Stuff I Grew Up With: Gremlins (1984)

This is one of those films that's been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't recall the exact first time I saw it or how it came about, as I was so little at the time, probably no older than five or even four years old, but I know we rented it from our town's video store a number of times, as this was one of the few 80's horror/creature feature movies my parents allowed me to watch at that age (which is quite ironic, as we'll get into). I was always fascinated with it, probably watched it at least a dozen times or so, and yet, I always had very mixed feelings about it. I definitely liked it for the most part, but there were also parts that creeped me out, like the scene where Gizmo first multiplies or when the gremlins hatch out of their cocoons. Regardless, I kept watching it as a young kid, until a certain point where I just got older and lost touch with it. Other than some occasional TV advertisements and seeing the VHS box at the video store, I didn't see it again until many, many years later, when I was fourteen. By that point, I was starting to become a true, hardcore fan of horror films, so when Gremlins played on cable one time during the summer of 2001 (it was on either Cinemax or HBO), I decided it was time to revisit this relic from my childhood. I may have had mixed feelings about it as a child but, when I saw it as a young adult, it firmly became one of my favorite movies and has been so ever since. By that point, I'd also learned I was far from alone in that sentiment, given how it was one of the surprise hits of the 80's, with lots of merchandising and the like, despite the controversy that came with it, and spawned a bunch of imitators, none of which have come close in my opinion (although, I do like Critters quite a bit).

What I absolutely love about Gremlins is how much of a perfect marriage it is in different styles and tones (it's also interesting to note it was released the very same weekend as Ghostbusters, which also succeeds on that score, although that movie never got as dark as this does). As it goes on, it shifts from a light-hearted, whimsical, family-friendly comedy/fantasy set around Christmastime to a pretty dark and, at points, even terrifying creature feature, and ultimately into a manic, violent, live-action cartoon. This type of extreme tonal transition shouldn't work and yet, I think it's done flawlessly here. The same goes with how the gremlins themselves often go from being depicted as truly dangerous, nasty little monsters that do kill people to full-on Loony Tunes characters. Never does this feel jarring but, instead, is always consistent and in character with the story being told. Now, is that story suitable for kids? Well, I think it mostly comes down to the individual kid, although I do think there are some parts that are maybe a bit too dark or violent for really young kids (like how I was at the time). However, most kids, especially nowadays, could probably handle it and enjoy it as much as teenagers and adults do. Plus, I think kids should be exposed to something that has a bit of bite to it every now and then.

As Christmas approaches, inventor Rand Peltzer visits an antique store in Chinatown, hoping to sell some of his goods, as well as possibly find a present for his teenage son, Billy. Though he fails in selling the elderly owner, Mr. Wing, anything, he does find an unusual, furry little creature called a mogwai, which he feels would be a perfect present for Billy. Mr. Wing, however, isn't keen on selling the creature and even turns down $200, saying it comes with too much responsibility. But, his young grandson secretly sells Rand the mogwai behind his back, and tells him it comes with three rules: keep it out of bright lights, don't get it wet, and, most importantly, don't feed it after midnight. Rand takes the mogwai, which he names Gizmo, to his home in Kingston Falls and presents him to Billy, who immediately adores the little creature. Everything's fine at first but, the next day, Billy's friend, Pete, accidentally spills water onto Gizmo, who goes into convulsions and then spawns five more mogwai. These mogwai are not as cute as Gizmo and are a bit more mean-spirited and mischievous. Their leader, dubbed Stripe due to the Mohawk-like tuft of hair on his head, who proves to be especially vicious. Amazed at this instant reproduction, Billy takes one of the mogwai to the local elementary school and shows it to the science teacher, Roy Hanson. He uses a single drop of water to create another one, whom Hanson decides to keep in order to run some tests. On the night before Christmas Eve, while Rand is away at a convention, Stripe and his band of mogwai annoy Billy by loudly demanding food. Looking at his clock and seeing it's not midnight yet, he feeds them some leftover chicken. Meanwhile, at the school, Hanson leaves a half-eaten sandwich by his mogwai's cage and, when he leaves for the night, the mogwai eats it. The next morning, Billy wakes up to find that, except for Gizmo, all of the mogwai have created slimy cocoons around themselves, including the one at the school. He also discovers that his clock was unplugged at some point during the night. Later in the day, the cocoons hatch and the mogwai emerge as gremlins, evil, scaly little creatures that have only one thing on their mind: causing chaos. Thus begins a bizarre and terrifying Christmas Eve for Kingston Falls.

Gremlins is a movie that had an incredible group of talent behind its conception and production. First, it was written by Chris Columbus, who also wrote The Goonies shortly afterward and would go on to direct such beloved films as Home Alone and Home Alone 2, Mrs. Doubtfire, Nine Months, Stepmom, and the first two Harry Potter films. He said he got the idea after hearing creepy noises in the loft of his apartment building late at night, as well as that Gremlins was meant as nothing than a spec script to get himself some jobs in Hollywood. But then, in 1981, Steven Spielberg, feeling it was very unique and worth making into a movie, bought the rights to it. What's interesting is that the original script was much darker, with more horrific deaths, like the mother being killed, followed by her decapitated head rolling down the stairs, and the gremlins actually eating people and Billy's dog, Barney, and Gizmo himself becoming the leader gremlin (ironically, the artwork for the modern home media releases show Gizmo with Stripe's shadow behind him). However, that changed when Spielberg and Joe Dante became involved, as they decided to tone things down considerably, with Spielberg himself being the one to suggest that Gizmo stay good for the whole movie. Some may object to their taking what could have been a great, dark horror film with comedic elements and making it to a somewhat edgier version of E.T., but the finished film is still quite dark as it is and, more importantly, I don't think it would have been as unique, successful, and fondly remembered if the original script had been shot. And while we're on the subject of Spielberg, I'd like to say something else: everyone claims that he took the direction of Poltergeist away from Tobe Hooper but, while we'll probably never know what really went on during the making of that film, one thing's for sure: when it came to Gremlins, he left Dante alone and allowed him to make his film, even when he insisted on things Spielberg himself didn't agree with or care for.

Spielberg chose Joe Dante to direct Gremlins because of his ability to blend together horror and tongue in cheek comedy, as he'd done in his previous movies, Piranha and The Howling (the latter of which Spielberg was apparently a big fan of). It probably also didn't hurt that Dante had just directed one of the segments of Twilight Zone: The Movie, which Spielberg was also a producer and director on. Obviously as a little kid, I knew nothing about Dante, or directors in general, but over the years, I've come to recognize and appreciate Dante, not only for his skills at mixing genres but also for his ability to inject references to other movies without it becoming obvious and annoying. Also, I feel Dante's movies, particularly this one, are enjoyable for lovers of old Hollywood, be it science fiction and horror or otherwise, because you can see his own love for it through his use of character actors from the Golden Age, as well as in his timely way of shooting stuff. We'll go into this more later but the look of the town of Kingston Falls, as many have pointed out before, looks and feels like It's a Wonderful Life, with just about everybody being quintessential idealized townsfolk: decent and likable, just like in many of the classics of yesteryear. In fact, the whole movie has the glossy look and artificial feel of a studio movie made back when the system was at the height of its power (it's fitting, then, that this was the first movie in a long time to use the classic Warner Bros. shield logo and theme). And then, Dante takes that old-fashioned feeling and turns it squarely on its head, injecting black comedy and a creepiness factor, but does so in a way that doesn't totally destroy it.

Zach Galligan as Billy Peltzer exemplifies what I meant when I said many of the characters feel like the idealized sort of townsfolk you see in old movies, as he pretty much is the typical, good-natured teenager straight from a 50's Hollywood flick or TV show like Leave It to Beaver. He's kind, wholesome, doesn't swear, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, has a nice job, a good girlfriend, loving parents, and so on. I know some find Billy to be rather bland for these reasons and, yeah, he's hardly a nuanced character, but I think Galligan pulls it off very well, simply by being likable to the nth degree. He's such a good kid that he's working at the bank to help support his family, given how his dad's inventions aren't exactly selling like hotcakes, and he has moments where he's clearly concerned about their future and how long he can continue to help make ends meet. That's to say nothing of how good he is to his dog, Barney, and when he's presented with Gizmo, he's absolutely taken with the little guy. He does end up breaking the important rules, resulting in the ensuing chaos, but they happen either accidentally or because he was tricked. And, just like Steve McQueen in The Blob, you root for Billy to defeat the evil that has invaded his hometown, especially when the police don't believe him. In fact, he manages to accomplish quite a lot. He saves his mom from one of the gremlins, as well as saves Kate when the bar she works at is overrun by them, and even manages to blow up a theater full of nearly all of them. Plus, even though Gizmo is the one who ultimately defeats Stripe, Billy relentlessly pursues him through the department store, battling him at various points, and even continuing the pursuit despite having been shot in the arm with a crossbow and nearly gotten chainsawed. Finally, even though he's horribly disappointed and disdainful over what's happened, saying Western society is not capable of caring for mogwai, when Mr. Wing sees the bond Gizmo and Billy has developed, he tells him that he may be ready some day soon.

If Billy is the idealized teenage guy, then Phoebe Cates' Kate is the idealized teenage girl (which is ironic, considering that Cates had just been in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, where she's anything but wholesome). Despite the fact that we find out she has some serious psychological baggage from something horrible that happened to her on Christmas that's made her utterly hate the holiday, all in all, she's a very likable, kind, lovely young woman, one who clearly likes Billy (they're so close already that I was surprised by the scene where he kind of pensively asks her out on a date). Like him, she has a low-paying job at the same bank, but she also works for free at the local bar on weeknights just to help out the owner, Dory. and even helps pass around a petition in order to save the bar from being torn down by the cruel Mrs. Deagle. There's also a nice moment where, when Mr. Futterman is drunk and depressed at the bar, Kate listens to him and then gently talks him out of driving home on his plow. In fact, other than her getting very defensive when Billy asks her why she doesn't celebrate Christmas (though, of course, you find out why later), she's as likable a girl as you could possibly ask for. And while she is little more than a damsel in distress and bystander during the third act, she's smart enough to figure out that the gremlins don't like bright lights, allowing her to escape the bar, and also ends up saving Billy from being killed by Stripe when she manages to turn on the lights in the department store.

While we're talking about Kate, we might as well discuss probably the most controversial scene in the entire film: the quiet scene where, after she and Billy take shelter from the gremlins inside the abandoned bank, Kate tells him why she hates Christmas. You know the story: one Christmas when she was young, her father had attempted to surprise her and her mother by climbing down their chimney, dressed up as Santa Claus, with a bunch of presents, but slipped and broke his neck. Even worse, his body wasn't found for several days, by which it had decayed enough to where they could smell it. Studio execs, as well as Steven Spielberg, didn't like the scene, as they said it wasn't clear whether it was supposed to be darkly funny or sad, but Dante refused to cut it, saying it represented the film as a whole: a combination of humor and horror. And since Spielberg had decided it was to be Dante's movie, he allowed him to keep it in. Personally, I've never found that story to be darkly funny, just horrifying and tragic, and I've always seen the way it comes about as being fairly straightforward. Scared and in shock over what's going on, Kate says that, because of the gremlins, she now has another reason to hate Christmas. Billy, naturally, asks what she means, and she explains how the most horrible thing that ever happened to her was on Christmas. In fact, I've never understood what the big deal was. I don't think it's that jarring and I also don't think it's out of tone with the rest of the film. This whole movie is about something horrible and crazy happening on Christmas, so what's the big deal with it reminding her about another horrible thing that happened on Christmas? Bad stuff can happen on Christmas like any other day, yet I don't hear anyone complaining about Bob Clark's Black Christmas for that reason. It is interesting, though, that the same year saw the release of Silent Night, Deadly Night, which got parents so freaked over the idea of their kids becoming scared of Santa if they saw the TV spots that they got it pulled from theaters. Moreover, not only does Kate's story also have its own macabre look at Santa but, at the end of it, she says, "And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus." Maybe that was also part of the controversy, since parents were taking their kids to see the movie. Anyway, while Kate's speech is horrifying and sad, I also have to say that, while I'm sure he was a great guy and his intentions may have been good, her father was a dumbass. Actually climbing down a chimney like Santa Claus with a bunch of presents is such a stupid and risky stunt that it's no wonder he got himself killed.

Also very likable are Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) and his wife, Lynn (Frances Lee McCain). Like the two teenage leads, they're the quintessential wholesome, small town couple. Rand is a very kind and loving husband and father, a big teddy-bear of a guy, whose major flaw is that his often bizarre inventions tend not to work, resulting in him either not having much luck in selling them or ending up with unhappy customers when he does make a sale. He's away at an inventors convention when the

gremlins invade Kingston Falls and doesn't realize what's going on until he arrives early Christmas morning, just in time to see Stripe get destroyed by the sunlight. Realizing that what happened is his fault, he genuinely apologizes to Mr. Wing when he shows up at the end to take Gizmo back, but also takes the opportunity to try to sell him one of his inventions as a way of apologizing. As for Lynn, while she doesn't have many scenes or dialogue, you can tell that she's just as loving a parent as her husband. Moreover, I love how, when the gremlins get loose in the house and terrorize her, instead of running and screaming, she actually stands and fights, managing to kill three of them, and in some pretty brutal ways, too. She even has a chance to run out of the house but instead, decides to try to kill all the gremlins. This almost gets her killed but still, I love her moxy, as even when she gets attacked by the gremlin that's hiding in the Christmas tree, she's still fighting back and trying to stab him.

As likable as most of the characters are, the one true human antagonist, real estate manager Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holliday), sits on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. Sort of a female version of Ebeneezer Scrooge, she's absolutely despicable: selfish and greedy, only cares about money (at her home, she has a bunch of cats who are all named after some form of currency), is cruel to those who have leases to the property she owns, and is just horrible to everyone she comes across. Her introductory scene early on is her stomping through town, barking at and insulting everyone she sees, and expecting everyone to make way for her, like when she walks out into the street and right in front of a car that slams on its brakes. Right outside the bank where Billy works, she runs into Mrs. Harris and her two kids. Though she pleads with her to tell the bank manager to continue supporting them until they can get paid, Mrs. Deagle snarls that she and bank have the singular purpose of making money, "Not to support a lot of... deadbeats!", which she says while looking at her kids. And when Mrs. Harris tells her it's Christmas, Mrs. Deagle cruelly answers, "Well, then, you know what to ask Santa for, don't you?" After that, she walks into the bank, pushes past everyone in line, and angrily tells Billy that his dog, Barney, destroyed a Bavarian snowman she had on her lawn. She then shows how truly wicked she is when, instead of compensation, she demands he allow her to take Barney to the kennel and have him put down. On top of that, she says she could catch him herself and put him in the dryer! Listening to this from underneath Billy's desk, Barney decides he's had enough and attacks her. He doesn't really hurt her but she plays the victim, saying she has a weak heart, then goes right back to threatening the dog and calling Billy's dad a loser, before going on about her heart condition again. And then, in a later scene, she not only threatens Barney again when dealing with Billy at the bank but, when Billy gets upset with what she's saying and has to write another check, she has this smug look of satisfaction on her face. She deserves to get blasted out of her house top window when the gremlins mess with her stair-lift.

Corey Feldman has a small role as Pete, a young boy whose father, a Christmas tree seller, has him wear an embarrassing tree outfit to help with promotions, which he utterly despises. He's also the one who inadvertently starts all the trouble because he accidentally pours water on Gizmo. Aside from that, he's little more than just your average, likable young kid. Of course, since it's a Joe Dante movie, you gotta have Dick Miller, who appears here as Murray Futterman, a likable and

funny, if somewhat bitter and depressed man due to his having lost his job recently. Significantly, as a World War II veteran, he claims to have had experiences with gremlins and is one of the first to actually refer to the creatures as such. He also hates anything foreign, which is a big part of the humor around him. Both he and his overly bubbly wife, Sheila (Jackie Joseph), seem to get killed by the gremlins but, in the sequel, it turns out they survived (which I'm glad for, because I love Mr.

Futterman in that movie especially). Another Fast Times at Ridgemont High alumnus, Judge Reinhold, has a small role as Gerald, a snobby young man who's Billy's superior in his job at the bank and goes out of his way to make him feel like crap, talking about how he'll eventually be president of the bank and a millionaire by the time he's thirty, while Billy is basically supporting his family himself. He's so vain that he actually has the gall to ask for a vodka martini, shaken not stirred, at Dory's Tavern and is a major kiss-up to Mr.

Corben, the bank president. He also asks Kate out on a date, even after he just mocked her for working at the tavern for nothing, and proves to be insecure when Billy calls him "Gere" at one point. Though Gerald only appears briefly at the beginning in the final film, there is a deleted scene that pops up in some TV versions where he's locked himself up in a bank vault to get away from the gremlins and refuses to come out even when Billy and Kate try to rescue him, thinking they're deliberately trying to get him killed. Roy Hanson (Glynn Turman), the

elementary school biology teacher who Billy shows one of the mogwai to, is just as amazed by their reproductive abilities as Billy and keeps the newly-spawned mogwai for some tests. He makes a big mistake when he takes a blood sample from him, because when he becomes a gremlin, he takes lethal revenge on Hanson. Sheriff Frank Reilly (Scott Brady) is another character who makes me think of The Blob, as he and his deputy, Brent Frye (Jonathan Banks), don't at all believe Billy when he tries to warn them about the gremlins. Even when he shows them Gizmo, Frank still isn't convinced and merely thinks Gizmo is a cute little critter. It's only when he and his deputy go out to investigate what happened at the Futtermans' house that they realize he was telling the truth, but they then crash after one gremlin destroys the brakes on their car.

He only appears at the beginning and ending of the film but, in a way, Mr. Wing (Keye Luke) has become almost as iconic as Gizmo and the gremlins due to his mysterious and very quiet presence, as well as his memorable appearance with the long white hair, beard (which they put on Keye Luke because he looked ridiculously youthful, despite being in his late 70's at the time), and damaged right eye. He's somewhat cliche now, being the all-knowing, old Chinese man who

understands things far more than those of the modern Western world, but Luke pulls it off well, playing Mr. Wing with great dignity, as well as with, an occasionally humorous, but, at the same time, disappointed contempt for the trappings and vices of modern society. He's famously reluctant to allow Rand Peltzer to buy Gizmo at the beginning of the movie, saying he comes with too much responsibility, and when he hears what's happened, he comes to Kingston Falls at the end to retrieve him. He also admonishes the Peltzers for their mishandling of Gizmo and sadly declares that, like so much else of what nature creates, Western society doesn't understand how to treat it and is not yet ready to care for mogwai. However, as noted, he does see some potential in Billy and says that he may be ready to properly care for Gizmo one day, adding that he'll be waiting for it to come. Also, even though he doesn't do much and only appears at the beginning of the film, I have to mention Mr. Wing's grandson (John Louie) because, one, he's significant in that he sees to it that Rand ends up with Gizmo, and two, I think of how this came out the same year as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which, of course, had Short Round, and it makes me wonder if one character inspired the other for Steven Spielberg.

Noteworthy cameo appearances include animation legend Chuck Jones as Billy's artistic mentor in one scene; Dante regular Belinda Balaski, who'd already appeared in Piranha and The Howling, as the sympathetic Mrs. Harris; and 50's sci-fi veteran Kenneth Tobey as the gas station manager who Rand sells a "smokeless ashtray" to on his way home and who, according to Mr. Wing, tried to turn around and sell it to him. Spielberg himself and composer Jerry Goldsmith also pop up at the

convention Rand attends, as does Robby the Robot, spouting some of his dialogue from Forbidden Planet, and the actual prop from The Time Machine. Finally, I have to comment on Billy's dog, Barney, played by a dog named Mushroom, who has to have been one of the best animal actors ever. According to Dante, aside from the fact that they literally had to tie him to Zack Galligan to get him to follow him in one scene, he was an absolute joy, and they got so much emotion and actual acting from him that it's amazing. There are

moments where he really looks scared, especially in the scene where Gizmo multiplies, and the way he acts with the mogwai and gremlin puppets makes them feel all the more like real, living creatures. For example, when Stripe spits at Gizmo at one point, both Gizmo and the dog react to the spit and then look back up at Stripe, as if Barney is sympathizing with Gizmo and thinking, "Oh, that was mean!" However, my favorite reaction from him is near the end, when Stripe has been destroyed and he's looking ever so cautiously at his bubbling remains, groaning and tilting his head quizzically at every bubble. That's just great!

Even though the movies he made before this were very low budget, Joe Dante managed to make them look very stylish and colorful. Here, working with a much bigger $11 million budget, and also likely due to Spielberg's involvement, he was able to make Gremlins into an absolutely gorgeous-looking movie. Like I alluded to, it has that high-production gloss that Spielberg always seemed to bring to any movie he was involved with around this time, and it's also superbly shot by Dante and his cinematographer, John Hora, who'd worked

with Dante on both The Howling and his segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie. They often give the movie a somewhat otherworldly, fantastical feel even before things get really weird, with lots of reds and blues in the color palette, and with a lot of dark, low-lit scenes, like the opening in Mr. Wing's shop in Chinatown, Billy's bedroom in the attic when he's playing around with Gizmo, Roy Hanson's classroom when the one gremlin hatches and gets loose, the inside of the YMCA that Stripe escapes to, and the climactic scene in the

department store, among many others. They also wonderfully use low-lighting and shadows to create mood, like when the mogwai in Hanson's lab gets the idea of eating a sandwich after midnight in order to get back at him as a gremlin and smiles evilly when he turns the lights out and leaves; the scene where Kate tells Billy about what happened to her on Christmas when she was a little kid; and the eerie scene afterward where they walk into the dark, completely deserted town street, with no sign

of the gremlins at all. Speaking of mood, I really like how, once the gremlins hatch from their cocoons, the movie literally gets darker, with the scene where Billy first encounters a gremlin at the school taking place at dusk (the orange sunlight coming through the windows perfectly captures the feel of sunset on a winter day), and by the time Lynn has killed three of the gremlins in her home, it's dark out. And speaking of the gremlins, they nicely hold off on showing them for a bit after they hatch, only showing their shadows, as well as glimpses of their hands.

What gives the movie that feel of classic Hollywood that I mentioned earlier is how it's 100% studio-bound, having been shot on the backlots at both Warner Bros. and Universal. In fact, the set for Kingston Falls is the very same one used for Hill Valley in Back to the Future (another Spielberg production) and, with all the snow covering the town square and streets, it does very much look like It's A Wonderful Life. The same goes for the streets and exteriors of Chinatown, which look like they're from another world, with

all the multi-colored lights and neon, and the steam coming up through the vents in the street. Just as otherworldly-looking is the set of Mr. Wing's antique store, a rather eerie room lit entirely by candles and full of the strangest oriental objects one could ever hope to see. It's the perfect place for Rand to find Gizmo, and his bringing him home to a place that's as pure Americana as Kingston Falls, leading to it getting invaded by hordes of destructive, supernatural creatures, is a very symbolic and classic concept. Speaking of which,

the rest of the sets are both fairly normal-looking and quite idyllic, especially the Peltzer household, which kind of serves as a microcosm for the town as a whole, as does the chaos that happens when the gremlins first wreak havoc on it. Their invasion and very presence turn what should be ideal homes and other settings into rundown, low-lit nightmares, like the interiors of the elementary school, the bank, the movie theater, and the department store, where every nook and cranny

gives Stripe a place to hide and also provides him with potential weapons, as well as a means to create more gremlins. Dory's Tavern, which was a pretty low-key, calm bar before, becomes especially trashed and crazy when the gremlins take it over, and the streets of Kingston Falls, which were calm and silent the night before, save for the sound of Christmas carolers, become a complete shambles before the gremlins take refuge in the theater, leaving them deserted and eerily quiet. Finally, I have to mention Mrs. Deagle's house, which is this big, two-story mansion that's filled with her numerous cats, a big portrait of her late husband, and the stair-lift, which the gremlins tamper with, giving her a very memorable exit from the movie.

Obviously, this is one of those movies that feels appropriate to watch either around Halloween or Christmas, as it manages to capture the spirit of both, but it's also one that nicely explores both sides of the latter. On the one hand, it's decked out in the iconography and general good feeling of that time of year, with the snow, the lovely colors, the warm, cozy feeling from sitting in front of a fireplace on a cold winter's night, the Christmas songs on the soundtrack, and, of course, all the Christmas trees, decorations, and toys. But,

beneath all this cheeriness is a sense of melancholy and sadness, as many of the citizens of Kingston Falls are struggling to make ends meet. Because of his dad's numerous failings as an inventor, Billy basically has to support his family by working at the bank and, seemingly, doesn't go to school, likely because his parents can't pay for his tuition. Also, like a lot of the people in town, Mrs. Deagle is making their lives all the more miserable. Case in point, Dory, of Dory's Tavern, is dealing with her trying to take his lease away and has to have

Kate work for him for nothing. Mr. Futterman has recently lost his job and often gets depressed and drunk at the tavern. And due to Mrs. Deagle's cruelty, it looks as though Mrs. Harris and her family will likely be out on the street soon. Speaking of which, not only is Mrs. Deagle uncaring about the plight of the less fortunate but so is Gerald, who mocks Billy after the scene between him and her at the bank, saying that, unlike the more understanding Mr. Corben, he

would have fired him in a second, and rubs it in Billy's face that, while he has to support his family, he himself on his way to becoming a millionaire by the time he turns thirty. He also makes a snide remark when Kate turns him down for a date because she says she's going to be working at the tavern, saying, "Why don't you tell Dory you're sick? He can't dock your pay." And yet, going back to Mrs. Deagle, we see that life isn't exactly rosy for her, as she lives alone in her big mansion, with

only her many cats to keep her company. What's more, you see that in her previous appearances, she'd dolled herself up with makeup, a wig, and expensive clothes. This pathetic side of her culminates in how, when she's faced with the gremlins, she thinks they're otherworldly beings who've come specifically for her, suggesting that she's always had a sense that, like Scrooge himself, her miserly ways would come back to haunt her.

All of the misery and personal pain the characters are going through are heightened all the more by it being Christmastime, which is sometimes a rough part of the year for people anyway. As Kate herself says, a lot of people often become depressed and suicidal around Christmas, a period that forces you to hide whatever pain you may be feeling with a veneer of happiness, as well as interact with members of your family who may open up old wounds. Like Kate, you may have a reason to actively hate Christmas and you have to either hide

it or just not celebrate the holiday at all, as she does. And then, you have the gremlins coming in and turning the holiday into the ultimate nightmare for the townspeople. The fact that they spawn from a Christmas gift is a very apt bit of symbolism, and over the course of the movie, they continually twist and pervert iconography associated with the holiday. The first time you get a good look at one, he's eating the Christmas cookies Lynn was making in her kitchen. Lynn mistakes a toy moving inside a

stocking for a gremlin hiding in there, only to be attacked by one hiding in the Christmas tree, his red eyes allowing him to blend in with the lights. A group of them dress up as carolers to terrify Mrs. Deagle, while another group attacks a guy dressed up as Santa. And during the climax in the department store, Stripe hides among toys, uses skateboards and a tricycle to escape Billy, and uses some of the stuff he finds in the store as weapons.

At the time, everybody absolutely fell in love with Gizmo, and it's not hard to see why. Personally, I think his design is cuter in the sequel, and he's also a more active character there, whereas here, he's usually either sitting somewhere or being carried around, but he is also very heartwarming here. What's impressive is how the puppetry and animatronics are not only so good that you'd swear Gizmo was a real little creature, but they, along with Howie Mandel's vocalizations, also manage to give him character. The main part of his personality is that of a very sweet and playful little critter, and his interactions with Billy and Barney are very cute, especially the latter, who often sniffs and licks him as though he were another animal. However, there are also moments where Gizmo proves to not just be a mindless cutey but also smart and even self-aware. For instance, there's one scene where Billy is playing a little electronic keyboard and Gizmo sings along with each note. Then, he plays a bunch of notes in a row and Gizmo, as if saying, "You try singing that!", responds by wobbling his head and pushing a key himself. Another little moment is when Pete says Gizmo is cute and he rolls his eyes, as if he's heard it so much that he's thinking, "Yeah, yeah!" Most importantly, he knows from the moment he gets wet and spawn some new mogwai that this isn't going to be good, as he sighs and shakes his head with a forlorn expression on his face shortly after they've come to be and have already proven themselves to be troublemakers. He also knows not to eat after midnight, turning down some food when Billy offers it to him, and when the other mogwai have cocooned themselves the next morning, he knows all too well what's about to happen, as he says, "Uh, oh!". He's clearly terrified at being left alone in the room with them and when they hatch, he's victimized and bullied by the gremlins until Billy turns up and saves him after they've thrown him down the laundry chute.

For most of the second half, Gizmo is carried around in Billy's backpack as he, and later, Kate, try to warn the townspeople before realizing they have to stop the gremlins themselves. He does still have some noteworthy moments, like when he's just as horrified by Kate's story as Billy, or the sounds and reactions he makes in the movie theater, like when you hear him singing along to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs like the gremlins and when, as they're creeping behind the movie screen, he sees a deer in the film and

exclaims, "Bambi!" But it's during the climax in the department store where Gizmo finally becomes truly proactive, as he slips away from Kate while Billy is chasing down and battling Stripe, and finds and start driving a Barbie car, having been inspired by watching a movie with Clark Gable called To Please a Lady earlier. He drives around crazily, slamming into things and bouncing all around the store, freaking out Barney when he comes across him, and ultimately crashes into the garden section,

where Stripe attempts to spawn more gremlins via a water fountain. He nearly gets shot by him but manages to open up the skylight and kill him with the rays of the rising sun. Gizmo comes out of this a bit bruised and with a slight fever, but otherwise okay. And when Mr. Wing comes by to retrieve him, Gizmo asks him to allow him to say goodbye to Billy, which he actually says, showing how much he has bonded with him.

Weirdly enough, when I was a little kid, I don't think I ever saw the moment where Pete accidentally spills water on Gizmo, causing a bunch of fuzzballs to shoot out of his back. I remember seeing the fuzzballs swelling up and getting bigger, which is the part that creeped me out, but I don't remember ever seeing the lead-up to it. In any case, this results in the birth of five more mogwai, led by the nasty and cruel Stripe. As his punkish, Mohawk-like tuft of hair would suggest, he's trouble from the very beginning. Not only does

he look mean but the first thing he does after being born is try to bite Pete's finger when he scratches his chin. Stripe also proves to be especially mean towards Gizmo, at one point spitting at him when he's sitting on the floor and having fun tooting a little horn, and it only gets worse after he and the others become gremlins. Speaking of which, Stripe goes out of his way to ensure he and the rest of his little gang go through the metamorphosis, tricking Billy into feeding them after midnight. None of the other mogwai have any distinct personalities all

their own but, rather, blindly follow Stripe and act just as nasty he is. It makes me wonder why those born from the benevolent Gizmo are like this and if most mogwai are evil, with Gizmo being one of the few exceptions. Or, could it just be due to Stripe's influence, with him starting out as the one bad egg in the bunch? I suggest that because, when Billy takes one of the mogwai to Roy Hanson and creates another in front of him, neither of them seem particularly mean. In fact, they both act like

Gizmo. And when Hanson keeps the new one in his lab in order to run some tests, everything seems okay until he takes a blood sample from his arm. The mogwai is obviously not happy about it and, when Hanson unknowingly leaves a sandwich next to his cage late at night, he has the most evil expression when he looks at it, seemingly plotting to get revenge on Hanson by becoming a gremlin.

The design of the mogwai is an inspired one in that it blends several different creatures together. It has the overall look of a kind of brown-and-white rodent, but with big ears akin to a bat's and monkey-like hands, fingers, mouth, and nose. Notably, while all of the gremlins look the same, the other mogwai are a bit distinct from each other. They aren't quite as cute as Gizmo, as there's something subtle about their faces that just feels a little off, and they do kind of look a bit different from each other. Besides Stripe, who's the most distinct one, there's

one I've always noticed who looks kind of chubby. And speaking of Stripe, they managed to make him look sinister even before he becomes a gremlin. Not only does he just look plain mean in the face but, despite being a furry little creature who makes kind of cute sounds, there's a sense of malice in his personality. An example is the way he evilly smiles when Billy is awakened by the sound of Barney howling out in the cold in the middle of the night, before pretending to go back to sleep, signifying

that he and the others definitely strung Barney up in the Christmas lights where Billy found him. And the way he whispers to the other mogwai when they manage to get Billy to go get them some food is not only suspicious but also unsettling, as you know they're up to something and you soon find out what it is.

Now we come to the part of the movie that always freaked me out as a kid: the cocoons the mogwai encase themselves in after eating after midnight. As a really young child, I didn't even understand what they were supposed to be; all I knew was that the way they looked gave me the creeps. They just look so gross, with all the slime and webbing, and their texture kind of looks like meat gone bad. But the part that really freaked me out was the scene where they hatch. I'll go into more detail about that later but, man, that scene is terrifying, especially

for a little kid. Once they emerge as full on gremlins, their only objective is to cause as much havoc as possible. They get into everything, tamper with the wiring of various machines throughout town, causing numerous accidents and deaths, torment Gizmo, and attack people by biting, scratching, and, in the case of one who attacks Lynn, actively trying to kill via strangling and other methods. They genuinely enjoy creating all this chaos due to their own warped sense of

entertainment, which also includes invading Dory's Tavern, holding Kate hostage and forcing her to serve them drinks, pigging out on beer, pretzels, and popcorn, playing arcade games, and even dancing, among other crazy and cartoonish acts. And during the third act, they take refuge inside the movie theater, where they pig out at the snack bar, invade the auditorium, and get into the projector room. It turns out that they enjoy Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and actually start singing along to Hi, Ho.

Now freed from the confines of his mogwai form, Stripe (voiced by Frank Welker) is able to be as malicious and nasty as he ever wanted to be. After Billy and Lynn manage to kill the other gremlins in his initial gang, he heads to a YMCA and jumps into the pool, spawning an entire army that invades Kingston Falls. He not only continues to be their leader, having them follow him into town once they're spawned and directs them in various forms of havoc, such as entering Mrs. Deagle's house, but he proves to be willing to kill one of his own for his amusement, like when he's playing cards and shoots a gremlin he discovers is cheating. He also has a sweet-tooth, which saves him from dying in the theater explosion, as he finds the snack bar empty and goes across the street to a department store to get more candy. And as mean and nasty as he'd been before, it's during the climax in that store where Stripe shows how dangerous he is. During Billy's pursuit of him, he throws saw-blades at him, shoots him in the arm with a small crossbow, comes at him with a chainsaw, and even attempts to shoot him with a pistol. Stripe does know who Billy is, as he says his name a couple of times, making his murderous intent all the more chilling. He also finds a water fountain in the garden section and sticks his finger in it to spawn more gremlins. And when Gizmo crashes into the section in the Barbie car, Stripe takes delight in attempting to shoot him, only for Gizmo to open the skylight and expose him to the morning sun's rays, which disintegrate him.

As cool as the mogwai look, I think the gremlins are even better, coming off as particularly well-designed and, in a way, more believable. Their look is nothing short of iconic, with their overall reptile appearance consisting of scaly skin, blackish gray color with tan stripe patterns, big ears, red eyes, clawed hands, and the small spines that line their brows and the tops of their heads. The hideous snarling, hissing, screeching and giggling sounds they make are also very memorable, and are thanks to a whole host of voice acting talent. Not only is the incomparable Welker the voice of Stripe, but you also have Michael Winslow from the Police Academy movies, Peter Cullen, Bob Bergen (who went on to be the voice of Porky Pig for the modern age), Fred Newman, Bob Holt, and even an uncredited Jim Cummings. 

As we've been alluding to, Gremlins may have been an enormous hit at the time but it certainly wasn't without its controversy, mostly from parents who took their kids to see it, believing that it was maybe going to be a slightly scarier version of E.T. (bolstered no doubt by Steven Spielberg's name being attached to it), and were shocked by how dark and downright violent it actually is. In fact, it was so violent that, along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, it led to the creation of the PG-13 rating, as it was felt both films were too

dark to be rated PG but maybe not quite enough to be rated R. Apparently, one critic saw the death of the gremlin in the microwave as a reinforcement of urban legends about pets dying in them and even Roger Ebert, who liked the movie, said he felt that scene might encourage children to do stuff like that to their pets. (I could be naive, but I don't think the vast majority of children are as demented as Ebert apparently thought they were. What child would want to do that to a cat or dog they love? An animal that they hate, maybe, but a beloved pet?)

Going back to the parents' reactions, I wonder if they saw the trailer for the film, which doesn't blatantly show Gizmo or any of the gremlins but doesn't make it look like a kid-friendly movie, either. That said, I've heard that other advertisements at the time showed Gizmo and overlooked the gremlins, so maybe that was what was so misleading. I'm definitely sure the merchandising, which likely had Gizmo all over it (such as stuffed Gizmo toys, which my paternal grandmother actually had at one point, and those storybooks with records that you could get at Hardee's, which my maternal grandmother had), contributed to the confusion. Now, I don't think anyone would argue that Gremlins is definitely NOT a kids' picture but, as I've said, I think kids nowadays are likely sophisticated enough to know it's not real and could probably handle it.

One bit of controversy that makes me roll my eyes is that some people saw racism in the movie. They called the gremlins unflattering stereotypes of African-Americans because they eat fried chicken with their hands, listen to black music, break-dance, and wear sunglasses at night, as well as newsboy caps (which was apparently a common style among African-Americans around that time). I get so sick of people trying to start something by looking for cultural insensitivity, like when they said that Jar Jar Binks is a stereotype of Jamaicans

Let me ask a question: how do a bunch of scaly, slimy monsters count as stereotypes of anybody, let alone African-Americans? Is it because their skin is dark in color? Do their floppy ears remind you of dreadlocks (again, going back to Jar Jar)? Maybe I'm just an ignorant white guy but , personally, I find the idea that someone would see scaly little monsters as caricatures of African-Americans to be insulting and racist in and of itself. If you're going that route, you might as well say that the scene where Roy Hanson gets killed by the gremlin in the school is promoting black on black violence. 

Another reading of the film that I do find interesting, though, is that it's a statement against technology, given how Rand's inventions are constantly failing, Mr Wing disapproves of Western civilization and society, being particularly disgusted about television and the idea that the Peltzers may have gotten Gizmo into the habit of watching it, and, of course, the gremlins constantly destroy and mess with machines, which is to say nothing of the last line: a warning from Rand that, if anything mechanical in your house breaks down,

there might be a gremlin in your midst. Another analysis is that the depictions of violence are a meant as a statement that Westerners take too much entertainment from it, and also that, rather than just African-Americans, the gremlins are a means of satirizing and commenting on different aspects of society, with them being variously depicted as teenagers, the wealthy, and even fans of Disney. Definitely unique ways of looking at the movie, although none of this crossed my mind until I read up on it.

You really can't stress enough how amazing and, in various ways, groundbreaking these special effects were for the time, as they really pushed the art of puppetry and creature animatronics to its very limits. What's impressive is not just the effects themselves but how many different ones they employed: they had rod puppets, marionettes, puppets fixed to surfaces to be controlled from below, and big mogwai and gremlin faces for the extreme close-ups, particularly for those involving Gizmo in order to get the emotion on his face.

Sometimes, they would transfer from one type of puppet to another in the same shot, like a scene where Billy takes Gizmo into the bathroom to put a bandage on him after he hurts himself. Zack Galligan walks in carrying one puppet, puts him down, and then, when the camera pans down to show Gizmo sitting on the counter, it's a different, more articulated puppet. What's also amazing is the increasing scale of creatures they'd have onscreen at once. You go from having a big group of mogwai to scenes like in Dory's Tavern and the

movie theater where you have dozens and even hundreds of gremlins onscreen. As Joe Dante said on one of the audio commentaries, they wouldn't even attempt to do this kind of movie in that manner nowadays, and as much as I can understand why, as Chris Walas has said how this movie nearly killed him and his artists because it was so hard, it still sucks to think that, which makes the movie all the more of a special treat. 

The gremlins themselves are where the effects really shine, as you fully believe these are real, living, breathing creatures. There are a few wonky moments with them, like when you can see the rod in one's arm when he's throwing stuff at Lynn in her kitchen and how limited their movements are in some shots, but, for the most part, they're awesome. Gizmo and the mogwai, however, are bit more mixed. In the close-ups of their faces and in some medium shots, they look convincing, but in the shots where there are bunch of mogwai onscreen,

they come off more like stiff puppets. There are also parts where Billy is holding Gizmo and it's painfully obvious it's just a stuffed toy, and some of the faces he makes look very artificial and don't fit with those he made before, due no doubt to their being various different puppets. According to Walas and company, the mogwai puppets were frustrating because of their small size and they tended to break a lot, which is why they had that scene where the gremlins put Gizmo on a dartboard and throw stuff at him as a way of releasing their pent up frustration with him.

Other cool effects Walas and his crew managed to pull off include the scene where Gizmo multiplies, which is very eerie and downright disturbing, with the shot of his back bubbling and steaming, and then the little fuzzballs that pop out of him slowly swelling up and inflating until they grow into fully formed mogwai (you can tell they just recycle the same shot of the one puppet again and again). The same goes for the cocoons, not just in the way they look but how they pulsate and expel steam and a green glow from within them when they hatch.

Despite the PG-rating, the movie is known for being quite violent at points, like when the one gremlin explodes in the microwave and how Stripe hideously disintegrates and melts when he's exposed to the rays of the sun at the end, with even his skeleton deflating into bubbling goo (both of those moments are awesome, by the way). And speaking of Stripe, when he attempts to create more gremlins via the fountain at the end, the effect of his back bubbling into hives that starts to break open is wonderfully disgusting, and is something Rick Baker would improve upon exponentially in the sequel.

For the shot where you see Stripe leading his newly-formed army of gremlins into town, they used stop-motion animation, and it's effectively eerie for that moment. Visual effects-wise, they probably used some matting for the big wide-shots of all the gremlins in the theater, and the final shot of Mr. Wing walking off down the road is a beauty, with the background shot of the town and the moon in the sky with a few clouds passing around it. And in the scene in the theater where the gremlins chase

after Billy and Kate when they see them on the other side of the screen, they did some animation for the gremlins' silhouettes when they charge at the screen from behind and it looks really cool and uncanny.

As I said in the introduction, for the first 25 minutes, Gremlins seems like it's going to be a heartwarming, child-friendly fantasy movie. The opening in Chinatown is a bit mysterious in the way the setting and Mr. Wing's shop is depicted, but it's also whimsical and funny, with Rand trying to sell Mr. Wing his little invention called the "bathroom buddy," a bunch of different utensils like a toothbrush, toothpick, and even toenail clippers placed into this little box as a means of

getting rid of the need for heavy luggage. When he tries to demonstrate its usefulness, hinting at how you could brush your teeth right there on a bus, he squirts himself with toothpaste. This becomes a running gag throughout the movie, as you see various other inventions of his that don't work, like a chicken-shaped egg cracker that can barely do what it's supposed to, an orange peeler-juicer machine that goes haywire and completely covers the kitchen, a card-dealing machine that shoots a

bunch of cards out at once while Rand is fiddling with it, a variation on the bathroom buddy that squirts him in the face with shaving cream, and a "smokeless ashtray" that doesn't work well for the person he sells it to. In any case, he finds Gizmo in the back of the store and, after Mr. Wing refuses to sell him, his grandson arranges to sell him to Rand behind his back. Although the grandson's warnings about the rules necessary for taking care of a mogwai do hint at something sinister if they're broken, the movie continues with this whimsical,

family-friendly tone by getting into the spirit of Christmas, as the first half of the opening credits are played over a montage of the citizens of Kingston Falls preparing for the holiday, as the song, Christmas (Baby, Please, Come Home), plays. There's some humor in how Billy is introduced through his car refusing to start, forcing him to walk to work, and with Mr. Futterman being introduced by talking about his disdain for foreign cars and how home-made machines, like his Kentucky harvester, are the best. And although she's shown to be horribly cruel, Mrs. Deagle is portrayed in an over-the-top, cartoonish manner, accentuated by Jerry Goldsmith's motif for her.

Billy being presented with Gizmo as an early Christmas present makes the movie appear to be in the vein of E.T. After a bit of shock when Gizmo first jumps out of his box, he's slowly revealed in all of his cute glory as he pulls himself up, and Billy picks him up and cuddles him in his arms, which is so adorable (a nice little touch is Gizmo reacting to Barney coming up and licking one of his ears). But, when Gizmo freaks out at the flash of a camera, Rand tells Billy the rules, again

hinting at some darkness to come. Regardless, we get the moment where Billy and Gizmo play with a little electronic keyboard. Billy then puts a Santa Claus hat on Gizmo's head, but when he pulls up a mirror to show him his reflection, Gizmo is freaked out by the reflection of the light and falls off the desk and into a wastebasket. Though funny, when Billy pulls him out, he sees Gizmo hurt himself and takes him into the bathroom and bandages up his little head. They then go to bed and you see Gizmo

let out an adorable little yawn as he lays in his small bed next to Billy's. The next morning, Pete comes by to deliver a tree the Peltzers, while upstairs, Gizmo watches To Please a Lady on the TV, being particularly taken with the racing scenes. Billy and Pete go upstairs and Pete is introduced to Gizmo. Pete, of course, thinks Gizmo is a cool little thing, and Billy picks Gizmo up and takes him over to his table, saying he might be able to get him to sing.

Where the movie starts to take a dark turn, though, is when Pete, while going to pick Gizmo up, accidentally spills water from a jar of paintbrushes onto him. Watching Gizmo squirm and scream as his back bubbles and the furballs pop out is rather disturbing, as he he looks like he's in genuine pain, and like I said earlier, the image of those furballs swelling up until each of them forms into a new mogwai is really strange and unsettling. Even though it's led to the creation of five more cute

mogwai, there's the sense that something isn't right, given the way they look and how Stripe immediately proves to be a mean little bugger when he tries to bite Pete's finger. From there, things get more sinister, with Stripe and the new batch proving to be something of a gang, and with Billy finding Barney hanging up in the Christmas lights outside in the cold, while Stripe smiles evilly as he sleeps with the other mogwai in their own bed. Then, the next day, Billy takes one of the new

mogwai to Roy Hanson at the elementary school, creates a new one with a drop of water, and allows him to keep one to run some tests. Significantly, Mr. Futterman tells Billy and Kate about supposed gremlins that caused havoc during World War II and claims other countries still ship them over in the machinery. The creepiness ratchets up as that one mogwai does not appreciate having some of his blood drawn, while over at the Peltzer home, the mogwai, aside from Gizmo, demand food. Billy, seeing that his clock says 11:35, gives them some

leftover chicken from the refrigerator. (When I was a little kid, I thought they turned into gremlins because you're not supposed to let them eat chicken!) I always found the moment where they gobble down the chicken, with a bunch of grease and meat sticking to their faces and fur to be really gross (Gizmo agrees, seeing as how he goes, "Yuck!", when he looks over at them). And then, at the school, the mogwai Hanson is keeping eyes the sandwich he unknowingly leaves near his cage, with the clock in the background of one shot

revealing that it's actually 2:00. Once Hanson leaves, the mogwai reaches out through the cage, pulls the sandwich towards him, and starts munching on it offscreen. Back at the Peltzer house, Billy and Gizmo, in a nice bit of foreshadowing by Joe Dante, fall asleep watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Not only had the seed pods been featured earlier, but they doze off to Kevin McCarthy's frantic warnings of, "They're here already! You're next!" And as the screen fades to black, you can hear the mogwai laughing.

We now switch gears into full-blown horror for a bit when Billy wakes up the following morning to find that the mogwai have gone into the cocoons, and when he shows them to Lynn, he also discovers that his clock still reads 11:25. Checking the cord, he finds the end has been ripped apart. He and Pete then visit Hanson and learn that his mogwai has cocooned himself in his cage. As he cuts the cage open, Hanson explains that the creature is going through a metamorphosis inside.

There's also a short moment where, as Lynn talks with Rand at the inventors convention (as somebody walks Robby the robot by him and the prop from The Time Machine is visible in the background, he notes that the competition is a little more advanced that he expected; I used to think it was a science fiction convention and those were just props, but I have a feeling that the gag is that those are actual inventions that blow his out of the water), we see the cocoons starting to move up in

Billy's bedroom. And then, we come to the scene that's pure nightmare fuel for a young kid. In his lab at school, Hanson shows his class an old educational film about the heart and the pumping of blood (said film is called Hemo the Magnificent), and as it goes on, the camera slowly pulls back through the room and pushes in on the box containing the mogwai cocoon. As it does, you can hear a beating sound that's not coming from the film, and we then cut to inside the box, as the cocoon pulsates and splits open, expelling steam

and a green glow. The same thing is happening over at the Peltzer house, as the cocoons in Billy's room hatch, while a terrified Gizmo takes cover in a helmet on the floor. The sight of those pulsating, steaming cocoons is made all the more freakish by Goldsmith's screeching version of the Gremlins theme, and you also get your first glimpse of one of the creatures as his clawed hands rip through his cocoon. Back in Hanson's classroom, the box rattles and expels steam, before falling off the counter and onto the floor. Hanson is the only who

notices this, and when the bell rings, he dismisses his class for the Christmas holiday (since it's Christmas Eve, I'd expect them to already be on vacation; I guess times were different back then). Pete tries to ask him something but he ignores him and makes him leave with the rest of the kids. Once they're all gone, he finds the now empty cocoon on the floor and calls and tells Billy at the bank, while back in Billy's room, Gizmo is now surrounded by the newly-hatched gremlins.

Hanson returns to his lab and closes the door. He switches off the film projector and talks to the gremlin who's hiding somewhere in there, telling him he has a candy bar for him. The projector switches back on and he hears the sound of glass breaking and the creature skittering around the room, and sees a small table jostle from him banging into it. He tracks the gremlin to under his desk and tries to lure him out so he can see him with the promise of the candy bar. He reaches

under the desk with it and the gremlin does munch into it, saying, "Yum, yum." However, Hanson then screams when the gremlin either bites or grabs onto his arm. That's when Billy arrives, and when he goes into the lab, he finds Hanson dead on the floor, a syringe sticking out of his right buttock and his torso dragged under the desk. Seeing this, Billy tries to go for the phone on his desk, only for the gremlin to reach up and scratch him across his hand. He recoils from this and watches the gremlin

reach his hand out from under the desk, grab an apple, and bite into it, only to not like the taste and throw it back. He does the same thing with a glass test tube, before escaping through an air vent in the wall behind the desk. Billy goes to the infirmary to take care of the scratches on his hand and, when he leans up against some upper cabinets, we get our first real glimpse at what the gremlins look like when the one leans out of the cabinet and screeches at him. He then throws a bunch of stuff at Billy before escaping by smashing his way through the

door and running off, laughing evilly. Meanwhile, at the Peltzer house, Lynn hears a commotion upstairs, which is shown to be the gremlins throwing darts at Gizmo after putting him on a dartboard. Grabbing a knife, she makes her way up there, while the gremlins toss Gizmo down the laundry chute. When she reaches Billy's room, she finds that the cocoons have hatched. Billy's phone rings and when she answers, he warns her to get out of the house. But, one of the gremlins rips out the phone line, growling, "Phone home, ca ca!"

After being disconnected from Billy, Lynn then hears the song, Do You Hear What I Hear?, playing on the record player downstairs, which is an effectively terrifying moment, making her realize she's alone in a house full of little monsters (I've never been able to hear that song without thinking of this movie).

While Billy rushes home, Lynn finds her record player with some three-toed footprints on the dusty box next to it. She turns the music off, when something is thrown at her and shatters on the wall next to her. In a truly suspenseful and creepy moment, she heads back towards her kitchen, looking down one hallway, only to miss the shadow of a gremlin watching her from nearby on the wall. This leads into the moment where the gremlins are first seen in full, with the one

munching on her Christmas cookies. When he then sticks his head into the mixer to lick up the batter, she kills him turning it on and slicing him up. Another attacks by throwing plates at her, but she manages to use a folding tray as a shield and then stabs him repeatedly with her knife, impaling him to the counter. After that, she kills another by forcing him into the microwave and using it to blow him up. Hearing more gremlins laughing in the living room, she arms herself with a pair of

knives and creeps in there (if you look in the back, you can see that one gremlin is still alive and trying to pull the knife out of his midsection). That's when she mistakes a toy moving inside a stocking for one of them, only to get attacked by one that's hiding in a Christmas tree. He manages to pin her down with the tree, dodge her swipes and stabs with the knives, and bites and scratches at her, while Stripe watches from nearby. By the time Billy makes it home, the gremlin is trying to strangle Lynn with a section of rope from the tree.

He grabs one of the two decorative swords they have hanging by the front door and whacks the gremlin, sending him flying into the fireplace and leading to the horrific sight of his screaming head burning within it. Stripe appears near the window and, after blowing his nose, smashes through the window and takes off, laughing like the little maniac he is. Billy takes his mom to a local doctor and returns to the house, where he finds Gizmo in the laundry chute. He puts him in a backpack, while at the convention, Rand tries to call home, as Robby the robot stands outside his booth, saying various lines of dialogue from Forbidden Planet.

Billy and Gizmo track Stripe to a local YMCA, where he messes with the building's fire alarm bell. Billy tries to get at him but he flies out of a circuit breaker panel, scratches Billy across the chest, and then jumps into the swimming pool, which starts bubbling with steam, fills with a green glow, and emits a blinding flash. Realizing what's happening, Billy grabs Gizmo and runs for it, as the sound of the screeching, newly-formed gremlins gradually fills the auditorium. Billy goes to the police station and futilely tries to warn Sheriff Reilly and Deputy

Frye, while the gremlins invade the town. Their attack on Kingston Falls is where the movie begins to shift from horror to cartoon-like craziness. The scene where they nearly kill Mr. Futterman and his wife, Sheila, is pretty terrifying. Mr. Futterman is sitting at home, watching a Christmas episode of Red Skelton on TV, when the signal starts messing up. He groans about it being a foreign TV, but unbeknownst to him, the gremlins are hanging off the antenna on the roof (there's a subtle but funny moment where it briefly switches to a movie in

French and he mutters, "Foreign," in aggravation). Deciding to go out and see if the antenna blew down, he walks out and looks up at the roof to see the antenna is rather bent. He then hears the sound of gremlins in his garage and goes to investigate, only to hear the sound of his Kentucky harvester's engine turning over. Driving it, the gremlins come smashing through and chase him right through his front door, cornering him and Sheila in the back of the living room. Before they're seemingly crushed,

Mr. Futterman sees the gremlins and screams about their driving his plow. Their antics now start to become downright funny, like when the local minister tries to mail some letters, only for a gremlin inside the mailbox to not like the taste of them and spit them back out. Another man, Anderson, comes by to mail a package, but the gremlin inside grabs his arm and won't let go. Elsewhere, another one messes with the traffic lights and causes a crash. 

The cartoony factor is cranked up even more when the gremlins come across Mrs. Deagle's home (I like when Stripe reads her name on the sign and says it repeatedly). While she comes downstairs to feed her many cats, one of the gremlins slips inside through the cat flap in the door. Hearing what sounds like Christmas carolers outside, the miserly old woman, calling them, "Screechy-voiced, little glue-sniffers," goes to throw a pitcher of water at them, only to step dead when she sees the gremlins standing out on her lawn, singing their own

leitmotif. She screams and runs back inside, locking up the door, while the gremlin that is inside fiddles with the controls on her stair-lift. Panicking and yelling, "They're here! Oh, they've come for me!", she gets on the stair-lift and hits the button, only to get launched up her tall, winding staircase and blows out the top window in the front of her house, crashing near where Sheriff Reilly and Deputy Frye pull up. As they sit in shock over what they just saw, a gremlin gets underneath them and tears up their police car's brake lines. Then,

Dave Meyers, a man who dresses up as Santa Claus every year, comes stumbling out of a house, with gremlins all over him. He collapses right beside the car and both Reilly and Frye get a good look at the little monsters. They take off in their car, as more madness happens around them, while at his own house, Pete uses a slingshot to fend off a bunch of gremlins climbing up towards his bedroom window. He also uses a pair of scissors to cut loose a gremlin hanging from a line of

Christmas lights above his window. Reilly and Frye then crash when a pickup truck pulls out in front of them and they're unable to stop. They hit the truck on its side, sending it crashing through a storefront, where it explodes, as a gremlin watches and laughs maniacally. Billy and Gizmo, meanwhile, make it back to Billy's car at his house and, for once, the usually unreliable car actually starts. As Billy drives, he hears Pete call the local DJ, Rockin' Ricky Rialto, and tell him about the gremlins. Ricky doesn't believe him, telling the listeners he's tired of, "All this Orson Welles crap," when Billy and Gizmo hear the sound of gremlins breaking into his recording studio and attacking him.

The next two major scenes are the most insane in the film, confirming that this is now a live-action cartoon. One is the big sequence at Dory's Tavern, as the gremlins completely trash it and hold Kate hostage, forcing her to serve them drinks and food. There's so much stuff that goes on in this one scene. There are gremlins drinking beer (one guzzles straight from the tap, with his belly expanding), smoking and singing drunkenly, eating popcorn and pretzels, playing a Star Wars arcade game, playing cards, one hanging from the blades

of a ceiling fan as it spins him around, and one gremlin bowling with beer bottles and the cue-ball, using a mallet to smack it towards them. There's the notorious flasher gremlin, gremlins messing with a boombox, one of whom says, "Hey, what's happenin'," another sitting all by himself in a moment that feels out of an old film noir, a gremlin break-dancing, and stuff straight out of Loony Tunes, like the one gremlin bashing another on the head with a mallet when he annoys him with some hand puppets and another sticking his finger into an electrical

socket and getting electrocuted, while another sprays him with a fire extinguisher. The scene continuously becomes crazier, with gremlins throwing bottles at each other and passing out drunk at the bar. (There's so much going on that I'm sure I messed some stuff.) When Kate goes to light one's cigarette, he recoils from the lit match (how were they lit to begin with?), and she gets an idea. Grabbing a camera, she starts flashing the light in their faces, causing them to back off so she can jump the bar

and head for the exit. In the middle of this, she turns the ceiling fan on to max speed, flinging the one gremlin off and sending him crashing into a neon sign, where he sticks horizontally. At the door, Kate is cornered by a gremlin wearing a ski mask and wielding a pistol. She tries to repel him as well, but her camera jams. She ducks right before he fires a shot, when Billy pulls up to the front and uses his car's headlights to repel the gremlin, allowing Kate to run out the door. The

two of them attempt to drive off but, like before, the car won't start, forcing them to run for it. That's when you see the town is in complete chaos, with people running about either with gremlins on them or in a panic, people in windows getting attacked, and lights exploding all around. The two of them take cover in the bank, which has already been ransacked and destroyed.

While not quite as wild, the scene in the theater is still pretty crazy. It starts out hauntingly eerie, with Billy and Kate walking back out into the street, which is now suddenly dead silent, with no sign of the gremlins. Billy figures they've gathered somewhere dark and he and Kate head for the theater, which is revealed to be full of all of them. The majority of them are in the auditorium, with one hanging from the ceiling before falling off, while others are messing around in the projection booth, fiddling with the projector and the film reels

(one laughs when another gets caught up in the rotating reels). They manage to get the film going and it comes up on the "Hi, Ho" scene from Snow White, which the gremlins are instantly taken with and start singing and rocking back and forth to it (there's even a brief glimpse of a gremlin wearing Mickey Mouse ears). Seeing that they're distracted by it, Billy and Kate sneak into the boiler room in the back, while Stripe is shown going up front to get more snacks and then heading across the street to a department store. Billy and Kate set the place

to blow by releasing the gas from the boiler and then leaving behind a burning rag. When they escape out the back, they're spotted by the gremlins, who rip through the movie screen and chase them to the exit. They just manage to get out ahead of them and close the door on their hands, with Billy putting a crate up against the door for good measure. They run for cover down the street and hide behind an abandoned car, when the theater explodes. You see various gremlins burning and dying, and there's even a quick glimpse of a gremlin in a surgeon's mask holding a big knife! (What was that all about?) Stripe also sees the explosion and hisses angrily at it. He's then spotted by Billy and Kate and quickly retreats back into the store.

The climactic battle with Stripe itself shifts back and forth from being cartoony and slapsticky to pure horror. Billy has Kate take Gizmo and go find a way to switch on the lights in the store, while he grabs a baseball bat and goes looking for Stripe. There's genuine suspense when he roams the dark store, at one point smashing a television when Stripe's face appears on it, and then goes into the toy department, where Stripe watches him from behind some stuffed animals (there's a nice touch of him hiding behind an E.T. doll, making for a sort

of sinister twist on E.T. hiding among toys in that movie). After that is when Stripe throws saw blades at Billy, slicing the head off a mannequin, but that's then offset by the sight of him escaping on a small tricycle. Stripe ambushes Billy in the next department, throwing and shooting balls at him, getting him in the arm with a crossbow, and then coming at him with a chainsaw, which Billy has to fend off with his bat. Were it not for Kate finally finding the circuit breaker and switching on the lights, Stripe might have killed him. Instead,

he's repelled by the lights, the chainsaw drags him across the floor, and he bonks his head against the wall, accompanied by the sound of twittering birds. But, it also dragged him near the garden section and its water fountain, which Kate accidentally turned on while trying to find the lights. In the midst of all this, Gizmo found the Barbie car and starts driving it around, already proving he's a terrible driver by crashing through a display of boxes (my mom always gushes over this part). Also, Rand finally makes it back to town, and Barney, sensing something's wrong, jumps out of the car and runs into the department store. He comes across Gizmo, who's slamming into everything in his path.

Having grabbed a gun and reached the fountain, Stripe fires on Billy when he enters the garden section, then climbs up and sticks his finger into the water, beginning the multiplication process (although, he was clearly already wet before that). After a funny moment when Gizmo drives up behind Barney, causing him to jump, you see that Stripe's back is beginning to bubble and sprout new gremlins. Gizmo ends up in the garden section when he drives up a shovel and crashes into the back of it, complete with a crash sound effect from the Loony

Tunes cartoons. Stripe takes the opportunity to try to kill Gizmo with his gun, only for Gizmo to pull open the skylight and let the morning sun's rays fill the room up. Exposed to them, Stripe horrifically disintegrates and melts, which Rand shows up in time to see. Stripe's corpse falls into the water at the base of the fountain, while Billy picks up Gizmo and has Rand wrap him up in his scarf. Billy walks over to the fountain, likely wondering if Stripe is truly dead, and there's a jump scare where his skeleton suddenly lunges out of the water, before collapsing to the floor and disintegrating into a puddle of bubbling goo.

The final cherry on this sundae of a movie is Jerry Goldsmith's great score which, like the movie itself, alternates between out and out horror, comedy, and warmth. The actual theme suits the film and the gremlins themselves perfectly, sounding kind of freakish but also energetic and mischievous all at the same time. It's introduced gradually throughout the movie, first playing in a subtle manner after the other mogwai have been spawned, then becoming more noticeable in scenes like when Billy shows the mogwai to Roy Hanson, sounding absolutely screechy and nightmarish when the cocoons hatch, and finally starts hitting its full strength during the second half. The main version of the theme is heard when the gremlins hijack Mr. Futterman's plow and, of course, it plays over the ending credits. Goldsmith also added a number of gremlin-esque, howling sound effects to the score that are particularly unnerving to listen to, as well as a came up with a certain of actiony variation on the main theme that plays during some of the more fast-paced moments, like when the gremlins chase Billy and Kate through the theater. Gizmo has his own theme which is actually this little song he often sings, which Goldsmith orchestrates at various points, sometimes for other moments like when it's clear there's a sweet, loving connection between Billy and Kate. Wherever it's used, it's a piece that nicely captures the warm and innocent parts of this story. Goldsmith also emphasizes the all-American feel of Kingston Falls with this very cheery theme for the townspeople, which you hear over the latter half of the opening credits, while Mrs. Deagle gets an over-the-top, nasty-sounding theme that gets down to how miserly she is. There are also some soft, foreboding, atmospheric pieces here and there, like what you hear when Kate tells Billy her story, and when they wander outside when all suddenly grows quiet, Goldsmith plays an eerie little version of Silent Night.

Gremlins is both one of the best Christmas horror films and among the best horror-comedies ever made. While I don't think it's appropriate for very small children, I think older kids to adults have loved it since its release in 1984 for good reason. It has a cast of likable characters, memorable creatures in Gizmo, the mogwai, and the gremlins, it's beautifully shot, has good production values, the practical creature effects are impressive both for their variety and sheer amount, Jerry Goldsmith's score is awesome, and is not afraid to go into some places that other Christmas-oriented movies shy away. Most notably, it combines so many tones rather effortlessly, while keeping a look and feel reminiscent of the good old Hollywood golden age and past Christmas movies like It's a Wonderful Life. Aside from some occasional flubs in the special effects and the mogwai puppets not always being the best, I have no issues with it and it will always be one of those great memories from my early childhood. I may not have been able to say that at the time or even when I was an older kid, as I was still a bit freaked out by it, but now, I can truly say that I'm glad this little gem was part of my life from an early age. I love it to death.