Little Rubber Puppet Monsters

In the early 80's, thanks to the success of Halloween and Friday the 13th, a slew of slasher movies was released. There was even a documentary about the glut of imitators that flooded the theaters/video stores for a few years.

There was a smaller trend (smaller in several ways) in the 80's as well, that began after the success of Gremlins: the little rubber monster puppet genre.

I think there were less of these than slasher movies - one reason might be that making this kind of film is surely more labor-intensive and more expensive.

Several horror movies use hand puppets or animatronic puppets here and there, like Alien and The Thing, (as well as other genres like Star Wars with Yoda), but the subgenre I'm talking about is where there are multiple little beasties as the main threat of the story. There's also a tone that goes along with a lot of these, decently dark and scary, but with at least some comedy or fun to it.

Here's a bit of a rundown of the notable ones:



Gremlins
Of course, this started the whole thing. It was a huge hit apparently, and it's got a pretty bizarre sequel (a sequel that I enjoyed quite a bit). I was always surprised, and kind of glad, that they didn't pump out a half dozen sequels.



Critters
This is probably the other big one, and one of the better ones. Space fugitives crash on earth, and are savage little furballs with razor sharp teeth. I think this one got four movies altogether. I've heard something about a remake/series as well…had to look it up, but there was a TV movie that came out in 2019. Good on the Critters! Alive and kickin'…er…chewin'.



Ghoulies
I remember this one vaguely from the video stores; it had the iconic image of a little slimy creature popping up out of a toilet. Apparently there were four of these as well!

In addition to these, there were lesser known releases like Hobgoblins, Munchies, Elves, and so on.





It was an interesting subgenre that existed for a brief time. I wonder if it's due for a resurgence? Personally I don't think it would work with CGI creatures; the fact that the little beasties are actually there, physically, is an important component.

I was going to save my Halloween-oriented posts until October began, but nothing better was coming to mind for an end-of-September post. But hey, it's only one day off.

Have a good one!

Banes