Irresistibly Loony Little Monsters On The Loose Comedy Horror Classic

Rating: 8/10 (8 January 2006)

It's Christmas in American picture-postcard town Kingston Falls. Billy Peltzer is given an unusual present; a cute little furry creature called a Mogwai. He is delighted with the gift until he accidentally gets it wet and it quickly multiplies. Worse still is to come when the new creatures are fed after midnight and transform into horribly mischievous Gremlins ...
Most people's favourite Christmas movie is It's A Wonderful Life. My favourite is Gremlins. It's a fabulous flick, because it somehow manages to be both a sentimental good-natured modern-day fairytale, and an uproariously riotous comic horror film that stomps all over the nice wholesome image of Christmas and small-town America. The script by Chris Columbus is simply fantastic - all the characters are beautifully drawn, the Three Rules Of Gremlins are brilliant, and there are whole scenes which are simply priceless - the evocative Chinatown opening, the Sam Peckinpah kitchen massacre sequence, Kate's phenomenal Why I Hate Christmas speech, Mrs Deagle's grisly demise and the Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs spectacle, to name but a few. This is one of those rare examples of a film where everything just gels together beautifully - Dante's gleefully insane direction, Jerry Goldsmith's alternately soothing and teeth-grating score, wonderful camera-work by John Hora and eye-popping special effects puppetry by Chris Walas - Gizmo and Stripe are not just props in this movie, they are real characters who give performances with more depth than a lot of A-list actors I could name. The rest of the cast are equally wonderful; Galligan and Cates (for my money the best and cutest young actress of the eighties) are extremely appealing, Axton is terrific as the hapless inventor dad, Miller hilarious as the xenophobic neighbour Mr Futterman, and Luke is unforgettable as the wise old grandfather. Look out also for an unbilled bit by Dante alumni Kenneth Tobey and executive producer Steven Spielberg in a rare cameo appearance. This is a brilliantly made, wonderfully wicked horror comedy, in equal parts intriguing, funny, gross, touching and scary.