One of the best Christmas movies

Rating: 7/10 (27 December 2013)

Gremlins is essentially a kids movie for adults. This factor has probably got a lot to do with its producer, Steven Spielberg, who pulled a very similar trick with the earlier Poltergeist. Where that movie was directed by The Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper, Gremlins was helmed by Joe Dante director of The Howling. But both Poltergeist and Gremlins feel like Spielberg movies and the influence of the horror directors is very watered down. I don't think Spielberg was a passive influence as producer; he seems to have been more like the actual director.
Whatever the case, Gremlins focuses on an everyman suburban family in a fantastical situation, something Spielberg seems to have had an affinity with. While it is a horror movie, it's never exactly disturbing or frightening. Having said that, it is an odd combination that is occasionally jarring, such as a kitchen sequence where three Gremlins are dispatched of quickly and gorily – one is stabbed to death, another is chopped up in a blender and a third is frazzled in a microwave oven. Moments like that, along with scenes of the Gremlins drinking, smoking, killing and flashing – led to it being problematic with some parents back in the day who thought it was going to be like E.T., which is hardly surprising seeing as the cute and cuddly Mogwai is pretty much in Ewok territory. But really, it's the evil Gremlins who make this movie entertaining. They constantly laugh along to their evil deeds and generally act bad just for the hell of it. What helps matters a lot is that the creature effects are very impressive. Despite these monsters being more or less puppets, they are very well rendered indeed.
The family that the film is based around are typical enough. The father is an inventor, or more truthfully a very bad inventor. His long suffering family are forced to try out his proto-type inventions around the house. This leads to a few funny scenes where the devices function disastrously. Early on its made abundantly clear that there are three hugely important rules connected to owning Mogwais – don't expose them to bright lights, don't get them wet and don't feed them after midnight (I always wondered even as a kid that that last rule was a little disconcertingly vague, I mean it's never exactly specified when you can actually start feeding them again!). Anyway the son, alongside his sidekick Corey Feldman, manages to break these rules in about twenty-five minutes. They don't hose the Mogwai down after feeding him pizza at 1am in the morning with a strobe light operating in the background but their idiotic actions really aren't a million miles away from this. But, hey, moronic behaviour is a very useful plot device for a horror film and it does allow for the mayhem to kick into full gear.
Gremlins is certainly one of the most consistently entertaining Christmas movies. The holiday season backdrop actually adds quite a lot to the feel of the film to be fair. It's a pretty dumb movie but made with a lot of skill, which is quite a good combination in the final analysis.