Stars: Brad Dourif, Don OpperBudget: Unknown
Directed By: Rupert Harvey
This is the fourth and last (thankfully) film in the critters series. It suffers from every franchise killer, no real new ideas, oh and the inevitable trip into spaaaaaaace that a lot of horror/comedy franchises seem to inevitably go.
This film is not really baaad per-say in fact it seems pretty standard run of the mill till Charlie destroys the ship midway, but that's for later.
Starting exactly where the last film ended we see charlie preparing to destroy the last two critter eggs. He is then called upon his galactic com by the bounty hunter boss.
He is apparently in violation of certain laws involved in destroying the last of a species kind. Ug appears and explains it better telling Charlie a pod is coming to collect the egg's.
Charlie isn't happy about it but agrees putting the small eggs into tin cans he sticks them into the cryogenic pod that crashes through the roof. He is to unfortunately frozen in the pod as it jettisons into space.
Later in the year of 2045 a space ship flying through space detects the pod, as a salvage ship the crew instantly think the pod may be worth some extra money. The captain is a dick (Rick), then the second in command Fran, is a very strong woman. Then there's the engineer Al Bert (Dourif), Bernie one of the ships hands and also Ethan the younger novice as such. Rick and Bernie bully Ethan quite a bit but the other two are more friendly to him.
When they realise the pod has an old marking on it of the intergalactic council, they contact the new federation who congratulate them on finding the pod and advise them to go to a nearby station to wait for them to pick up the pod, for decent compensation of course.
Rick is unhappy with this as he wanted more than what their offering but his choice to hold off for more money is other thrown by the other crew members. They reach the station but on exiting their ship realise the place is derelict and abandoned. Even the computer has seemingly gone senile.
The each discover things they're looking for such as showers with Bernie looking for the pharmacy, Al Bert also discovers the nuclear core is close to collapsing too. Fran goes for a shower where she is watched in silhouette by Rick, when he goes to give her a towel and possibly join her Fran clocks him a good right hook.
Embarrassed and realising the rest of the crew has seen what happened Rick storms off. The others just laugh it off as he storms away. He has other agendas however, taking his laser rifle to the pod chamber he burns a hole into it in an attempt to get to whats inside. Ethan catches him in the process but Rick knocks him out and hoists his unconscious body in the air.
However a puzzled thawed Charlie springs forth from the pod, seemingly unfazed by this Rick enters the pod expecting something more valuable to be inside. What he finds is freshly hatched little baby critters that proceed to leap in his mouth and bite his wrist.
All while this is happening Charlie trying to repair his super gun that has fallen apart. Finally once Rick drops dead, Charlie picks up his laser rifle and fries one of the critters hair off, possibly in an act to give the critters more character again like in the third part. Charlie gets Ethan down from the hook who quickly gets to like the crazy little man, especially when they hunt for the two little critters.
They both get trapped in the garbage disposal but escape before they are jettisoned into outer space, they are then let out of a vent by Bernie. The rest of them are a bit iffy over Charlies story even though Ethan confirms he didn't have anything to do with Ricks death and he has a driving licence from 1992.
Using a key card Ethan found in the lab coat of some scientist the crew discover the station was an experimental place for producing a terrifying killing machine out of beasts except it made them unable to reproduce. One of the Critters is watching this from the vent.
Bernie takes the card and lets himself into the pharmacy where he proceeds to fill a backpack with assorted drugs. Al notices that two life forms are making their way towards his position. He tries to warn him but they innevitably here his screams and we see him attacked by the two (now larger) fur balls.
This is where the film takes a drastic downturn for me they try to escape Charlie kills one of the critters but destroys the salvage ship in the meantime, then Ethan turns into a spoiled brat and we get a plot where the last critter uses the machine that enhances ferociousness on his kids.
Ug or he's known now as Tetra comes to the ship and kills Al after tries to stand up to him, this alienates Charlie. Especially when Tetra threatens the life of the others for the location of the remaining eggs. Ethan has however stormed off with an antique colt 44. to stop the other critter, this is where he see's it using the machine.
Ethan kills the bald headed critter with a liquid nitrogen pipe. The rest of the film is terribly uneventful now until Charlie is forced to kill Tetra in a who can pull the trigger quicker stand off, obviously Tetra has gone rusty there.
So i won't spoil any more not that there's much left to tell from here on out.
I'm not a massive fan of this last chapter in this franchise but it's better than some films of the genre and is worth watching just to finish the quadrilogy off.
THN awards Critters Four, 2 stars out of 5.
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