The Orville's Scott Grimes Starred In A Forgotten '80s Sci-Fi Horror Movie That Deserves More Love

Actor Scott Grimes' first film credit was for a 1984 TV movie called "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," a Christmas flick that starred Mickey Rooney. Grimes was only 12 or 13 at the time, and his role was substantial; he played the Rooney character's young grandson that his grandfather returned from the dead to spend time with. That same year, he was in a feature film called "The Night They Saved Christmas," so it seemed that the young Grimes was already on a Christmas kick. He was the go-to holiday movie kid. Grimes has been working steadily on TV and in movies ever since, appearing in dozens of TV shows, including in animated shows, on long-running soaps, and on 70 episodes of "Party of Five." He appeared in 112 episodes of "ER," and, more recently, plays Lieutenant Gordon Malloy on the sci-fi comedy series "The Orville." 

Back in 1986, though, Grimes starred in what is one of the finest films of his career, and I include his cameo in "Oppenheimer" in that statement. At age 14 or 15, Grimes played the young Brad in Stephen Herek's "Critters," a creature feature about foot-tall furry eating machines from outer space. "Critters" was one of the many "small monster" movies to have been released in the wake of "Gremlins" in 1984, but it's no knockoff; Herek maintains that he was reading the script to "Critters" long before "Gremlins" ever hit theaters. On the back of the "Critters" VHS edition, it was even stated that "Critters" had to be re-written after "Gremlins" came out to avoid some similar scenes. 

"Critters" is wild and nasty and fun. It was clearly made on a budget, but that only added to its violent charm.

The mythology of "Critters" is pretty simple. An alien prison ship is passing over Earth when its prisoners, the Krites, take control, kill its pilots, and crash-land on the planet below, specifically in a sleepy town in the middle of Kansas. The Krites are, as mentioned, ravenous little beasts who must eat constantly to stay alive. They also can roll into little balls and trundle from place to place, making them difficult to catch. If you do catch one, and they don't eat you, they can fire poisonous quills from their backs, paralyzing you. The Krites are nasty little monsters. They also have a penchant for chaos, enjoying causing mayhem and destruction wherever they go. Very occasionally, "Critters" provides translations of the Krite language, and they tend to speak in four-letter words. 

Grimes plays a character named Brad, the youngest son of the Browns, a family of Kansan farmers. Brad and his father Jay (Billy "Green" Bush) will be the ones to first discover the crashed Krite vessel. The setting of "Critters" is full of colorful characters, most notably a drunken former baseball pitcher named Charlie (Don Keith Opper) who claims that he can hear alien radio signals through his dental fillings. Charlie will become the star of the "Critters" series, appearing in the next three sequels. Grimes will also return to the series to reprise the role of Brad in "Critters 2: The Main Course," arguably the best in the series. 

Brad is a key character in "Critters," too, as it will be the young kid who discovers that Krites blow up when they eat lit firecrackers. Brad will also be the go-between for Earth and a cadre of alien bounty-hunters who kill Krites for a living. 

The bounty hunters also play a key role in the first two "Critters" movies. When they land on Earth, in pursuit of the Krites, they have no faces. Luckily, the bounty hunters can shape-shift, and choose to take the forms of people they see, or characters in magazines. They go by the names of Ug (Terrence Mann) and Lee, although they look like various people throughout the film. Lee imitates a pinup model, and looks mostly like Canadian actress Roxanne Kernohan. Ug sometimes looks like Charlie in "Critters 2." The second film is wilder and bigger than the first, with Mick Garris taking over from Stephen Herek (who had moved into production on "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure"). Both films are excellent, however, and make for a marvelous double feature. Grimes is about 14 or 15 in the first film, and about 16 or 17 in the sequel, and it's interesting to watch the young actor grow up and become more sophisticated. 

And speaking of young actors growing up, one will be interested to hear that a young Leonardo DiCaprio took over as the "lead kid" character in Christine Peterson's "Critters 3" in 1991. That film went straight-to-video, and had an even smaller budget than the first two, keeping the Krite appearances to a minimum, and kept the action bound to a single building. It's interesting seeing a teen DiCaprio ply his craft, as he seems to have already, as a kid, developed all the mannerisms, line deliveries, and acting tics that he would continue to use until his 50s. 

There was also a "Critters 4" in 1992, "Critters Attack!" in 2019, and a miniseries called "Critters: A New Binge" that same year.