CRITTERS 4 (1992)
If New Line is the house that Freddy built, then surely the Critters franchise is responsible for its vinyl siding (or at least the gutters). Obviously, the original stands as a fantastic "small town" creature feature, and most of the sequels are entertaining. Most. I'm reminded of the time I decided to tackle Ghoulies IV on a whim. Stupid whims. Critters 4 strains to have bits of plot connecting it to the other movies. Bounty hunter Charlie botches a mission to preserve a pair of Crite eggs and winds up in cryostasis. Because apparently, that happens a lot in outer space. Anyhow, he is pinpointed by a scavenger ship and taken aboard. You can probably fill in the rest. I'm begging you to fill in the rest, dear reader, as I could be doing anything else right now. Like rinsing out my eyeballs with sulfuric acid or enjoying a tall glass of...um, sulfuric acid.
The cast is just plain weird. Angela Bassett plays a nondescript pilot, Brad Dourif plays a nondescript engineer, and Anders Hove plays an ancient vampire named Radu. Okay, Radu is a no-show, but Hove does appear as the classless captain. I'm assuming that everyone fired their agent posthaste. The Critters themselves don't actually do much, although IMDb makes it a point to call attention to the fact that Critters 4 supposedly has a higher body count than any of its predecessors. I didn't notice, and neither will you. The death sequences are pitiful. Still, I'd say that this flick's most egregious offense is insinuating that the Crites are being hunted down by deadlier aliens. We never see the damn things! On principle, Critters 4 is worse than Ghoulies IV. That was a 1-Z'Dar slap to the face, but I'm awarding an extra half-Z'Dar for Brad Dourif. At the end of the day, I appreciated his efforts, even if I don't remember his character.
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