BONUS! Watch a Roger Corman movie to celebrate his 100th birthday!
Sooner or later, I had to watch this movie.
Gage Dobson (Jaime McEnnan ) has some problems. He’s bullied every day by Ashton (Scott Ferguson) and Leon (Mike Simmrin), and when he gets home, he has to deal with his divorced mother, Cathy (Loni Anderson), who is dating Dr. Elliot Carlisle (Andrew Stevens). He’s a jerk, but if you know Andrew Stevens like I know Andrew Stevens, you know he’s going all Night Eyes on mom as soon as the lights go down.
He’s also in love with a girl, Andrea, but she doesn’t even know he exists. And that’s Love Hewitt, who is Jennifer Love Hewitt, long before she ruled the ‘ 90s and 00s libidos of teenage boys.
Gage has just one friend, Professor Cruikshank. That’s Arte Johnson, and like Marty and Doc Brown, you may wonder why a pre-teen is hanging out with an ancient, odd scientist. And then, for some reason — he’s in a movie — Gage goes to an abandoned mine and meets Munchie.
Munchie is supposed to be some kind of ghoulie, gremlin or critter, except he’s lifeless, and by that, I mean he only moves above the neck. He’s like a worse Garbage Pail Kid, if that’s possible, and it is, because he has the voice of Dom DeLuise, predating the world we have survived, a place where Eric Roberts would play Duffy the cat.
Gage is, as you’d expect, scared shitless by this creature, which looks like the Tasmanian Devil plus Fuzzbucket. If I saw this thing in a mine, I’d jump down a shaft to escape it and leave this world behind me. But no, not Gage. He gets a new friend: a creepy thing that claims to have written all of Shakespeare’s plays and uses its magic powers to abuse every one of the bullies, so, like always, when someone bullied gets any power, they don’t deal with things evenly. Instead, power corrupts.
Munchie is an eternal creature that has been in every major civilization since time began. Here, he helps Gage so much that he gets kicked out of school. Munchie solves that by throwing the kind of party that you only see in teen sex comedies. That’s when you realize that this is a movie for children directed by a man who loves breasts more than any of us, Jim Wynorski. That probably explains why—again, a kid movie—the cast includes Raven De La Croix, Monique Gabrielle, Becky LeBeau and Brinke Stevens. I can’t even comprehend how many times he tried to talk Loni Anderson into a shower scene.
So many of courses. Of course Carlisle wants to dissect Munchie. Of course Gage ends up getting with Jennifer Love Hewitt (Wynorski also wrote another movie for her, Little Miss Millions). Of course Munchie saves the day. Of course Munchie slams a teenage child into the concrete, and we all laugh, not thinking that this ancient creature, with all the powers of magic at his claws, could kill us all. Of course Munchie dresses like Jack Nicholson. Of course Fred Olen Ray and George “Buck” Flower are in this movie.
Writer R.J. Robertson was all about sequels, writing Deathstalker II, Big Bad Mama II, House IV and Beastmaster II. He helped develop the look of Munchie, along with special effects artists Gabriel Bartalos and David Kindlon (who worked on Gremlins 2, so they know what’s up).
When in Studio City, remember to eat at Vitello’s Italian Restaurant. You could be sitting in the same booth as Munchie.
Is this a sequel to another Roger Corman-produced film, Munchies? Maybe. Maybe not. It does, however, take its first three minutes completely from Jackson County Jail. And to prove that Roger Corman is all about being green—or recycling—the music from this film is also in Mom, Can I Keep Her?, the only movie to have both Mary Woronov and Terry Funk in its cast.
You can watch this on Tubi.
