Gremlins [RSC Film Club 12]

[LimeGreenLegend 4,295]

It's December, so of course we'll be watching a Christmas movie for this month's film club.  The winning film was nominated by @Spinnaker1981, 1984's Gremlins.  Directed by Joe Dante (The Howling, Innerspace, Small Soldiers) and written by Chris Columbus (writer of The Goonies, Young Sherlock Holmes and director of Home Alone and the first two Harry Potter films), Gremlins stars Zach Galligan as Billy Peltzer, a teenager who receives a strange, but cute, new pet for Christmas.  

As long as he follows the three rules for looking after them, don't get them wet, don't expose them to light, and don't feed them after midnight, then everything will be fine.  He doesn't follow the rules.  Although it is set at Christmas, the film was released in the summer, and was a huge hit, making over $150 million on an $11 million budget.  It's currently sitting at an 84% for film critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 78% audience rating.  Despite this success, the film received a lot of criticism on release.  Despite it sitting firmly on the funnier side of its horror/comedy genre, the violence was deemed too extreme for younger children, and these complaints, along with similar complaints for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, led to the creation of the PG-13 rating by the MPAA in the US, and the 12 certificate by the BBFC in the UK.  

I haven't seen this since I was a kid, and I remember nothing about it except it freaked me out!  I can't wait to check this out and see if it holds up and, more importantly, see if it fills me with the spirit of the season  

they're watching Snow White...and they love it

Edited March 5, 2020 by LimeGreenLegend

[djw180 7,006]

I should be watching this sometime next week. Anyone with access to them, it's on TCM Sun 22nd 1:35 AM and ITV Mon 23rd 10:45 PM.

[djw180 7,006]

I thought I had seen this before but having watched it again I'm not so sure. I definitely saw the sequel at the cinema, but I think I must have just seen bits of the original or watched it in the background, because although I remember certain bits (e.g. the beginning in the shop, the microwave, Kate hating Christmas and explaining why) I don't remember most of it.

 

So I was pretty much seeing this for the first time and I think that probably effects my view of it because the most striking thing was how dated it looks. We have had other films made decades ago that don't look as dated as Gremlins does to me. This really sticks out as a cheesy 80s film, maybe it's meant to be? But I have to say I found it a bit naff. Whilst you don't expect great dialogue and performances in this sort of film some of it is a bit banal and poorly acted. I don't like animals in films, especially overly-cute ones and they don't come much more overly-cute than Gizmo with his big eyes and singing. In fact based on the way Gizmo is depicted I would have thought this was aimed at young children, but then other bits of it most certainly are not (people getting killed, gremlins being killed in gruesome ways etc.) and it had a 12 certificate in the UK.

 

I have to mention is the music. Again in other reviews of 80s films we have had, I have said I quite like the 80s music. Not with this one though. The end title music is truly awful, you could not have a better example of the worst of 80s music IMHO - I'm definitely knocking a point off for that! On the other hand, one thing I did quite like is the film references in it. We have the obvious ones of people watching It's A Wonderful life and the black & white sci-fi monster film (not sure what that was, It came from Outer Space maybe?) and of course the Gremlins watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But are there also other film references or am I reading too much into it, The Shining and Scarface perhaps? Anyway it gets the point back for these films references, those intentional or maybe not intentional.

 

The above may well be a bit over-analytical for this sort of film, but if I'm going to review a film for film club, I review it same as the other films we've had. It was OK, there was nothing better to watch on the TV on Xmas Eve when my wife and I watched this. I didn't fall asleep during it (despite it being after dinner + a couple of drinks) but I wouldn't bother watching it a again.

 

6/10

 

 

As I said above I remember the sequel being better than this, much better in fact. It would be interesting for me to watch that again and see if it still seems a lot better or that looks just as dated.

 

Wife's brief review in response to my initial thoughts - “Yes it is a bit naff, but I like that sort thing”

 

[Fido_le_muet 5,198]

Watched it at the beginning of the month. 

I had seen it several times before in my youth and I remember loving it back then. 

Now it's not quite as good as before. It's still entertaining but I agree with DJ the music is kinda annoying. I also remembered it as a kids film but a few moments are truly gore and not suited to young ones IMO. 

Acting was a bit poor but it is to be expected from a movie like this from the 80s. 

So we begin in China with some dude who wants to sell his crappy inventions to an old mysterious Chinese man. He notices some animal in a box and wants to buy it but the old man refuses but a little kid sells it in secret because he wants the money. Before that the old man told failed inventor what not to do with the animal. 

After bringing the Mogwai home, he gives it to his son Billy and explains the rules to him. It has to be mentioned that his son is a grown man and not a kid anymore. Meaning that he should be able to follow simple rules but he immediately fails one of the rules by being careless and letting one of his friends drop water on Gizmo. Even if it was accidental, he didn't pay attention at all to what his friend was doing. The Mogwai spawns 5 more Mogwai from his back and they definitely seem more trouble than Gizmo. 

Billy brings Gizmo to his science teacher and this idiot immediately drops water on Gizmo, resulting in another Mogwai. 

The clever little bastards manipulate Billy into feeding them past midnight by advancing the clock. They enter a cocoon state and emerge the day after as awful creatures who try to kill Billy's mother. She manages to kill a couple in gruesome ways but she is injured by the leader. 

Billy arrives and kill all of them but the leader who flees and jump into the local pool and immediately spawns dozens of these assholes. 

It's chaos in the little town! People are killed or tortured and suddenly the gremlins stop to watch a movie in the theater. Billy and his forgetful allies blow up the theater and kill all the gremlins but the leader who got out just before. 

He tries to find water again in a mall but he's killed by Gizmo who exposes him to sunlight. 

The old Chinese man appears out of nowhere and takes Gizmo back because these americans are absolute idiots and can't take care of a Mogwai properly. 

The end. 

Seriously I enjoyed it because it is entertaining but it is dated like DJ said and a few moments are very WTF and non sensical. The characters are absolute imbeciles and make all the wrong decisions all the time! 

But it's alright cause Gizmo is just so fricking cute! 

6/10

[Con 5,719]

Gremlins (1984)

As soon as the end credits rolled, I knew why despite all the nostalgia and fond memories of 1984, this film has never made it on any of my Favorite Lists. Now don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good things in this, take Kate's (Phoebe Cates) backstory and disdain for the Christmas holiday which was unexpectedly profound, say what I will about my childhood, but at least I didn't have a father that passed away on Christmas...that has to be awful. In my case, my step-dad for 10 years was asked by my mother to leave. I will never forget that first Christmas in his new apartment, it sucked, all those previous amazing Christmas mornings were now dead. So yeah, watching this as an adult, that is where my heart went so I thought I would love it  but one thing was clear, the original release of this was intended for children. When I watched it as a kid, the puppets didn't bother me, Gizmo's eyelids didn't bother me and neither did the puppet slapstick, but as an adult I could not help but be a bit disappointed by a few things. As always I will start with the positives...

I can totally see why the film succeeded so much in 1984...it was a fun concept. Also for the time, the effects were pretty amazing, no one had ever seen a puppet break-dancing before or shooting a gun. The concept of this mysterious pet transforming into a monster was awesome and we never know where the film is going with the story. I also liked how the Mogwai is an utter mystery, we have no idea its origin and only are told about the three rules. As I mentioned above, I liked the Kate backstory of disliking Christmas because I found some relating to her sentiments, and just like the Mogwai produces Gremlins, Christmas produces depression, in other words, nurturing can be very important for those that feel darkness in the light of the Holidays.

The cinematography was pretty good as they did a great job conveying the story. When the scene calls for tension and terror, we get that. When the scene calls for the silliness of Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) trying to sell his mobile toothbrush machine we get that in the scene design, in other words, I felt the atmosphere was the strength of this film. The film can also be useful to show children that want pets the importance of responsibility when it comes to owning a pet and I think that is where the film is at its most useful.  As much as I want to knock the effects, and let's admit it, there were films released the same year that needed more complex effects and did them better (Ghostbusters, Raiders of the Lost Ark), this wasn't a complete failure here. I think I only noticed one puppet wire throughout the whole thing and that was pretty impressive. The way they worked around the puppeteering was pretty damn cool, like when they put Gizmo in the backpack, that wasn't originally in the script, the filmmakers needed a way to make Gizmo mobile but had no idea how to hide the wires and puppeteers from the zoomed out shots of Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) with Gizmo, so the backpack became a solution. The camera work was instrumental in giving us the illusion that these Gremlins moved on their own. Oh cant forget how amazing the dog Barney (Mushroom) was with his interactions with Gizmo, it was pure luck that the dog was just fascinated by the Gizmo puppet and it shows in the film. I also want to give a shout out to the puppeteering teams, they did a phenomenal job from start to finish with the animatronics and creature effects and should be proud of their work.

Okay now for the "gremlin" portion of my review... I probably made this assessment the last time I had watched this film and probably why I hadn't rewatched this until the film club, ——now I'm no scientist or genius but isn’t snow a form of water? , the one thing that ruined this for me as an adult was the film breaking its own rules!! I despise when films do this, they did it in Halloween (2018) and why that film became one of my most hated of 2018, what i'm talking about is the rule of never getting the Mogwai wet---------so why the hell would you set your film in a SNOWY TOWN??!!!!!! Why would Mr. Wing (Keye Luke) lecture about responsibility at the end of the film when he himself has brought the fucking Mogwai to place that has winter snow fall every year? Unless I missed the part where they mention a rare and unexpected snowfall for the region, it really made no sense for Mr. Wing to have the Mogwai there. It was like the characters forgot that SNOW is just water frozen and once it falls on a warm body it melts into....omg, WATER!!!!  It only gets worse when Stripe who survives the theater massacre, is running around looking for water to jump into when there is fucking snow everywhere!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just jump into a snow pile, Stripe!!! Yeah you can imagine how pissed I was during the Gremlin christmas carolers scene too. I mean, they are standing in snow outside Mrs. Deagle's (Polly Holliday) home!!! I'm sorry, that was a huge fail. Another negative for me was the Gremlins taking over the town sequence, I felt it just went on too long and took away from the tension they had setup through the gruesome deaths of the Gremlins and humans, suddenly we get almost 10 minutes of Gremlins at the bar getting drunk and while some of it was funny, i thought it was overdone and watching Kate tend to the bar all on her own when the Gremlins had been killing everyone they came in contact with just didn't make sense to me, I get it, they kept her alive cause she was serving them but it didn't work for me. As soon as they show the "Flashdance" Gremlin in that sequence, I checked out and as you know, it didnt get better for me after that since what follows is the theater scene and Stripe’s search for WATER....despite snow being all over the damned place!!! A better concept would have been if the snowfall would have fallen unexpectedly in the second act causing Stripe to create more Gremlins of his kind that way. Also, I thought feeding the Mogwai after midnight is what  turned it into a Gremlin, but i guess if you wet the Gremlin in its current phase, it reproduces more it its kind since Stripe was looking for water and not food, again I couldn't help but think of stuff like that, sorry. Had they left snow out of the film, I would have not been so distracted by those outdoor scenes....every time i saw snow, I thought, WATER!!! They should have just given Gizmo a job at the wet t-shirt contest, it would have been safer than the snowfall outside. 

Another weakness for me was the actions of the characters in charge of the Mogwai. First, Mr. Wing having the Mogwai in a winter region. Billy being careless and allowing himself to be fooled by the Mogwai, and then the professor leaving a fucking sandwich out when he was made aware of the three rules ——or maybe he wasn’t, not like anyone seems to respect the rules anyways, not even the writers. 

Final Verdict...2/5...that is my adjusted adult score. What I thought was going to be a fun nostalgic rewatch became a frustrating experience as my main complaint really took me out of the fantasy and world I was supposed to get immersed in. I didn’t get the point of following the father around except that he serves as the narrator of the story but chronicling his journey back home seemed pointless. It wasn’t all bad though, as i felt the film had great atmosphere and tension when it required it and great moments of levity to balance the moments of brief gore. The concept of a pet becoming dangerous if you don’t care for it properly was pretty cool. I also cracked up every time Stripe said, “Gizmo caca”, caca in Spanish means shit/turds, so Stripe calls Gizmo a piece of shit the entire film. Hahahaha  I didn’t mind the human actors not being the stars of the film, as that goes to the Gremlins, this is a story about them and is why Gizmo is the hero at the end and not Billy. This is a fun movie to watch with kids as there are some decent themes of responsibility and elements of entry-level horror. But not something I’d recommend to adults unless it’s nostalgic. I wish I was left with warm Fuzzy nostalgic memories but all i could think of was....there was snow/water everywhere!! So if you can convince me that the snow isn’t a problem, then I’ll consider raising my score. Gremlins is fun family fare and I bet that was the target audience back then and even clearer now.

Cookies get 5/5.

Edited January 4, 2020 by Con