Munchies



Archaeologist and alien conspiracy theorist Simon Watterman is on an anthropological dig in Peru with his son, Paul, when they discover a tiny creature roaming around in one of the caverns. Convinced that he’s finally found an actual honest-to-god alien, Simon brings the creature back to the United States with him so he can show his find, which they are now calling a Munchie, to fellow scientist Dr. Crowder, in the hopes of getting money so he can fend off his evil, greedy, snack food entrepreneur twin brother Cecil, who wants to buy up his land (for some reason that is never stated). But first, he has to go get the doctor. So Simon leaves his son Paul in charge of the creature and heads into town.

But it turns out evil uncle Cecil has Simon’s house bugged and has figured out that he’s found something valuable that can thwart his plans for further property acquisition. So Cecil and his hippy step-son Eddie sneak into Simon’s house and steal the Muchie while Paul and his girlfriend are busy performing kinky hanky-panky upstairs. Much like his brother, Cecil puts his kid in charge of the Munchie while he goes out and, just like Paul, Eddie proves to be useless when it comes to watching small creatures. But, unlike Paul, Eddie also proves to have a mean streak and “keeping an eye” on the Munchie quickly escalates into “shooting it with a shotgun” and “chopping it up into little pieces.” But, as it turns out, cutting up the creature just makes it multiply, and the new, now multiple Munchies quickly make their dissatisfaction with being minced up known by dispatching of Eddie and stealing his car. By now though, Paul and his girlfriend have figured out what’s going on and are hot on their tail as the little miscreants begin to cause havoc all over town.



So, uh, do you like Gremlins or any of its resulting cheap knock-offs? Because that’s basically what Munchies is: a cheaply made, obvious Gremlins knock-off that also happens to be directed by Bettina Hirsch, the very same person who edited Gremlins. And it also just so happens to be produced by none other than low-budget horror maestro Roger Corman, so when I say it’s “cheap” you know I mean it’s cheap cheap. I mean, they barely even deviated from the basic plot of the movie they were trying to rip-off, so you know they didn’t put much thought into it. That said though, I have heard a couple people speak rather positively regarding this movie, so I went in kinda hopeful. But I think those people must have had their nostalgia goggles firmly adhered to their skulls, because as far as knock-offs go I can think of much better ones for you to spend your time on (Like Critters, for example. Critters is fun.)



For starters, the story of this movie is…pretty bad, even by kid film standards. The creatures themselves, which are explained in the most basic of terms, still end up making little sense. In the span of mere seconds they quickly go from barely knowing how to use a TV remote and speaking a couple words of Spanish, to speaking full-on English sentences and intrinsically knowing how to drive a car? Like, how? And why the hell are they such pervy little imps? Humans aren’t even the same species as them, so why are they trying to look up women’s skirts? And for the life of me, I can’t understand why the “evil” brother is so obsessed with getting the other brother’s house/property. He apparently has a booming restaurant/snack/land development empire, yet he’s so determined to get this one, tiny little parcel of land right across the street? Like, my dude, you’ve already won the sibling rivalry competition. You should be taking your damn profits, building a mansion, and gloating from the third floor pool you built in your gilded palace while sipping on mai-tais. Not bugging your brother’s house via chincy Elvis statues. Your evil plan was going just fine without that one parcel of land. It would have made 10x more sense for this movie to have some random thieves come in and steal the Munchie and cause havoc that way, rather than use the cacamamie plot-line they settled on.


Brilliant masterminds, these two.

And the movie is meant to be funny, but unfortunately it misses the mark 90% of the time. In fairness, when the Munchies are on screen they are pretty amusing. They are undoubtedly the best part of the film. The problem is we’re forced to spend most of the movie with the human characters and, honestly, most of them suck. Harvey Korman anchors the bulk of the film, and while he’s great in smaller, secondary roles, he really can’t carry a whole movie on his own. His brand of comedy just works better in spurts, I think. Then you have Charles Stratton trying hard to play a younger, poor-man’s Woody Allen, and Charlie Phillips as a bumbling, and painfully unfunny sheriff. And they’re all trying to land jokes, but instead of being funny they usually just end up being irritating. It also doesn’t help that most of their Pop Culture references were painfully dated even when the movie was released. So I doubt a lot of kids today would even get half of the references they’re making.


Yes, we get it. Gremlins was a better movie!

It’s not a total wash, though. Alix Elias, who plays the “evil” brother’s wife, has a few good lines as Cecil’s ridiculously ditzy blond soulmate. And Nadine Van der Velde, who plays Paul’s girlfriend Cindy, helps anchor the film a bit with some much appreciated sensibility and more down-to-earth sarcasm. It also doesn’t hurt that she’s absolutely adorable and the least annoying character in the movie. But the only human to get a real laugh out of me was the little old lady the Munchies tried to run off the road. So to get back at them she threw lit firecrackers into their car (did I mention this film was supposed to take place over the 4th of July weekend?), while cackling the entire time. She was great. And of course she was, because – and I didn’t realize it at the time because they gave her an awful wig and dubbed her very recognizable voice – that was Ellen Albertini Dow, better known as the “Rapping Granny” in the Wedding Singer, and that gal was a hoot in whatever she was in. Too bad her part was so short.


I can’t get over how proud she is for nearly causing vehicular homicide.

You’d also think that the Munchies themselves would be better designed but…I guess their title characters looking good wasn’t a top priority for the producers. Hell, the solid statues the Munchies turn into end up looking better than the actual puppets that are supposed to be the main draw of the film. They look like poorly drawn mini-Godzilla’s with bad hair. Some of the DVD packaging makes them look really menacing and filled with personality. But when they’re on screen they just look cheesy and indistinguishable. Which is sad, because unlike other Gremlin-like films, these little guys can actually speak. And they do. A LOT. So in theory they could have done something to make them all stand out from one another, but they didn’t. I kept watching this and thinking that the aliens in Critters, which are little more than grumbling, angry spiked balls with teeth, ended up coming away with more personality than these guys did. And I might have forgiven them for all that if the puppetry had stood out in any way. But beyond the first scene where you can finally see the whole puppet and are given glimpses of full movement, the rest of the movie is pretty lackluster, consisting mostly of vague movements of the head and arms. I thought they might be building up to more at first, but this is a Roger Corman film, so I guess I should have known better. Still, it’s a bummer they didn’t put more effort into these guys.



I was really hoping I’d like this one more than I did but…oh well. I will say that Munchies does have some good one-liners and genuinely funny moments. And they did blow up two cars unnecessarily, so I can’t say that I was bored. But most of the humor in this comedy/horror film is cringe-y, nonsensical, or horribly out of date. Which, yeah, most kids aren’t going to care about that. They just want to watch the creatures run amok. I get that. But I CARE. So there. Ultimately though, the movie rates a solid “okay” for what it was going for, which is fine. Just know that if you’re looking for any creature features where mini-monsters run around and torment people, that there are better options out there.

And no, it doesn’t include this film’s sequel Munchie (singular, not plural). You should avoid that abomination like the plague.

Munchies is available on a variety of streaming services.

Munchies is also available on Bluray.

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