Oh boy. Munchies (1987) is…something.
Produced by the beyond prolific and legendary Roger Corman and directed by Tina Hirsch, Munchies is a late 80s rip-off of Gremlins – one of the slew of similar films to follow in the wake of the 1984 Amblin classic.
Corman is known for cashing in on any hot film or genre of the day with low rent rip-offs. Some are genuinely good (Galaxy of Terror) while others are cheap bores (The Terror Within). Munchies falls somewhere in between. It’s a very odd film – one I found myself annoyed by more than charmed.
During a dig in South America where archeologist Simon (Harvey Korman) is trying to prove the pyramids were made by aliens (just go with it), he and his wannabe stand-up comedian son Paul discover the titular Munchie. Simon believes the creature to be an alien. They take the little muppet (later dubbed Arnold) away from the dig back home to California. Paul and his girlfriend Cindy (Nadine Van Der Velde of Critters) soon find out Arnold is not all that he seems.
Simon’s twin brother, Cecil (also Harvey Korman) is a huckster who seemingly runs all of the town’s commerce and wants Arnold for himself. Little does Cecil know that when a Munchie is threatened, they turn bad. They also turn jive talking and horny. Go figure.
Oh, and apparently they multiply when dismembered.
This flick is a curiosity only in how much it doesn’t try to mask how much it’s ripping off Gremlins. It deadass struts around proudly, wearing its rip-off badge with honor. Frank Welker (Stripe in Gremlins) voices half of the Munchies; the poster’s tagline is a riff on the Gremlins poster tagline; the Munchies tool around in an AMC Gremlin; they have a want to multiply exponentially; a Gremlins toy can be seen at one point in the film; the term “gremlin” can be seen in bold letters in a tabloid rag during one scene; and even the film’s director was the editor on Gremlins.
I could go on, but you get the point. I think this review will mention Gremlins more times than the actual title of the film in question…
Due to being a Gremlins obsessive, I would glom onto any film about diminutive monsters causing mayhem. I rented them all as a child, and Munchies was actually in the rotation for me along with the likes of Ghoulies 2 and the Critters films. They were all magical in their own way to my young and yet-to-be-jaded eye.
I hadn’t seen Munchies in, jeez, maybe over 20 years until I sat down to rediscover it for this column. The experience was strange, to say the least.
If you squint, you could actually see the vague imprint of clever ideas in the film. You see, Simon had an evil brother! A twin! A bad double! Then Arnold the Munchie spawns, you guessed it, evil twins! See?! There’s like, parallels there or something!
The Munchie action, while copious, isn’t particularly fun or well-staged. Due to the obvious low budget, the little beasties just flap and flop around the whole time with almost nothing in the way of articulation. They aren’t all that well designed either.
It almost becomes funny in spite of itself. They tried, okay!
The film doesn’t take itself seriously, which allows for it to go down easy. There are mild chuckles peppered around here and there all mostly due to character actor Harvey Korman as Cecil giving his role more effort than he probably should have. You get the sense that there may have been a degree of ad-libbing in many of his scenes he shares with various cast members, as they are the scenes that generate the most legitimate sources of humor.
If you have a soft spot for puppets in your horror flicks like I do (you will soon learn I have many soft spots when it comes to horror), Munchies is worth a watch if only as a curiosity of diving into the depth of Gremlins rip-offs. Munchies is not Critters, or hell, even Critters 3. But it’s better than Hobgoblins 2. And, well, that’s something, right?
The post ‘Munchies’ Proudly Ripped Off ‘Gremlins’ Back in 1987 [Hidden Gems] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.