This selection from Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas gives us a horror hit that forever changed portrayals of Christmas -- not to mention the MPAA:
On a trip to New York City, unsuccessful inventor Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) searches for a Christmas present for his son Billy (Zach Galligan), and in Chinatown he finds an adorable creature known as a mogwai. The old shopkeeper (Keye Luke) refuses to sell it, but his grandson secretly lets Rand have it for $300. There are rules to be followed in keeping the creature: Keep it away from bright light, don't let it get wet, and don't feed it after midnight.
Billy is delighted to receive the pet, whom he names Gizmo, but havoc erupts when the rules are ignored. Once he gets wet, Gizmo spawns several more mogwai, only these new ones are mean and aggressive. And when the new creatures eat after midnight, they go into cocoon stage, only to re-emerge as scaly, vicious creatures. The Peltzers and Billy's girlfriend Kate (Phoebe Cates) -- with the help of Gizmo -- must save their town of Kingston Falls from the evil, vulgar, rampaging beasties.
Joe Dante has always had a mordant sense of humor, and getting to combine slimy creatures with an idyllic, snowy small town at Christmas time was a juxtaposition he clearly relished. Kingston Falls is a close cousin to the Bedford Falls of It's a Wonderful Life -- there's even a mean old rich person to cause misery, although in this case, Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holliday) comes to a much more violent end than the older film's Mr. Potter. The effects get rather splattery, and Columbus' script has some hoary moments (all of which are brilliantly spoofed in the even-funnier sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch), but Gremlins has a ghoulish sense of humor that makes it an annual must among people who look to Tim Burton, Edward Gorey, or Hieronymous Bosch rather than Currier & Ives for their holiday inspiration.
Fun Facts:
· The gore and violence of the PG-rated Gremlins, which came with a "Steven Spielberg Presents" seal of approval, was one of two movies in the summer of 1984 that inspired the Motion Picture Association of America to create the PG-13 rating. (The other? Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.)
· Comedian and Deal or No Deal host Howie Mandel provided the voice of Gizmo.
· Dante loaded Gremlins with lots of film-nerd inside jokes, from the casting of Dick Miller and Jackie Joseph from the original The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) as the Futtermans to the brief appearance of Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet at an inventors' convention to an cameo by Jim McKrell as newscaster Lew Landers, the role he played in Dante's The Howling. The film also marks the final screen appearances of veteran character actors Scott Brady and Edward Andrews as, respectively, the local sheriff and Billy's boss.
· Some 50 companies paid for the rights to manufacture tie-in products, including paperback novelizations, children's records, lunch boxes, sleepwear, toys and dolls, air fresheners, pens, flashlights, masks, camping gear, video games, watches and clocks, T-shirts and other clothing, beach towels and greeting cards. Stickers were available to purchasers of Scott Tissues, Hi-C fruit drink and Crest toothpaste. Oh, and Gremlins cereal, from Ralston Purina, of course. A company not officially tied into the film was Hasbro, which changed the look of its popular Furby doll to resemble Gizmo; the studio sued, and Hasbro settled for an undisclosed seven-figure sum.
Check back for more of Movieline's 12 Films of Christmas throughout the rest of this week.