Gremlins (1984)

Director: Joe Dante

Cast: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Dick Miller

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, certainly.

Did I Like It: There are two types of Gremlins fans. The Danteians, and the Columbites. The first group will show up for the series* for the chaos of it all. They might be part Gremlins themselves, if we dared to map their genome. They may like this film, but they love Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). The Columbites view the original film as a grim exercise in suburban horror. They live for the Santa-in-the-chimney monologue. They think this film is better if Mr. and Mrs. Futterman (Miller and Jackie Joseph) died at the end of Mr. Futterman’s plow. They think the second film is silly.

Only one group is right, and you’re not going to need two guesses to find out into which camp I fall.

Sure, the rules governing the balance between Mogwai and Gremlin make no sense, and we’ll have to wait for a whole additional movie before that absurdity is embraced, but it’s not entirely this film’s fault that its sequel completely eats its lunch I can never look upon Kingston Falls and not be taken completely out of the film. It’s Hill Valley, and they’re absolutely shooting on the Universal backlot, but this film actually precedes Back to the Future (1985).

The creature effects here age poorly, but we know they do get better. That’s just six years worth of progress working against this film. If you think that I’m just being needlessly negative about the film, I think Warner Bros. tends to agree with me. Almost every promotional image of Gizmo for this film is actually an image of him from the sequel.

But even if this film is written by Chris Columbus and can’t help but reflect his ethos, Joe Dante can’t help but author some portions of the film. The villains’ collective decision to cease their reign of terror in favor of a late night screening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) is peak chaotic energy, and fundamentally makes the film a comedy, regardless of what Mr. Columbus may have typed all those years ago. Then there’s, my favorite scene when Mr. Pelzer (Axton) is calling home from the inventor’s convention. Robby the Robot (from Forbidden Planet (1956) is there. The Time Machine (from George Pal’s The Time Machine (1969) is there (and then it isn’t). It’s just a little bit of chaos leaking into the film. IS it enough to raise it above the sequel in my estimation? No, but it is an appetizer to the feast that is soon to follow.

*By the way, HBOMax, while we’re on the subject… I was promised an animated Gremlins series in 2021. Joe Dante himself was consulting with it. What happened there? The internet seems to think that it will now come some time in 2022… I guess we’ll see.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Director: Joe Dante

Cast: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, John Glover, Tony Randall

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, my yes.

Did I Like It: It is without a doubt one of my top five movies of all time. It is a strong contender for my favorite movie of all time. If you’re about to say to me that the original Gremlins (1984) is better, I don’t want to hear it.

There may be films in existence that are more deliberately created works of art. There may be stories that are crafted with more precision. But there is absolutely not one film in the century-plus existence of the format that is more in line—nay, likely created—my particular aesthetic, than Gremlins 2: The New Batch.

I love every inch of this film. I could run down the elements that light my imagination on fire, right down to something I only noticed during this screening: the guys in hazmat suits shoveling Gremlins remains into barrels. I want to know what happened to those barrels. I would go through all of those little touches, but you should really stop reading this website right now and watch the movie, regardless of whether or not you’ve never seen it before, seen it long ago, or watch it at least once every couple of years like I do.

One moment that floors me every time I see it, though, before I move on to some final thoughts. The day after Billy (Galligan) is arrested at Clamp Tower and his fiancé (Cates) bails him out, we cut to a police station. A normal film would have just given us that moment of exposition to get the two heroes back into the tower. This film spends several seconds dwelling on what appear to be a group of mime criminals being escorted from a paddy wagon. These mime have not been a part of the story up until this moment. They are not of any consequence to the rest of the story, and indeed, are never heard (or, I suppose, seen) from again. This is Joe Dante and the Gremlins aesthetic. Never let a moment go by that couldn’t be filled with a gag.

I love this movie, and you should, too.

Gremlins fandom tends to fall into two different camps, those who prefer the original, and those who know the sequel is the completely bonkers, objectively superior movie. I will immediately and irrevocably like a person less if they trash on this movie. In most cases when someone dislikes a movie I enjoy, I can rationalize that reasonable people can have different tastes. In this case, if someone does not like this movie, they are proclaiming their dislike for something so deep in my marrow, that we’ll never be the same again.