The Irish Horror-Comedy That Should Be a St. Patrick’s Day Staple
Most major holidays tend to have several thematically-linked movies that people watch on the big day. Fourth of July has Independence Day, the blockbuster that likens British people to genocidal aliens, Halloween has several hundred Halloween movies and Christmas has a number of options ranging from Die Hard to Home Alone to the ultra-violent French movie that Home Alone probably ripped off.
But what about St. Patrick’s Day? Sure, there’s The Fugitive, in which Dr. Richard Kimble escapes the feds by joining Chicago’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, which is presumably the only time in history that the St. Patrick’s Day parade has led to someone not getting arrested.
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And there’s also Darby O’Gill and the Little People, the batshit crazy Disney movie that features vengeful leprechauns, screaming banshees, and most terrifying of all, Sean Connery singing.
But we’d like to take this opportunity to suggest another candidate for the best possible St. Patrick’s Day movie: Grabbers, the underrated 2012 Irish horror-comedy about a small island community battling hideous tentacled alien creatures.
What makes it a St. Paddy’s Day movie? At the risk of sounding reductive, it prominently features both Ireland and multiple scenes of excessive drinking. While that may not sound unique exactly, the drinking in question is surprisingly pivotal to the story.
The basic plot involves a by-the-books Dublin cop (Ruth Bradley) who temporarily joins a small island community’s police force and immediately begins clashing with her new partner, a scruffy alcoholic played by Richard Coyle. The pair soon discover that the town is being overrun by grotesque extraterrestrial life-forms that suck the blood of their victims — and the only way to survive an attack is to get crazy hammered because the aliens, like many a doomed freshman, can’t stomach alcohol.
Naturally, our heroes’ plan to save the town involves throwing a massive party at the local pub and making sure everyone is Don Draper-levels of wasted by the time the “Grabbers” arrive.
Sure, Grabbers doesn’t take place on St. Patrick’s Day, but in addition to the Irish pub setting, one could argue that the town’s efforts to exterminate the slimy aliens is reminiscent of the erroneous legend about St. Patrick ridding Ireland of snakes in the fifth century A.D.
Anyways, it’s a charming, funny sci-fi throwback that sure beats lining up for 45 minutes to drink watered down green beer at a Buffalo Wild Wings.
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