I had lost track of Albert Simmons, accountant to the Goose Lord and his gang, and was aimlessly wandering the corridors of the hospital. By happenstance, I walked across a room with some poor sod hooked up to some kind of ventilator and an IV. Then I noticed a Ziggy tattoo on his left forearm and I knew it was Waldo. I know I haven’t mentioned his Ziggy tattoo until now, but it exists. I’m not making this up.

— To be continued. 

Tonight’s movie is 1988’s Critters 2: The New Batch from director Mick Garris. It is the rare sequal that surpases the original film. Check out who wrote the screenplay: Mick Garris and  David Twohy. Yes, the very same David Twohy that gave us the Chronicles of Riddick trilogy. And Mick Garris gave us the TV adaptations of Stephen King’s The Shining and Stephen King’s The Stand. We’ve got some talent here.

Our movie takes place in Grover’s Bend, KA, the same place where the Critters landed in the first movie and decided that us humans were mighty tasty. Scott Grimes returns as Brad Brown, the kid that defended his family from the Critters in the first movie. Now a teenager, he’s visiting his grandmother while on Easter vacation. He’s put the whole incident behind him and acts like the critters were figments of a boy’s imagination.

A punk teenager named Wesley (Tom Hodges) finds some Critter eggs at the abandoned Brown farm and sells them to a cantacorus antiques dealer named Quigley (Douglas Rowe). Quigley hates Easter, but that doesn’t stop him from selling these creepy looking eggs Nana Brown (Herta Ware) for the church Easter egg hunt on Sunday! The remaining eggs hatch Quigley’s shop and bite his foot off before devouring the rest of him. And I don’t mind this because I don’t like Quigley and I want him to die.

The bounty hunters from the last movie are back with Charlie McFadden (Don Keith Opper), the drunken farmhand from the last movie, in tow. He went away with the aliens at the end of the first movie and became an intergalactic bounty hunter. The bounty hunters received word that there are still critters back on Earth so off they go. The one bounty hunter that can’t make up his mind what to transform into decides on the Playmate of the Month from an old Playboy they find on the side of the road in Grover’s Bend. So we now have a blonde intergalactic bounty hunter shooting up some nasty Critters with her bazooka gun. It doesn’t get much better than this.

But then Eddie Deezen shows up to spoil the fun. It might be hard to explain this to you younger folks out there, but Eddie Deezen was a cautionary tale for young boys about what not to become when you got older. In this movie, he’s the manager of the Hungry Heifer, a midwestern restaurant chain where they serve fries called buffalo chips. Eddie Deezen can be seen gleefully pushing buffalo chips on customers and this is what a man with no shame really looks like.

Critter 2: The New Batch features one of the greatest scenes in cinema history. The town sheriff is coaxed into dressing up as the Easter Bunny to greet the kids after the local church service. While investigating the recently hatched Critter eggs, a bunch of Critters jump inside his suit and start munching away. While the local minister is delivering his sermon, the dying sheriff crashes through the church window and falls on the altar. The kids scream at the bloody Easter Bunny in front of them.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, and episode 645) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.