Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

At some point when I was a young kid, I learned there was a sequel to Gremlins when I saw the VHS box at the video store, but I never saw the movie itself. The reason for this was because, as I said in my review of the first one, I may have liked it but it also freaked me out, so I wasn't exactly in a rush to see Gremlins 2: The New Batch. The only glimpse of it I got during my childhood was when I was around ten or eleven, while I was flipping through channels one night and came across it on either HBO or Cinemax. Guess which part it was? The part where the gremlins hatch out of the cocoons. Needless to say, that was enough to make me quickly change to another channel and, save for a little bit of the beginning one night on Sci-Fi Channel (not too long after Christmas, actually), I never actually saw the movie until my senior year in high school. In fact, I saw it one Sunday morning in mid-December, when I was waiting to go to school in order to take one of the many exams we were required to before going on Christmas break. I don't remember which exam it was but I remembered that I'd studied about as hard as I could and so, I was trying to take my mind off it until it was time to go. That's when I came across Gremlins 2 on some cable channel and figured, "Why not?" By that point, I'd heard and read about the general consensus, which was that it was not a good sequel (even my own sister had that opinion), although I don't think I ever heard them say exactly why they felt that way. But, when I watched it, I thought it was awesome. It may depart from the horror-comedy feel of the original for just pure comedy, but I think it's a very fun, totally zany movie, as well as a good satire, not just of the original film but of a lot of other movies, as well as of rampant consumerism and popular fads, concepts, and personalities of the time like cable TV, genetic engineering, and moguls Donald Trump and Ted Turner. And, as much as I love the original, I have to admit that I think enjoy this just a little bit more (which is ironic, because I can find more flaws with it, as we'll get into).

Some time after the events of the first film, Gizmo the mogwai is still living with old Mr. Wing at his antique store in Chinatown. One day, Mr. Wing is visited by several representatives of Daniel Clamp, an eccentric billionaire whose new office building in New York City, Clamp Center, is all about technology, with automated rooms, doors, elevators, and the lick. Clamp intends to build a similar installation in Chinatown, but Mr. Wing is the one resident who refuses to budge and tells Clamp's men that he's sticking to his guns. However, six weeks after Clamp's proposal, Mr Wing has died and his antique store is demolished. Now alone, Gizmo is forced to flee for his life and is captured by a scientist working at Clamp Center. Billy Peltzer and Kate Beringer, who are now engaged and live together in the city, also work there as a design artist and tour guide respectively. Neither of them are particularly happy with their jobs, with Billy chafing under the workload, strict deadlines, and the stringent policies enforced by Forster, the chief of security. Gizmo is taken to a genetic research laboratory upstairs called the Splice o' Life, run by the sinister Dr. Catheter, who plans to perform horrific experiments on him. However, Billy learns of this and manages to sneak in and save him. He then places him in a drawer in his office, intending to take him home at the end of the day, but things take a turn when Daniel Clamp himself visits the department. Clamp is quite taken with Billy's design specs for the Chinatown project and becomes friendly with him. Billy's superior, Marla Bloodstone, sees this friendship as a great career opportunity for both of them and pressures Billy into having dinner with her, forcing him to leave Gizmo alone in the office. Billy tells Kate about this and asks her to take Gizmo home with her, much to her chagrin. In the office, Gizmo gets wet due to water from a broken drinking fountain, spawning four more mogwai, the leader of whom is the evil Mohawk. They trap Gizmo in the air vents, and Kate, not being all that familiar with him, takes one of the other mogwai home instead. These mogwai then manage to eat after midnight, beginning a chain of events that will make for one insane day at Clamp Center.

Since the first Gremlins was a surprise hit for Warner Bros., they naturally wanted a sequel and were eager to have Joe Dante return as director. However, Dante wasn't keen on the idea, as he felt there was nowhere to go after the original, that the story had been told and its ending made for a proper closure. Moreover, making that movie was an exhausting ordeal for everyone involved and Dante was intent to put it behind him. The studio then spent several years trying to develop a sequel without him, but after all their proposed story ideas and choices for potential directors fell through, they went back to Dante, who, by this point, had made Explorers, Innerspace, and The 'Burbs, none of which had done that well at the box-office. They offered him complete creative control over Gremlins 2, as well as a much bigger budget ($30 million, whereas the original had only $11 million), and since this was a rare opportunity for any director, let alone on a big studio film, Dante would have been a moron to say no. Thus, working with screenwriter Charlie Haas, as Chris Columbus was busy directing Home Alone at the time, he crafted a film that allowed him to completely indulge himself and throw in numerous film references, parodies, satires, and everything else, including the kitchen sink. However, there is a downside to that, as the plot gets lost in the madness after a while, but regardless, it's the movie to watch if you want to get a sense of what Dante as a director is about. Indeed, he's said it's probably his most personal film and made for a more enjoyable a filmmaking experience than the first one.

Unfortunately, it didn't pan out at the box-office, as the movie made only $41 million in the U.S. when it was released in the summer of 1990. Dante has said it was largely due to there having been too much of a gap in-between films and that no one was interested anymore, though I'm not so sure about that, given how Terminator 2 and Aliens were both released seven years after their predecessors and were enormous hits. I think what may have actually happened was another case of unmet expectations, this time with people thinking they were going to get another dark horror-comedy but instead got a live-action cartoon with just a smattering of horror (the trailer for the film would have you think its tone is more in line with the first, if maybe a bit crazier). I'm also guessing that parents didn't want to take a chance on being fooled again, not realizing that this film was more child-friendly. Whatever the case, the movie's lackluster performance at the box-office sort of marked the beginning of the end for Dante's time working for the studios, as he went on to make a string of flops before leaving Hollywood behind after Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

Several members of the original's cast returned for the sequel, chief among them Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates as Billy and Kate. Though they're now engaged and sharing a New York apartment, not much else has changed about them, as they're still as wholesome as they ever were. Unfortunately, what also hasn't changed is that they're both stuck in jobs that just barely allow them to keep the lights on, let alone get married. Billy especially has it bad, as he has to deal with killer deadlines and his superiors changing the design specs on him at a moment's notice. His immediate superior, Marla Bloodstone, has little sympathy for him, caring only about how his performance will reflect on her and the department as a whole, and he also gets picked on by the rather cruel head of security, Forster, who admonishes him for having a potted plant in his cubicle, as well as for creating artwork of Kingston Falls in his downtime. And then, on top of everything else, he learns that Gizmo is in the building when he overhears a mailman humming his song after hearing it up in the genetics lab. Initially, he looks unhappy, like, "Oh, God. Not this," no doubt because of what happened before, but, regardless, he poses as a maintenance man and enters the lab. When he does find and rescue his former pet, his affection for him comes back in full, and when he learns that Mr. Wing has died, he decides to keep Gizmo and care for him. Though he plans to take him home as soon as his workday ends, things become complicated when he unintentionally manages to befriend the owner of the company, Daniel Clamp, who loves his artwork for the Chinatown project and calls him Bill. Moreover, Marla, seeing this as a potential career opportunity for her, talks him into having dinner with her, forcing him to leave Gizmo in his office, which eventually leads to him getting wet. 

Kate, who works in the rather unflattering position of a tour guide at Clamp Center, complete with a silly outfit and hat, is not at all happy when she learns about Gizmo's return, dreading that this means the gremlins will return as well. Billy tells her that Gizmo won't spawn any gremlins as long as she just obeys the rules, but by the time she goes up to find him, it's already too. Also, since she's not that familiar with what Gizmo looks like, given that she wasn't around him that much in the first movie, she ends up taking home Daffy, one of the bad mogwai that spawned from him. When Billy comes home after his dinner with Marla, where she began to hit on him very aggressively, he realizes what's happened and he and Kate go back to Clamp Center to try to find Gizmo and prevent the other mogwai from eating after midnight. Not only do they fail on that score, but Billy gets arrested when he's caught trying to sabotage the building's water system in order to keep the gremlins from getting wet. By the time they make it back to the building, the mogwai have already hatched as gremlins and, just to make things that much worse, Kate, who saw a smudge of lipstick on Billy's face the night before, learns that Marla was hitting on him and is none too happy about it. Individually, they get caught up in the madness when the gremlins begin attacking the building and multiply after being exposed to fire sprinklers. Billy, being the expert on them, tries to help Clamp and the others combat them, while also trying to find Gizmo, whereas Kate gets stuck in the elevator for a little bit. The dilemma between her, Billy, and Marla is never mentioned again, except for one scene near the end, and, honestly, once the gremlins show up, they and most of the characters become as superfluous as the actual plot until the ending, when they conspire to kill them.

Also returning are Dick Miller and Jackie Joseph as Murray and Sheila Futterman, who you learn were only injured by the gremlins driving the former's Kentucky harvester into their house (I've heard that, in the original movie, there is a line from the news coverage at the end which states that they survived). Mr. Futterman in particular has been mentally scarred by what happened, having actually seen the gremlins, and has had to see a psychiatrist. The two of them pop up when they visit Billy and Kate at their apartment, arriving a day sooner than expected, and, much to my delight, are given much bigger roles this time. Mr. Futterman even goes through something of an arc in that he starts out convinced that he just hallucinated the gremlins but is also quite paranoid, becoming freaked at one point when hears the sound of a mogwai chittering. After he and Sheila are attacked by the Bat Gremlin while they're out sightseeing, he realizes the creatures are, in fact, real, and that there was nothing wrong with his mind at all. This gives him the drive to sneak into Clamp Center and help Billy, Kate, and the others deal with them. He manages to save Billy from one gremlin, tosses another down an elevator shaft when he snaps after he gets spat on, and aids in the plan that kills them. What hasn't changed about Mr. Futterman, though, is how funny and suspicious he is of anything foreign; when he and Sheila first arrive, he worries about their cab driver having been Russian. As for Sheila, since she was only in one scene in the first movie, you didn't get much of a sense of her character, save for some general allusions. Here, those allusions prove to have been accurate, as you see that she's a little overly chipper, patronizing, and enthusiastic, which seems to annoy her husband. She has a running gag in that, like any tourist, she's constantly taking pictures and often flashes people in the eye. And though she and her husband get attacked by the Bat Gremlin, she herself is not present for the final confrontation with them.

Finally, Keye Luke also returns briefly at the beginning as Mr. Wing (no mention is made of his grandson, but I'm guessing after he sold Gizmo to Rand Peltzer behind his back, he banned him from his shop). He's just as wise and yet cynical about technology and modern society as he was originally, and it's not surprising that he's refusing to let Daniel Clamp buy him out so he can commence with his Chinatown project. Also, his disdain for the Peltzers getting Gizmo into the habit of watching TV is brought up during the opening, when Gizmo starts watching Rambo on the television set Forster and the others leave behind. He admonishes him, calling it, "An invention for fools!", and shuts it off. During this scene, Mr. Wing is shown to have a very bad cough, a foreshadowing of his death, which happens six weeks later. Keye Luke is said to have commented to the filmmakers, "Now, remember, when you make Gremlins 3, I'm a flashback!" but, unfortunately, his character's death proved to be a bit of foreshadowing in its own right, as Gremlins 2 was one of Luke's final roles before his death in 1991.

One of my favorites of the new characters is Daniel Clamp (John Glover), the founder of Clamp Industries. He was originally written to be a villain but instead, Glover plays him with a child-like enthusiasm and energy that makes him come off as innocent and well-meaning, but misguided. He absolutely loves technology, to the point where he has every small part of his office building, from the doors to even the restrooms, automated, which makes him a perfect target for the gremlins. Rather than a villainous, Donald Trump-like businessman, Clamp has the feel of a man-child who never completely grew up, one who thinks all this technology is cool, is oblivious to the fact that a lot of the stuff in the building doesn't work even before the gremlins show up, and doesn't understand why other people, such as Mr. Wing, don't share his enthusiasm. He thinks he's doing Chinatown a service with his plan to build a big, automated center there and tries to relate with Mr. Wing, who he, non-maliciously, says sells "small things," as someone who also loves his business. He strikes up a genuine friendship with Billy, whom he calls Bill, when he sees his design-work for the project, and when the gremlins show up, he, unlike Forster, is more willing to listen to his knowledge about them. Still, Clamp does have some selfish priorities. Early on, he tries to arrange for a traditional Chinese parade in his honor, though that, again, comes out of his genuinely thinking he's doing something good for Chinatown and should be rewarded for it. He also shows more concern about the lawsuits that are likely to come out of so many people getting injured or killed than, you know, the injuries and deaths themselves, and he's determined to keep the whole thing away from the media. Still, he does manage to get out of the building and arrange an, ultimately thwarted but valiant, attempt to kill the gremlins (though, the good publicity he could get from it is an incentive for him to do it). Moreover, he does kind of learn his lesson, deciding at the end of the film to build a quiet little town instead of more automated buildings.

Forster (Robert Picardo), Clamp's head of security, is more in line with the original conception of Clamp, as he's portrayed as being very cruel and assholish. He shows no respect for Mr. Wing when he and several others visit him in order to bring him a video message from Clamp, and even seems to have a disdain for both him and his shop of antiques, constantly wiping dust off his suit and sneeringly telling him to keep the TV set they bring, before tossing the remote against some items. After they leave, Forster is cruelly confident that it's only a matter of time before they'll be able to go ahead with the Chinatown project, noting Mr. Wing's cough and commenting, "He's an antique. We can wait." Later, he puts down Billy for the unauthorized potted plant at his desk, which he says risks an aphid infestation, and his drawing of Kingston Falls. Over the latter, he motions towards a rather bland drawing of geometric shapes, saying, "Mr. Peltzer, do you know how much the Clamp Organization has spent to provide its employees with art by recognized artists at this facility? Eye-pleasing, color-coordinated, authorized... Maybe everybody here would like to do some little touches. Coffee mugs that say, 'World's greatest lover.' The ashtray that reads, 'Rest your butt here.' You'd like that, wouldn't you, Mr. Peltzer? Coming to work, every day, in a $200 million... flea market." After that, Forster takes sadistic pleasure in humiliating and firing a man just because he took an unauthorized smoke break. He remains completely cynical even when the disaster is in full swing, and continually insists that Billy is a lunatic, even though his claims about the gremlins prove to be right. In the end, Forster proves to be completely unable to handle this situation and becomes the object of the newly created female gremlin's lust and obsession. Despite being disgusted by this at first, it ends with him stuck in the restroom with her and actually deciding to go along with his "marriage" to her (as sick as that implication is). 

Another of my favorite new characters is Grandpa Fred (Robert Prosky), a horror host on the Clamp Cable Network with a Dracula gimmick who's an obvious tribute to Al Lewis as Grandpa Munster (Prosky looks and even kind of sounds so much like Lewis). Rather than a joke, he's actually a very sympathetic and poignant character. He's recently been saddled with an awful time slot (as he says, "People that watch TV at 3:30 in the morning aren't scared of the Wolf Man. Only thing that scares those people is gettin' sober and findin' work,") and, because Clamp only likes color movies, he's forced to show junk like The Attack of the Octopus People (actually Octaman, the first movie to feature work by Rick Baker). Most significantly, being a horror host is not at all what he wanted. Instead, he wanted to be a news broadcaster and contribute something meaningful to the world. Despite these reservations, he stays in his vampire makeup and outfit for the whole movie, even when the disaster with the gremlins hits. Once that happens, though, he decides to take the initiative and do news coverage of the situation, getting Mr. Katsuji, a hyperactive Japanese tourist (Gedde Watanabe) with a camera, to be his cameraman. He even manages to score an interview with the Brain Gremlin and learn from him exactly what the gremlins are after. Though Clamp, initially, is not happy when he learns of this news coverage, he's ultimately impressed with Fred's nose for news and makes him an anchorman, much to his delight.

But, my absolute favorite character in the film is Christopher Lee as Dr. Catheter, the mad scientist who heads the experimental genetics laboratory in the Clamp Center. As John Stanley said in Creature Features, Lee is "simply marvelous" in this role, coming off as so classy and, at the same time, such a stereotypical mad scientist that it works perfectly. I love how he complains that he doesn't have the diseases he needs to continue his research, grumbling that the sample he's just received is, "Just rabies," adding, "I've got rabies. And I'm supposed to get the flu this week," and then grousing about the flu being on back-order. He also has a blase attitude towards Gizmo's cuteness, sneering, "Cute, isn't it?", and isn't impressed by Gizmo dancing to Fats Domino. He's intent on experimenting on him, but Billy rescues him before that can happen. When he discovers the gremlins wrecking his lab, he initially blames it on his assistants, and after a while, he runs into Billy and says he'll never touch another living creature again, that, "There are some thing man was not meant to splice!" I only wish he was in the movie more, and what really sucks is that he's the only human character who actually gets killed.

Billy's immediate superior, Marla Bloodstone (Haviland Morris) at first just bosses him around and becomes frustrated with his questioning her about the changed deadline and design specs, saying he only sees his little part of the project, while she has to keep the big picture in mind. She's also not happy about Forster criticizing the state of Billy's cubicle, saying their department is going to be reviewed soon. And when Billy says he's doing the best he can, Marla's reaction is an unsympathetic, "Do better!" But once Clamp takes a liking to Billy, she actually starts hitting on him, mainly because she thinks Clamp's interest in him could benefit her career as well. That said, when the two of them are having dinner, she not only goes on about what they could accomplish together but actually tries to play footsie with him after making the suggestive comment, "You know, when art and business join forces, anything can happen," so it's possible she found him attractive from the start and now has the perfect opportunity to express it. Either way, she causes some problems between him and Kate, leaving a big lipstick mark on his face that Kate notices and later blowing off the fact that he has a fiance by hitting on him right in front of her. Again, this subplot quickly becomes superfluous and is resolved in one brief scene where Marla, more or less, apologizes to Kate when the latter finds her stuck in the Spider Gremlin's web (I'm glad they didn't dwell on it, as it would have added an unnecessary soap opera element to the movie). By the end of the movie, it seems as though Marla may have a shot at getting with Clamp himself when he finally notices her and makes her his head of publicity.

Other small but notable characters include Marge (Kathleen Freeman), the Julia Child-like hostess of a cable cooking show the gremlins crash; Catheter's overly enthusiastic, peppy assistants, Martin and Lewis (twins Don and Dan Stanton, whom you may remember from Terminator 2 as a security guard and the T-1000 imitating said security guard), one of whom captures Gizmo after he escapes the demolition of Mr. Wing's store; John Astin as a janitor who unknowingly gets Gizmo

wet while trying to fix a broken water fountain; Henry Gibson, from Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, as the poor guy who gets fired by Forster; and football players Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith, who get attached by the gremlins at a bar. Like he did in the first movie, Jerry Goldsmith appears briefly, along with his actual wife. The same goes for screenwriter Charlie Haas, who appears as an assistant to Dr. Catheter named Casper, and even Joe Dante himself appears as the director of Grandpa Fred's show (Dante also voices Marge's offscreen director and, according to his audio commentary, voices a random gremlin who gets shot by the Brain Gremlin). There are other noteworthy cameos, but I'll wait on talking about them until we get to their specific moments.

Gremlins 2 is about as visually different from the first film as it is tonally. For me, it doesn't have that classic, Hollywood Golden Age feel, mainly because much of the studio work here was restricted to interior sets and you don't have as many of the big backlot scenes as before. What's more, a number of the exterior scenes were filmed on location in New York, like at Times Square and Park Avenue, which stood in for the exterior of Clamp Center. The movie looks quite different too, as it was shot on a different film stock (in fact, the

film stock the original was shot on, which give it that rich, glossy feel, was discontinued afterward), and even though Steven Spielberg was still a producer on it, I think Joe Dante's having total creative control this time around likely had a major influence. The cinematography, while still the work of John Hora, does feel a lot different, as there's not nearly as much darkness, even though the bright light rule for the mogwai and gremlins still applies. At most, it's just kind of dim, although the scenes with the Spider Gremlin and the silhouette of

Marla caught up in his web do look nicely striking. Also, the movie doesn't have that kind of fairy tale look, like due to it not being set at Christmas. It's still a good-looking movie, mind you, as you can see the high production values, and like most of Dante's films, it has a very bright and rich color palette. While sets like the offices and cubicles where Billy works and the big main lobby of Clamp Center have pretty typical lighting (although, the latter does have nice shafts coming

through the windows and doors), many of the other sets have more noteworthy lighting all their own. The security control room where Forster works has a lot of cool, blue lights that reflect nicely off the shiny surfaces, while the fake graveyard set for Grandpa Fred's show is bathed in a nice mixture of green and pinkish purple. Speaking of green, the interiors of the Splice o' Life can often be seen in a green glow, while the area down in the basement where the mogwai cocoon themselves and then

hatch is bathed in an amber-like light that makes the hatching scene come off as a bit eerie. And one of the absolute most memorable scenes purely from a visual standpoint is when the gremlins multiply on the set of Marge's cooking show due to the fire sprinklers going off. As the multiplication starts, the place is filled with thick steam and flashing green and red lights, all under the torrent of the sprinklers, making for another of the few moments in this movie that is kind of spooky.

While some scenes were shot on location in New York, other exteriors were done on the Warner Bros. backlot, likely the street shots of Chinatown during the opening, as well as other sequences they couldn't actually shoot there, like when Mr. Futterman gets attacked by the Bat Gremlin. Although it's not as dimly lit and mysterious as it was in the first movie, Mr. Wing's shop still looks pretty much the same, lit only by candles and full of numerous bizarre antiques. You get to see Billy and Kate's Manhattan apartment, which is

indicative of the very low income they likely have from their jobs. It's not the worst possible apartment, but it's still very small, with just a living room, kitchen, and the bedroom and, hopefully, bathroom, neither of which you get to see. There's also this Canadian-themed restaurant Billy and Marla eat at, which is very stereotypical, full of stuffed animals like bears, big bass, and rams (the latter of which looms over Billy and Marla's table), waiters dressed like Mounties, mugs shaped like tree trunks, and a desert that's a big, chocolate moose head. And, as you might guess, there are some "ehs" being said, both by the waiters and the voices telling waiting parties that their tables are ready.

However, all those sets are secondary to the main location of Clamp Center, which is not only a very memorable setting and a perfect target for the gremlins, but serves as a physical embodiment of one of the original's perceived themes: anti-technology. As I said in that review, some critics have seen Rand Peltzer's ridiculous inventions, the gremlins' constant tampering with technology, and Mr. Wing's hatred of it to have be a derision on the filmmakers' part. Here, it's like Joe Dante and Charlie Haas decided to drive that point even

further through Clamp's fully automated building, which feels like what would happen if Rand himself designed such a place. Like Rand, Clamp means well but his overzealous mechanizing and automation of everything is more of a nuisance than it is helpful. Even before the gremlins arrive, the building has problems, such as the revolving front doors in the lobby spinning one guy around, the lights at Billy's work-station shutting off in order to save power, video phone screens screwing up, the technical aspects of Grandpa Fred's show

going wrong, and so forth. Moreover, the automated messages heard over the building's speakers are not only nauseating in their smarmy, insincere tone, but they also tend to be overly explanatory and downright stupid. For instance, the fire alarm goes like this: "Fire. The untamed element. Oldest of man's mysteries. Giver of warmth. Destroyer of forests. Right now this building is on fire. Yes! The building is on fire! Leave the building! Enact the age old drama of

self-preservation!" Another one that you hear says, "Would the owner of the car with license number 1AG 401 please remove it from the Clamp parking garage? Your car is old, and dirty." But the one that gets me, is when you go to the restroom, an automated voice says, "Mister, welcome to the men's room." And when you leave, it says, "Hey, pal, I sure hope you washed those hands!" Talk about making a public restroom more awkward than it already is. I don't even like hearing music playing over the speakers when I'm in one.

The sets for the interiors of Clamp Center are impressive in their size and design, like the enormous main lobby, with numerous levels going up that are full of many different stores and restaurants, but many also have a drab, corporate color scheme, with lots of grays and blacks. That does go for the lobby, which has marbled, textile floors and walls, along with gray and white pillars and steel girders. The food court has the same sort of look, although it has a little more color due to the light fixtures on the ceiling. The only bit of color in

the office area where Billy works is this model of a building and its surrounding compound, as well as his designs of the Chinatown complex and this little bit of geometric artwork on the wall, which is only allowed because it's been authorized by the management (a jab at corporations and their policies, no doubt). Otherwise, the place is the typical soul-sucking, gray and black colored work area, although it does have an interesting, enormous model of the building, which the Daffy mogwai manages to climb atop at one point. The

same goes for the way the hallways look (some of which kind of have a Tim Burton-like pattern to their blacks and whites) and the restroom, which is especially depressing to look at. The security control center, at least, has some interesting lighting and the colors of the various buttons on the control panel, but it's not much better. Daniel Clamp's office up at the very top of the building has a similar look to what's down below, but what

makes it different is that it has a set of thin, vertical windows leading to a sharp corner, with clouds just outside them and beams of sunlight coming in. He also has a telescope there and a number of monitors lining the wall in front of his desk. Somewhere, he has a personal escape route, allowing him to emerge through a secret elevator that comes up through the sidewalk outside (and is also how Mr. Futterman manages to get inside the building). The office of his receptionist, Betty, has a desk with a salmon-colored top, artificial flowers beside it, and a big shot of the city-scape on the wall behind her.

The Splice o' Life, Dr. Catheter's genetics laboratory, is where things really start to get interesting. The place's front office is surprisingly cheerful-looking, with a predominantly bright-red color scheme, a backdrop behind a large, red podium consisting of DNA strands, molecules, and an erupting volcano, and a logo on the front window that reads, "Designer genes," below the name of the corporation. The corridor leading into the lab itself is akin to a tunnel, with a circus tent-like color pattern of red and white, which is kind of

appropriate, given how insane the lab is. It's full of the expected equipment, like test tubes and beakers full of chemicals, elaborate chemistry sets, microscopes, and numerous test animals like monkeys (some of which are apparently named after the Chipmunks) and rats. However, there are crazier things to be found in there, like this weird spider-like creature Billy finds while searching for Gizmo, and a cow with a tin helmet on its head saying, "I am calm and centered. I enjoy giving milk." (They also bring an elephant through at one

point. God knows what they planned to do with him.) All of the stuff here is meant as a way of satirizing the field of genetics, which was really starting to gain traction at that time, as the scientists are working on the most bizarre and ludicrous projects, like making rats that can be used as batteries and making tomatoes tougher for shipping, to the point where they can be bounced off walls. There's also mention of cloning, which happens to be when Martin and Lewis are first introduced, suggesting they may not be just twin brothers. But all of that is nothing compared to the various serums and chemicals the gremlins ingest, causing insane mutations.

The building is also home to Clamp's own cable network, with numerous studios where various television programs are filmed, like an Archery Channel, though all you get to see of that is a guy dressed like Robin Hood storming off the set in anger, Marge's cooking show on a set meant to represent a home kitchen, a movie review show called The Movie Police, with Leonard Maltin, and some talk-show set where Grandpa Fred interviews the Brain Gremlin. Speaking of Grandpa Fred, you also have the set for his horror show, which is a

classic graveyard setting, with fake tombstones, a mausoleum, an open coffin, and a backdrop with an owl in a barren tree and a full moon in the sky. What's ironic is that this film's satirizing of cable TV and its overabundance is more relevant now than it was at the time, as there really is a channel for just about everything nowadays. The movie also takes a jab at Ted Turner, with Grandpa Fred being forced to show only color horror movies rather than the black and white classics, as well as with Turner's habit of colorizing old movies, as per

this one announcement you hear: "Tonight, on the Clamp Cable Classic Movie Channel, don't miss Casablanca, now in full color, with a happier ending." But probably the greatest bit of media satire is this overly sentimental and uplifting video tape Clamp plays when things become quite dire, with the message, "Because of the end of civilization, the Clamp Cable Network now leaves the air. We hope you've enjoyed our programming, but more importantly, we hope you've enjoyed... life." According to Joe Dante, they put that in when they learned CNN apparently has such a tape on standby, ready to play at the final hour.

For the bit of the movie where Gizmo ends up in the building's ventilation system, they built a pretty cool-looking set to simulate the air-shafts, and the evil mogwai cocoon themselves down in the basement, near the main line for the building's water system. As I've hinted at, that's really the only location in the film that's even close to being creepy, with its low lighting, amber color scheme, and patches of blue light here and there... unless you want to count the dentist's office where Daffy the gremlin tries to go all Marathon Man on Billy.

While he may have become an icon in the original movie, Gizmo still didn't do much at the end of the day. Other than when he drove the Barbie car and killed Stripe, he mainly just sat around, looking cute, or was carried by either Billy or Kate. That's not the case here, as Gizmo is on his own very early on after Mr. Wing's death, and is forced to run for his life and escape when the curio shop, the only home he's likely to have ever known, is destroyed. You really feel for him from the start, as he looks so sad and heartbroken when he's left alone at the store, only for it to then be destroyed around him. He escapes, only to be captured and taken to Clamp Center, where Dr. Catheter and his assistants plan on performing lethal experiments on him. Fortunately, Billy happens to work there and rescues him. When they're properly reunited, Gizmo is so happy, even purring when Billy rubs his head, that you can hardly stand it. The same goes for when Billy holds him and realizes from the little arm-band he's wearing that Mr. Wing has died. But Gizmo's happiness is short-lived, as Billy is forced to leave him in the drawer in his office when Marla makes him have dinner with her. He's able to climb out when Billy's gone, but this leads to him getting wet when the janitor tries to fix a broken water fountain. This is another moment where I really feel for Gizmo, especially when he starts smacking the floor with his hand as he begins to spawn other mogwai, as if he's saying, "No, not again!" Like before, these new mogwai turn out to be rotten and immediately turn on Gizmo, forcing him into the air vent and locking him in there. While stuck in there, he sees Kate take Daffy home by mistake and sadly sighs before going about trying to find his way out of the air vents. By the time he does the next morning, he falls down into the basement after the gremlins hatch and spends much of the second act being horribly tortured by Mohawk.

But, by the time the third act rolls around, Gizmo decides he's had enough of being pushed around and hatches a plan to get back at Mohawk. Taking inspiration from having watched Rambo at the beginning of the movie (he also apparently watched Rocky, as he's seen training with a punching bag in one scene, although it comes back and whacks him when he hits it), Gizmo creates a makeshift bow and arrow out of a paper clip, a rubber band, and a pencil. He also puts on a red headband like Rambo, and even creates his own

explosive arrow by attaching a bottle of white-out to the end of the pencil and lighting it with a match! Not only does he manage to save Kate and Marla when they're being attacked by Mohawk, who's become the Spider Gremlin by this point, but he manages to exact a slow, painful death on his enemy. So, yeah, go Gizmo! After that, he sort of sits by while the humans take care of the other gremlins, but I think he deserves it. By the end of the movie, Clamp meets Gizmo and talks about

merchandising him (I can't imagine what that's a reference to), as well as making him a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. He suggests getting rid of the headband but Gizmo isn't inclined to do that. And when they leave the building, it's clear that Mr. Wing's fears about Gizmo and television have truly come to pass, as he's talking about cable TV, saying, "MTV! HBO! Nick at Nite!"

As I said in my review of the original, I prefer Gizmo's design here. There's no denying that he was cute in the original but here, he's nothing less than adorable and seems much cuddlier. Some may argue that he looked more like an actual animal in the original, whereas here, he looks more like a stuffed toy, with Joe Dante himself even saying so, and while I can't really argue that, I still prefer this look. Plus, the changes made to his design enable him to emote much more, and his look remains consistent throughout, rather than his face

changing constantly due to the various puppets used before. Speaking of which, because of the increased budget and improvements in puppets and animatronics, Gizmo is able to do so much more here. You actually see him get up and walk, run, climb, and even manipulate and hold objects, as well as perform major actions like training and firing an arrow. Granted, not all of these actions look that great, especially the wide shot of him running at the beginning, which may have been an

achievement at the time but now looks pretty archaic (the scene where he dances on the table to Fats Domino has held up pretty well, though), but I just like how Gizmo has a more active role in the movie. Finally, I also liked Howie Mandel's voice performance more here. It sounded all the more innocent and cute and thus, really appealed to me. 

Since Chris Walas was busy directing The Fly II at this time, and Rob Bottin, whom Joe Dante had worked with several times before, was also preoccupied with other work, the filmmakers next decided to go with Rick Baker. At first, Baker wasn't interested in the idea of simply carrying on what someone else had originally created, but when Dante and company allowed him to change the designs, make the creatures much more diverse, and, most significantly, make them feel more like individual characters, he signed on. Baker was an

inspired choice to begin with and, when you watch Gremlins 2, the proof is most definitely in the putting. As I said in my review of the original film, the effects there are undoubtedly amazing but not always entirely successful, especially with the mogwai. Here, the puppet effects for both the mogwai and gremlins are just incredible. Yeah, there are moments where Gizmo feels like a stuffed animal and, every once in a while, the other mogwai, due to their look and design, do come across as just puppets, but overall, they're very realistic, along with the amazing-looking gremlins. 

This time, the effect of Gizmo's back bubbling and the fuzzballs shooting out isn't as disturbing to look at, and he only spawns four, but this is where you see Baker's influence, as these mogwai all have distinct looks and personalities, rather than just being less cute and more mean-spirited copies of Gizmo. Their color schemes are totally different, for one: three of them are black and white, and the other is orange and white. Two of them are called George and Lenny, after the main characters of Of Mice and Men, and are designed accordingly:

George has a grouchy-looking, Edward G. Robinson kind of face and demeanor to match, whereas Lenny is bucktoothed and dopey, often climbing atop the annoyed George's head. The orange and white mogwai is named Daffy, as his crazy, manic behavior is akin to Daffy Duck in his original characterization in the Loony Tunes cartoons. From the moment he's spawned, he's completely crazy, bouncing wildly around the room as a fuzzball, smearing paint all over a window, laughing and giggling constantly, with his often

crossed eyes rolling around in his head, and making a huge mess in Billy and Kate's apartment when Kate brings him home after mistaking him for Gizmo. Unlike George and Lenny, he doesn't have an inclination to follow their leader, even after he becomes a gremlin, and only takes part in the mayhem when he happens to be there. Speaking of which, the evil leader gremlin, Mohawk, make look considerably different, with his black and white fur, big ears with curves around

the edges, and amber-colored eyes, but he is still basically Stripe reincarnated. Not only does he have that same distinctive tuft of hair but he's even voiced by Frank Welker. The minute he's spawned, he starts tormenting Gizmo, ripping off the armband he wears, growling, "Gizmo, ca ca!", and has the others trap him in air vent. And also like Stripe, he leads the others to eat after midnight and become gremlins.

Like I said, when I first got a glimpse of this movie one night, I had the bad luck of it being the scene where the gremlins hatch out of the cocoons, bringing back memories of that nightmarish scene in the first film. However, now I can say that the cocoons here don't look nearly as gross or creepy as those in the original. They just look like big globs of slimy goo, with any texture they have being covered up by all of the sticky stuff. That said, they do seem to be color-coordinated to the skin of the individual gremlins that hatch out of

them, with two being green and the other having a more brown color. The scene where they hatch is also nowhere near as disturbing, although I don't think they really tried for that, given the tone of this film, and instead just put typical creepy music over a short montage of shots of the gremlins' arms and body parts emerging.

The best effects in the movie are the gremlins themselves, with Rick Baker and his enormous crew of technicians and puppeteers doing an amazing job. As cool and iconic as the originals were, these gremlins are so realistic in their movements, actions, skin textures, and even their personalities that it's awesome. I've always loved how, even before the gremlins get into laboratory and start drinking the chemicals, there's an individuality to them, with some having different color or stripe patterns that reflect which of the

original four they were spawned from, facial features and head shapes, and so on. One gremlin I particularly like is this green one who puts a mousetrap in the sandwich of Clamp's receptionist and then takes over at her desk. I really like his look, both in his color scheme and face design, and I also enjoy the moment where he attacks Clamp, as the puppetry there is very remarkable. He's also part of one of the only genuinely gruesome and somewhat gory moments in the film, when his

foot gets caught in the paper shredder and he's slowly torn apart by it. It's not as gruesome as the notorious microwave kill in the original but it is still kind of sick. And in the scene where George, Lenny, and Daffy are exposed to the fire sprinklers on the set of the cooking show, you get to see exactly how the gremlins actually multiply, something you only saw a hint of at the end of the original. Here, you not only see the boils expanding on the gremlins' backs but also see the new little gremlins forming inside them and eventually breaking through, which is a really impressive and amazing effect.

When I first saw the movie, I was curious to know what George, Lenny, and Daffy would look like when they became gremlins, given the precedent set by the first movie. To my surprise, they retain both their unique faces and personalities, giving you a sense that these are the same characters, just scaly and slimy instead of small and furry. George becomes green in color, as does Daffy, while Lenny becomes brown, and just like when they were mogwai, George has a really serious and dour personality, while Lenny is more of a dopey

goofball (he looks and even sounds like Goofy as a gremlin, don't you think?) who tends to clumsily whack George in the head. While Lenny is probably the most benign gremlin, Daffy becomes dangerously hyper and even deranged, messing with the elevator when Kate is using it, sending her flying up and down crazily, and attacking Billy with a dentist's drill after strapping him in a chair. But my favorite gremlin in the movie is Mohawk, who really looks badass. He's the most reptilian-looking gremlin in either movie, with mottled skin

and scale patterns, snake-like crests on his face, and instead of retaining his furry tuft of hair like Stripe, Baker came up with the idea of him growing long, scaly fins that run from the top of his head to his back. There also seems to be fish-like properties to his design in the way his face looks and how he seems to have fins on either side of his head. His entrance as a gremlin is fantastic, as he explodes out of a control panel and attacks a technician who was mocking the rules concerning

mogwai, but after that, rather than acting as a leader to the gremlins as a whole, he instead spends most of his screentime torturing Gizmo, threatening him with a sparking electric cable, sticking him in a copying machine, ripping velcro off him, and driving a toy train into him on some fake tracks. This lone wolf sort of mentality remains after he becomes the Spider Gremlin, allowing the Brain Gremlin to step in and take over.

The diversity of gremlins increases exponentially when they break into the Splice o' Life and begin drinking various chemicals and serums. One becomes a Vegetable Gremlin, as various vegetables sprout from his body, he becomes greener than normal, his ears turn into big cabbage leaves, and he constantly belches. Another becomes a Bat Gremlin, growing a pair of gargoyle-like bat-wings out of his back, becoming more bat-like in the body, face, and head, with pointy, mouse-like ears, and emitting bat-like hissing and screeching sounds. He also becomes

resistant to sunlight when the Brain Gremlin injects him with some "genetic sunblock." While an impressive-looking puppet, in the wide-shots of him taking to the air and flying, he's brought to life through stop-motion, which is always nice to see, even if the melding together of him and the live-action actors hasn't aged well. He has a memorable encounter with Mr. Futterman outside, which ends with him becoming covered in cement and freezing into a statue on a cathedral. Another gremlin drinks a chemical that turns him into an energy surge with

the ability to travel through the building's electrical outlets and phone lines, and he can be held captive when a call he infiltrates is put on hold. Brought to life completely through good old hand-drawn animation, he's the one that kills Dr. Catheter, the bastard, and is also used to kill all the other gremlins at the end. One that freaks me out is the Girl Gremlin, who's basically one in drag with green hair, lipstick, eye-shadow, and even breasts (can you spell "ew"?). She takes a liking to Forster,

even forcing him to marry her at the end of the film when he becomes stuck in a restroom with her. And Mohawk becomes even cooler than he already was by drinking a chemical that turns him into a Spider Gremlin. His entire lower body becomes that of a spider, with eight legs sprouting out of an enormous abdomen, and he proves to be quite deadly in this form, spinning huge webs that ensnares people, leaving them totally helpless. This puppet just amazes me due to the scale and it's designed beautifully. It's a shame that it actually had to be destroyed by fire.

Mohawk may start out as the leader but he's eventually replaced by the gremlin who's definitely the most memorable one in the film: the Brain Gremlin. He starts out as a typical, brown gremlin but then drinks a chemical that causes him to go through a a Jekyll and Hyde type transformation shown in shadow. When he pops back up, glasses have appeared on his head and he's now become extremely intelligent, to the point where he can speak properly and in a sophisticated, eloquent manner (Tony Randall voices him in a way that makes him come off like an Ivy League graduate). Surprisingly, he's actually quite polite, actively wears clothes, unlike the other gremlins, and even gives an interview with Grandpa Fred, explaining that what he and the other gremlins want is civilization, to be able to revel in the finer things in life (though, I kind of wonder if all the other, more carefree and anarchic gremlins feel that way or if he's just speaking for himself). He also explains that the gremlins start changing when they drink the chemicals because their bodies naturally allow quick evolution through, "Genetic material of research quality." As proper as he is, though, he's still as evil and potentially dangerous as his brethren, shooting one innocent gremlin who's just playing around as a demonstration of uncivilized behavior, adding, "Now, was that civilized? No, clearly not. Fun, but in no sense civilized." And as if that weren't enough, he actually sings New York, New York at the end of the film! All in all, the Brain Gremlin is another unreal piece of effects work, with the lip movements and body language of the puppet coming together perfectly with Randall's voice acting to make him into a real character. 

The first Gremlins may have had scenes that were impressive for just how many creatures there were onscreen in a given scene, but Gremlins 2 makes that look like kids' stuff. There are scenes here that are totally covered in gremlins, like a scene where the gremlins take over a restaurant and the climax, where the gremlins all gather in the main lobby. They are everywhere in those scenes, especially the latter, and they're doing everything you can think of: dancing, playing instruments, serving drinks, smashing each other over the heads with stuff,

maiming each other, and so on and so forth. There were so many gremlins that additional filming on all this lasted five months, long after the actors had left, and according to Dante, it got to the point where just about everybody who was on set was having to operate a puppet. Really incredible work, and it sucks that you will never see a creature feature on this scale done this way again.

Not only are there infinitely more practical creature effects here, there are also more instances of stop-motion, mostly for the Bat Gremlin when he flies and attacks people. Like I said up, while the shots of him taking flight and soaring above the city are very nice, the shots where he's interacting with the actors don't come off as well. It's especially egregious in the scene where he attacks Mr. Futterman, as not only do Dick Miller's movements not totally match with those of the stop-motion but many of the people walking by aren't even the least

bit fazed by a man getting attacked by a winged, bat-like monster in the middle of New York! There are other instances of stop-motion, like the gremlins you see atop and under the elevator in very quick shots, and the first full-body shots of the Spider Gremlin, such as a shot of his shadow before he crawls out into the hallway, and they come off really well. The same goes for the animation of the Electric Gremlin, which is very energetic and expressive, and when he shocks people and the other gremlins, the interaction

between the animation and the live-action is done much more successfully. And speaking of which, when you see the Bat Gremlin's wings growing out of his back, the melding of the practical puppet and the matted in wings looks pretty good there as well. All in all, save for those awkward full-body shots of Gizmo walking and dancing, and a little bit of dodgy matting when the Bat Gremlin swoops down at Mr. Futterman, like the puppet effects, the visual effects in Gremlins 2 are awesome to look at.

I think I'm kind of cheating by including Gremlins 2 as part of this marathon because, despite there being little monsters galore, it's a pure comedy. In fact, I'll go even further by calling it a live-action cartoon, even more so than its predecessor got at a couple of points, and with none of the instances of darkness, scariness, and black humor that made the first definitively horror as well as comedy. Therefore, it's very ironic that it got a PG-13, the very rating its more violent predecessor helped create, as I think it would have been fine with just a PG. The

only really gruesome death is the gremlin in the paper shredder, which is not nearly as grisly as the entire kitchen scene in the first movie, and while all the gremlins at the end do die by being electrocuted until they melt, those effects are just gooey and gross, rather than disturbing like Stripe's disintegration. Also, the gremlins only kill one person and there's no blood involved, and while they do bite, scratch, and beat on people, the pranks they pull on aren't as mean-spirited or lethal

as they were before. There's only one very strong swear word, which is when Clamp describes the gremlins as some, "Pretty goddamn major bugs," and other than that, there's barely any cursing in the film at all. The only reasons for the PG-13 that I can think of are the advances towards Billy by Marla or the female gremlin coming on to Forster, but those are nothing at all. Despite the stronger rating, I would show this to a younger kid long before I would the first.

Reveling in the creative freedom the studio gave him, Joe Dante ratcheted his usual style of commentary, references, and in-jokes towards various subjects, including other movies, to the nth degree. He's said that he's amazed at how much Warner Bros. let him get away with, feeling that if they hadn't wanted a Gremlins 2 so badly, they probably would have cracked the whip a little more. When it comes to references to other movies, television, and various aspects of pop culture, Dante typically doesn't make them actual physical

aspects of the stories he's telling. Usually, they consist of a glimpse of something on TV, a brief shot of a book, or the notion that the film has a plot or subject matter akin to other movies he loves. Here, he throws that out the window and instead has parodies and references up the ying-yang, even if they don't make sense in context. I'm probably going to forget some because there are so many, but the most notable include the Bat Gremlin actually leaving a hole shaped like the Batman symbol in the lab wall when he crashes through it;

Dr. Catheter actually carrying one of the pods from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which, if you remember, was playing on TV in the original); Daffy, as a mogwai, sitting atop the model of Clamp Center, with toy airplanes hanging above him, in a little nod to King Kong; a gremlin getting acid thrown in his face, putting on a Phantom of the Opera mask, and later doing a parody of the unmasking scene from the Lon Chaney film; George actually building a gremlin out of Legos;

him and Lenny watching the 50's monster movie, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms; Daffy, when he straps Billy to a dentist chair and takes a drill to him, asking, "Is it safe?"; Gizmo, of course, being inspired by Rambo: First Blood Part II; and one of the melting gremlins at the end wearing a witch's hat and saying the Wicked Witch's final lines of, "I'm melting! I'm melting! What a world! What a world!" There's even a shot of a gremlin getting the Warner Bros. symbol tattooed onto his chest and a reference to that old cartoon gag of someone drinking water after apparently avoiding getting shot, only for the water to spray out of small holes in their body! And Dante has said that the big musical number the gremlins engage at the end is taken from a 1934 called Dames.

The film also parodies, satirizes, and mocks the original, both the movie itself and the controversy around it, like there's no tomorrow (according to Dante, that really flustered the execs at Warner Bros.). In doing so, it doesn't just break the fourth wall, it demolishes it. First, there's a discussion over how arbitrary the rules about the mogwai and gremlins are. When Billy tries to warn Forster and the others in the control room, they mock him and ask questions like what would happen if a mogwai ate something, part of it got stuck in his teeth, and

it came out after midnight, or what if a mogwai was on a plane eating something and it passed into another time zone? This is the filmmakers acknowledging that the rules don't make much sense, and like I said in my review of the original, there were many instances where the gremlins should have started multiplying but didn't. Also, in this very film, Gizmo seems to have no trouble escaping the antique store and walking around in broad daylight without melting, and there are other moments here where the gremlins get wet and yet don't multiply, like when one gets sprayed right in the face as a gag. 

Where the movie begins to go completely meta is when Leonard Maltin actually has a cameo and bashes the original movie, just as he did in reality. Unlucky for him, the gremlins are in the studio and don't take too kindly to his rant, where he says he'd rather have a root canal than watch the movie and calls it trash. They proceed to throttle him and strangle him with a film strip, as he starts yelling that he was just kidding and says he gives the movie a ten. You have to admire both Dante and his jokey way of getting back at his his critics, and Maltin himself for going along with the gag. (He actually gave this one a better review, at one point commenting on its "grotesque cameos," never bothering to mention that one of said cameos is actually him.) Moreover, this scene also predicted the extreme and volatile reactions fanboys have to their favorite things being trashed, especially on the internet. But this is also where the movie crosses over from just being a silly sequel to a full-on, self-referential send-up.

On that score, that's nothing compared to the most unexpected, self-aware moment, when the film itself seems to break and we then cut to a scene of the gremlins taking over a movie theater. Dante has described this as an attempt to involve the audience in the film, much like what William Castle did in his movie, The Tingler. For my part, I thought something really happened to the film when I first saw this on cable, but when I realized what they were trying to do, I really enjoyed it. This is also where the film steps outside itself and pokes fun at

the controversies surrounding the original, with Belinda Balaski playing an outraged mother who drags her daughter out of the theater when the gremlins put on a nudie flick, complaining to the manager, "I can't believe this. I mean, this is worse than the first one!", which Dante has said is akin to something he himself experienced when the first was released. After the annoyed manager tells her, "We just show these movies, madam. We don't make them," the projectionist (Kenneth Tobey) comes downstairs, revealing that the gremlins beat

the crap out of him and says, "They refuse to show the rest of the film! All they want to see is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." As if this couldn't get any more ridiculous, the manager says he'll deal with it, then goes into the theater and actually finds Hulk Hogan, of all people, sitting in the audience and tells him what's going on. Hulk proceeds to threaten the gremlins, telling them, "Okay, you guys, listen up! People paid good money to see this movie! When they go out to a

theater, they want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booth!" One of the gremlins blows a raspberry at him and he gets serious, ripping his shirt and saying, "Do I have to come up there myself? Do you think the Gremsters can stand up to the Hulkster? Well, if I were you, I'd run the rest of Gremlins 2 right now!" He then proceeds to directly break the fourth wall and tell the audience, "Sorry, folks. It won't happen again," and the movie picks up where it left off. I was

speechless because of how surreal this was, but I also loved it, as it shows how clever Dante is and how much he wants to involve the audience in his love for film. Also, as most fans know, they put a new scene in the video version to make it look like the gremlins had invaded the viewer's VCR, leading to them encountering John Wayne while they're branding a cow, as he tells them, "Go on back to your own movie." They also manage to sneak in a bit of the Bugs Bunny cartoon, Falling Hare, which Dante had wanted to put in the original since it features a gremlin. Finally, the gremlins get into a shoot-out with Wayne, who manages to kill them, saying, "I warned 'em. I don't need varmints on my ranch, and you folks don't need 'em in your... TV sets. Let's start that movie up again." That scene can be viewed an Easter egg on the DVD.

The one bit of self-referential parody I've never quite cared for is when the movie makes fun of Kate's horrific story from the first one. After they're rescued her and Marla the Spider Gremlin, Mr. Futterman says they shouldn't give up, saying Washington and Lincoln never gave up, and suddenly, Kate says, "Please, don't mention Lincoln. Something terrible happened to me one year on Lincoln's birthday." We don't hear the entire story, as Billy tells her they don't have time for it (what we do hear suggests that Kate had an encounter with a pervert who looked like Abraham Lincoln), but I knew right away what it was referencing, as even the lighting is kind of similar to that scene. My problem with it is that it feels too forced. I know it was meant to be a joke but still, it comes out of nowhere and is really jarring. I know some say that about the scene it's parodying but if you read my review of the original, you'll see that I felt Kate had a reason for telling Billy that story and that it fit with the movie itself, whereas this is completely out of left field, joke or not. While I don't think this moment was necessary to begin with, I think that, if nothing else, they should have at least tried to make the transition to it smoother.

I've heard some criticisms that Dante was so focused on doing a satire that he forgot to make an actual story and, as much as I love this movie, I do agree that, once the gremlins take over the building, it dispenses with whatever plot it had to begin with and becomes one gag after another until the ending. Therefore, I can totally understand how many could grow to find it repetitive and tiresome. I also can't deny that Gizmo and the human characters get so lost in the mayhem that, when Gizmo's Rambo moment comes around, I'm like,

"Oh, yeah, you're in this movie, too." Among the few major complaints I myself have is that I don't buy into the threat of the gremlins destroying New York. Billy and the others say that, once the sun goes down, the gremlins are going to get out into the city and, if it rains, which it threatens to do, there will be no stopping them ever, but the problem is, while we know that is a possibility, the movie is so goofy that I can't take that seriously. And when Clamp plays that melodramatic end of the world tape, it feels like we've entered Dr.

Strangelove territory. Another complaint is that the movie goes on a bit too long after the gremlins are killed. It feels like it takes forever to wrap everything up, with Clamp being inspired by Billy's drawing of Kingston Falls to build his own small town, his thinking about merchandising Gizmo, and the final bit with Forster and the female gremlin. Dante agreed with this sentiment, as he didn't film another intended moment at the end which would have had Hoyt Axton showing up as Rand Peltzer, who's designed a wetsuit for Gizmo to prevent any further gremlin outbreaks. Let's face it, when your monsters are dead, the movie should be over as soon as possible.

You should know exactly what you're in for the second the film begins, as the first thing you see is an animated segment with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, meant to make it seem as though there's going to be a Loony Tunes cartoon before the main feature. It's the usual shtick, with Bugs riding the Warner Bros. shield, only for Daffy to come in, declare he's sick of Bugs hogging the spotlight, yank him off, and take his place, saying he's going to be riding it from now on. Of course, when he

tries to redo the intro, things go awry, as the shield overshoots its mark in the center of the rings and slams into the screen. Annoyed, Daffy gets down and tries to push it back through the rings, only for the rings to iris in around him, forming a sort of hula hoop. Giving up, he says, "Well, if I'm not going to star in this cartoon, we might as well just start the movie." Bugs yells, "Roll 'em!" and spins Daffy into the background like a top, which then morphs into the title. Now, if you're still expecting a serious horror film or, at the very least, a dark horror-comedy on par with the first one after that, you're extremely optimistic. 

While the first Gremlins starts out like a family-friendly movie and evolves into one that's both genuinely creepy and funny at the same time, Gremlins 2: The New Batch starts out fairly straightforward but becomes more and more insane as it goes on. Following an opening montage of aerial footage of New York (unused footage from Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, by the way), we're reintroduced to Mr. Wing at his antique store in Chinatown, when he's visited by Forster and

several other of Daniel Clamp's men, who bring along a TV set and a VCR in order to play a videotape message from Clamp. While Mr. Wing watches the message, Forster becomes annoyed when he gets some dust on his suit's sleeve by leaning on the front desk and wipes it off. He flings the handkerchief to the side of the small, covered cage on the desk, which just happens to be housing Gizmo, who takes the handkerchief and proceeds to sneeze from the dust on it. Forster also attempts

to open an old umbrella, only for it to let out a small puff of dust. After the tape ends and Mr. Wing turns down Clamp's offer, Forster and his men depart but leave the TV set there. As Mr. Wing shows them out, Gizmo turns on the TV and starts watching Rambo: First Blood Part II, which he's really enthralled with. Unfortunately for him, Mr. Wing comes back in, derides television itself, and switches the set off, coughing and hacking horribly. The movie jumps to six weeks later, by which time Mr. Wing has died and his store is to be

demolished to make way for Clamp's Chinatown project. That's when the mourning and abandoned Gizmo has to escape the shop when the roof is ripped through by a backhoe, crawling out through a crack in the wall. He's then captured by one of the scientists working at Clamp Center.

Billy and Kate are then reintroduced as working at Clamp Center and having trouble adapting to life in New York, getting pushed aside from rude people and yelled at by frustrated cabbies. When they arrive at the tower, we get a sense of how nothing in the fully automated building works correctly, as well as how soul-crushing and frustrating Billy's job is, especially when Forster nastily criticizes his potted plant and doing artwork of his hometown. After that, Grandpa Fred is introduced and his big

disappointment is discussed between him and Billy, during which he mentions the Splice o' Life upstairs and the bizarre genetic experiments they perform on animals. Things start to get kooky when a mailman heads up there with a package for Dr. Catheter. He finds nobody at the front desk, so he walks into the lab, where he hears the sound of Gizmo singing. He gives the package to the receptionist, who then gives it to Catheter when he shows up, and he heads into his lab, grumbling

about not getting the germs and diseases he needs. He meets up with Martin and Lewis, who show Gizmo to him, locked up in a cage that was covered by a tarp. As Catheter observes him, the twins turn on the radio and play Fats Domino's I'm Ready, which Gizmo loves the sound of and proceeds to dance to on the table when they open the cage for him. The twins are so busy dancing back and forth to the music themselves that Gizmo almost manages to escape. However, Catheter catches him and puts him back in the cage, as they

discuss the potentially painful and lethal experiments they plan to perform on him. Elsewhere, Billy, after a phone conversation he has with Kate is ruined when the video-phone craps out, overhears the mailman from before humming Gizmo's song. Recognizing it, he asks him where he heard it and he mentions that he heard someone singing it up in the genetics lab.

Knowing what's going on, Billy heads up to the Splice o' Life under the guise of fixing their copying machine and is allowed in the back. Entering the lab, he sneaks around, looking for Gizmo, while Catheter, Martin, and Lewis are distracted when the latter show Catheter their idea of creating rats that could act as batteries. Eventually, Billy finds Gizmo, puts him in the small, red toolbox he has with him, and creates a distraction by letting loose a couple of the lab's test

monkeys. He takes Gizmo into the men's restroom and, once they're alone, the two of them have their heartwarming reunion where Billy figures out that Mr. Wing has died and Gizmo is alone. He keeps Gizmo in a drawer in his office while he works, telling him to keep his head down and be quiet. However, when he hears someone come in and shout that Daniel Clamp is coming, he accidentally slams the drawer shut while Gizmo's hand is sticking out. After letting Gizmo pull his hand back

in, Billy meets Clamp, who's impressed with his drawing of the Chinatown project and compliments him on his work. However, Gizmo causes some problems when he slightly knocks open his drawer in front of Clamp, prompting Billy to say that the drawer is designed to do that now and again. Once Clamp leaves and Marla starts coming on to Billy, Gizmo, again, knocks the drawer open. Marla wonders if he is keeping something in there and Billy becomes so nervous that he agrees to have dinner with Marla. Before he leaves, he tells

Gizmo to stay put and that he'll send someone to come get him. But, of course, Gizmo doesn't stay put, as he uses a rope of paper clips to climb down out of the drawer. Billy meets Kate outside the women's locker room and tells her about Gizmo, which she's not happy to hear about. She's even less enthused when he tells her she'll have to take him back to their apartment, but Billy tells her that as long as she obeys the rules, they won't have to worry about gremlins. Despite proving that she knows the rules, she runs after Billy, only to spot him leaving with Marla.

A surprisingly suspenseful scene is the lead-up to Gizmo getting wet. The janitor played by John Astin (when Gizmo sees him, he says, "Gomez,") rolls his cart into the office area and goes to get a drink from a water fountain, only to get sprayed in the face. Thoroughly annoyed, he decides to try to fix the fountain and takes out his wrench. Gizmo watches as he fiddles around with it, when water sprays out of it and hits the floor near where he's standing. It sprays again, this time closer to him,

and Gizmo, knowing what will happen, runs for cover at Billy's workstation. But, it's not enough, as another spray of water shoots out of the fountain and hits the stand housing Billy's drawing of the Chinatown project. It runs down the face of it, collects and runs across the base, and pours onto Gizmo's head. The janitor gives up on the fountain and leaves, while Gizmo starts to multiply. Two furballs shoot out of his back and into the drawer he was in, while another bounces up off the

workstation and into the wastebasket. A final one pops out and starts bouncing around the room wildly. Up in the drawer, George and Lenny form and peek their heads out, while the bouncing ball plops up against the wall and Daffy unfurls upside down. Dropping to the table, he immediately gets into mischief, squirting paint from a tube onto the window and smearing it. Down below, from the wastebasket, which fell over a few seconds before, emerges the evil Mohawk. While the janitor obliviously talks with someone on the phone

nearby, Mohawk, George, and Lenny menacingly approach Gizmo, backing him up against the wall. Mohawk rips his armband off, while George has Lenny open up a nearby air vent, but when he does, he hits him in the face with the cover. The evil mogwai then force Gizmo into the vent and put the covering back on, laughing at his despair. All throughout this, Daffy has tracked little paint footprints across Billy's design work and is fooling around with a paintbrush at the top of the stand.

Down below, Kate heads to the elevator and takes one up to the office area. As she does, Mohawk, George, and Lenny emerge from the elevator opposite hers, having hitched a ride with the janitor. Up in the offices, Kate finds Daffy sitting atop the big model of Clamp Center and, mistaking him for Gizmo, picks him up and puts him in her purse. She finds the laughing, hyperactive mogwai to be difficult to handle, and as she leaves with him, Gizmo watches helplessly from within the air

vent. Sighing sadly, he turns around and tries to find a way out of the vents. Elsewhere, the other mogwai have made their way down to the food court and are hiding underneath a table. They then see people enjoying ice cream and yogurt and decide they need to get a piece of that action. After the scene between Billy and Marla at the Canadian-themed restaurant, which Billy quickly leaves when Marla starts to get a little too seductive for his liking, we see that Kate brought Daffy back to

their apartment. In the kitchen, Kate prepares some food for him, while on the counter behind her, Daffy pushes the blender off and it smashes onto the floor. This startles Kate, while he laughs crazily and claps his hands, as his eyes roll around in his head. She tells him to be more careful and then gives him a plate of food. He very quickly eats a corn on the cob (they put the Tazmanian Devil spinning sound effect in that bit) and, after belching, picks up a small chicken leg. Deciding he doesn't want it, he throws it and hits Kate in the

back. When she swings around, he throws a little thing of gravy at her, hitting her on the front of her shirt. Billy then arrives home, but when he sees Daffy, he tells Kate that he isn't Gizmo, right before Daffy sprays him in the face with cream. Billy tells her they need to go back, find the other mogwai, and stop them from eating after midnight. They also have to take Daffy with them to keep him from doing so. He laughs and flails around wildly as they shove him into a bag, when the doorbell rings. Billy tells Kate to get it, while he

threatens Daffy into being quiet. Their visitors turn out to be the Futtermans, who are a day early for their visit. Because of the situation, and Mr. Futterman being so freaked out by his encounter with the gremlins that he's paranoid when he hears Daffy giggle, Billy and Kate tell them they can't stay, that the building is being fumigated. The Futtermans are very understanding and decide to go find a hotel. Before they leave, Mr. Futterman gives Billy an apple pie his mother baked for him, but someone sat on it on the bus, and also tells him his dad is working on some new inventions, like "reverseable toilet paper" or something.

Back at the Clamp Center food court, as a customer argues with some yogurt jerks about whether or not the peanut butter cups she's asked for are natural, the mogwai are pigging out, with Lenny downing ice cream straight from the machine until his little stomach looks like it's about to burst. Mohawk's hand pops up through the M&Ms in the toppings section, which doesn't go unnoticed, as one lady screams it's a rat. He quickly pulls his arm back through, only to then pop his head up and snicker

evilly, horrifying all those who see him. When Billy and Kate make it back there, they rush up to the food court and overhear a woman talking about seeing Mohawk in the topping. They then realize it's after midnight and the mogwai have eaten. Kate leads Billy down into the basement, to the source of the building's water supply, and he uses an axe to destroy the lock on the gates in front of the pipes. However, he's detected up in the central control room, and when the supervisor sees a video

feed of him, he has a security guard sent down there. Billy gets through the gates and starts turning the shutoff valve, when the guard shows up. Kate manages to hide, but the guard catches Billy and holds him at gunpoint. Spying his bag, he makes him give it over so he can inspect it, not heeding his warning that it's a bad idea. He slings the flap open and Daffy springs out and bites his nose. The guard blunders around, screaming and firing his gun repeatedly, until he manages to yank Daffy off him. Panicking when he manages to get a

look at him, he throws Daffy to the floor and fires at him, but he runs off without getting hit. Billy warns the guard they need to find Daffy before he eats something but he points at his nose, yelling, "He already ate something!" He then tries to warn him that there are more and they need to shut the place down, but the guard, despite having seen Daffy for himself, takes Billy away, intending to call the cops on him (why are people still skeptical even when they see one of the mogwai?). As they leave, the camera pans up to reveal that the other mogwai have created their cocoons.

The next morning, Kate bails Billy out of jail by paying them their next month's rent (randomly, a bunch of mimes who've been arrested are led into the building as they're coming out) and they rush back to Clamp Center. Before they get there, the gremlins start hatching from their cocoons, as we get a glimpse of what Mohawk will look like as his spines spring out of the back of his as he hatches. Elsewhere, Gizmo is still wandering the building's ventilation system, when he falls through a gap in

the floor and down a long shaft that leads all the way to the basement. He hits the floor and, as he gets his wits about, looks up and sees the hatching cocoons. He backs away from them, only for Mohawk to grab him from behind and pull him behind a bit of wall. Billy and Kate arrive at the building and find that it's experiencing a number of technical problems (which one of the announcements asks the patron not to notice). As they start preparing for the dangerous day ahead, a

quick cutaway shows Mohawk threatening Gizmo with a ripped and sparking electric cable. After Marla comes up to Billy and Kate and makes things bad for the couple by telling Billy that their date the night before was really nice, Billy heads for systems control, while Kate begins her job as a tour guide. Billy barges into the control room and tries to explain the situation to Forster but, because he got arrested the night before, Forster dismisses his claims of gremlins as a "psychotic episode." At the same time, the others in the control room, have

fun with his claims about them and how they work. Kate leads a tour group through the halls of the Clamp Cable Network, having to deal with the hyper Mr. Katsuji and his constantly taking pictures, which often flash in her eyes. Meanwhile, the fun over Billy's claims in the control room comes to an abrupt halt when Mohawk explodes out of a panel and latches onto a guy who just noted that it's always midnight somewhere. The man flails around, struggling with the vicious gremlin, who fights off attempts to yank him off by

the others. He then punches the technician dead in the face and continues tearing up the control panel, when Billy grabs a flashlight she and Kate got earlier and uses it to drive him away. He gives the flashlight to a female technician and leaves the room, though Forster promptly takes it from her for himself.

At that moment, the cooking show hosted by Marge, which Kate's tour group is watching being filmed, is crashed by the gremlins. First, Daffy pops out of a large pot and squirts her in the face with a baster, then George appears in a cabinet she backs into, and when she turns around, she comes face-to-face with Lenny, who's wearing a chef's hat and apron and yells, "Boo! Boo!" George grabs Marge by the hair but she manages to break free, only to have Lenny pelt her with eggs. She uses the

pot's lid as a shield before vacating the set completely. George then spies the microwave and has Lenny throw metal cooking utensils into it, much to Marge's horror. Lenny, at one point, hits George in the face with a frying pan and laughs at him. Grumbling, George closes the microwave door and turns the machine on. Predictably, it explodes, sending Marge running off the set. The smoke from the ensuing fire causes the sprinklers to come on and, as Kate watches, the reproduction

process starts. The gremlins fall to the floor as new one starts bursting out of their backs, and as the set fills up with steam, Kate has to drag Katsuji, who's filming the whole thing, out the door, telling him it's not part of the program. Everything in the studio gets zapped and shorted out as the gremlins multiply. The commotion doesn't go unnoticed up in central control, as Forster gets a quick glimpse of what's happening on the security monitors before the feed cuts out. They then start to register brownouts and climate control problems all over

the place and, in an image that's kind of creepy, they get a reading from their pest infestation monitor, which shows the number of dots representing "pests" growing rapidly. We then see that Mohawk has gone back to torturing Gizmo, this time having shoved his head into a copy machine and making copies of his face with various pained expressions.

Kate makes the mistake of trying to take the elevator up to floor 38, only to learn that the gremlins have control of it. The elevator speeds far past floor 38, with an exterior shot showing some gremlins on top of the car. Kate commands the elevator to stop and when it does, she commands, "Sound alarm," only to be greeted by the sound of the gremlins imitating the alarm to mock her. We then cut to Clamp's office up at the top of the building, where he starts doing some memos with

his receptionist, Betty. While Betty is listening to him and not looking, a gremlin puts a mousetrap in the club sandwich she has on her lunch-tray. She then absentmindedly grabs the sandwich and, as Clamp continues with his memos, he hears a loud snap and her letting out muffled yells. He runs back there, only to find a gremlin sitting in her seat, wearing her red sweater, and smacking the keys on her computer. The gremlin turns to Clamp, throws a coffee pot at him, and then ducks under

the desk. There's another genuinely suspenseful moment where Clamp creeps out from behind the wall and peers over the desk. Seeing no sign of the gremlin, he walks past the desk and looks around, only for the gremlin to ambush and jump at him. He scratches him, pulls his hair, smacks him across the face, and bites his hand in their struggle, when he gets his foot caught in the paper shredder and is slowly devoured and ripped apart. Billy and Forster then come in and both attempt to warn Clamp of what's going on, though Forster still tries to make it

seem as though Billy is a crazy person. Meanwhile, Kate, who's been stuck in the elevator all this time, has the gremlins attempt to get into it by drilling and hacking through the walls. Two different ones reach in through some holes near the floor and grab each of her legs, while two more reach for her up around her torso. Kate tries to run but falls, and another gremlin grabs her by the hair and pulls her towards the wall. She manages to break free and bites him on the wrist in retaliation. Elsewhere, Daffy messes with the controls, causing the

elevator to drop so suddenly and quickly that Kate actually floats in midair. It crashes down and all of the gremlins that were on its underside get squashed, soaking Kate in their gooey, green blood and body parts. When two women waiting to use it see what's happened when the doors open, one of them decides, "We'll get the next one." After a scene where Clamp orders Forster to get on top of the situation and keep it away from public view, and after Leonard Maltin gets attacked for crapping on the original movie, Mohawk tortures Gizmo by ripping velcro across him.

Now, we get to the scene where the gremlins invade the Splice o' Life. Martin, Lewis, and another scientist named Wally are discussing the latter's attempts to make tomatoes tougher for shipping, when they spot a gremlin downing Wally's vegetable formula. He promptly turns into the Vegetable Gremlin, belching and sprouting various vegetables from his skin. More gremlins show up and start trashing the lab, when Dr. Catheter walks in. Shocked at what's going on, he sees a brown gremlin downing a beaker of liquid that has a

drawing of a brain on its side. He approaches him, telling him he can get him diseases, when the gremlin starts convulsing and coughing, before collapsing behind the counter and going through a crazy transformation that's seen in shadow, accompanied by wild cartoon sound effects. The change then stops and the gremlin slowly pulls himself up behind the counter. Now wearing a pair of glasses, he coughs a bit, and then truly becomes the Brain Gremlin, talking properly and intellectually about the mutations the gremlins are

going through as they drink the formulas. He draws their attention to the gremlin who becomes the Bat Gremlin and then, getting an idea, fills a syringe with what he calls "genetic sunblock." He goes up to the Bat Gremlin, explains how sunlight causes them so much trouble (I always chuckle at the short cutaway where Martin and Lewis listen to this in an inquisitive manner and two gremlins behind them do the exact same thing), says that the formula in the needle will eliminate said problem,

and injects him in the neck. Once he does, he proclaims, "There it is: the Apple! The city so nice, they named it twice! Check it out one time, won't you?!" The Bat Gremlin takes to the air and, despite the scientists', very pathetic, attempts to catch him, smashes through the wall and soars across the Manhattan skyline. The gremlins then invade a posh restaurant in the building, as well as the stock exchange, where two gremlins are on the phone, yelling, "Buy!" and "Sell!", respectively,

while the Brain Gremlin is on the phone with someone, saying, "We've advising our clients to put everything they've got into canned foods and shotguns." As the madness spreads, Kate runs through the hallways, coming across people getting attacked and finding that the elevators have been totally taken over. She runs into the food court, which is overrun with gremlins who are either attacking people or trying to start a food-fight, when she comes across another flasher gremlin... and sends him flying with a kick. She then pulls a fire alarm, starting an immediate evacuation of those unaware of what's going on.

In another part of the city, the Futtermans are doing some sightseeing at an old cathedral, when the Bat Gremlin appears atop it and flies down at them. He goes right for Mr. Futterman, who attempts to fight him off and then run away, only for the gremlin to chase him down and scratch him alongside his right temple. The gremlin chases him to the edge of a spot on the sidewalk where there's wet cement and Mr. Futterman manages to grabs his legs and slam him into it. As the gremlin tries to get loose, Mr. Futterman pours more cement on him from the

mixer. Covered in cement and screeching, the Bat Gremlin manages to fly up and lands on one of the cathedral's spires. The cement hardens and he becomes like another gargoyle statue. Back inside Clamp Center, in a toy department, George has made himself an impressive gremlin statue out of Legos... until Lenny accidentally whacks him on the head and causes him to fall forward into it, knocking it to the floor. Mohawk then drives a toy train straight into Gizmo, who's tied to the tracks and gagged. Upstairs, with the entire floor in a

panic, Billy and Forster come across Dr. Catheter, who's on the brink of hysteria about what's happened. Catheter thinks he's being patronized when Billy asks him where he saw the gremlins, then tells him they were at the Splice o' Life. That's when the film begins to distort and breaks, leading into the moment in the theater. When the movie gets back on track, Grandpa Fred wanders into an empty control room and sees various news reports speculating about what's going on inside of Clamp

Center. He hears one woman mention that there are no reports coming out of the building at the time, giving him an idea. Outside in the hallway, he runs into Katsuji, who's filming every like a madman, and asks him if he can work a camera. Katsuji answers, "Work a camera?! I am a camera!", which is all Fred needs to hear and he has the excitable man come with him.

More craziness happens in the lab, like the one gremlin becoming electric and disappearing into an outlet, another getting acid thrown in his face, and another becoming a female after drinking one particular formula. Billy, Forster, and Catheter enter the room and see that it's overrun. Billy and Catheter go to get some weapons the doctor has in the back, leaving Forster alone to get assaulted by the female gremlin, who latches onto him and kisses him repeatedly, even telling him, "Don't be afraid of what you feel." While he runs out of the

lab, with the female gremlin latching onto his leg and yelling, "Oh, why can't you commit?!", Catheter's plan to get his weapons goes very wrong, very quickly. First, when he reaches into the lockers containing them, a gremlin hiding in there latches onto his arm. Billy pulls him off and sends him flying, but the Electric Gremlin explodes out of a table lamp and electrocutes Catheter to death. Even worse, Mohawk gets one of the assault weapons and sends Billy running out of the lab amid an onslaught of gunfire. Mohawk then grabs

a beaker with a spider drawn on its side, while a gremlin who got caught up in the crossfire finds he didn't escape unscathed, only to laugh along with the others when he sees water spraying out of the small holes in his torso. After a small cutaway shows Gizmo escaping the ropes on the toy train tracks and remembering Rambo's line, "To survive a war, you gotta become war," Clamp learns that his desire for no media coverage has been ruined when he sees Grandpa Fred doing a live report of

the mayhem. Gizmo starts to train, lifting a small barbell, only for its weight to be too much for him, as he crashes right through the floor. Outside, Mr. Futterman, realizing he was never crazy, tries to get into the building, while inside, Mohawk drinks the formula and turns into the Spider Gremlin, his transformation seen only partially and in shadow. Billy runs back up to Clamp's office and tells him about how bad things are, when the Electric Gremlin shoots out of an outlet. Billy manages to

contain him in the phone system and he's none too happy about being put on hold, freaking out when he hears the type of music everyone hears when they're on hold. Clamp then plays that end of the world tape, but Billy comes up with a plan to trick the gremlins into thinking the sun has set so they'll gather into the lobby. He also tells Clamp he'll have to set up the other part of the trap from outside, allowing him to use his personal secret exit.

This is the point I mentioned where it feels like we've lost whatever plot there was and the movie becomes little more than one gag after another, with hints of the plot here and there. We see George and Lenny watching The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, laughing at the moment where the Rhedosaurus eats the policeman; Marla, who apparently didn't hear the fire alarm, walk into the dim hallway, complaining about the lack of light in her office, and blunder into a web created by the Spider Gremlin; Gizmo trying to beat on a

punching bag, only for the thing to swing back and hit him in the face; Clamp emerging onto the street using his secret exit and telling the reporters that there's nothing to worry about, while Mr. Futterman uses the device to sneak into the building; Lenny messing with the climate control system, creating a powerful vacuum of wind that sweeps through the hallways; and Billy, while searching for Gizmo, getting knocked out by Daffy. Gizmo, meanwhile, makes his way down to the offices, straightens a paperclip out into the shape of

a bow, and then attaches a rubber band to it. As the clocks in the building begin to run forward several hours as part of Billy and Clamp's plan, Fred gets the opportunity to interview the Brain Gremlin. His interview is broadcast across the airwaves, including to a TV set in the restaurant the gremlins have taken over, and he asks the Brain Gremlin what it is he and his brethren want. The Brain Gremlin tells him they want "civilization," specifying, "The niceties... The fine points:

diplomacy, compassion, standards, manners, tradition... that's what we're reaching toward. Oh, we may stumble along the way, but civilization, yes. The Geneva Convention, chamber music, Susan Sontag. Everything your society has worked so hard to accomplish over the centuries, that's what we aspire to; we want to be civilized." That's when he shoots one gremlin fooling around beside his chair as an example of uncivilized behavior, then says, "Now, bear in mind, none of us

has been in New York before. There are the Broadway shows. We'll have to find out how to get tickets. There's also a lot of street crime, but I believe we can watch that for free. We want the essentials. Dinettes. Complete bedroom groups. Convenient credit, even if we've been turned down in the past." As he talks, Clamp has a backdrop depicting nighttime placed in front of the building.

Billy then wakes up to find himself strapped to a chair in a dentist's office, when Daffy pops up, wielding a dentist's drill and prepares to do some painful work on Billy. Billy cries for help and Mr. Futterman comes running in. Daffy tries to fight him off with the drill but he manages to grab the light and shine it right in his face, sending him running. While Mr. Futterman unties Billy, Kate, who's wandering the dark halls, searching for Billy, comes across Marla stuck in the large spider web. Naturally, she's tempted to just leave her there, but

when Marla admits she was interested in Billy but didn't get much further than that, Kate takes out a knife and starts cutting her free. But, the Spider Gremlin appears down the hall and starts scuttling towards them, causing them to back up into the webbing. The sound of their screams bring Billy and Mr. Futterman running elsewhere, while Kate finds that her flashlight isn't working and she can't repel the gremlin. They back up into the webbing, as he closes in on them. Suddenly, Gizmo appears

in a nearby air vent, armed with his makeshift bow and arrow, and wearing a red headband like Rambo. Just as the Spider Gremlin is almost on top of the girls, he lights the bottle of whiteout at the end of the pencil he's using as an arrow and fires. The Spider Gremlin is immediately engulfed in flames and, fortunately for the girls, Billy and Mr. Futterman appear behind the webbing. Mr. Futterman manages to cut through the webbing, allowing them to escape, while Billy spots and picks up Gizmo. As they watch the Spider Gremlin burn to death, Kate wonders what compelled Gizmo to do that and Billy figures they just pushed him too far.

After the sudden ribbing of Kate's story from the first movie, we see that the gremlins have all gathered in the main lobby and thus, we get into the very surreal musical number. The Brain Gremlin, dressed in a tweed, 40's style suit and hat, starts singing New York, New York, while the other gremlins provide backup via their singing and playing instruments, as confetti and bubbles rain down around them. Billy, Kate, Gizmo, Mr. Futterman, and Marla watch from a walkway, the latter two getting into the number, and Grandpa Fred

continues reporting on it from nearby. There's a striking moment where a bunch of gremlins close some platforms to form a huge image of the Lady Gremlin's face, and then she herself emerges from the image's left eye, wearing a red dress and a pink lei. She doesn't sing, though I was expecting her to (Dante has said that was the moment taken from the movie called Dames, which I'll take his word on, since I've never seen that movie myself). More craziness follows, like several gremlins dancing in a row while shaking maracas, while others amass

a huge amount of weapons (according to their battle plans, they plan on destroying the Statue of Liberty). And unfortunately, the plan to fry them with sunlight is spoiled when some thunderclouds pass over, blocking out the sun. We get more gags, like a gremlin reading a book called Dining after Midnight in New York, another hanging a teddy bear in effigy, which is meant to represent Gizmo, one plucking an olive off of the Vegetable Gremlin to put into a martini, the gremlin getting the

Warner Bros. logo tattooed onto him, a gremlin killing another by shooting a camera flash off in his face, and the parody of the unmasking scene from The Phantom of the Opera. Realizing the disaster that will occur if the gremlins get out in the rain, Billy comes up with a plan. He tells Mr. Futterman to grab a nearby fire hose and aim it into the lobby, Kate to keep Gizmo from getting wet, and Marla to... keep smoking nervously. When Mr. Futterman goes to grab the hose, a gremlin pops out of a

garbage can and spits on him. The gremlin then laughs at him maniacally, but Mr. Futterman breaks, grabs him, and throws him into the elevator, sending him down to the lobby. He then says, "Don't mess with Murray Futterman." Billy then asks Kate to transfer the on hold call in Clamp's office down to a phone where they're standing., while Mr. Futterman gets into position and aims the hose down into the lobby. He tells Billy he's ready and Billy, in turn, tells him to start spraying.

He blasts the Brain Gremlin just as he finishes New York, New York and then does the same to the rest of them, sending them skidding across the floor. Naturally, they begin to multiply and they start laughing, thinking they've triumphed (one gremlin is seen scrubbing himself with soap, going, "Singin' in the bathtub!"). Kate manages to transfer the call Billy mentioned down to the lobby and Billy grabs the phone's receiver and points it at the lobby, telling Mr. Futterman to turn off the hose. He then tells Kate to hit it and when she does, the

Electric Gremlin blasts out of the phone and into the lobby. He shocks the living crap out of his brethren and then dissipates, as the other gremlins begin to melt and disintegrate into oozing, green puddles; reporting, Grandpa Fred finds he can't go into detail about it on TV. The massacre ends with the Brain Gremlin rasping out the last bars of New York, New York before keeling over dead. At that moment, Clamp leads a fully-armed SWAT team into the building, but they don't far before Clamp slips in what's left of the gremlins. From there, the

movie goes into its rather long wrap-up: Clamp, instead of scolding Fred for the news coverage like he was going to, making him an anchor, makes Marla his head of public relations and has her answer the reporters' questions, and then, when he inadvertently sees Billy's drawing of Kingston Falls, decides he wants to build a quiet little town just like it in New Jersey, intending to call it Clamp Corners. Finally, in the midst of the repairs, Clamp gets a call from Forster, who's stuck upstairs in a

restroom. Clamp tells him it'll take them a while to reach him because everything's still out and advises him to take half a day off once the building is up and running again. And then, the movie truly ends with Forster being faced with the female gremlin in a wedding dress, as the sound of gremlins singing the wedding march can be heard in the background, and he decides to go along with it as long as he's stuck there. We even get a THE END title card in romantic cursive writing, before going into the actual credits.

Joe Dante often puts in stuff at the end of his films for people who watch the ending credits (like me): here, the background for the credits slowly transitions from black to a deep blue and Daffy Duck even pops up occasionally, commenting about the credits before asking, "Still lurking about? Don't you people have homes?" The last bit of the movie is another animated segment, this one  with Daffy trying to steal Porky Pig's "That's all folks!" sign-off, only to get clobbered by the shield yet again. Both this and the opening animated sequence with Daffy and Bugs were actually directed by Chuck Jones, whom Dante convinced to come out of retirement.

In keeping with the lighter, sillier, and cartoony tone, Jerry Goldsmith changed his score accordingly. The main theme from the original is reused, as is Gizmo's theme, but instead of sounding creepy and mischievous like before, Goldsmith instead makes it sound out and out silly and fun, going for an orchestrated sound rather than the original, electronic one. While I like both versions and think that each fits its respective movie, I must admit that I enjoy listening to this version more. Interestingly, while Goldsmith gradually slipped the theme into the first movie, here he plays some scenes, like when the gremlins multiply from the fire sprinklers, with big, elaborate takes on it, before putting the main theme in more of the background of scenes such as the gremlins trashing the lab and Daffy trying to play dentist with Billy. You hear the theme in its full glory over the ending credits, with the middle of it being more low-key, calm, and even cheerful in how it sounds, before ending with the main theme's climax. As for Gizmo's theme, it's just as lovely to listen as before, and is sometimes used as a poignant leitmotif for him in scenes like when he's shown alone at the store after Mr. Wing's death and when he and Billy have their little reunion. Moreover, when Gizmo becomes inspired by Rambo, Goldsmith tweaked his theme to sound akin to Rambo's, which he also created. And I've read that Goldsmith reused a piece of his score for The 'Burbs for when the Bat Gremlin flies out of the building. He also came up with a number of nice, original pieces, from the really hip, Chinese-style music that plays over the opening scene of a limo driving to Mr. Wing's store, to a goofball leitmotif for Daffy that comes complete with a silly, quacking sound effect. Plus, despite the tone, there are some scenes that are scored seriously, even creepily, like the buildup to Gizmo getting wet and his multiplying, him being forced into the air vent, the gremlins hatching from their cocoons (the closest the score ever comes to feeling like the original's), and a suspenseful bit that plays right before Clamp gets attacked by the gremlin in his office.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch is the definition of an unconventional sequel. It's a wild, self-aware, comedic satire of the original film, numerous other movies, and popular trends and fads of the time that some may not know how to take. But for a movie lover like me, I think it's genius. The performances by the actors are good, the mogwai and gremlin effects are amazing and make the creatures really feel like characters, the score is fun and energetic, I think the majority of the references and satire are done well, and the movie as a whole is a testament to Joe Dante's love of film and how he's trying to share it with the audience. It may have some faults, like the satire overwhelming the story, some jokes feeling forced, it getting a little too silly for its own good, and the ending going on a few minutes longer than it should, but overall, it's a hoot of a film. While it may not have done well at the time of its release, it's nice that it's getting more attention nowadays, and if you haven't seen it or saw it once but didn't like it, I'd say give it another chance. At the very least, you'll probably agree that it's well-made and is the type of studio movie you don't see too often.