Cody Hamman celebrates the holidays with some Film Appreciation for 1984's Gremlins.
Sometime in the 1920s, or possibly as early as the days of World War I, British pilots started joking that mechanical problems with their airplanes were caused by "gremlins", mischievous little creatures that just loved to sabotage planes. Around sixty years later, by which time gremlins had been written about by the likes of Roald Dahl and featured in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, a fledgling screenwriter named Chris Columbus started writing a screenplay titled Gremlins, inspired by the creepy sound of mice moving around in the darkness of his apartment.
Despite the concept's roots in aviation, the story Columbus crafted doesn't have anything to do with creatures messing with airplanes. Instead, Columbus envisioned gremlins rampaging through small town America at Christmastime - and his initial draft of the script was quite dark, featuring disturbing elements like a decapitated mother (whose head bounces down a staircase in front of her son) and an eaten dog. By pure luck, the script ended up in the hands of Steven Spielberg, who expressed interest in producing the film, while encouraging Columbus to soften the tone. It was a good note, which definitely helped Gremlins achieve the "horror comedy Christmas classic" status it has held for decades.
It was also thanks to a note from Spielberg that Gremlins gave the world one of the most adorable iconic characters of the '80s, a little creature called Gizmo, a member of a species called mogwai. This cute, furry thing is discovered in a Chinatown antique store by inventor Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) while he's out trying to sell units of his latest faulty invention, the Bathroom Buddy shaving and toothbrushing travel kit. Gizmo actually belongs to the store's owner Mr. Wing (Keye Luke) and isn't for sale, but Peltzer wants to buy his adult son a Christmas gift and offers $200 for the creature, so Wing's grandson sells Gizmo to him without his grandfather's permission.
There are three rules to owning a mogwai: keep them out of the light (bright light will kill them); don't get them wet, because if they get wet they'll multiply; and never feed them after midnight. That's the most important rule of all... because if a mogwai is fed after midnight, it becomes a gremlin, a hideous, sort of reptilian, dangerously mischievous creature. In Columbus's first draft, Gizmo becomes a gremlin. Spielberg suggested that Gizmo should remain a mogwai throughout the film, to be a sidekick to the hero who has to deal with the gremlin outbreak, because he was too cute and audiences would like him too much to accept that he becomes a monster. Spielberg was right. Gremlins would not be nearly as popular as it is if Gizmo mutated into a gremlin instead of being his sweet, adorable self through the whole movie.
Mr. Wing didn't want to sell Gizmo because taking care of a mogwai is too much responsibility, people can't be trusted to handle them. It turns out that he's right to be concerned, because Peltzer's son Billy (Zach Galligan) completely fails at the responsibility within days of receiving Gizmo as an early gift. It's his fault that his small hometown of Kingston Falls - which is the same backlot set as Back to the Future's Hill Valley, just coated with snow - gets overrun with gremlins on Christmas. By the end of his first night with Gizmo, he has had to bandage the little guy's head. The very next day, a clumsy child acquaintance played by Corey Feldman accidentally spills water on Gizmo, causing five little furballs to pop out of his back - five more mogwai. And it's immediately clear from their appearance that these mogwai aren't going to be as nice as Gizmo. Gizmo himself is clearly dismayed to see these new mogwai. The next day, Billy takes one of these misbehaving mogwai to show to a middle school science teacher - and purposely drips water on it as a demonstration, causing another mogwai to pop into existence. Yep, he just creates a new member of a mysterious species like a mad scientist, then leaves the creature with the science teacher so he can study it. The fact that Billy shows mogwai to a middle school science teacher, and that he lets a kid played by a preteen Corey Feldman into his bedroom to look at comics, are clearly leftovers from earlier drafts in which Billy was meant to be younger, not an adult who works at a bank. Galligan was 19 during filming.
Then Billy makes the biggest mistake. Not realizing his clock has stopped working, he accidentally feeds the mogwai after midnight - not Gizmo, he's not hungry. They become gremlins, and so does the mogwai left at the school, because the teacher was careless with food around it that same night. There's about an hour left of the 106 minute running time when the rapidly multiplying gremlins start their rampage, and during that hour the film descends into madness.
Gremlins was directed by Joe Dante, who previously proved he was capable of balancing horror and humor in his films Piranha (Spielberg's favorite Jaws cash-in) and The Howling. This one leans even further into the humor than those movies did, with moments that make it very clear that Dante has had a lifelong appreciation of the Warner Bros. cartoons. (And that appreciation would get even more obvious in the totally bonkers sequel.) There are definitely moments where the gremlins are effectively creepy, and there are also moments that are goofy as hell - especially a scene where gremlins pose as carolers, and the sequence of them taking over the bar where Billy's crush / bank co-worker Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates) works nights.
Brought to life through practical FX magic, the gremlins (and Gizmo, and the other mogwai) are an incredible sight to behold. Designed by Chris Walas, these things are completely believable as living, breathing creatures with personalities both good and both. The gremlins are cartoonish maniacs, and aren't so good when they're mogwai either, while Gizmo is sweet and lovable. The voice provided for Gizmo by Howie Mandel helps him capture viewers' hearts as well. Gizmo doesn't approve of the naughty mogwai's behavior and is scared of gremlins - understandably, since they bully him - and he helps Billy and Kate as they try to save their town.
Other characters who get wrapped up in the mayhem include Billy's mom Lynn (Frances Lee McCain), who would have gotten decapitated if not for Spielberg; the extremely unpleasant Ruby Deagle (Polly Holliday), who is very much the "Wicked Witch" of Kingston Falls; and the Futtermans, Murray (played by legendary character actor Dick Miller) and his wife Sheila (Jackie Joseph). A World War II veteran, Murray Futterman gives us the reason for why the film is titled Gremlins. Before gremlins have even entered the picture, Mr. Futterman is talking about gremlins sabotaging planes during the war and stowing away in foreign-made products to make sure they don't work correctly. He only trusts American products. And if it weren't for him, we'd have no reason to refer to the mutated mogwai as gremlins.
If I have one complaint about this movie, it's the fact that Billy and Kate's smarmy co-worker Gerald Hopkins (Judge Reinhold), who hits on Kate by bragging about the fact that he has cable in his new apartment, doesn't have a substantial encounter with the gremlins. There was a deleted scene with Gerald during the gremlins outbreak, but even that isn't what I'm looking for. I want to see Judge Reinhold have a lengthy interaction with gremlins, and it never happened.
If the studio had their way, one of the most famous scenes in the movie would have joined that Gerald scene on the cutting room floor. There's a show-stopping moment where Kate tells Billy why she hates Christmas, and the studio hated it about as much as she hates the holiday. Spielberg apparently wasn't a fan of the scene, either, but Dante wanted to keep it in so Spielberg didn't pressure him to cut it. I'm glad it's in there, it's a great moment for Phoebe Cates.
The situation eventually builds up to a climactic action sequence set in a department store, during which Gizmo steps up to reveal that being tiny and cute doesn't prevent him from being a hero, and we're treated to the sight of a gremlin - a unique gremlin known as Stripe because of his white mohawk - wielding a chainsaw, which is awesome.
Gremlins is a really fun movie, and while it has scares and violence that may be too intense for some young viewers (which is why this movie, along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, led to the creation of the PG-13 rating), it's also the sort of movie that can work really well as a young person's gateway to horror fandom. They might have to build up to it, watch something like The Monster Squad before they get to this one, but the silliness of many of the gremlins scenes helps take the edge off. I can say this from experience, because I wasn't even a year old when Gremlins was released, so I was very young when I would watch this movie again and again on cable. I loved watching it when I was a kid. I was already a fan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by the time I was in preschool so I know I'm not a normal case, but Gremlins is no Texas Chainsaw. This one has a family friendly touch to it.
Nearly forty years later, Gremlins holds up as a blast to watch, and the practical effects in this movie are still stunning.
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