Critters (franchise)

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Critters
Official franchise logo
Based on	Characters created by Domonic Muir
Distributed by	Warner Bros. (New Line Cinema)
Release date	1986–2019
Country	United States
Language	English

The Critters franchise, includes American science fiction comedy-horror installments consisting of five feature films, and one television series. The original film was released in 1986 and received "two thumbs up" from Siskel and Ebert.

Although widely believed to have been made to cash in on the success of the similarly themed Gremlins,^[1][2][3] director Stephen Herek had refuted this in interviews, pointing out that the first Critters script was written by Domonic Muir long before Gremlins went into production, and subsequently underwent rewrites to reduce the similarities between the two films.^[4]

The series is about a group of malevolent carnivorous extraterrestrials called Krites (better known as Critters, the term the franchise is associated with) that have the power to roll into balls similar to hedgehogs and form into a giant sphere that can roll across a landscape. The individual Krites resemble small animals that are furry and spiky with large mouths filled with rows of sharp teeth. Throughout the franchise, they eat anything in sight, including human beings. The spikes on their backs can be launched as projectiles that render the victim unconscious. Krites come in black, brown, and navy blue. In the first film, they were also able to grow to a much larger size, but this ability was dropped in later installments.

The storyline for the first two films involves alien bounty hunters who hunt the Krites in a small American town. The setting for the third movie is a city, and the fourth film takes place on a space station.

The Krites exist solely to eat and breed; the main human characters in the films endeavor to survive and defeat them. The creature effects work was done by The Chiodo Brothers, who later went on to make Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Terrence Mann appears in all four films as an interstellar bounty hunter named Ug, as does Don Keith Opper as Charlie, an alcoholic who rises to the occasion when called upon to defend humankind. Leonardo DiCaprio appeared in Critters 3, and Dee Wallace-Stone and Billy Zane both appeared in the first installment. Scott Grimes starred in the first two films as Bradley Brown.^{[citation needed]}