Gremlins (1984)
–You do with mogwai what your society… has done with all of nature’s gifts. You do not understand.
Welcome to the first day of my Christmas movie reviews. For the next three weeks, I’ll be reviewing some favorite Christmas classics. On Mondays, though, I’m looking at films set at Christmas that are not your normal holiday fare. Gremlins is part good-feeling Christmas special and part monster movie. It came out in the summer of 1984 and along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom inspired the MPAA to create a new rating: PG-13. Gremlins will always be cemented in my mind as the only movie I saw with an older cousin, who would be dead in a couple of years, and her two small children. The kids were too young to be scared by the film, but they understood all of its comic potential. They shouted and laughed with glee at moments when older members of the audience were wincing. In their own way, they understood the movie better than any of us because Gremlins is, in so many ways, a dark comedy.
Hoyt Axton plays Rand Peltzer, a loveable but eccentric inventor, who is visiting Chinatown trying to sell some of his products and find the perfect Christmas present for his son, Billy. He doesn’t succeed with selling his Bathroom Buddy, but he does find an amazing gift – a creature called a mogwai. The mogwai is brown and white and fuzzy with big ears and big eyes. It trills and hums and mimics humans and is absolutely adorable. Of course, Rand wants to buy it, but the Chinese gentleman who owns the shop refuses. His grandson is not so reticent and secretly sells the mogwai, who Rand dubs Gizmo. There are three rules carefully explained to Rand. Never put the mogwai in the light. Never get him wet. Never, ever feed him after midnight. Well, the principles of storytelling allow us to know from the beginning that all three rules are going to be broken. The fun is in seeing how they are and what consequences result.
Gremlins is brimming with references to other movies; in fact, the characters frequently watch classic films like It’s a Wonderful Life, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and To Please a Lady. While attending an inventors’ convention, Rand encounters Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet. One of the most enjoyable aspects of Gremlins is that all of the classic film references are pertinent to the plot of the current film. Mrs. Deagle, a modern Scrooge, holds the power of foreclosure over many of the inhabitants of their small town much like Lionel Barrymore’s character in It’s a Wonderful Life. The name of the town Kingston Falls is also reminiscent of Bedford Falls. Invasion of the Body Snatchers talks about scary pods just before Billy and his mother are presented with their own, and the scene where Kevin McCarthy wildly talks to the police about the dangers lying in wait foreshadows a similar scene with Billy trying to warn Kingston Falls police about the gremlins. Gizmo watches To Please a Lady and is impressed with Clark Gable’s skill with a race car. Later, in search of the leader of the gremlins, Gizmo finds a Barbie dream car and races off with a confidence equal to the King’s. The theme of Forbidden Planet is that there are things and information that mankind is not ready to possess without risking self-destruction – just as the Chinaman (played by the wonderful Keye Luke who played Charlie Chan’s number one son back in the 1930s) points out that man is not ready for the responsibility of taking care of the mogwai.
The cast is fun with Polly Holiday as Mrs. Deagle and Dick Miller as Mr. Futterman stealing all of their scenes. Gizmo is given a wonderful vocal performance by Howie Mandel. Gremlins understands that the sounds of scampering, unseen feet is extremely creepy, but it also deals with other fears. At Christmas we often worry that something will go wrong with the presents that we give: that they won’t be liked or they won’t work or something will happen to them. It also plays into a xenophobic fear of foreign products that was common in the 1980s. Yet, for all of its manipulation of scary scenes, what makes Gremlins so entertaining is its sense of humor. The gremlins, for all of their violent tendencies, are shamelessly materialistic consumers. They love popcorn, candy, beer, poker, loud music, dancing, and movies. The scene where they terrorize Phoebe Cates in the pub is a delight in the way that the creatures appear menacing while also being very creatively funny. You have the flasher, the breakdancer, the one hanging from the ceiling fan, the too cool blues fan, and the poker game. The sequence in the movie theater where they accidentally turn on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is enchanting. For a few precious minutes, these little monsters, who love to sabotage people’s lifts, rewire traffic lights, attack people putting letters in mailboxes, and run over people with snow plows, are actually mesmerized. They start singing, “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho.” Let’s face it: gremlins are pretty much the dark side of our own ids, but even our dark sides can have a soft moment when confronted with movie magic.
