Munchies
After any genre has become established it’s not long after you start getting the rip offs and spoofs. Munchies is a bland mediocre spoof of the killer little animal genre established with the classic Gremlins and ripped off many times over by the likes of Ghoulies, Troll and Critters. By the time Munchies hit the theaters gremlins had already come and gone and sequels had been planned, for that matter Ghoulies, Troll, Critters and their respective sequels were being worked on. The problem with most spoofs is that they tend to not be all that funny and in that area Munchies delivers in spades.
The puppets are beyond terrible, they make the Elves in Elves look like Rick Baker masterpieces
Harvey Korman (staple of the spoof genre) plays duel roles as twins Simon (an archeologist and the finder of the titular furbags) and his evil brother Cecil (maker of snack foods made with only the finest nuclear waste money can buy). Simon makes it a family affair by entrusting the Munchie (now dubbed Arnold) to his wannabe stand up comedian son Paul and his girlfriend Cindy. He of course promptly loses him to Cecil’s bumbling stepson “Dude” who of course manages to get himself murdered by them (now numbering four because we learn that cutting them up just multiplies them, not kills them). The chase that ensues is actually kind fun, if not incredibly dumb. Once the chase is over though the film takes on the pacing of cold molasses trying to move up the side of a glacier. It’s borderline painful to watch at this point, even the usually very funny Korman can’t save it with his actually quite funny quips “Toxic waste is America’s greatest resource”.
Rest in peace you magnificent bastard, you'll be remembered for your good films...trust me
Once they discover how to take the little turds out Paul makes pretty quick work of them. The secret waste storage center is discovered in Cecil’s underground hidden cave so he is arrested and Paul saved one of the statues that the Munchies become to try to explain to his father what happens. It turns out that the statue is considered a prized archeological artifact and Simon gets an offer for it for mucho dinero and at the end of the day everything is looking up for Simon, Paul and Cindy.
Munchies did a hell of a job of making itself seem like a fun little horror spoof romp, but frankly the dialog they give the Munchies is about as fun as watching paint dry and the one genuine laugh I had was due to one of the cops running face first into a rock face wall, now THAT was funny. If asked I would say, maybe skip this one and watch critters 2 again which is at least unintentionally funny OR watch Gremlins again, which is an all around much better film. This is seriously one of Roger Corman’s worst and that’s saying a lot about a man who literally has thousands of crappy films to his name.
For shame Mr. Corman...For shame
2 out of 10
"This is seriously one of Roger Corman’s worst and that’s saying a lot about a man who literally has thousands of crappy films to his name."
ReplyDeleteActually, Corman's movies only number in the hundreds, and many of them--maybe even most--are good to great. Roger is much better than MUNCHIES.
Touche! allow my correction:
ReplyDelete"This is seriously one of Roger Corman’s worst and that’s saying a lot about a man who has many crappy films to his name."
I'm actually a huge fan of Corman, which is actually one of the few reasons I picked this up in the first place. The Term "crappy" to me doesn't necessarily denote a "bad" movie, but it's pretty clear he works well within the realms of "crap-cinema" and Munchies is easily one of the biggest turds of his ouvre.
But hey thanks for the feedback and keep an eye out for future posts. I've got some great stuff planned.