[Pride 2021] How Critters Became Queerters

Cinema, it’s a splendid thing. The most splendid thing about it is that we all view it from a different eye, background, stance, etc. Just like how people are perceived differently, so is cinema. For us queer people, we tend to view cinema through our queer eyes. If you’re like me, sometimes it’s not on purpose. It’s just what you do. 

With that said, imagine my surprise when on my last watch through of the Critters franchise, I picked up on some queer moments. They aren’t anything big, and they are definitely few and far between. Of course, these things would fly by anyone else’s psyche. And hell, it may just be my own will to dig up anything queer in any film. Alas, I am here to explain to you how Critters became Queerters for me on this last watch through. 

The first Queerters moment can be found in the first sequel, Critters 2: The Main Course. Being a film from 1988 that seemingly catered to mostly cis straight males, the film is full of sexual innuendo and a surprise PG-13 boob scene. Before those get into full gear, there’s a scene concerning the bounty hunters from space along with Charlie (Don Opper) aboard their spaceship as they are heading back to earth to destroy the Crites. The alien bounty hunters are shape shifters, choosing their form as they see fit. 

Charlie, a human who joined the bounty hunters throughout the events of the first film, asks Ug (Terrance Mann) why the other bounty hunter, Lee (Randy Spears), is still in a shapeless form. Ug’s response was, “Lee stays a nothing-face until he finds the right self. Can’t live in the wrong self.” No biggie, right? Not to these queer eyes! 

Instantly, I jumped on to the fact that perhaps Ug completely understands that a chosen gender is what one feels that they are. Granted, the physical shape that Lee has in his unformed self appears male. Lee is also referred to as “he” by Ug, but there’s no obvious physical traits or protruding genitalia through their suit that either confirms or denies a sex. It’s assumed that when the alien bounty hunters are not in a form that they have chosen that they aren’t of any sex. 

One can say that all goes down the drain once Lee does decide on his true form. This comes about as Charlie, Lee, and Ug come across a Playboy magazine left on the side of the road before reaching Grover’s Bend. As Charlie is claiming that Playboy is for the articles (oh, that age old joke), Ug looks over to Lee, and commands them to transform. Charlie assumes Lee is transforming into him, and places the magazine in front of him to possibly deter Lee from transforming into him. In return, Lee begins to transform into the centerfold (Roxanne Kernohan) that opens up. 

Once Lee has finished his transformation, the look of relief and satisfaction on their face represents that they are proud of who they’ve become. A gentle caress of the boobs, and a smile of contentment leads Lee to accept a power that they hadn’t previously displayed. “Kill Crites,” they say as they persistently walk off to complete the mission that they came to Earth to do. 

Ug’s words to Charlie about Lee’s search for their “right self” has the capability to hit home with anyone searching for their true sexuality. Any small moment like that in any sort of visual media has the capability to give any person the smallest amount of strength to continue on to find out who they are. Lee’s transformation into a woman further solidifies that as a woman, they feel powerful. The gentle caress of the boobs carries that although I believe that wasn’t the original intention. Acknowledging the physical form of what they have chosen followed by a powerful declaration creates a moment that Lee is happy to have become a woman, a form that, previously, they didn’t know they would feel a certain power. 

My next point was to focus on the character of Marcia (Katherine Cortez) from Critters 3, and how she definitely was queer. A hinted at romance with a dude was completely side swiped to focus more on Marcia doing her own thing, and becoming her own character. And while Marcia will always stand in the Queer Horror Hall of Fame, I’ve come upon a nice realization - 700+ words into this - that finding small hints of queer in the films that we grew up with is exceptionally important. 

I made mention to a friend the other day whilst speaking of The Craft: Legacy that I love how there are now openly queer characters within film that don’t have to explain who or why they are. They just are. In the majority of film, pre-aughts and even throughout the aughts, we had to dig and decode and come up with our own interpretations of who may be a queer character. As I did with Ug’s speech about Lee, we have to create a world in which these films speak to us and help us thrive within a world where we could only experience our true selves through film due to outside sources forcing us to secretly build these worlds that we wished to thrive in. 

I love that - now - writers and creators such as Michael Kennedy (Freaky), Christopher Landon (Freaky, Happy Death Day), Brad Michael Elmore (Bit), and Don Mancini (all things Chucky) are creating worlds where queer characters exist, thrive, and survive. I love that there are films like Knife + Heart, Climax, Good Manners, and What Keeps You Alive that exist to show that queer stories within horror are just as important. 

I come from a generation (of which I have learned, recently, they call “geriatric millennials”) that had some slices of cake, but generally had to bake extra cakes to eat to become full on a need for queer stories within their favorite genre. I still pull out my little easy bake oven when I’m watching films from the past. I still search out for queer aspects that I may have wished I’d seen when I was younger. The past of horror, the present of horror, and the future of horror within the queer world presents itself as a huge, indescribable cake that will never fully be consumed because we’re always finding different flavors. I just happened to bite into the piece of my cake that had a hint of a Queerters spice to it. 

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