on murderous "I WANT ME GOLD!" mode.  They go to a bar, where of course tons of little people dressed as leprechauns are out and about celebrating the holiday.  It's here where we get one of the only decent sequences in the film, as super con man Morty challenges the Leprechaun to a drinking contest, switching out his own drinks with soda water while Davis does his damndest "drunk" impersonation.  It elicited a chuckle or two from me, anyway.

Right after this, we get a scene in a coffee shop where the Leprechaun sobers up.  Oh, and the waiter in this little sidebar is played by Michael McDonald, the man best known as Stuart from MadTV as well as approximately 14,000 other characters.  In my humble opinion, the dude is quite the comedian and a decent actor to boot, and he makes the most of his 90 seconds of screen time in Leprechaun 2 - even when he's getting stabbed in the hands and having hot steam blown on his face.

Alright, time for a bit of back story setting up the third act of this movie.  Earlier in the flick, Cody had been arrested for running a red light while running the dark side tour.  While in jail, the very same homeless bum who had first seen the Leprechaun was there for an unrelated reason, saying that he saw a creature emerge from a tree at Houdini's ruins on the outskirts of Los Angeles.  Convenient, eh, that our heroes know EXACTLY where the villain's lair is?  I also should have pointed out that the Leprechaun's weakness is different for this go-round - this time, anything wrought iron is his kryptonite, leading Cody and Morty to attempt to retrieve a giant wrought-iron safe from the Go-Kart track.  Because that's what they should be spending their time doing.

This does, however, lead to Morty's death scene in one of those moronic tributes to the ol' "Monkey's Paw" story.  Cody is able to trap the Leprechaun in the safe, at which point Morty gets greedy, locking his nephew in a store room and milking the beast for three wishes.  I won't recount the entire story, but the sequence ends with the Leprechaun freed and Morty's stomach cut open as he lays in a pool of his own blood.  Another life lesson from Leprechaun 2: if a Leprechaun grants you three wishes, don't be a dumbass and realize that he's probably going to do something extremely devious.

Time to wrap this up.  Cody breaks out of the storeroom, and we get our ending sequence back in the underground lair, complete with the heartwarming reunion between Cody and Bridget - which I might have cared a lot more about had they had more than five minutes of screen time together before this.  There's this LONG, very Nightmare on Elm Street-esque process where the two lovebirds attempt to find their way out of the lair, only to find themselves back where they started time and time again.  Cody finally agrees to give the Leprechaun the coin in exchange the coin for Bridget after she turns on the charm and smooches him.

Surprise, surprise - Bridget was really the Leprechaun!  He makes off with his gold and his bride, ready to bring Bridget to a fate worse than death when Cody suddenly rises up and shoves an iron crowbar through his chest.  See, earlier in the movie, one of the dwarves at the bar had given him a gold coin made of milk chocolate, and in a Vince Russo-like swerve, that was what he had given the Leprechaun, thus making him still invulnerable to the Leprechaun's holy powers.  And...that's pretty much it, folks - the Leprechaun explodes, Cody and Bridget escape the lair and declare their love, happy times for all.  And I can go on back to being a sane person.

FINAL ANALYSIS: Sitting down to watch this movie, I expected it to be bad - but nothing could have prepared me for the levels of suckitude that Leprechaun 2 manages to reach.  The characters are terrible.  The acting, with the exception of Davis and McDonald's all-too-brief cameo, is atrocious.  The story defies to make any amount of sense.  And...it ain't scary.  In the least bit.  Two movies into this series, and I've already lost the will to live.  1/2 * out of ****.

"Leprechaun" - The horror franchise about an evil imp looking for his pot o' gold commences!

Way back when the Lick Ness Monster was just a little hatchling, the summer of 1993 was a pretty eventful and formative one when it came to horror fandom.  More than any other time period, that span was when my education took place at the oft-mentioned Greatest Video Store That Ever Existed.  Me and my brother (RIP) took in tons of classic movies during that magical time when the Lex Express was in full effect.  Hellraiser, Child's Play, Bram Stoker's Dracula...the list goes on and on.

However, another movie that we scoped out some long ago Friday night was a micro-budgeted film that made its budget back some ten times over at the box office, and was about to launch a never-ending stream of direct-to-video sequels.  But we'll be getting to those in due time.  That movie is, of course, Leprechaun, the movie that starred the guy from Willow as an evil wisecracking Irish demon searching for his long lost pot o' gold.

At the time, I thought that the movie kind of sucked, although I still enjoyed it just for the pure silliness and spectacle.  After spending 150 minutes watching and dissecting it (that is how long it took - when I write these reviews, I occasionally have to pause in order to do my recapping/backbiting while the events are still fresh in my mind), I'm still of pretty much the same opinion.  There are people in my everyday life who have called me an overgrown man-child, and this diagnosis of Leprechaun pretty much confirms it.  Yes, the movie is pretty terrible, and I can't recommend it with any sort of good conscience, but there are some moments (and one scene in particular) that ALMOST make this worth putting up with 91 minutes of extremely cliched, extremely inane tedium. 

Before we get the hell going with this recap already, I also need to expound on the performance of the guy behind the layers of makeup and false facial hair.  As AFOREMENTIONED, Warwick Davis plays your title character, and while certain parts of this flick - including the Leprechaun's lines - made me want to punch the TV, I can't fault the effort of Mr. Davis.  Here's something that you can take to the bank - when you see a dwarf in a movie, it's a pretty safe bet that he/she will be acting their ass off, as recently seen with Phil Fondacero in the HMM reviewed film Ghoulies II.  Davis might very well be the most successful dwarf in film history, having played everything from an Ewok to Professor Flitwick in the massively popular Harry Potter films, which are so big in mainstream pop culture that I haven't seen a single one of them.  Derp.  Even more, he's actually a HUGE FAN of this character, and has stated in numerous interviews that he treated every film as a serious undertaking.  As someone who has read "Crystal Lake Memories" and paid witness to countless actors making fun of my favorite movie series of all time, this sort of attitude is very refreshing indeed, so five gold stars for Warwick Davis.

What else?  Leprechaun was released in January of 1993, and was actually the first movie that Trimark Pictures ever released.  On a budget of $900,000, it wound up making more than $8 million in theaters and has since become something of a cult hit on video.  Thus, while the flick is nineteen kinds of bad, it's easy to see why we have six of these movies taking up space in the horror section at Best Buy.  I can respect any movie that makes a decent chunk of change from next to nothing of an initial investment, even if I don't necessarily like it.

Oh yeah, and Jennifer Aniston is in this flick. 

With that, THE MOVIE!!

The movie opens in a sea of Irish brogueness that would make WWE's Sheamus red with envy.  An old gent by the name of Daniel O'Grady (Shay Duffin) returns home from Ireland (after presumably burying his mother) to inform his wife that he captured an honest-to-jeebus LEPRECHAUN while away in the land of shamrocks, shenanigans, and House of Pain - and thus, the little guy had to give up his pot of gold, and they are now rich.  Because, you know, that's something that one should just expect to be easily believed. 

I'll give the movie this - it wastes absolutely NO time getting moving, even in comparison to other horror films with a micro small fries budget, to the point where we get our first kill within five minutes of this scene.  Yep, it seems that the Leprechaun stowed away in O'Grady's briefcase, and being none too happy about giving up his precious pot o' gold immediately pushes O'Grady's wife down the stairs, breaking her neck in the process.  In retaliation, O'Grady himself rushes his little green foe with a four leaf clover, which the impish demon recoils in horror from, before locking him in a trunk and immediately dying of a heart attack.  So ends the beginning/exposition phase of the cinematic masterwork that is Leprechaun.  The only other thing to mention at this point is that the Leprechaun makeup work by Gabriel Bartalos is actually quite impressive considering the budget - combined with Davis' earnest portrayal, he's no doubt a distinct and reasonably memorable character.  Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but an endorsement nonetheless.

From here, we flash forward ten years and meet Jennifer Aniston circa 1992.  In this movie - her first - she plays Tory, a feisty city girl spending a summer in the countryside with her father at an old farmhouse.  I almost LIKE the fact that we're given virtually no back story on Tory and her dad (John Sanderford), as any explanation why they are spending a lengthy vacation in such a decrepit, beat-up, completely out-of-the-way haven wouldn't be accepted in the intricate, moronic recesses of my brain.

Since the majority of you enjoy my reviews being a bit more than just lengthy, bitchy recaps of long-forgotten horror movies from my youth, a few comments on Miss Aniston - surprise, surprise, I'm actually a fan.  I know that her movies are, by and large, box office poison, but I'm a big admirer of her comedic timing and particularly the character of Rachel Green on Friends, where she survived as virtually the only main character who DIDN'T get Flandersized due to a one-dimensional portrayal.  In this movie, she essentially plays a teenage version of Rachel - sassy-but-likable priss - and that's alright by me.  Leprechaun may suck, but she's not a reason.

Time for the amazing plot to get rolling; yeah, Tory's dad has rented a farmhouse for the summer, and I'll give you one guess as to which house this is.  If you answered "the O'Grady house, where a certain murderous Leprechaun is still stowed a away in a crate in the basement," you get a cookie.  Within minutes, one of the painters working on the house - a simplish oaf portrayed by Francis Buxton himself Mark Horton - sets the Leprechaun free.  Fortunately for Horton (who has a made-up name for his character, but I refuse to call him anything else), the Leprechaun's powers are still weak, leaving our official body count still solid at 2. 

Before we delve further into the abyss, there's just a couple more characters that I need to introduce you to for clarification purposes.  One of them is Nathan (Ken Olandt), the hunky leader of the painters who serves as Aniston's source of romantic tension for the film.  Considering the godawful material that they're given and the fact that this story is never given closure, the two actors actually have decent chemistry together.  Rounding out the cast is Robert Gorman as Nathan's little brother Alex, who contributes virtually nothing to the plot other than obligatory "kid in peril" moments that aren't suspenseful in the least bit.  In essence, they could have replaced this kid with a cute furry dog and achieved the same effect.

Since the movie's running time needs to be elongated, none of the other characters believe Horton when he tells them about the murderous imp in the basement, and not soon after, a rainbow appears in the sky.  Ever the opportunist, Horton (no longer scared about seeing a Leprechaun a mere five minutes after the event) finds the end of the rainbow along with two of the Leprechaun's 100 gold coins - one of which he somehow manages to swallow (don't ask).  This leads to death scene #2 of the film, which occurs after he takes the other coin to a local pawn shop.  I remember this death scene vidily from my childhood, and it was actually the scene shown on the Boogeymen DVD release, as Davis hams it up and bounces up and down on pawn shop merchant's bulbous gut with a pogo stick in order to recover his precious coin.  All things considered, this is the movie's money scene.

Unfortunately, immediately following this, we are given a long, crappy, stupendously stupid segment involving a dumb cop stopping the Leprechaun as he speeds back toward the farmhouse (in a power wheel, no less) in search of the remaining 99 gold pieces.  The less said about this death scene, the better.  Upon making it back to the house, the Leprechaun goes to work cleaning every single shoe he finds.  This is worth mentioning because, apparently, the guy was a shoemaker in his previous life, and has a Rain Man-like predisposition to cleaning every piece of footwear that he comes across.  Methinks this is going to be important later.

All of our main characters (minus Dad, who conveniently was attacked by a cat earlier in the film and had to be taken to the hospital) make their way back to the house and find it disarray.  The movie then gives us a few EXTREMELY annoying jump scare scenes, but this serves as the appetizer for what may be the most hilariously stupid sequence I've seen in any horror movie.  Get ready.

OK, I'm jacked about this one.  The core four group of characters hear a bell outside the farmhouse, which prompts dashing Nathan (who by this point has gotten Tory to warm up to his country-boy charms) to go out and investigate.  Somehow, he misses the very poorly concealed bear trap in his walking path, which of course catches his leg in its grip before the Leprechaun reveals itself to him and begins attacking him.  These screams cause the remaining three characters to run outside and check on their de facto leader.  I'll fully admit that I expected the movie to pull the usual "hero tells other characters about the impossible thing he has just seen only for them not to believe" routine...but nope.  Wasting no time, the Leprechaun sprints forward in front of everyone and bites Nathan in his leg wound.  Alex (that would be cute puppy dog kid) picks up a nearby rock and nails his foe with a Hulk Hogan-like limp blow before Aniston begins socking the creature with the butt of a shotgun.  Eventually, Nathan gains control of the weapon and blasts the creature with it.  Inside the house, Horton runs for the phone, telling the redneck cops on the other end that "the leprechaun is attacking - send the marines, send the Navy!"  Hilarity, I tells ya.  The cherry on top?  After being freed from the bear trap by the suddenly strong and resourceful Tory, Nathan shambles forward to the bush that the Leprechaun fell into after being shot and IMMEDIATELY empties every last round of ammunition into the shrubbery.

Everybody got that?

I love this sequence, not only for its start-and-stop editing and questionable material, but for the fact that it combines three tried-and-true tropes of horror films in a single 45-second string of events.  Let's see what we got here:

(1) The quasi-leading man putting himself into harm's way by investigating the STRANGE NOISE outside.

(2) The potentially helpful police officers who laugh off a call for help.  It's something I've seen in a lot of horror films; to cops, all victim characters are lying assholes.

(3) The "running out of ammo" bit, which Nathan gives us for no discernable reason.  Hey, that little bastard fell into the bush - I'm blowing the hell out of it!

So ends the greatest movie scene...there ever was.

As an added bonus (/redundancy), Tory discovers that the phone line is dead, and the movie is able to enter its final trimester as the four idiots find themselves locked in a battle for life against the little beast searching for his lost bundle o' gold.  This makes me quite thankful, as it makes explaining the inane plot being presented far more streamlined from this point forward. 

We get yet another tried-and-true trope in the form of the painters' getaway vehicle not starting (and it's during this scene that I noticed that these guys have the greatest name for a business ever - "3 Guys that Paint"), followed by another uproarious scene as the Leprechaun overturns their vehicle with a tiny dune buggy.  Not QUITE as riotous as the now-immortal bear trap sequence, but it's pretty damn special all the same.  After being chased inside the house, the Leprechaun gets its hand cut off by a closing door, only for the severed limb to open the door by itself and crawl back to its master.  Funny thing about this movie - they actually do a decent job of giving this diminuitive villain a decent slate of powers to make it seem relatively menacing.  In addition to spontaneous hand regeneration, he also has the power to mimic voices, which has come in handy at a few points throughout the movie.  I know I haven't recapped these points, but rest assured, they're there.

Since the crux of this movie is "murderous Leprechaun attempting to find his lost gold," it would help the proceedings swimmingly if...you know...said gold was actually FOUND.  Tory finds it in a well outside the house and gives it to the now magically appearing Leprechaun, who is none too pleased to find that one of the coins is missing.  Before our heroes can escape, the pissed-off and slightly reward-free Leprechaun teleports inside the house so our final faceoffs can commence. 

Firstly, Horton realizes what the Leprechaun wants - the gold coin that he swallowed (which you would realize if you are an especially attentive and/or bored reader).  Proving himself moderately useful, Horton then suggests going to visit Old Man O'Grady, now in a rest home after suffereing the heart attack in the movie's prologue, and they are able to reach Tory's jeep after tossing all of the house's shoes at the Leprechaun.  In this respect, shoes to this character are somewhat akin to rice with vampires, in that it encompasses an OCD-like response that serves as the villain's achilles heel.  Or I'm just looking way too deeply into it.

Well, admittedly, I'm growing somewhat restless wading in the endless muck that is Leprechaun, so let's speed this up, shall we?  Do you really need me to tell you that the good guys win?  Well, they do.  After finding out from a near-dead O'Grady (the Leprechaun beat our heroes to the punch) that four-leaf clovers are Leprechaun kryptonite, they find one of the incredibly rare weeds and, after moderate intrigue, Alex shoots the clover into the Leprechaun's mouth with his slingshot.  Smiles, laughs, shits and giggles all around.  All of our main characters survive, although the film ends with a voiceover by Davis informing us that he is still searching for his gold, cursing both the Earth and yours truly with the promise of more nonaction.

Final judgment: This movie doesn't exactly unspool in a nice, efficient, well-written fashion, and it should be well-apparent reading the above scatterbrained recap (which is even more confusing than usual, I know).  With the exception of Aniston, the hero characters are pretty much unbearable - although I did get a lot of milage out of screaming "Hey, it's Enrico Palazzo!" every time Horton appeared on the screen to no one in particular.  The "scary" scenes aren't scary in the least.  And the story, while occasionally inventive, is incredibly bland and uninteresting.  All that aside...this movie does hold some nostalgic value for yours truly, both for the memory of watching it with my brother almost twenty years ago and for reminding me what horror movies were like in the days before seemingly every major release was a goddamn remake.  And that incredibly awesome bear trap/beating/shootout scene ALONE raised the star rating by a full half-point.

Nonetheless, I'm not looking forward to the rest of this series in the least bit assuming the law of diminishing returns kicks in, because I'm told that this is actually (shudder) the BEST movie in the series.  ** out of ****, and those ** are for ALL the wrong reasons.

Critters 4: What's a Crite Got to Do With It?

Before we get going on this one, it's time for some "boring life and times of the Lick Ness Monster" story hour.  It's been three weeks since my last review.  During that time, most of my spare moments were spent writing and refining a story for a podcast's horror fiction contest.  This story, according to the contest's official rules, had to be original, previously unpublished, scary, and between three and four thousand words in length.  Take one guess as to what my biggest hurdle in that equation was.

It wasn't coming up with an idea, or having the willpower to actually WRITE the damn thing.  Nope.  It was the LENGTH.  In case you haven't noticed, I have a real problem cutting myself off and, you know, not being a boring, blubbering idiot.  I fretted and fretted over that four thousand word limit, to the point where I had to make no less than six different sweeps through the story just to delete extraneous crap in order to shoehorn the entire plot in.  As a result, the whole thing feels like a super sped-up version of what I was attempting to do, and I'll be very surprised if any of you see a story entitled "I Want to Die" (and it's just as life-affirming as that title lets on) in the quarterfinals of the "How Stuff Works" horror fiction contest.  It didn't go too well.

But now I'm back in my element.  It's apparent to everyone who has kinda-sorta followed my reviews that they've gone through a biggie-sizing over the years, starting off as four-five paragraphs of (crappy) gushing and eventually metamorphosizing into the picture-laden recaps that detail almost every nuance of the film in question that you know and loathe today.  And that's just the way I like it. 

So, here we go with Critters 4, where the Crites attack...IN SPACE!  I find it somewhat disturbing that something like 85% of all modern horror franchises feature the inevitable "we're out of ideas, let's throw the villain(s) in space" entry.  It was shot back-to-back with its predecessor, and it also has the return of Don "Fuckhead" Opper in the role of Charlie.  You know, the original Gremlins movie had drunkard Murray Futterman as a supporting character and brought him back in a quasi-starring asskicker role in its sequel.  But Murray Futterman was, you know, cool, and played by Dick freakin' Miller.  How this guy managed to somehow get pidgeonholed into all four of these films, I'll never know.

Except that all four movies have either been produced or written by his older brother. 

What else?  The flick was directed by Rupert Harvey, co-writer of Critters 3 , and that's as deep as I'm digging into his filmography.  And, as crappy as this movie is, it's got a pretty memorable cast.  All of the Critters movies have had a knack for finding actors long before they became prominent - the first had Billy "jerkoff guy from Titanic" Zane, the second had...I dunno, Lin Shaye, and the third had LEONARDO DICAPRIO as a secondary hero and love interest to the main heroine.  This one has Brad Dourif, a man who should be more than familiar to any casual horror fans watching this flick as the voice of Chucky and bit player in approximately 5,000 other horror films, and Angela Bassett, a hot tamale who would go on to be a pretty big star in the '90s, including an Oscar-nominated turn portraying Tina Turner in What's Love Got to Do With It, as well as the vagina-fest [i]Waiting to Exhale[/i] and Wes Craven's [i]Vampire in Brooklyn[/i].  In this film, she has a completely out of nowhere nude scene where a guy stares at her while showering for about a minute straight in a sequence that winds up going completely nowhere.  Yup.  It's there.

THE MOVIE!!

If you'll recall, Critters 3 ended with Charlie finding and destroying all of the Crites terrorizing an apartment complex with the exception of two Crite eggs.  In a somewhat bizarre twist ending, Charlie was contacted by Ug (Terrence Mann), his old bounty hunter friend, and told to load the eggs into an intergalactic space pod.  Well, it's here where the non-action picks up, as Charlie - true to form - completely botches this simple task, loading the eggs but also somehow locking himself inside the vessel before it cryogenically freezes him and takes off.  This guy's likability quotient hasn't gained any traction in the two years since the previous film.

Flash forward to the year 2045, where the pod is discovered by our group of primary characters.  One thing I love about horror movies set in space is how they always - and I mean always - put together a team of astronauts who seem to completely detest each other.  This movie is no different.  The crew manning this salvage ship is comprised of space pirates who want to capture the pod to turn it in for a huge reward.  Your lead douchebag is Rick (Anders Rove), who immediately identifies himself as an a-hole due to his unmistakable sleazy hairstyle.  There's also a young teenage kid named Ethan (Paul Whitthorne, who kinda looks like Zachary Ty Bryan from Home Improvement), computer expert Al Bert (Dourif),  second-in-command Bernie (Eric DaRe), and pilot Fran (Bassett).  Of these, Ethan and Fran are the only ones who don't immediately stand out as future Crite food, although it's always fun to watch Dourif in action.  No matter how bad or cheesy the movie, this dude always gives it his all.  If you want a stronger endorsement, he actually managed to make Rob Zombie's Halloween movies watchable.  I'm not sure there can be higher praise than that.

Anyway, it's here where we get a bit of back story.  The Intergalactic Council from the first three films has now been dissolved, and in its place is Terracorp - a super-duper mega evil conglomerate whose CEO is, amazingly enough, Ug.  He now goes by the name of "Counselor Tetra," and in a video message to our group of pirates tells them that he is prepared to offer them "triple salvage" for returning the pod to one of their waiting space stations.  More importantly, his glorious mullet from the first three films is now gone.  Rick's assholery rises to new levels here, as he attempts to hold out for more money, only for the rest of the crew to bring him to his senses.

Our heroes soon make it to the waiting Terracorp station, finding it abandoned and without half of its survival supplies.  Druggie Bernie immediately wants to raid the station's pharmacy, while Fran goes off to the showers for the AFOREMENTIONED nude scene.  I always enjoy being able to watch big stars in their  formative stages and the things that they were once willing to do just to be in a movie, and it's no different here.  To be fair, Angela Bassett had a pretty damn fine ass in 1992.  Had I discovered this movie in my teenage years (and before internet porn), this scene would have gotten some steady airplay in my VHS.

And now for a long-winded LNM bitching interlude.  A few years back, I saw a movie from the mid '80s entitled Star Crystal that stands today as THE single worst movie I have ever witnessed.  Maybe someday, when I'm feeling really, REALLY bored and masochistic I'll watch it again and scribe a full Horror Movie Mayhem review, but alas, that day has not yet come.  I mention this film because it featured a group of astronauts communicating with a ship's talking computer named Bernice in a never-ending series of dialogue that takes up pretty much half of the movie's running time.  Apparently Rupert Harvey and his team of writers thought this was a really good plot device, because the Terracorp station has a voice-activated computer named Angela that Dourif repeatedly spars with, and while not quite as grating as the scenes from Star Crystal, they still come across as never-ending and pointless.  For some trivia information, Angela (talking computer, not Bassett - it's confusing, I know, so this is the last I'll mention it) is inexplicably voiced by Martine Beswick, a two-time Bond girl who, as Thunderball sidekick Paula Caplan, ranks as one of my top ten hottest chicks in film history.

Life lesson for the day: it's awesome to be as cool as Sean Connery.

35 minutes in, and it's time for Critters 4 to start rolling (pun intended).  Asshole Rick takes it upon himself to open the pod against the wishes of Terracorp, which means that we're once again blessed with the presence of Charlie (yay) for much of the movie's duration.  Of course, the eggs have hatched by this point, and we get the first death of the movie, as Rick bites it at the hands of the newly-birthed baby Crites.  General horror movie rule: if a character is played by an actor named Anders, he's probably not going to survive.  In the process, Charlie saves the life of Ethan (whom Al had sent to the cargo bay to keep an eye on Rick), setting up a friendship that the writers intended to be similar to the Charlie-Brad dynamic from the first two films, but instead comes across ten times as moronic.  After a sequence inside the ship's waste disposal tank (don't ask), all of our characters finally meet up, where Charlie is finally told that he has been floating around in space for 53 years and everyone he knew is dead. 

Al and Ethan are able to hack into the ship's computer system and discover a handy-dandy video that gives us Terracorp's evil plot.  We are shown the rapid development of a creature called a "cephaloid," which Terracorp plans to use to completely eradicate life forms from a target area in order to use as development properties.  I'm always amused by some of the plots that screenwriters manage to dream up for corporations to use in films, and this is one of the best/worst I've seen.  One would think that it would be much easier to simply buy properties that DIDN'T require mass genocide instead of spending the approximately ten trillion dollars in research and development for this particular project, but what do I know?  Terracorp is bad.  It's been established.

Hey, remember how earlier Bernie (whose Jean-Claude Van Damme style ponytail conveys his sliminess) wanted to get all sorts of Iron Sheik-style medicine inside the station's pharmacy?  Well, we FINALLY get the payoff to this angle, as he swipes a keycard and enters the massive pill storehouse.  Of course, he is immediately killed by the two Crites before he is able to do his best Lindsay Lohan impersonation.  Moral lesson from Critters 4: don't be a goddamn pill popper.  This sequence is also approved by CM Punk.

In the process of killing one of the two now fully-grown adult Crites (with a Colt .45, no less), Charlie manages to blow the holy hell out of their escape ship.  Derp.

Shortly thereafter, Terracorp arrives (finally), and shockingly reveal that they have no plans of giving the salvage crew any form of payment.  Yup - they only want the Crite eggs, presumably for their genius plan of colonization/land development, and Ug (still going by that goofy "Counselor Tetra" name) is now a full-on corrupt businessman.  The two other reviews of Critters 4 that I've read both harp on this - Ug had been a heroic bounty hunter in the first two films, and his heel turn here was a little out of left field and unneeded.  Me?  Eh, at least it broke the monotony.  He immediately establishes himself as a huge P.O.S. by killing an uncooperative Al in one of the scenes that actually got an emotional response from me.  I know it didn't come across in this review, but Dourif actually managed to make the dude pretty likable.  He's in the Horror Hall of Fame for a reason.

Since we now have our official government minimum body count met, it's time for this movie to enter its finale.  The nuclear reactor on the station fails, leaving the heroes 10 minutes to wrap up the plot.  Ethan lures the Terracorp stormtroopers into a freaky-looking lab, where a large horde of genetically engineered Crites makes short work of them.  Almost immediately afterward, he also manages to kill the lead Crite via cryogenic freezing, making him a much more effective hero character than Charlie could ever hope to be. 

But alas, we've got one more villain to take care of - yup, it's Ug/Tetra, who is none too happy that his evil plan has been thwarted.  Before he can do away with Ethan, however, Charlie makes his reappearance, blowing his old friend away with the antique Colt.  And...that pretty much wraps it up, with Charlie, Fran and Ethan getting the "sole survivor" honors.  They escape in Ug's ship and the station explodes, killing all of the onboard Crites.  Since there aren't any more Critters movies, I'll take this as a pretty good inkling that the damn things are finally extinct.

Final word: Me no likey.  Critters 4 is generally regarded as the least of the series, and for good reason - compared to its sibling films, it displays a severe lack in charm, scares, and even the Critters themselves.  To be fair, it's always good to see Dourif in action, and he singlehandedly manages to make this movie a bit more than a total disaster, and it's always good to see a series like this actually END.  If you're looking for good, cheesy fun, however, stick with the other movies in the franchise - they're all much more whimsical and good-spirited than this one.  * 1/2 out of ****.

So ends the Critters series in the life of the Lick Ness Monster, and it's now time to start swimming for the next island on the horizon.  I can already see the glow - almost as if there's a big pot of gold up ahead...