Gremlins: 3 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Mogwai

How’s it going Sweet Foods Made by Combining Ingredients such as Fruit, Nuts and Sugar (aka Confections)?

Now that Thanksgiving is over, I assume you’ve all gone out and seen ThanksKilling and avoided ThanXgiving like you’d avoid a swine-flu victim, I’m already nervous about what in the blue hell I’m going to review for Thanksgiving next year (fingers crossed that Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving film comes to fruition), and it’s time to move on to the most wonderful time of the year. I speak, of course, not of National Bouillabaisse Day (December 14) nor of National Roast Suckling Pig Day (December 18…don’t believe me on these two holidays? Check out THIS website), but rather, of Christmas Day. Of course, it’s easy enough to find Christmas-themed horror movies and I’m not going to reinvent the wheel or even diverge from a standard (perhaps I’ll save that for a second or even third Christmas movie review…). It is worth noting, however, that I’m a firm believer that you need to see the classics first. I mean, you have to compare everything to SOMETHING, thus I present to you my personal gold-standard for Christmas films: Gremlins. Jack Frost, Black Christmas and The Nightmare Before Christmas might be considered by some to be better films in this holiday horror genre (and I know nearly every single MAN out there is screaming that Die Hard is the best Chrismtas film ever - AND if you think Jack Frost is more in line with Christmas than Gremlins, you need to pass me whatever it is that you're smoking), but Gremlins is far and away my personal favorite.

We begin with voice-over narration from Randy Peltzer. He’s in Chinatown to try to sell some inventions (he’s an inventor of debatable skill and negligent success) and browsing the shops looking for a Christmas present for his son. He gets taken to an interesting (to say the least) little shop in the basement of a building by a small child. This child ends up being the grandson of the owner (the owner is played by Keye Luke a formidable television actor who also leant his vocie to the American version of Godzilla Raids Again as the dub for Tsukioka), and seems to be the only one of the two (grandfather and grandson) who realizes that they need to make some money or they may not have a store (or a home) for much longer.

See, in a darkened corner of the store, Randy has come across an item he is incredibly interested in. It’s called a mogwai, and it’s an incredibly adorable creature. When Randy looks at him, the mogwai starts singing a hauntingly beautiful song. Randy offers first one then two hundred dollars for the mogwai, but the old man refuses, claiming that with the mogwai comes too much responsibility to entrust to just anybody. The kid tells Randy to wait out in the alley and meets him out there a moment later. He hands him a rather ornate box with the mogwai inside and gives him three rules to follow.

Pay attention pastries! These are IMPORTANT and you just know that every single one of them will be broken by the end of the movie (and in fact, they are all broken well before then). Number one – The mogwai hates bright light so keep him in darker rooms; sunlight will actually kill him. Number two – Never get him wet. Don’t give him water to drink, and definitely do not give him a bath. Number Three and MOST IMPORTANT – Never, ever feed the mogwai after midnight, no matter how much he begs (this being the only rule that really seems illogical…midnight in which time zone? It’s actually a rule that gets mocked in the sequel).

During the credits, we are whisked away to the fictional town of Kingston Falls, wherein Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan whom you may recognize from Waxwork) is having difficulty starting his car on his way to work. His neighbor, Murray Futterman (played by Dick Miller, who’s career would entail such unforgettable roles as the gun clerk in The Terminator, and one of the garbage men in The ‘burbs) heckles him a bit about how it’s because it’s a foreign car (not sure if this scene was as funny in the 80s as it is today) and Billy decides he and Barney, his dog, are going to walk to work.

At work, Billy ties Barney up to the desk and Katie (Phoebe Cates, post-Fast Times at Ridgemont High but pre-Drop Dead Fred) comes over to have him sign a petition to save a local business from the proverbial claws of Mrs. Deagel, a bitter old husk of a woman who evidently has some power and is somehow connected to the bank itself. She’s come to the bank to chew bubble gum and kick ass and she’s all out of bubble gum (wait, wasn’t that King Kong in King Kong vs. Godzilla? No…it was “Rowdy” Roddy Piper who said it in They Live and THAT makes two reviews in a row that I've "mistakenly" said that). What she’s really come to do is threaten Barney’s life because she believes he broke one of her Christmas decorations. This is the type of person I’ve never known to exist in real life, perhaps because I live in the real world and not a small town where a horrible excuse for a human being who happens to have money can just do whatever they want without being told they are about two seconds away from being punched in the throat.

That night, Gerald (Judge Reinhold of Stripes and The Santa Clause) stops by a bar Billy frequents to remind him of just how much of a loser he is. We also get to see some of the budding romance between Billy and Kate before Billy goes home where his mother (Frances Lee McCain of Back to the Future and Scream) is preparing some Chrismtas goodies. That’s when dad comes home with his present.

We get our first look at the mogwai and he could not be cuter if he was wearing a diaper. Randy explains that he’s been calling the mogwai Gizmo, and we get a glimpse of the creature’s intelligence (he calls the dog “woof woof” and seems to smile at the name Gizmo). That’s when mom takes a Polaroid of Billy with his new pet. Gizmo freaks out about “Bright light! Bright light!” and Randy explains the three rules.

That night Billy and Gizmo bond. Gizmo teaches Billy his song, and Billy tends to Gizmo when he accidentally gets hurt by falling off the desk. Throughout all of these scenes we are witness to an array of failed and half-working inventions by Randy.

The next morning Pete (Corey Feldman of The Lost Boys, The Goonies and Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter, among many, many others) drops off the Christmas tree for the Peltzers and is introduced to Gizmo. Oh, AND Pete breaks rule number two. He gets Gizmo wet. Rather than hurt the mogwai, however, the water causes Gizmo to MULTIPLY! The Peltzer’s now have a veritable army of mogwai and Randy gets the idea that perhaps they can sell tons of these as “The Peltzer Pet.” Something doesn’t seem quite right with the other mogwai, however, and they seem a bit more mean spirited than Gizmo. There is one with a stripe who seems to be the unquestioned leader of these other mogwai, and Gizmo is definitely viewed as an outsider. Billy is amazed but Gizmo seems less than impressed, in fact he seems downright depressed.

The first night that the second group of mogwai spends with Billy, something wakes him up in the middle of the night. He wakes to find Barney is not in bed with him and goes out to check. Barney has been strung up by Christmas lights and Billy KNOWS that Mrs. Deagle is responsible. We in the audience know better…(this seems as good a place as any to interject this point: while the unattentive viewer may get the feeling that all of the mogwai are bad except Gizmo, we really never see any of them being explicitly bad except for Stripe. This leads me to believe that while a GREMLIN is inherently evil, the only mogwai that is a 'bad' guy is Stripe.)

Billy decides to take one of the mogwai to his school’s science teacher for some study and examination, and on his way home he walks Kate home. On the way home, she seems unusually cynical of Christmas and when Billy confronts her with it, she gets a bit defensive. Something deeper may be at work here (and we do find out later that her Dad died on Christmas)…but Billy decides to ask out the girl with issues because, hey they tend to be freaks in bed right?

That night, the meaner mogwai are begging for some food and Billy, being the good pet owner he is, makes sure it’s before midnight before feeding them. He gives them some fried chicken and offers some to Gizmo but Gizmo refuses (trust me, this is going somewhere). The next morning, however, the mogwai are…changed. They have become odd, slightly amorphous, slimy pods. When Billy checks the clock again, he sees that it has been disconnected and thus it was more than possible that he fed the mogwai well after midnight (see? Told you it was going somewhere).

The pods ultimately do hatch and things start to get really interesting. Billy’s mom has a run in with them in the house, and she’s able to dispatch all of them (with some help from Billy) except for Stripe. Unfortunately, Stripe is a thinking-man’s gremlin and he heads to the local YMCA and jumps in the pool. A veritable army of gremlins descends upon the town.

The gremlins commit various acts of mischief, similar to the type of antics one would blame a gremlin on (messing with cars, traffic lights, etc), but they don’t stop there. They ransack the town as a whole, attack the town’s sheriff, assault the Futtermans, and even kill Mrs. Deagle (like she didn’t have it coming). The scene in which they take over the bar that Kate works at has some of the best physical comedy in the film.

In the end, Billy and Kate are able to herd the gremlins into a movie theater with the plan to burn the theater down while the gremlins watch their new favorite movie which happens to be Snow White (I still find this funny after all these years). Will this plan ultimately work or will a freak December rainstorm break out and end life as we know it? The answer is no to both, so you’ll have to actually watch the movie to see how it turns out!

Gremlins has long been criticized for being too violent, too gory, and too over-the-top (aka, right up my alley). I think this is mostly due to the Gizmo character. Gizmo is such a cute, cuddly, adorable little pet, that the gremlins seem like the worst things to have ever stalked the face of the earth by comparison. Further enhancing the criticisms of the gremlins is the fact that they seem so happy and carefree as they brutally maim or even kill somebody that you might easily confuse them with a child having fun playing with his (or her) toy cars or action figures. The most damning piece of evidence against director Joe Dante (whom I personally love, not just for this film but for his entire body of work including The Howling and even Small Soldiers) is how the gremlins are depicted in the film. Their misdeeds are almost always accompanied by upbeat or downright goofy music, and much of the time they are shown as being little more than jokesters (a lot of their antics are just zany antics and not much more). It’s this inconsistency that caused people to be revolted and horrified and to walk out of the theaters with their small children when the gremlins would go on to kill or be killed in graphically violent ways. The rigorous use of words like "B___h," "A_____e," and "S__t" may have contributed as well...

Criticized though it was (and still is), Gremlins was hugely successful. It opened the same weekend as Ghostbusters and only fell $1.1 million short of that film’s opening weekend take. It grossed over ten times its budget by the tie its first theatrical run was through. With a box office take like that, people took notice, and the number one thing they took notice of was the rather adult-oriented content of the film. It was so controversial that, along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins was one of the major contributing factors to the creation of the PG-13 rating. Watching this movie today (even knowing that PG-13 didn’t exist at the time) I find it astonishing that this film has a PG rating attached to it.

The creation of PG-13 wouldn’t be the end of Gremlins’ legacy, however…not by a long shot. The film would go on to spawn a sequel (and a totally awesome NES game), as well as a veritable slew of knock-offs. The next time you sit down to watch Troll, Munchies, Beasties, Kamillions, Spookies, Hobgoblins, Ghoulies, or Critters, you can thank (or lament) Gremlins for their development (though to a lesser extent for Critters and Ghoulies) and ultimately for their release.

So, I’ve gone into some length on how I LOVE Gremlins, the plot of the film, and its reception and legacy, but what I haven’t touched on much is why I consider this to be a Christmas film and my lead-off for reviewing Christmas films (as I alluded to earlier, it’s my hope to have one or two other Christmas movie reviews). As far as it being a lead-off, I really like this movie a lot and I feel that’s all the reason I need (plus, if you’ve never seen it, maybe this is the impetus you need to go out and do so), but its actual connection to Christmas…

Well, for one thing, it’s explicitly set around the holiday. Neighbors pick out their trees, mom bakes cookies, and the first scene in which we see gremlins is set to the song “Do you see what I see?” Also, the gremlins are often seen interacting with Christmas objects and characters (Gizmo wears a Santa hat, the gremlins attack a Santa character, the gremlins sing Christmas carols, and one of the gremlins is seen in a Santa hat late in the film).

Most importantly though, the film teaches us many of the same lessons as other Christmas films. It is better (much better) to give (a gremlin) than to receive. You most definitely should not open your gifts before Christmas, because you never know when your dad is going to give you a pet that will spawn hundreds of bloodthirsty monsters and who wants to deal with that headache right around Christmas? Also, you should attack your local Santa look-a-likes because it’s not like they have power to take presents away from you. You can be as miserable and mean as you want around the holidays, but as long as you do so with a smile on your face, nobody will accuse you of being a Scrooge and you can go about your day being miserable and do harm to others or yourself. Just remember, do it with a SMILE! Also, if the cute girl seems like she has “issues” because her dad accidentally died on Christmas, you probably should not tell her that her most recent spot of holiday trouble is essentially your fault. You may one day get married to this woman and trust me, that is NOT something you want her to be able to hold over your head twenty years from now (“I’m not going to change that diaper, after all, YOU were the one that let those monsters loose that one year.” That’s good for at least the bulk of a child’s diaper-wearing life, and I’m pretty sure we learned that lesson in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or maybe it was It’s a Wonderful Life). Finally, we have learned that it’s not a matter of your life’s worth of work, it’s what you do (and have done) in recent times that truly matters (and that is a REAL lesson to be learned by A Christmas Carol, just as it is here). Billy is generally a loser, but he becomes a hero by believing in himself and realizing he only has one life to live. You also only have one life to live and your options are: save the world, or do nothing and be worthless. As for myself, I saved the world last Christmas, you just didn’t hear about it because the liberal media didn’t want it to get out…

Well, that’s all I have for today (except to say kudos to whoever created the Gremlins theme). Go see this movie (even if you have seen it before, it’s a great one to get into the spirit). The fairy tale feel mixes really well with the horror-comedy elements and Gizmo is just awesome (and voiced by Howie Mandel, of Little Monsters and Walk Like a Man). Final Rating is below and as always, you can read about what it means and get a full list of all my reviews by clicking RIGHT HERE.