Munchies

I guess this is supposed to be a parody of Gremlins and ET but they forgot that parodies are supposed to be funny. They only character who is even slightly funny is Corman's wife. Most of the comedy is just having everyone be named after a musician. The worst thing is that almost nothing that happened made any sense.

Not a knock on Korman as he was very funny on the Carol Burnett show. He was also good at playing secondary characters in Mel Brooks' movies ("High Anxiety" comes to mind). He is, however, not a person who can carry a movie in dueling roles no less. This one is basically a "Gremlins" knockoff, following a tradition of such movies as "Critters" and "Ghoulies". It is not a very good knockoff either, on par with "Ghoulies", but with a much lighter tone to it as it is no where near as dark as that movie got. In fact, this one is too light and frothy, and unfortunately many of the jokes end up falling flat. Though I did give it a 3 for a score, this is only because there is a movie that is even a worse "Gremlin" knockoff. If you watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 you know the one I am talking about...the infamous "Hobgoblins". This one has a guy finding a little critter in some underground place (I only saw this movie once a long time ago so I don't remember everything to clearly) and it starts out friendly enough. However, this creature quickly becomes unfriendly and of course more are spawned and that is the movie. More misses than hits in the joke department, and it is also really lame to see Korman playing the evil brother role. Best to skip this one, but then you may want to check it out just for kicks.

The title creatures wreak havoc at a peaceful little desert town. That's basically the whole plot for this film, and while the scenes devoted to the Munchies themselves are somewhat fun (in a lowbrow kind of way), all the rest is just filler, and bad filler at that. From the "hero", who is a painful Woody Allen wannabe, to the ultra-dumb town cop, it's hard to pick the most irritating character in the film. There were some times when almost all of them were on the screen together and I was thinking, "OK, at least the girlfriend is cute, but why do we have to put up with the rest of those morons?". The film is also filled with pop references (from Ozzy Osbourne to Linda Blair), which probably made it already dated by the early 90's. (*1/2)

This Roger Corman produced comedy could be labeled as a Gremlins rip-off. Well, it is. The Munchies are short little dudes who multiply rapidly and are into creating mischief and wreaking a little havoc. Sound familiar? The funniest thing about the movie is all the Gremlins references. There's a newspaper with Gizmo on the cover, Robert Picardo (of Gremlins 2) stars in the film, and the absolute highlight is the Munchies driving around in a Gremlin. Truly some classic stuff. Other stars of the film include Summer Camp Nightmare's own Charles Stratton and Nadine Van Der Velde from Critters. If you want to see the extremely poor man's version of Gremlins, rent the Munchies, if you can find it.

Another film watched for the "How Did This Get Made" podcast, "Munchies" is a film rather cynically designed to cash in on the success of "Gremlins" and the similar low budget versions that aped it. Having fallen asleep during my first attempt to watch the film (let's not judge it based that though) I picked up from where I could remember and finished the film.

Whilst trying to prove that Machu Picchu was built by Aliens, Simon Watterman (Harvey Korman) returns to America with his son, Paul (Charles Stratton) and a strange creature they've discovered. The creature is kidnapped by Simon's twin brother Cecil (Harvey Korman) who wants Simon's land for himself, but Cecil's stepson, Melvis (Alix Elias) gets frustrated and attempts to kill the creature, inadvertently transforming one into four. More aggressive as a group, they start to terrorise the town, whilst Paul tries to chase them down.

It wasn't the films fault I fell asleep the first time I tried to watch it, but it really didn't help itself. The budget is, as I say, modest and the puppets that result from it are pretty rubbish. Their made of a hard rubber and are incapable of much in the way of movement. The performances are generally quite poor, Korman is probably the standout, as you might imagine, but even he's struggling against a shallow and confusing plot.

I can get past those sorts of issues though, if the film is interesting around it's budgetary limitations. "Munchies" isn't though, it's predominantly quite boring and the lack of fun scenes really makes it drag to watch.

It's maybe not the worse film I've watched for the podcast, but it's a really bad time and I don't recommend it.