It’s 1970 and a car screeches down a desert road, the cops in
hot pursuit. Driving the car is a man on a mission, and what a mission
it is. There’s a wooden chest on the seat next to him, and it sounds
like he’s got Cannonball Run star Dom DeLuise locked inside. Thankfully,
the man is able to ignore the stream of awful wisecracks emanating from
the box, and he succeeds on his quest. He loses the cops and throws the
chest into a bottomless pit. Everyone in the world – apart from
Burt Reynolds, presumably – is filled with a warm comforting sense
of relief.
Flash forwards to “today” – today in this case being
the early Nineties – and we meet Gage Dobson, a toothsome young
loner who has just started at a new school. His only friend is the kooky
old professor across the street, he’s being picked on by the school
bullies, the principal has got it in for him, his math grades are slipping,
his mother is dating a sleazy vivisectionist and on top of all that,
he’s got the hots for Andrea Kurtz, the cutest girl in school.
Hey,
can you guess who Jennifer Love Hewitt plays? Clue: not the vivisectionist.
So, all in all, life pretty much sucks for Gage. Why, if only he could
find some magical friend who could solve all his problems via the use
of camera trickery and cheap optical effects…
One day after school, and for no real reason, Gage wanders into an
abandoned mine where he discovers the mysterious chest that our man
from 1970 so
kindly disposed of. And, lord help us, the voice of Dom DeLuise is
still coming from inside. Opening it up, Gage is introduced to Munchie – a
barely animated mannequin whose twitchy movements, jittery eyes and rigor
mortis smile easily make him the most sinister looking creation ever
to grace a kid’s film. The voice of Dom DeLuise is still coming
from somewhere, and even though the puppet’s stiff lip movements
don’t even begin to match the words, we have to assume that Munchie
is the one doing the yakking. And what yakking it is – an unending
stream of lame puns, clumsy pop culture gags and vaudeville wisecracks
that are less Bugs Bunny and more Open Mic Night at the Shitty Seventies
Stand-up Club.
Munchie immediately sets about righting all the wrongs in Gage’s
life, using wacky slapstick and slide-whistle sound effects wherever
possible. The principal is humiliated, school grades are altered, the
bullies are defeated and ridiculed and mum’s suitor is revealed
as the odious cock he blatantly is - though it’s not clear why
Gage’s mother needs the assistance of hilarious dinner time pratfalls
to realise this stunningly obvious fact.
All that’s left is to win over the heart of fair Amanda, something
that Munchie achieves by throwing that classic final act blow-out of
all thinly plotted kids movies – the forbidden house party.
There’s not much drama to it – Amanda likes Gage anyway,
and all he needed to do was talk to her to discover this, which renders
Munchie’s assistance somewhat redundant. But there’s no time
to consider that, because we’ve just got time for the obligatory
car chase as mum’s spurned suitor tries to capture Munchie and
take him to the lab. Of course, Munchie simply makes their car fly through
the sky (in one of the cheapest special effects shots in the whole movie)
and delivers everyone to safety.
We end with Gage, Amanda and their parents waving
Munchie and the kindly professor off at the airport, as they embark
on a tour of ancient ruins. Amazingly, nobody in the departure lounge
seems
at all disturbed by the presence of a pint-sized wisecracking rubber
monster with a fixed latex grin that seems to say “I will swallow
your children’s brains”. Munchie then makes like a terrorist,
hijacks a plane and jets off into the sunset. Oh, Munchie. You rascal.
Need to know: The 13-year-old Jennifer Love Hewitt was credited in
Munchie simply as Love Hewitt, a cutesy moniker that she later changed
to Jennifer “Love” Hewitt
for Sister Act 2 in 1993, until dropping the punctuation and settling
on the name we now know. Munchie was a kid-friendly sequel of sorts to
Munchies, a 1987 Gremlins knock-off produced by Roger Corman. The B-movie
impresario also executive produced Munchie, with directorial duties falling
to Jim Wynorski, a low budget schlock merchant whose other films include
Chopping Mall, Scream Queen Hot Tub Party and Ghoulies IV (see: Matthew
Lillard). Wynorski recently brought us delights such as The Bare Wench
Project and The Witches of Breastwick. This grounding in cheap exploitation
and horror probably explains why this upbeat kid’s flick features
cameos from the likes of Angus Scrimm (star of the Phantasm series) and
Fred Olen Ray (director of Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers). Munchie Strikes
Back blessed video shelves in 1994, though not even Dom DeLuise bothered
to return for that one.
Availability: Second hand US VHS is your best bet should you wish to
enjoy uniquely sinister kiddie adventures with Dom DeLuise.
