Gremlins (1984)

As we limp to the finishing line of a year that can’t be committed to the mists of time quickly enough I thought it would be appropriate to inaugurate another tradition, a review of a festive period film to complement the years retrospective traditions. I’ve had a bit of a soft spot for Gremlins for reasons I’ll shortly get into, the announcement of a one day revival across certain cinemas in London including my local Cineworld left me with little option than to unleash this Stephen Spielberg produced, Joe Dante directed mischievous little critter. Gremlins harks back to my early days of film obsession, alongside the likes of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones  movies this is where the madness and mayhem truly began, with this particular beast a potent early example of Hollywood marketing blitzkrieg that my adolescent defences was powerless to resist. I had the sticker album and tie-in novel, the ‘making-of’ photobooks and I eagerly devoured any trailer glimpse on the TV, therefore you can only imagine my devastation when it was awarded a 15 certificate here in the UK, thus barring me from an eagerly awaited celluloid snack. A few years later I had my sweet revenge once I hooked with a girlfriend who used to make Mogwai impressions in the sack – talk about fucking weird. As a careful lover though and following the films mantra I ensured she never saw daylight, was never fed after midnight and absolutely never got her wet – hey, I’m a responsible chap.

Small town Remericana, and in a warmly log toasted atmosphere young Billy Peltzer   (newcomer Zach Galligan) receives an unusual yuletide gift from his faintly eccentric entrepreneur father Randall  (Hoyt Axton). Billy is enamoured with his new pet Mogwai whom he swiftly christians as Gizmo, the cutest ickle fluffy bunny this side  of  marshmallow mountain, ut with real power comes great responsibility as Randall explains how the mysterious oriental gentlemen who sourced the critter gave very specific instructions on the care of this precious pet, that he must be shielded from strong light, that he should never be fed after midnight, and absolutely under no circumstances ever exposed to water. True to form all three of these instructions are soon violated by accident and stupidity, and a host of psychopathic critters birthed by Mogwai’s extraordinary reproductive cycle are soon terrorising the sleepy snow drenched hamlet, forcing William to team up with his childhood crush Kate (the swoon inducing Phoebe Cates) in order to quell the carnage and save Christmas…..

With Spielberg teamed up with the lucrative partnership of Frank Marshall and Kathleen   Kennedy (now the CEO of Lucasfilm) this trio seemed that they had a licence to print money back in the 1980’s, producing behemoth hit after hit which still offer the fond elixir of nostalgia for cinephiles of my generation. Gremlins  is one of the more subversive pictures in the period given its direct family friendly demographic designs coupled with horror elements, of course it has aged in places but it remains terrifically amusing fun, once the carnage gets going with the genesis of the lizard scaled lunatics Gremlins lurks along with a devilish glee despite its paper-thin plot. Rather than being sickly nauseating Gizmo and Billy have a genuine link and the cute little bastard has a definite personality, not a bad achievement for a patently ridiculous puppet which I’m sure would not past muster with the youth of today. It’s the sly comedy and clandestine critiques which ensure that the film hs aged with an agreeable grace, including of course this widely accepted classic scene which I don’t think you’d get in Ice Age 6: Revenge Of The Fridge  or whatever other franchise they’re pandering around these days;

Ah, Phoebe Cates (sighs), she got married to Kevin Kline don’t you know? Unsurprisingly the executives loathed that scene and wanted it excised from the movie, Spielberg was similarly inclined but to be fair he saw this as Dante’s movie, and if he wanted it to remain then as the director it was his call. The film is replete with movie in-jokes similar to those embedded in the work of John Landis and early Spielberg who makes a cameo appearance as does voice legend Chuck ‘Looney Tunes’ Jones and a priceless The Time Machine visual gag which is straight out of Airplane airspace, I’ve never caught that one before so this cinema visit was immediately worth the effort. As you’d expect from Dante there is a plethora of Americana embedded through scattered comic books and B movie classics unspooling in background TV’s such as Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, It’s A Wonderful Life (of course) and some noir classics of the 1940’s, this is clearly where all that self referential postmodernist spiraling began which continued into the Shrek movies and the superior work of Pixar. 

The original Chris Columbus scribed script was far more violent with more in the way of grisly decapitations and microwave roasts, In a rare case of agreement I think it’s preferable that the obtuse violence was diluted to reach that all important kiddie dollar, I liked how they made Zach’s mom as something of a bad-ass, dispatching three of the critters in an inventive deployment of kitchen utensils and improvised weaponry, in that era of monosyllabic indestructible monoliths such as Rambo, Ahnoldt, Dolph and everyone else who now crop up in the execrable The Expendables franchise. There is some light Orientalism with the wise Asian seer, heck if you really wanted to go with the cultural stuff then the fear of the land of the rising sun obtaining outsourced labour is present in the figure of Dante’s favourite actor Dick Miller’s blue-collar joe whom continuously complains about foreign machinery and urges everyone to ‘buy American’, and during the greed is good era the film harbours some sly stabs and commercialism and commerce, the capitalist hijacking of Christmas in the never sated pursuit of money. 

The second film has an unusually strong cult following which I haven’t seen in ages, if memory serves it delves further into the waters of corporate corruption, with an even denser layer of in-jokes and allusions which we nerds so fondly enjoy, I must give that another whirl. An Eighties classic then that’s up there for my generation with the likes of The Goonies, Ghostbusters,  Back To The Future, Wargames and The Lost Boys as a affectionately regarded fare, be sure to check out Dante’s wonderful Trailers From Hell  web series (he started his career cutting previews for Corman’s New Line outfit) after you’ve revisited this movie which can be parsed to ‘The Muppet Show meets Dawn of the Dead’, it sure beats that sickly Disney fraud;