Gremlins (1984): Favourite Films Series

Gremlins (1984): Favourite Films Series

 

Gremlins was one of the first movies I purchased on blu ray. It wasn’t even for myself initially, I bought it for a friend, with only a partial recollection of having rented it on VHS from the video store as a kid but just knowing he needed it for his collection, then I added it to my own budding collection not too long after. It became an essential part of my holiday-movie-viewing traditions, and I’ve watched it within the month of December most years since getting the blu ray.

I saw it for the first time when I was about seven or eight, and I remember enjoying it, but not that many specific things about it stuck with me other than the lore of the creatures: don’t get them wet, don’t expose them to bright light, and don’t feed them after midnight. One of the reasons those rules stuck with me was because a classmate of mine used that same premise for a short story he wrote in grade four, and when he read it out to the class I recognized that he had copied the idea from Gremlins, and it really bothered me. He just recycled the same premise—how unoriginal!   

The premise of Gremlins is not meant to be taken too seriously—it rides a fine line of being scary and funny, but thrilling all the way through. Randall Peltzer is an inventor of mostly useless, dysfunctional, and bizarre gadgets, but one night a young boy leads him into the stranger side of town (A.K.A. Chinatown, one of the aspects of the film that, admittedly, doesn’t hold up super well) and he discovers a strange creature in a cage in a dingy shop, but the old one-eyed shopkeeper says “Mogwai not for sale.” The old man’s grandson sells it to Randall secretly anyway, and Randall gives it to his son Billy as an early Christmas gift. Out from the box pops the creature we come to know as Gizmo, the most adorable fictional creature in all of cinema. Seriously, you’ll wish it was real so you could adopt one yourself. He comes with those aforementioned rules, though, and you can probably predict what happens next: all of those things!

Gizmo gets water from a paint brush jar spilt on him by accident, little furry balls pop painfully out of his back, and suddenly there are several more mogwai, only these ones aren’t as kind-spirited as sweet little Gizmo, with the one nicknamed Stripe (because of his mohawk) leading them. These ones are also hungrier, and Billy accidentally feeds them leftover chicken after midnight, which makes them go into cocoons similar to the egg stage of the xenomorph from Alien, then the mogwai hatch into ghoulish new forms: scaly, evil gremlins! Billy tries to stop Stripe, but the gremlin ends up in the swimming pool at the YMCA, spawning dozens more. He has to rescue his co-worker/wannabe-girlfriend Kate from the bar, and, along with Gizmo, try to stop the rampage of the gremlins as they trash the town and party their little green asses off.

I love monster movies, and Gremlins is one of the quintessential examples from the 80’s. When you put the premise down on paper, it somehow sounds unique and absurd at the same time. The creatures have clear rules, but they don’t really make sense, and it doesn’t matter. Gremlins is a perfectly engineered monster movie because it has characters who are given the proper setup needed for viewers to care about them before the mayhem ensues, and the first act is suspenseful, then the second act is full of classic jumps and frights and comedic moments, and the third act is all-out mayhem. The director, Joe Dante, keeps the gremlins mysterious at first, but once they are shown, they are given the spotlight, and have many moments to shine. The creature scenes are full of variety, hilarity, genuine fear, and charming visuals.

What I love the most about Gremlins is the build-up to the mayhem. We are with Billy every step of the way with learning how the mogwai work, and when we see poor little Gizmo’s sad face after the new ones spawn from him, we know that he knows there’s trouble ahead, but who could have expected just how much trouble? There are too many memorable and iconic moments with the many gremlins to count them all—the one eating the cookie in the kitchen, the one with glowing red eyes hiding in the Christmas tree, the one hanging from the Christmas lights—I could just keep going.

The moments when the gremlins are killed are all standouts. The one that explodes in the microwave is gruesome, but maybe not as gruesome as the demise of Stripe at the end, when he melts down to a goopy skeleton in a fountain, and even his skeleton itself goes soft and liquefies. Besides the creature deaths, there are some intense human deaths too. Santa himself gets assaulted by the gremlins (though it’s actually just a guy dressed as Santa), but the ultimate death is for the grumpy Mrs. Deagle, when she is launched out the top story window of her house on her motorized chairlift after the gremlins mess up the wiring. It is one of the most over-the-top and funniest deaths I can think of from any movie. Part of what makes it so perfect is the way the gremlins react: shocked for a second, then they laugh hysterically.   

The monsters have real personality, and their purpose is not to kill everyone, it’s just to have a good time and cause mischief. They are unique in one really important way: despite their appearance (in cute mogwai mode and in creepy gremlin mode), they are intelligent and communicative. The little garbled lines of dialogue they utter throughout are both hilarious and disturbing, and the way they figure out how to mess with people is where a huge portion of the entertainment value is. It all culminates in the tavern scene, which has nothing but gremlins goofing around and partying and doing all kinds of weird things (all while poor Kate tries to serve them drinks!) and is an effects spectacle. The animatronics and puppets used for the creatures hold up just as well today as when the movie first came out. As a kid, I didn’t even think about how they achieved some of the shots. Techniques included using trick camera angles, different sizes of Gizmo puppets, and even mixing in a little stop motion, but the movie just would not work the same if it hadn’t been made in this wonderful window of time when practical effects were at their best and CGI hadn’t yet replaced them.

Conceptually, the gremlins are among my favourite movie monsters. I had no idea as a kid that their concept stems from the real urban legend of little green men infiltrating the machines and vehicles in World War II—something that is mentioned in the movie by Billy’s neighbour Mr. Futterman, played by Dick Miller (who has had a role in every one of Joe Dante’s movies). Mr. Futterman gets the ultimate fright when the gremlins drive his Kentucky Harvester tractor through the front of his house. You could pick Gremlins apart for being somewhat predictable, but it’s a tribute to all the classic genre conventions of horror/monster movies, right up to the ending, with a “fourth act” where the heroes think they have defeated the creature once and for all, but they have to battle it one last time to save the day.

Gremlins definitely has one foot in the comedy genre and another in the horror genre, but it is not what I would call holiday fare for the whole family. Don’t let that PG-rating fool you; all the gruesome moments I mentioned earlier are shown in explicit detail. Joe Dante made some other movies that mixed horror and comedy in a similar way, but never as effectively as with Gremlins—a movie which actually contributed to the creation of the PG-13 rating. Too intense for young kids, but not intense enough to warrant an R-rating? That was the new solution in 1984. Steven Spielberg is the real reason for its inception, having produced Poltergeist two years earlier, then this movie, and then having directed Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, all of which contributed to the ratings’ creation. I think Gremlins is one of the main contributors as to why I love creature effects and gruesome, gooey monster gore, and just why I enjoy movies like this in general, having seen it at such a young age. Aside from the monster aspects of the movie, though, there is still plenty to enjoy.

Jerry Goldsmith is one of my favourite composers of film scores, having done the music for a number of my favourite films, but sometimes I forget he was the mastermind behind the extremely catchy themes for Gremlins. When I revisited the movie as a teen and the end credits began, with the absolute bop of a track “The Gremlin Rag” booming through the surround sound speakers, it became rooted in my mind as the theme music of Gremlins, and re-watching it now, I notice all the early cues for the theme, which makes the music build up alongside the story in the same suspenseful way until it reaches the later bombastic scenes. In addition to the original score, I also love the choices of Christmas songs. The one used for the opening titles is what I would consider to be a lesser-used Christmas song in holiday-themed films, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Darlene Love, and in the kitchen scene that comes later “Do You Hear What I Hear?” is made so haunting by the looming presence of the gremlins.

I’ve highlighted plenty of the horror so far, but I think Gremlins is a bit more about the humour. One of the funniest moments I can think of from any movie is when Billy and Kate find the gremlins in the movie theater, and Kate asks Billy what they are doing in there. He peeks in and says with perfect delivery: “They’re watching Snow White…and they love it.” There are many funny moments throughout, but there is also one very dark moment with the main characters. We find out why Kate isn’t such a big fan of Christmas when she tells Billy a little story from her childhood. Her dad broke his neck trying to climb down the chimney dressed as Santa. Yikes, talk about a holiday buzzkill. It’s dark, but in a similar spirit to some of the best Christmas specials out there like The Grinch and Charlie Brown, it reminds us that Christmas is not always the happiest time of year for everyone, but it doesn’t beat you over the head with the Christmas stuff either. It’s mostly a backdrop for the story.

So there you have it, folks: Gremlins is my favourite Christmas movie of all-time, in addition to another one of my overall favourite films (and my favourite entry in the little-monster-movie subgenre, too). Gremlins is an underrated 80’s classic, and I recommend checking it out no matter what time of year it is, but if you’ve seen it before and are now considering revisiting it, keep it in mind this holiday season.