• Directed by Rupert Harvey
• Written by Joseph Lyle and David J. Schow
• Starring
  • Don Keith Opper
  • Terrence Mann
  • Paul Whitthorne
  • Anders Hove
  • Angela Bassett
  • Brad Dourif

No matter how badly a franchise is flailing, there’s one sure way to kill it right off: set the latest installment in the future, in space. Unless it’s a time-travel saga, where can you go from there? These installments usually turn out to be Alien ripoffs by default, and are so poor that any impetus left in the original premise is lost. It happened with the fourth in the Leprechaun series. It happened with the third in the Project Shadowchaser series (the fourth installment had to have its name changed for release because the premise bore no resemblance to the earlier installments). And it happened right here with the Critters movies.

We open on earth with Charlie, the farm-hand turned intergalactic bounty hunter, tracking down the last two Krite eggs. Before he can destroy them, however, he gets a transmission from fellow hunter Ug, who tells him that it’s against the law to completely drive the species extinct. A cryogenic containment pod shows up — about twenty seconds later. (Just think: If their response time had been anywhere near as good in the first movie, it never would have happened.) Charlie crawls in to put in the eggs, but the door closes with him inside, and he and the eggs are frozen and blasted off into space — where they are inexplicably lost and left drifting through space. (Note the word “inexplicable”? It describes a lot that happens in this movie.)

Fast-forward fifty years, where a small stupid crew of a salvage ship come across the pod. (Note two crewmembers in particular: Brad Dourif, doing a great job with lousy material, and Anders Hove as the captain — if you don’t recognize the name or the face, you probably know him better as “Radu” from the Subspecies movies.) They contact the Intergalactic Council, and get a message back from Big Bad Terracor Corporation, which directs them to nearby Station 44 to wait for pickup.

Well, Station 44 turns out to be abandoned, the reactor is on the edge of critical, and the station was being used for research into deadly biological creatures. Now, you’d think that any one of these points would gel into a major plot thread, but no. They’re just mentioned in passing.

The captain pegs himself as a bad guy by stepping into the shower with a female crewmember; after she decks him, he goes back to the cargo deck to break into the pod. He oes, all right — releasing Charlie and the Krite eggs, which promptly hatch. Scratch one captain.

From here, it operates just as you’d think a bad Alien ripoff would. The crew tries to leave, but Charlie shoots up the instrument panel trying to blast a Critter. So then they get trapped in a confined part of the ship by the nuclear meltdown. (There always has to be a reactor problem, doesn’t there?) There’s also a ripoff of the Star Wars trash compactor scene, and more of the primitive horror movie morality (the second guy who gets chomped was in the act of breaking into the station pharmacy like a kid in a candy store).

Unfortunately, there’s too much distraction and not enough menace. Not to mention all the unfollowed plot threads. Why does it matter that the Critters aim the station for Earth if it’s going to explode in 24 hours anyway? (And how’s they learn to operate the instrument panel?) Why is Ug, when he does show up, suddenly a bad guy working for Terracor?

It’s all pretty much a whimper, good only for Critters completists. Ending a movie series in space is usually a good way to guarantee a whimper rather than a bang.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 7
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 2
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 2
  • Brad Dourif (Al Bert) had a great role as “Crewman Suder” on the Voyager episodes “Meld” and “Basics 1&2″
  • Anne Ramsey (Dr. McCormick) was “Ensign Clancy” on the TNG “Elementary, Dear Data” and “The Emissary,” both 2nd season