Munchies is an American independent feature film of the comedy and horror genres. Its basically a knock-off of Gremlins and Critters, but without half the recognition of either. The movie was directed by Tina Hirsch with a script written by Lance Smith. It was produced by Concorde Pictures and opened to limited theatrical release in the United States on March 1st, 1987. The movie stars Harvey Korman ins the dual roles of twin brothers Simon & Cecil Watterman along with Charles Stratton as Paul Watterman and Nadine Van der Velde as Paul's girlfriend, Cindy.
Director Tina Hirsch is credited as Bettina Hirsch in this film. This is her first film work as a director. She will go on to direct Four Decades Later in 2013.
This is Lance Smith's first feature film work as a screenwriter.
This movie does not have a Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes. It does however have an audience score of 25% based on more than five-hundred user ratings, averaging 2.4 out of 5.
On Letterboxd, Munchies has a weighted average review score of 2.25 out of 5 based on 2,714 user votes.
Another tagline is "...Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Raid the Fridge!", which is a parody of "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...", which was the tagline to Jaws 2 in 1978.
Actress Nadine Van der Velde is also known for playing April Brown in Critters in 1986. Both film involve an aggressive alien presence of small, laughable looking creatures.
Munchies takes a lot of its narrative queues from the popular 1984 horror/comedy Gremlins. Director Bettina Hirsch was an editor on that film.
Another Gremlins reference is the use of an AMC Gremlin automobile, developed by the American Motors Corporation in 1970. The one that appears in this film has a vanity plate that reads "OHGIZMO", which phonetically sounds like "Oh, Gizmo". Gizmo was the name of the protagonist Mogwai featured in Gremlins.
