Gremlins Vs Critters: Critters

Now to look at the other side of this match-up! In the Blue corner, the ever-insatiable Critters! If you need a reminder of the other side, the Gremlins, click here.

The Crites have four movies to draw from, and are much more focused on killing than the Gremlins. In doing research online for this series, I have found a few other places that have tried to answer this question of who would win, and most of them put the win in the Crites' column.

I'm still going to go over their abilities, strengths, and weaknesses here though, to ensure the match-up is as accurate as I can make it.

Strengths

1. Eating Machines.

The Crites are pure eating machines, with bottomless stomachs and their huge mouths have three sets of razor sharp teeth. They will eat literally anything they think could be food, and they also use their teeth and mouths to get to prey. They'll chew through doors, eat down chairs, and shred tires to stop potential food from escaping. In addition, they can go into a kind of 'Piranha mode' where a small group of them can strip a body of flesh in a matter of seconds.

2. Tranquilizer Spines

Probably the Crites most unique ability, is that they have spines among their fur that can be launched like darts. The spines are strong enough to pierce steel, and are coated with a venom that puts other living things to sleep when struck. A single spine has enough venom on it to put a fully grown man to sleep. That being said though, it doesn't seem to be a venom that can kill. People hit with multiple spines fall asleep faster, but even after being hit with a dozen, they recover fairly quickly once the spines are removed.

3. Ball form

The Crites arms and legs are short and stubby, so they get around by curling up into a ball and rolling and bouncing along after prey. In this form, they are extremely durable, taking hits from baseball bats, and other objects and simply bouncing off of them. They can also fall for substantial distances without being hurt. In addition, they can spin in place, supercharging themselves for a speed boost or to let them bounce straight up from a stationary position.

4. Growth

One of the Crites rarer abilities is that if they actually manage to eat enough of something that actually counts as food, they can grow to much larger sizes. The average Crite is about the size of a soccer ball when it's curled up, but the example we saw in the movie produced one that stood over six feet tall standing upright. It certainly stands to reason that with enough food, they could continue to grow and reach truly monstrous sizes. This would takes time though, and tons of food.

Weaknesses

1. Intelligence

Crites aren't very smart. As I said, they're eating machines, and they don't discriminate very well between things that are food and things that aren't. They're happy to bite into electrical cables, swallow explosives. and down random chemicals. They don't know how things work, and get caught in machines pretty easily. They also can't recognize things that are dangerous until they see one of their fellow Crites go down from it. Even then, they aren't quick to run away and tend to get stuck in place for a few moments.

2. Durability

This goes along with the lack of intelligence. They're bottomless pits when it comes to things that are edible, but they can easily eat things that kill them. The aforementioned explosives, electrical cables, and chemicals are all things that killed them after being eaten. The lack of durability extends to their outsides too. They've been killed by everything from being stepped on to a falling ceiling fan, and they die to firearms as easily as just about any other animal.

There we go! The combatants have been examined. Both sides have strengths and weaknesses that can either lead them to victory, or a crushing defeat. Check back next week when I go over one possible scenario for a confrontation between these two terrible monsters. What do you think of the strengths and weaknesses? Have I missed anything? Do you have any predictions for the fight?

~ Shaun