My favorite Christmas movie of all time.

Rating: 10/10 (10 October 2005)

Usually, when we think of Christmas movies, we think of flicks like "It's a Wonderful Life". Well, here's a new kind: "Gremlins". This has got to be one of the coolest movies ever made. Joe Dante - always a director with some neat ideas - couldn't have pulled it off better.
It all begins when inventor Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) buys a furry little creature called "mogwai" from a Chinese salesman (Keye Luke). There are three rules about mogwai: 1) Never expose him to bright light (the sun could kill him). 2) Never expose him to water (certainly don't give him a bath). 3) The most important rule of all is never, ever, EVER, under any circumstances, feed him after midnight. So, Rand gives mogwai to his son Billy (Zach Galligan). But, as you might have guessed, the rules get broken, and before long, the little town of Kingston Falls is overrun by mean, green gremlins.
Everything that you love about movies, you're likely to find in "Gremlins". Whether it's the inside jokes (a cinema is showing "A Boy's Life" and "Watch the Skies", the working titles for "E.T." and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", respectively), the indictment of vicious landlady Ruby Deagle (Polly Holliday), Lynn Peltzer's (Frances Lee McCain) battles with the gremlins, or the overall jab at a "wholesome American small town", this is a top-notch thriller/comedy. I'm sure that Phoebe Cates is proud to have gotten an early role in this (she plays Billy's girlfriend Kate Beringer). And since this is a Joe Dante movie, B-movie actor Dick Miller of course gets a role: he plays sour neighbor Murray Futterman.
Maybe this is just me, but I've noticed some similarities between "Gremlins" and "Ghostbusters". The obvious one is that they're both about things that nobody wants around town, but there's more. They're both plural nouns beginning with "G". "Gremlins" has 8 letters, "Ghostbusters" has 12; 8 and 12 are both divisible by 4. Both movies were released on 8 June 1984 (a year ending with 4, a day divisible by 4).
Oh well, maybe I'm the only one who would even notice that. The point is that this is one great movie, and everyone should see it. 10/10.