Don't Ever Get Them Wet: Dubious Gremlins Rip-Offs of the '80s and '90s

You should throw The Godfather: Part III (1990) in there just to see how it does.

I watch a lot of not-great movies (shocking, I'm sure), and I've somewhat recently rewatched the first two Critters films and Troll because they were nostalgic staples of my yoot, and I can confirm that they are just...really not good at all. Troll at least has the bravery to be completely batshit (Sonny Bono as a sleazy swingin' bachelor, June Lockhart as an ancient witch who cohabitates with an anthropomorphized mushroom).

Hadn't heard of the Munchie series, but have seen all the Ghoulies and Critters. Entertaining in a "big hair, denim, emoting" way. And Critters has an alien bounty hunter to set it apart.

And who would have that Troll 2 would make Troll look like a slick, big-budget production that is barely batshit at all

These are all fucking terrible

Well, yeah.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsFbpWQOMWU

this lineup of failures do provide pretty compelling evidence of how hard it is to make enjoyable movies about short creatures terrorising people, i guess

what was the next good one after gremlins 2? small soldiers? is this secretly a genre only joe dante can succeed in?

I remember seeing Munchies as a kid, and even at that age recognising how crappy the creature effects, just a bunch of puppets being thrown around. Can't imagine what it would like today.

Are we disqualifying leprechaun and childs play

It kinda depends on how broadly you're willing to draw the boundaries. They don't quite fit in this particular category afaic, but the Basket Case, Chucky, and It's Alive series are all worthy contenders in the 'diminutive antagonist' horror subgenre.

The Gremlins model seems to be more about hordes of supernatural/alien beasties rather than a single vertically-challenged fiend.

this lineup of failures do provide pretty compelling evidence of how hard it is to make enjoyable movies about short creatures terrorising people, i guess

what was the next good one after gremlins 2? small soldiers? is this secretly a genre only joe dante can succeed in?

Even Gremlins 2, as great as it is, is hardly a movie about "short creatures terrorising people" anymore... There's much more film/TV parody and wacky Gremlin hijinks than terrorising going on there. (Which I guess is why it's one of the most successful sequels to a horror movie, since it doesn't just repeat the same formula.)

A heavy dose of comedy seems to be a key ingredient for Gremlins imitators too... Almost all the movies listed are horror comedies, right? (Haven't seen the first Troll, Troll 2 is obviously an unintentional comedy.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUeSGMUK-6k

Yeah, humor (or, in most of these cases, 'humor') is an essential element of these things. Movies featuring hordes of little monsters that just attack people without taking a little time on the side to breakdance or don a silly hat would be a whole other subgenre.

first critters is pretty great. deeply corny and set in corn country. you've got terrance mann's hair. you've got don keith opper. the first ghoulies is also stupid and great. i guess if the evil guy can control his army of ghoulies, the sky's the limit basically. one of these two gets my vote.

I have never seen Ghoulies, but it's what always comes to mind when I think of VHS boxes that stood out and scared me when I first went into a horror section at like age 4 or 5.

yeah, i remember being deeply amused by the puerile title and also being a bit afraid of the toilet in our house for a while as a result of the image on the vhs box

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZGI5NzA3YTEtNGIwZS00ODE5LWFiOWItNDE0OTI4OGFjMzI2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjUyNDk2ODc@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,795,1000_AL_.jpg

hahaha

*childhood trauma intensifies*

love the midriff with suspenders look. or is that a medal hanging around its neck?

i remember being deeply amused by the puerile title

actually now i'm wondering if this is an intentional double-entendre at all - do americans know what 'goolies' are?

No, but I breathlessly await your explication.

testicles my dude

testicles

can't believe i've laboured under the unexamined assumption that ghoulies was supposed to be a funny title for over 30 years at this point

Lovely. Now I just have to do a little time travellin' real quick so I can supplement my third-grade vocabulary with this essential new addition.

according to the imdb trivia: "Ghoulie" means "small monster" in Persian.

have my doubts they knew about british goolie slang.

ghouls to ghoulies not a big stretch in spook talk.

ghouls to ghoulies, funk to funky
we know major tom's a junkie

Goblin, ghoul, a zombie with no conscience
Question: What do these things all have in common?

not quite this poll

While you're being ripped to shreds and almost certainly devoured by a multitude of unidentifiable knee-high creatures, use your fleeting final moments of life to scan the pack of befanged monstrosities for anything that stands out as particularly unusual (beyond the nature of your impending demise). If you happen to spot one of them smoking an oversized cigar or perhaps doing a Chuck Berry impersonation with a ukulele, you can go to your eternal rest safe in the knowledge that you're simply a bit player in one of the nuggets of cinematic gold to which this thread is dedicated.

I think I've only seen Critters out of these, so can't really vote (the Troll franchise is definitely a major oversight on my part).

I fucking love Gremlins, though.

I have seen, I think, critters 3? as a kid, don’t remember it too well although I’m pretty sure I vaguely enjoyed it

Re diminutive antagonists, not that I’m saying it should be included here but the funniest is pet sematary

I remember like Troll when I was 8 years old or so. Its probably not a good movie, but if memory serves, it isn't lazy or cheaply made; I think I may have even thought it was a Jim Henson production along the lines of The Dark Crystal or Labyrinth.

Also Julia Louis Dreyfus' first movie <3

the Troll movies are legit disturbing even whilst i acknowledge they are terrible

worrying about whether the makers of Ghoulies knew how funny the word Ghoulies is is a death-of-the-author irrelevancy tbh

Never appreciated the number of Gremlins knockoffs until this list, so thanks. Small antagonists are great (Puppet Master series, too), even with suspension of disbelief for speed and deadliness.

I looked up the director of Troll and, in addition to also helming Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go To College, he appears to still be employed in the Sci-Fi network Megashark vs. Croctopus genre. Just looking at the poster images from those films vs. something like Troll makes me a tad mournful; I miss the days when (likely out of necessity more than anything else) even B-grade schlock was made with a certain amount of care.

Yeah, the method of dispatch employed by the troll in Troll is probably the most horrifying. I'll take a quick evisceration over being slowly and horribly mutated before the ruin of my body finally erupts into a lush forestscape.

When I was a little kid staring at the boxes in the video store I wanted to see all these, but by the time I was old enough to watch horror movies, I didn't.

Within the past week, a US blu-ray set of the Munchies films and a UK set of the Troll films have been announced. I'm pretty sure I made that happen.

haven't seen most of these but i loved the Critters movies as a kid.

we recently had a bad movie showing of Troll 2 for a bunch of friends who had never seen it before and it was a riot. god that movie is hilarious.

Critters 2 was my favorite from the series. it has all the Critters rolling up into a giant ball of 'em that goes rolling around town killing people. one of the bounty hunters is a formless shapeshifter who finds a Playboy and turns into the model for the movie (except one point where the head becomes a man's head). at one point a man in an Easter Bunny costume has Critters jumping inside of it, killing him from within, which is a classic death.

Critters

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Troll 2 is easily one of the worst most crass rip off movies ever and probably should take the prize for having absolutely zero connection to the also terrible and but less amusing Troll (which should get points for having a child character named HARRY POTTER a decade too early).

That said I'm voting for Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go College cuz I just must.

For some reason it wasn't until just now that I got the meaning of "they'll get you in the end".... sad.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I thought the lone vote might have been cast in error, but I have to admit that this looks pretty epic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBYV5_76XWg

It occurs to me only now that the Garbage Pail Kids Movie would have been a perfectly valid poll option.

https://youtu.be/x01l_jMhjVM